In the Realm of Authors and Literature

Call It Sleep. By Henry Roth. 599 pp. Robt. O. Ballou. $2.50.

The Jewish sections of New York—Brownsville, the Bowery, Avenue D—have long been fruitful well-springs for novelists. The color, the intensity, the tragedy, humor and pathos that enshrouded daily living was there for the novelist who could grasp them—and many have. But none so well, or with such good right, as Henry Roth.

I do not know who Mr. Roth is, but the pages of his book tell me that he has lived in Brownsville and on Avenue D, that he has listened with a trained ear to the Yiddish of immigrants and the strange English of their children, and that he knows equally well their highest hopes and deepest despair. Through this knowledge ### has been able to write a book that is not only a sturdy novel, but a significant sociological document.

“Call It Sleep” is the subjective record of the life of David Schearl in his seventh and eighth years. Brought to America by his mother as an infant, the father having preceded them by several years, his early life is nevertheless much what it would have been in Europe. He hears much more Yiddish than English; his mother adores him and permits him to stay in the house too much for his own good; and finally, the life of these immigrant Jews is fiercely self-contained and admits no outsiders. So David spends his days watching his mother clean and wash and cook, trembling against the moment when he must go into the street and mix with the other children, who are rough and sure.

There is another influence of importance. His father is a hard and bitter man who will not adjust himself to changed conditions. First a printer, he later becomes a milkman because he finds that he cannot work with other men without quarreling, and so must have a solitary job. He begins to quarrel with David’s mother for many reasons, among them David, and he is a man capable of great anger. One or two of his outbursts scar David’s mind for life. But meantime the reaction from his father teaches him to get little more used to other boys and to playing in the streets. He learns all the tricks of the boys on Avenue D; he also learns a lot of four and five letter words and uses them freely in this book. By this time we are living through David’s eyes. We go to Chedar with him, we tremble before the stern old Rabbi when the reading is not quick and fluent, we squirm on the bench with Moishe, Avrum, Schulim and Yankel, trying to evade the Rabbi’s glance. But even if school has passed off well, there always is the uneasy feeling that by the time one gets home, father will be there.

By this time the reader has discovered that Roth is suggesting that the troubles of the immigrant generation are ones of physical ###ustment, but that their children are snarled by frightful neuroses.

The troubles that make David’s father merely irritable, indirectly make life a nightmare for David. So that he is driven more and more within himself. He is haunted by visions, such as the one of Isaiah’s lips being seared by an angel. Even when his bawdy and foul-mouthed Aunt Bertha moves into the family and ###rgely takes his part against his ###r, he lives far from the real world, driven off by factors he cannot understand.

Only once does he try to escape, and that, ironically enough when he makes friends with a young Irish boy. But their interests and backgrounds are so diverse that the attempt soon falters. The sole trace is a rosary which David got from the boy in exchange for a singular service. This drops out of his pocket at the climax of a terrific family argument in which the question of David’s parentage comes up. David feels that the suffering his mother must bear must be his fault, and that in punishment his lips must be seared, as were Isaiah’s. Driven from the house by his father’s rage at dicovering the rosary, we leave David marching with sublime folly across the trolley tracks toward the exposed third rail, to burn for sins that are not his.

No review can do justice to the richness of this novel, to the poetry of its language (Roth translates the Yiddish into a beautiful English, in contrast to his careful phonetic rendering of the street vernacular), or to its peculiar mood of spiritual elevation despite the intimate and sometimes shocking details which find a place in its pages. At times apparently Mr. Roth finds that he has so much to say that he breaks into Joycean stylistic tricks. In the last chapter the narrative has a dual focus inside and outside of David’s mind. I cannot help feeling that this is a fault, that Roth could eventually have found a way of saying what he had to say without this distortion. But this is indeed a minor fault in a book that pulsates with intelligence and life. I can recommend “Call It Sleep” to any one with a strong stomach.

Make a habit of glancing through the classified advertising columns. They may have a surprise in store for you.