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require interlocutors as well. “ I Married a Communist,” the memoir of Reingold’s wife is
ghost written by a politician. Her own life is re-told by a magazine reporter. The
psychotic Vietnam veteran in The Human Stain tells his tale to both a psychiatrist as well
as Zuckerman. His account is oblique and coded. A secret journal by Faunia Farley, the
sexually abused janitor and Silk’s lover, is discovered after her death and unreported in
the narrative. Swede Levov’s attempt to recover his father’s life is unsuccessful. Only the
narratives of the empathetic observers have any measure of reliability and some critics
have doubts about their veracity (Royal 2001, 6).
What the reader does experience, however, is the tragic dimensions of lives of
these men. For Reingold, Levov and Silk cannot, and to some extent will not, fully
abandon the attachments of their former communities nor can each fully assume the role
of the model liberal citizen. They are certainly betrayed by others in addition to the elites
they so abhor. Reingold is betrayed by his communist mentor, his wife, and friends,
Levov by his daughter, wife and brother, Silk by his daughter and colleagues. But, as
Roth teaches us, each in involved in their own acts of betrayal—of their fathers, their
neighbors and their very identity. Can this insight refocus democratic theory to appreciate
both the values of place and community as well as progress and individuality? The
populist moments in which this anger erupts collectively can be seen as instances in
which this dilemma can be grasped rather than as either dangerous de-stabilizing events
or signs of democratic promise.
REFERENCES
Ackerman, Bruce. 1980. Social Justice in the Liberal State. New Haven, CN: Yale
University Press.
Convention