Book Description
'One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American.' -Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did thisnovel receive the recognition it deserves-and still enjoys. Having sold-to-date millions of copies worldwide, CallIt Sleepis the magnificent story of David Schearl, the'dangerously imaginative' child coming of age in the slums of New York.
Customer Reviews:
Depict one character perfectly; the rest will follow........2007-06-16
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.
a porfound masterpiece.......2006-11-13
This is probably the best novel I have read in the last 10 years- my only question is why hadn't I heard of it before since it was writtten some time ago. How Roth gets into the mind of a small boy is remarkable- I could not put this book down!
Strangely Addictive.......2006-08-11
It was just another audio book to check out of the library and listen to while doing boring exercises. The oddysey of a Jewish immigrant boy in early 20th century New York City became an addiction that I did not want to continue but could not stop listening to. Towards the end, I wondered if author Roth had read Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' (he even refers to a heart of darkness). The book became an addiction, one that I am glad to have experienced, but would not want to try again.
rambling but important.......2006-04-21
He really captures the times and the immigrant mentality. He does ramble however and I got irritated at times. It's like he chose not to edit, but sometimes editing is about etiquette and consideration towards the reader.
Not My Kind of Novel.......2005-12-12
In a sense, it's sort of silly to try and write anything useful about a book so completely hyped by critics and carefully studied (cf. New Essays on Call it Sleep), but I'm going to anyway, because I didn't like it. Now, to be totally up front, I read it under a certain amount of duress. My book group picked it, and after the first ten pages I decided I wasn't going to read it and would miss the discussion for the first time in four years. However, it happened that at the exact same time, I started a research project in which I needed to learn about Manhattan in 1916. Since that's just a year or so after when this novel is set, I realized I could kill two birds with one stone -- and so I went ahead and read it.
In hindsight, I realize that I should have skipped the introduction by Alfred Kazin which appears in my edition. It gives away almost every significant plot point and plants far too much in the reader's head -- I cannot conceive of why it wasn't the afterword. Plussing as which, it's not a great essay, even a light skim of it will reveal at least one logical flaw and a total misreading of a scene from the book. So, skip the introduction until after you've read the story. And that story is basically the heavily autobiographical inner life of a emotionally damaged 8-year-old Jewish kid in a rapidly modernizing New York. Many like to laud this book as the best novel about the immigrant experience ever written. This seems rather a strange proposition, for while one of the central themes is certainly the boy's attempt to discover an identity in this brave new world, his circumstance is far from typical. First of all, the Jewish immigrant experience in New York is a very particular one, especially as it relates to cultural persecution in the old world and the notion of alienation and always being "the other". Trying to say the "New York Jewish immigrant experience" is representative of the "immigrant experience" in general is clearly ridiculous. Secondly, by their own choices and actions, the boy's family is almost completely cut off from their fellow immigrants, and are hardly representative. Indeed, it's almost refreshing to find a depiction of immigrants whose hardships are largely of their own making.
The boy protagonist is a particularly irksome guide to this world, as he is the ultimate mama's boy (although not without reason). One of the running menacing subplots is the question of whether or not his father is truly his biological father or not, and what exactly his mother got up to in the old country that led to her being married off to a brute of a man (elements apparently drawn from Roth's own childhood). The bulk of the book concerns the boy's horrendous struggle both to assimilate into the world around him and to decipher the spiritual world. The former is a reasonably well-told and familiar portrait of an outsider who just doesn't "get it". The latter fills the book with religious symbolism, which remained largely a mystery to me owing to my utter lack of religious education and knowledge. Clearly, readers with a strong understanding of Judaism and Christianity will certainly find plenty to chew on. The sexual realm is another running theme, and one that's treated with a great deal of angst, confusion, and negativity. This takes on an entirely different aspect if you read the book knowing that Roth, as his biographer so gently puts it, "indulged in incest" with his sister Rose (and a cousin) for several years during his early teen years. A less sugar-coated way of putting it is that he sexually abused and raped his little sister for several years... This is hardly incidental to the book, as his biographer writes: "Roth would ultimately recognize that incest was the engine that drove his composition." Roth's tortured soul comes through very clearly in his younger alter ego, and it's not a pretty sight.
The style and language used are certainly distinctive, and doubtless many find it invigorating and affecting -- I did not. Roth was rather famously influenced by Joyce, Eliot, and other modernists, and I just happen not to care for modernism. The stream of consciousness employed to depict the boy's inner terrors is effective in moderation, but each passage of it runs on far too long, almost to the point of parody. Similarly, much has been written about Roth's representation of Yiddish and the phonetic treatment of English in the book, but neither has aged particularly well. The stylistic flourishes, epithets, and distinctive syntax of Yiddish which Roth employs are difficult to read without simultaneously "hearing" them as farce or parody of the Mel Brooks variety. There are a great deal of detailed descriptive passages, which again, may appeal to those who appreciate the writer as still-life artist, but again, these struck no chord with me.
So, I freely admit that many of my reasons for not liking the book are personal, however I doubt I am alone in this (as indeed I wasn't in my book group). It simply did not resonate with me on any level, and I can't say I'm the richer for having read it. Others certainly will be though, especially those with an interest in Jewish-American literature or literature about New York.
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- Worth owning for fans of Call It Sleep
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New Essays on Call It Sleep (The American Novel)
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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Call It Sleep: A Novel
ASIN: 0521456568 |
Book Description
Henry Roth's Call it Sleep, praised when it first appeared in the 1930s, neglected for decades, and reissued to wide acclaim in the 1960s, has been finally hailed as the finest Jewish-American novel of the first half of the century and one of the richest modernist novels to appear in America. The introduction and essays locate the novel in its cultural context and in terms of contemporary debates about ethnic literature, minority writing, modernism and canonization. Thus the volume sets out to consider Roth's hybrid status--as an American writer, a Jewish writer, and a European modernist.
Customer Reviews:
Worth owning for fans of Call It Sleep.......2001-05-31
This collection of essays on CIS is a good find. Some of the essays are more thought-provoking than others; Werner Sollors' "'A World Somewhere, Somewhere Else': Language, Nostalgic Mornfulness, and Urban Immigrant Family Romance In Call It Sleep" and Leslie Fielder's "The Many Myths of Henry Roth" make the book worth buying.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Studies in American Fiction, published by Northeastern University on September 22, 1993. The length of the article is 7557 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
From the supplier: Tillie Olsen's 'Yonnondio: From the Thirties' and Henry Roth's 'Call It Sleep examine motherhood from the perspective of daughter and son, respectively. Olsen's text encourages the reader to identify with the mother by placing the daughter physically and mentally close to the mother. The distance required to objectify the mother's pain is not allowed the reader. Roth's protagonist, on the other hand, is obsessed with his mother without empathizing with her, giving the mother no voice in the text. The novel seems addressed to masculine readers in the way it provides for exploitative sexual pleasure.
Citation Details
Title: On the side of the mother: 'Yonnondio' and 'Call it Sleep.'
Author: Elaine Orr
Publication:
Studies in American Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1993
Publisher: Northeastern University
Volume: v21
Issue: n2
Page: p209(15)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Download Description
Tough Texan Blake Kemp is a man of the law, yet he breaks some rules along the way to avenge the death of a woman he once loved. But will his newfound feelings for his shy assistant, Violet, replace his need for revenge? And will Violet finally win the heart of the man she silently loved for so long?
Customer Reviews:
Boss Man by Diana Palmer.......2007-09-24
While I enjoyed reading the book, it wasn't one of her better books. Not one I would read a second time as I have done with many of her other books.
Wheres the hero?.......2006-10-15
Typical romance by Diana Palmer. Violet is a strong character, unlike a lot of the females in the other books. However, the male character in this one comes up extremely short. He has no attractive attributes whatsoever. He's selfish, caught in the past, and unwilling to do his part to make the relationship work. It seems like he cares about his pet cats more. Even to the end, he makes Violet settle for a measly relationship.
Don't Bother!!!!!!!!!.......2006-09-06
What a waste of my time and money! This author is living in a time warp! If you have another title, just change the names and you'll have a new book. How does she get away with submitting the same crap to the publisher?
Palmer's male characters are gods gift to women and get away with treating women like trash. The women are so fiesty, they put their men in their place with witty responses like "you, beast!" ...Blah, Blah, Blah.............
Boss Man~Cute.......2006-07-06
I enjoyed this book. It was a cute story. It tied up alot of questions that continued thru other books. I loved the two cats & how Violet won them over.
Dissapointed.......2006-01-18
In other books Blake has tantalized with the possibility of a good romance but when his turn came, I found his story a dissapointment. It was the same for Dr. Coltrain & Cash Grier; the possibility of a highly charged romance was hinted at in stories where they had 'guest appearances' but it seemed that when it became time to tell thier stories Diana was tired of them and just threw a combination of old plots and contradictory situations together. Diana Palmers works are either very good or very bad and I won't spend the money on hardcover any more. I'll wait for the paperback.
Book Description
Alcoholic. Epileptic. Technically challenged. Jimmy Reed nevertheless overcame these roadblocks to become perhaps the most successful RandB/pop cross-over artist of the '50s with songs like "Big Boss Man" and "Bright Lights, Big City." Musicians, family members, and those whose lives Reed touched offer revealing and heart-wrenching insights into this now-revered bluesman. While Reed's alcoholism was no secret, its effect on his musicianship is less understood. This engaging book tells the real story that until now has not been told.
Customer Reviews:
A Big Boss Book On The Big Boss Man!.......2007-09-17
The miraculous progress in blues scholarship over the last 20 years or so continues with this book about the great Jimmy Reed. There were virtually no liner notes on Jimmy Reed albums, so a well researched book like this one fills in much needed information. The bonus of a book like this is the circular effect of reading it. Jimmy Reed's music draws you to the book, and reading the book sends you back to the music to hear musical observations the author points out. The end result is a better appreciation for music you already loved!
Not Bad!.......2007-02-24
A valuable book, but more sense could be made of out the interviewees' conflicting recollections of Reed. Also, some facts are erroneous: the Beatles didn't record "Take Out Some Insurance" with Frank Ifield, as Romano asserts. A live recording of Ifield singing the song (backed by other British musicians) was issued on an LP that included both performances by Ifield and by the Beatles, but NOT together. Curiously, the Beatles were involved with Tony Sheridan, who did record the song. Romano doesn't mention this, though.
great read.......2006-11-10
This book looks at the life of Jimmy Reed. His music was and still is wonderful and very influencial. This book tells of his troubles of trying to make it to his successes to comebacks and all of the struggles he faced inbetween. It's a fascinating story that is very historical in it's content, but also a captivating read.
Download Description
Every novel in this collection is your passport to a romantic tour of the United States through time-honored favorites by America's First Lady of romance fiction. Each of the fifty novels is set in a different state, researched by Janet and her husband, Bill. For the Daileys it was an odyssey of discovery. For you, it's the journey of a lifetime. Your tour of desire begins with this story set in Nebraska.
Customer Reviews:
From Back Cover.......2005-02-28
Ian Danforth's new assistant was hiding something. Gorgeous Katie O'Brien was too self-assured, too haughty and too dismal a typist to be a temp. In a matter of days, Katie had Ian out of the boardroom and into the bedroom. Yet her heart remained a mystery - one he was determined to solve.
Katherine Fortune was her real name - and she'd been under the thumb of powerful, controlling men like Ian her whole life. Although Ian's lovemaking made her shiver with need, what future could they have? Ian was everything Katherine wanted - but he was also everything she was running from.
5th in Dynasties: The Danforths mini-series; follow-up to The Fortunes of Texas series.
Product Description
Multiple books shipped as one item. Save on Shipping/Handling charges.
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Big Boss Man
Jimmy Reed Cdcoll 0121
Manufacturer: COLLECTABLES RECORDS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
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ASIN: 630675069X |
Product Description
Volume one contains Roma Mater and Gallicenae
Customer Reviews:
The Roman Empire in decline.......2004-08-06
This book is a fascinating blend of history, legend, and fantasy. This book was clearly heavily researched and includes numerous footnotes explaining the authors' interpretations. In this first book of the series, we are introduced to our protagonist and the city-state of Ys. This book sets the stage for the rest of the series and starts slow, but it provides a wealth of historical detail about the waning days of the Roman Empire.
An Excellent begining book to an oustanding series!.......1999-01-30
I really enjoyed this series, and it's the second time i've read it so far. I recommend this to all who enjoy fantasy series with political intrigue and mysterious/legendary cities. The author's bring to live this city of Ys and it's main characters with such vision. You really feel like you are there and the hero is excellently written. I was disappointed to not find many other books by these two! =)
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El Rey de Ys: Roma Mater
Manufacturer: Editorial EDAF
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 8476405170 |
Book Description
A dramatic autobiography of one of China's dedicated, courageous, and intensely persecuted house church leaders.
Customer Reviews:
Heavenly Man Review.......2007-09-20
This book is exciting! I could not put it down. This details the
plight and success of the Jesus's Church in China. A must reading for
anyone interested in what God is doing in the world other than U.S.
An inspiring, thought provoking journal of a man that only God could protect.
1st century Christianity is happening in China!.......2007-08-23
If you think church is dead and Christians are boring, then you must read this book! I am completely humbled by what God is doing in China. Brother Yun's story is incredible, beyond what mere words can describe. We're talking apostolic conditions here, miraculous jail escapes, healings, visions for communications, praying and fasting, and thousands coming to Jesus Christ, conversions of peasants, farmers, prison guards, Communist leaders as well as hardened murderers.
Read this book, I promise you will not see things like you did before.
Shame on the west.......2007-08-15
This book should be read by everyone who calls themself a Christian!
The lives of those of Christians like Brother Yun put we soft, spineless, pampered, high maintenence American Christians to shame
6 Stars if there were such a category.......2007-08-11
If you only read one book (aside from God's word) the rest of your life, read this book. It's a great testimony of the quality, depth, and richness of relationship one can have with Jesus Christ. After reading it, I am somewhat embarrassed to idenify myself as a Christian given the ease of my life compared to those written of in this book! An amazing story of God's power and providence. The testimony of brother Yun is one that is provoking me out of complacency and on towards longing for God to reveal himself more and more in my life. This is not a light-hearted, feel-good Christian book. This is a "here's what it costs to follow Jesus" book. Absolutely wonderful!
Fantastic Book!!!.......2007-08-09
I had this book on my shelf for years, then finally picked it up one day and couldn't hardly put it down. I don't typically read books very fast, but I think that it only took me about 2 days to finish. It is a great book. Amazing story, glory to God!
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![*Signed* the King of Ys: Roma Mater, Gallicenae, and Dahut [3 Vol Lot]](http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/21z%2Bowt4llL.jpg)
