Mirabell
Former Member
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on the novel
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11036
Henry Roth (8 February 1906 - 13 October 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Roth was born in Tysmenitz near Stanislav, Galicia, Austro-Hungary. His first published novel Call It Sleep (originally published in 1934) achieved a second life since its re-publication and critical re-appraisal in the 1960s when it sold 1,000,000 copies and was hailed as an overlooked Depression-era masterpiece and classic novel of immigration. It is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Jewish American literature. Call It Sleep was dedicated to his then mistress and muse, Eda Lou Walton.
After the book's publication, Roth began and abandoned a second novel and wrote several short stories. In the early 1940s he abandoned writing, and moved from New York to Maine and later New Mexico, and worked as a firefighter, laborer, and teacher, among other occupations, before retiring to a trailer park in Albuquerque.
Roth originally didn't welcome the new-found success that Call It Sleep received, valuing his privacy instead. However, he soon began to write again, at first short stories. At the age of 73, he began work on a series of novels that grew to six volumes, with final editing completed shortly before his death. The first four of these were published (two of them posthumously) as a cycle called Mercy of a Rude Stream while the last two manuscript volumes remain unpublished. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States in 1995.
Roth failed to garner the acclaim some say he deserves, perhaps because he failed to produce another novel for sixty years. His massive writer's block after the publication of Call it Sleep is often attributed to Roth's personal problems, such as depression, political conflicts, or his unwillingness to confront events in his past that haunted him, such as having incestuous relationships with both his sister and cousin, which are written about in the later work.
on the novel
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11036
Call It Sleep exemplifies Henry Roth?s fascination with modernist technique; the influence of James Joyce is apparent throughout the novel, as are typical modernist themes of alienation and isolation. As a cultural portrait, Call It Sleep paints a vivid picture of immigrant life in early twentieth century New York, specifically that of the very large immigrant Jewish population. As a commentary upon the struggles of a minority group, Call It Sleep offers a poignant tale of a young boy and his often unsettling experiences both at home and in his community.
When Henry Roth began working on Call It Sleep in the summer of 1930, his intent was to write autobiographically. He wrote the first 75 pages of his draft in the first person, strictly adhering to the facts of his own life. Yet Roth admits that a struggle arose - a struggle between the factually-oriented autobiographer and the novelist who wanted to present different ideas and the freedom to imagine. Consequently, the resulting novel presents what Roth felt was an embellished portrait of his soul: an honest portrayal of his own childhood that reflects a young Jewish boy?s perceptions of his world and of his faith.
The young Jewish boy who serves as Roth?s double in Call It Sleep is David Schearl who is a mere toddler when he arrives with his mother Genya at Ellis Island in 1907, both of them immigrants from Austria-Hungary who have been sent for by Genya?s husband Albert. The novel depicts David as he passes through seven or so years of childhood and deals with personal doubts and fears, volatile family relationships, difficult social adjustments, and a restrictive yet paradoxically liberating religion.
Part of the lyrical excellence of Call It Sleep derives from Roth?s mix of Yiddish and English within his narrative. Yiddish phrases, as used in the Schearl home, represent the purity of both religion and culture, while the broken English phrases that David learns ?on the street? represent not only the encroachment of the American, Christian society but also the beginning of a loss of cultural identity. Additionally, the inclusion of Hebrew and Polish terms - the latter which the young David barely understands at all - serve to heighten a sense of mystery about forbidden things within the novel, including a tantalizing question about David?s parentage.
Another memorable aspect of the novel is Roth?s use of Hebrew texts as structural elements: among the texts Roth quotes or alludes to are Isaiah, the Haftorah Jethro, and the Chad Gadya - all well-known Jewish texts. The use of these texts emphasizes the strong Jewish faith that is under fire in the novel and points the contrast with the Christian milieu into which David is thrust as soon as he enters school.
Lewis Gannett writes that Call It Sleep is suggestive of ?the great Russians or German Romantics?