Roth, Henry. (1906 - 1995).
W o r k
- wrote a single novel, had it received poorly, and stopped writing
Call It Sleep (1934):
= a masterpiece of Jewish-American literature
- the breakdown of the American dream for a poor Jewish boy growing up in New York slums
<=> parallel to Michael Gold’s Jews Without Money: sympathies with Marxism and naturalistic technique
x but: unlike Gold focuses on the search for the language rather than for the political solution
- New York = a Babylon like city of broken English reinforcing the sense of dislocation
- attempts to connect Realism and Transcendentalism, and the European and American novel
Quote
"'Yuh know w'ea babies comm from'?
'N-no'.
'From de knish'.
'—Knish'?
'Between de legs. Who puts id in is de poppa. De poppa's god de petzel. Yaw de poppa'. She giggled stealthily and took his hand."
From Call It Sleep (1934).
Basics
(Photo: Wikipedia).
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Author
Henry Roth. (1906 - 1995). Jewish-American. -
Work
Novelist. Author of Call It Sleep (1934). -
Genres
Naturalism. Social novel.
Literature
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.