On The Bookshelf

Identity Issues

In his new novel, "The Human Stain,"
Philip Roth tells the story of a light = complexioned
black man who passes for a Jew.

Roth that the current zeitgeist has added
a new, ironic twist to the push-pull of
Jewish identity. ethnic chic.
Why fear antisemitism, in the
jr ewish demons have always
newly
minted 21st century, when you
pursued Philip Roth.
can savor your own Jewish
Starting with
cool? How curiously, won-
the 1959 publica-
drously American it is to
tion of Goodbye Columbus,
revel in the fact that Oscar-
his iconoclastic, and now
winning blonde goddess
classic, portrait of assimi-
Gwyneth Paltrow is
lated consumer Judaism,
descended, on her father's
New Jersey suburbs style,
side, from a long line of
Roth has dramatized his
rabbis, and that Madonna
characters' struggle to recon-
studies Kaballa.
cile their eternally warring
Indeed, proud Jewish
urges to simultaneously lay
roots are positively turn-
claim to and distance them-
ing up in just about
selves from (even sometimes
everyone's family tree,
flat-out reject) their Jewish
starting
with Secretary of
heritage.
State
Madeline
Albright.
Like the
Through the decades, Roth's ruth-
authors
of
a
spate
of
recent
memoirs
lessly ambivalent portraits have drawn
(including Louise Kehoe's award-win-
upon the author much ire from the
ning In This Dark House), she discov-
Jewish community — more likely than
ered only when well into adulthood
not, I've often thought, because his
the surprising fact of her Jewish her-
cold, unjaundiced eye is so on target.
itage — and at the same time learned
To be Jewish, or not to be Jewish
the terrible fate of family members
— at least, not too Jewish: That is the
killed in the Holocaust.
question that by now several genera-
So much for exorcising the past.
tions of American Jews — and, not
Conceal our identities as we will, fate
coincidentally, Roth characters belong-
will find us out.
ing to each of those generations —
No, Roth wrote in 1985 near the
have uneasily confronted and never
conclusion of his brilliant trilogy,
comfortably answered
Zuckerman Bound, "one's story isn't a
Nor does Roth's probing stop there.
skin to be shed — it's inescapable, one's
What does it mean to no longer be a
body and blood. You go on pumping it
stranger in a strange land, but a well-
out till you die, the story veined with
blended citizen in the national melting
the themes of your life, the ever-recur-
pot? For that matter, Roth pointedly
ring story that's at once your invention
questioned in his controversial take on
and the invention of you."
Israel, Operation Shylock, is it possible.
Fifteen years later, that passage gives
to straddle two worlds, or must we
an extraordinary, ironic resonance to
choose between them?
Roth's superb new novel, The Human
In some sense, aren't we all mod-
(Houghton Mifflin; $26), the
Stain
ern-day Hamlets, asking: Whether to
story of a light-complexioned black
live in exile, the Diaspora we know, or
man who, metaphorically speaking,
to return to a homeland whose terrain
does shed his skin. And he succeeds in
is so complex that no one can truly
doing so by "passing" for an olive-
claim to know it?
hued Jew.
Moreover, it has by no means escaped
The novel opens in the blazing
Diane Cole is the author of the memoir
summer of 1998, against the backdrop
`After Great Pain: A New Lift Emerges"
of President Clinton's impeachment
and the book editor of the health magazine trial. But in the view of narrator (and
longtime Roth alter ego) Nathan
"In Touch." She lives in New York City.

DIANE COLE
Special to the Jewish News

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