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Call It Sleep: A Novel
by Henry Roth (Introduction: Alfred Kazin) (Afterword: Hana Wirth-Nesher)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1992-01-01)
ISBN: 0374522928
EAN: 9780374522926
Dewey Decimal #: 813.52
Paperback: 448 pages
SKU: 20191
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Paperback. 1 front cover corner bent. Pages are clean and unmarked.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
When Henry Roth published Call It Sleep, his first novel, in 1934, it was greeted with critical acclaim. But in that dark Depression year, books were hard to sell, and the novel quickly dropped out of sight, as did its twenty-eight-year-old author. Only with its paperback publication in 1964 did the novel receive the recognition it deserves. Call It Sleep was the first paperback ever to be reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, and it proceeded to sell millions of copies both in the United States and around the world.
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Customer Reviews
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insight to an era
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-08-29
After hearing about this book from the movie "The Stone Reader" I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. It is a wonderful insight to an era in America for immigrants. I loved spending time with the characters even when I didn't like some of them. The prose was beautiful to read as a translation from the yiddish and polish, the reading was hard and slow when spoken in the characters broken english.
It is a great read and a good reminder to all of us what it was like to be an immigrant, young, and innocent in a new country.
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Ditto
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-30
I don't know what more I can add to the fine reviews already written here, other than to say, "Ditto." This is a truly literary novel, a small vignette in the big picture depicted in our American tapestry of culture, race and religion. It is a stark depiction at times, and at times disturbing, but the image created rings true, as do the characters. Highly recommended for the intellectual reader.
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An undeniable classic
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-06-03
When Henry Roth's novel Call it Sleep was published in 1934 it was hailed by some critics and readers as a minor masterpiece. Indeed, this is one of the best novels about our immigrant experience. Mr. Roth's compassion for his characters, his intense narrative force, and his wonderful ear for dialectic speech and poetry is evident throughout Call it Sleep. A simple story of an immigrant Jewish family during the years 1911 to about 1913, it centers on a boy named David Schearl, who lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, his feuding parents, his street friends and some relatives. At times its scenes of domestic strife may get wearisome to the reader, but then Roth introduces the colorful Aunt Bertha, who has a different temperament than David's gentle mother, and the fireworks begin. She is a loud, course, stout and an outspoken woman who never hesitates to stand up to her sister's bitter, argumentative husband. Their hard life reaches a climax during an ugly family fight wherein David, fearing his father's rage, runs away. He soon finds himself hiding in a train yard, but comes close to being electrocuted. He survives his harrowing experience and is brought home to his worried parents.
The beauty of Call it Sleep lies in Mr. Roth's power of description and his deep understanding of people. The images he conjures of his old Lower East Side neighborhood, its struggling people, busy streets and loud sounds, its smells and relentless drama all come alive. Some readers may find this somewhat lengthy novel confusing at times, with several passages difficult to understand, and its dialog undecipherable when Roth weaves speech, narration and poetry into a confusing jumble, but Call it Sleep is terrific reading. An excellent introduction by Alfred Kazin and an afterward by Hanna Wirth-Nesher, a language scholar, proclaim it a masterpiece of language and literature. Most readers will happily agree.
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Perhaps the best American novel in the 20th century
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-12-17
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
A reading group I belong to suggested Gatsby as the best American novel. It is very fine, but I retorted that Call It Sleep was finer -- then I ordered it and read it again after 40 years. I stick with my opinion.
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Depict one character perfectly; the rest will follow.
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-06-16
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Henry Roth wants to do two things well in this book: first, accurately describe the experience of being a child -- not a tough, bully-type child, but a shy kid with no friends. (I can relate.) Secondly, he wants to capture the language spoken by native New Yorkers and by immigrants to the city.
It might be best to explain the book's trick as "inside versus outside." Most of the time, we stand in a position of semi-omniscience, much like in Crime and Punishment: while the godlike narrator in Crime and Punishment could see inside Raskolnikov's head and no one else's, we are allowed into David Schearl's mind while he wanders terrified through the world. David understands perfectly well why he's so scared, and by the end so do we -- but we also understand why he can't explain his terror to anyone else. We are trapped in the child's head with him. It's been a very long time -- probably since I was David's age -- since I've remembered those feelings.
The language of New York's Jewish ghettoes in Call It Sleep also has an inside and an outside, and Roth's great trick is to pull us so deeply into that world that it's a slap on the face when we're back outside. The immigrants talk to one another in their native Yiddish, in which there's great poetry and biblical allusion (as well as more than a few "may your remaining days be dark"-type curses). We're steeped in that world. Only occasionally do the immigrants step outside and talk haltingly with, say, a local policeman. They are shy, awkward, and adrift. Roth is so ingenious in the delivery that we feel their shyness and awkwardness as though it were our own.
It's rare to find a book that is so committed to its characters. Roth has no ulterior motive. He just wants to introduce us to this little community and its little people. If we happen to see larger meanings or other people in those he depicts, it's accidental. That sort of devotion to character is extremely rare. I can only imagine how absorbed in the characters Roth must have been, if he drew his reader in that completely.
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