kennedys, clinton, and how (not?) to be a man of the people in America

I hesitated in my blog post title, wavering between United States and America. But the U.S. is a place while America is an idea and we're talking about ideas here so I settled on this nationalist term that normally isn't my preference, since it is imprecise. I first came to the awareness of the imprecision of the term America when I met some folks from South America who without fail would specify North America or the U.S.

That aside, I have put off writing about Philip Roth's The Human Stain because I hate the book. It's well-written, sure, but I am so disinterested in Coleman Silk's racial passing mainly because Faunia's subjectivity and her own class-passing (downward rather than upward, bucking the normal trend) are treated so problematically. She is likened to an animal, one of the dairy cows she milks. Also, she brandishes her illiteracy as a badge of protection, securing her individuality, keeping her independent of being subsumed by the literate classicist Coleman. But, while he may be a classicist, he's also a boxer. their bond is physical, two outcasts who don't want to conform to what's expected of their "type," whether that type be son of middle-class aspiring African Americans, or elite whites. But Coleman is dramatized so heroically, likened to Clinton during his ridiculous sex scandal, a victim, etc., while the character of Faunia's seems more about proving yet another layer of Coleman's iconoclasm than anything else. Is she his Monica? Ugh.

So, moving on to another book in which politicians are aligned with male protagonists, a book I thoroughly enjoyed, The City Below by James Carroll. In this book, the political motif is the entire Kennedy family. The book's ending is still elusive to me, ending with the funeral of David Kennedy, who OD'ed in 1984. I guess the Kennedys in this book and maybe even Clinton in Roth's can be considered a way to discuss ideals and fallibility, where the personal collides with the political. Questions raised in politics and in both of these two books are: Do you see yourself as a member of a community or as an individual? Does family matter, in what ways...? Where does family begin and where does it end? What does loyalty mean? Whose side are you on, and, as is often repeated in Carroll's book, who do you think you are?

Carroll hasn't been embraced by the literary world the same way Roth has. For some comments on that and the polarities of peace and violence, see this review This book covered so much ground that I don't have time to address it all, Patriarca, Gambino, the Vatican and the pill, the Boston busing crisis of 1974-5. I can't believe that this book has not been made into a movie yet. I see Leonardo DeCaprio and Edward Norton as perfect for the two Doyle brothers who dominate the novel, Nick "Squire," the flower shop gangster, favored grandson and criminal and Terry "Charlie," the spoiled priest in self-imposed exile from his roots with "The Town." Of course with a movie, the nuances would get lost, the whole political allegory thing....Speaking of movies, Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman star as Coleman and Faunia is The Human Stain. Both of them irk me which doesn't help my lack of love for that story. I think, though, that someday soon I should read more Philip Roth.

Tobacco Road may be next...we will see! It's always so weird starting in to a new book. It's like a new relationship (not just romantic, but with a friend, a job, whatever). You kind of feel forced and awkward at first but cautiously hopeful, wondering if it'll go somewhere great or not....