Chapter 1, Everyone Knows Summary

The Human Stain is a novel of identity that revolves around the love affair of two people who could not be more opposite. Coleman Silk is a classics professor, a man who was once well respected in his small community before an accusation took from him the identity he spent fifty years creating. Coleman's lover, Faunia Farley, is an illiterate woman who is being stalked by the ex-husband who blames her for the death of their two small children. This love affair creates a scandal in their small town that is only rivaled by President Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. From award winning author Philip Roth, The Human Stain is a statement on twentieth-century morality that could not have been voiced as well by any other writer.

In the summer of 1998, Coleman Silk, at the age of seventy-one...