Stained or The Japes Of Roth

I was recently reading Philip Roth's The Human Stain.  It's the story of a professor at a liberal arts college who uses the word "spooks" in a classroom and ends up out of a job.  The book, set in 1998, was published in 2000, and was turned into a poor film starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman in 2003.

Bill Clinton's impeachment serves as a backdrop to the novel, and it allows Roth to express his fury at how the president was treated.  He was incensed at the way Clinton was publicly humiliated for having a little fun, and by page 2 he (through his alter ego, narrator Nathan Zuckerman) is attacking all the bluenoses, especially on the right, for their pietism.

"[It was] the summer of an enormous piety binge, a purity binge [...] and a virile, youthful middle-aged president and a brash, smitten twenty-one-year-old employee carrying on in the Oval Office like two teenage kids in a parking lot revived America's oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony[....]

"I myself dreamed of a mammoth banner, draped dadaistically like a Christo wrapping from one end of the White House to the other and bearing the legend A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE."

Of course, Roth's work is filled with men's insatiable sexual urges, so his take isn't that surprising (though I'd be more impressed if he defended a Republican accused).  Further, his sentiments were widespread among Democrats back then.

Roth died last year, but lived long enough to see the rise of the #MeToo movement.  He had stopped writing by then, but would occasionally make his thoughts known on present-day events.  In fact, last year he was interviewed by The New York Times and though the article claims he discusses #MeToo, he actually sidesteps the issue when questioned directly.

He did take the time, needless to say, to claim Trump is the greatest disaster yet to befall America, as he's said for every Republican president since Eisenhower.

I only wish he were still alive so he could be confronted directly.  Ever since Hillary lost, more and more Democrats have come around to the point of view Roth attacks with such ferocity, claiming President Clinton, in fact, should have been impeached--and not for perjury or obstruction of justice, which were the Republican charges, but for acting like a teenage kid in a parking lot.

I think Roth is one of America's greatest writers.  If only he had lived a few more years, perhaps he would have 1) won the Nobel Prize and 2) seen his books removed from college curricula.