Upon picking up any piece of writing by Robert Roth you know very quickly that there will be no definitive point of view that will result in an easy neat conclusion. In Roth’s latest book, No End in Sight, a selection of writings that includes the issues of the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, rape, and predation, and cultural sexual phobias, are taken up through particular events, both personal and drawn from the news and social media. Roth has a remarkable laser-like attention to his subject and brings such intensity of thought and commitment to it that each specific case is viewed as through a prism; exploring every angle and hue, exhausting all possibilities before offering up his thoughts on the case/event/phenomena in question. Don’t get me wrong: Robert has a point of view or should I say points of view but his first interest is to try and make sense of what is going on underneath all the noise. For him it seems that to collapse complexity is to fall into a binary world of bad and good and for Robert its never that simple.

One case that Roth writes about is that of Anna Stubblefield and a young Black man in his 30’s, DJ, who has a severe case of cerebral palsy and is unable to speak and is thought to have the mental capacity of a toddler. Anna (a white professor at Rutgers) begins to work with DJ using a method called facilitated communication. Very quickly it appears that DJ is making huge strides and begins to write academic papers and attend conferences. Of course DJ’s family is thrilled by this awakening but soon discovers that Anna (who is 41 and married) has fallen in love with DJ and they are sexually intimate. Deep issues are confronted by this news and Roth attempts, as best he can,  to look through the lenses of the family, Anna’s POV, and also DJ’s, as he wonders about what DJ might feel. Of course, it is impossible to know in any absolute terms what is true and what is not in terms of DJ’s reality since he cannot communicate without Anna’s assistance. But what is real is that seriously disabled people are mainly regarded as non-sexual entities by the status quo and hence are believed to be possible targets for sexual abuse. Thus, Anna and DJ’s story becomes public and the pain and panic expressed by DJ’s family and the pain and despair Anna feels, not to mention her serious legal problems, are looked from all sides. Roth does a masterful job of negotiating this extremely difficult case.

Simply put, “No End in Sight” expresses just that: no end in sight of all that needs to be witnessed, addressed, thought through and revisited again and again. Robert Roth has given us a gift with his keen and deep analyses and musings on the human mess of confusion, pain and