But Coleman Silk seems like a stretch even for him.

Unfortunately for Philip Roth's professor, Coleman Silk, the students happen to be African-Americans.

Coleman Silk, so black, so smooth, so surface-driven.

Being Jewish, for Coleman Silk, means being white.

Not for nothing is Coleman Silk a classical scholar.

His reasoning was simple: like Coleman Silk, the main character in the novel, Mr. Davis is a black man who is often mistaken for white.

It is likely that thousands of them instead did what Coleman Silk and Mr. Broyard did.

"In Philip Roth's novel, you believe that Coleman Silk is white until Page 84," he said.

In the first part, he presents Coleman Silk as a failed academic, the victim of political correctness run amok.

The story is told by Nathan Zuckerman, a writer who lives quietly in New England, where Coleman Silk is his neighbor.