Call It Sleep

by Henry Roth, Alfred Kazin (Introduction), Hana Wirth-Nesher

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.

Call It Sleep is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the “dangerously imaginative” child coming of age in the slums of New York.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Jewish, New York, Literature, Novels

462 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Call It Sleep is a profound tale about all sorts of child’s fears. Bereft of father’s love David has no choice but to become a mummy’s boy. And he finds himself standing on the threshold of the hostile, inimical and indifferent world.

Relieved by slight flurries in traffic from his father’s smouldering eye, David stared unhappily at the houses gliding past the doorway. He felt strange – feverish almost. Whether it was that he had been staring down into the cellar too long, or whether because his fear of his father clouded and distorted all the things he saw, he could not tell. But he felt as though his mind had slackened its grip on realities. The houses, pavements, teams, people on the street no longer had that singleness and certainty about them that they had had before. Solidities baffled him now, eluded him with a veiled shifting of contour. He could not wholly identify even the rhythm and the clap of hooves; something alien and malign had fused with all the familiar sounds and sights of the world.

And to escape isolation David desperately needs someone he can lean on…

The hour that had passed had been one of the most blissful in David’s life. He had never wanted to be anyone’s friend until this moment, and now he would have given anything to be Leo’s. The longer he heard him speak, the longer he watched him, the more he became convinced that Leo belonged to a rarer, bolder, carefree world. There was a glamour about him. He did what he pleased and when he pleased. He was not only free of parents, but he also wore something about his neck that made him almost god-like. Sitting next to him, David’s one concern had been how to ingratiate himself, how to keep Leo amused, keep him from remembering that time was passing.

But instead of finding friendship David finds himself being used so there are no restrictions to his despair…
Children are like litmus paper – they at once react to all family troubles and they suffer most.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I read this in 1934 I would have thrown my socialist cap into the air and declared it to be genius. But not now, friends, not now. James Joyce's name crops up in reviews of this book all the time, but the similarities are superficial. Stream of consciousness, yep, that's about it. Don't misunderestimate me through, Henry Roth is a very remarkable writer. But reading him gave me the same feelings the coffee shop manager has towards Phoebe's singing in Friends -

"Don't you like Phoebe's singing?"

"I'm not saying she's bad, but she makes me want to stick my fingers through my eyes into my brain and swirl them round... and round..."

The stuff of the kid's life in Call it Sleep is mindbendingly dull, oh so very very dull, you are aching for an overladen truck full of anchovies or Tabasco sauce to swerve round the corner of 4th Street and for one - just one - crate to topple off and splat the little bugger flat on the sidewalk, just to put him out of his misery. But alas, this does not happen. But, you know, Henry Roth is a very great writer. Although except for the dialogue, which is (how can I put this) grotesquely tiresome. Every scene you've gone through many times already in other books, other movies, other past lives, other beermats. And no one has any fun at all, it's like fun was invented in 1935, yeah, that's right, the year AFTER Call it Sleep was published. Okay, Jewish immigrant, Lower East Side, turn of the century, sure, fun was in short supply. But surely you could find little tiny hints of it occasionally, maybe some rich guy dropped a bit of fun on the street. I dunno. Maybe we should create a goodreads Miseryometer for this kind of book - Angela's Ashes could be the gold standard. This one scores a strong 9.0 on the Angela's Ashes scale. But who said literature should be a barrel of donkeys? Nobody. I just like a glimpse of one cheeky little donkey now and then.

PS - I just checked other GR reviews of this - wow, am I out on a limb! Well, you gotta tell em like you finds em.

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

El caso de Henry Roth y de “Llámalo sueño”, su primera novela, es realmente curiosa. La novela se publicó en 1934 y, aunque llamó la atención de algunos críticos, comercialmente pasó prácticamente inadvertida. No fue hasta su reedición, ¡30 años después!, que la novela fue aclamada extensamente por crítica y púbico. Ahora es considerada un clásico y el germen de toda la literatura judío-norteamericana posterior. Aun así, el autor no volvió a publicar nada hasta los años noventa, poco antes de su muerte.

En nuestro país, posiblemente sea esta la más desconocida de las grandes novelas norteamericanas. No se publicó hasta 1990, lo que en buena parte se debió seguramente a la enorme dificultad que entrañaba su traducción. Miguel Sáenz fue el encargado de tan ardua tarea y, aunque él considere este trabajo como un relativo fracaso, se trata de Miguel Sáenz, el traductor de Döblin, Sebald o Bernhard, la novela mantiene su grandeza e interés.

Henry Roth hace aquí un retrato intenso y desgarrado del choque cultural que sufrieron los emigrantes judíos a su llegada a la supuesta tierra de la esperanza y las oportunidades, unos Estados Unidos caracterizados en sus barrios pobres por la mescolanza de gentes llegadas de todas las partes del mundo. El lenguaje de la novela es un inglés plagado de términos yidis y malhablado por los diversos acentos de los países de procedencia. Si esto ya debió de ser una locura plasmarlo en su idioma, no podemos hacernos una idea de lo que tuvo que ser trasladarlo al castellano. Pero es que la cosa se complica aún más. Numerosos pasajes a lo largo y ancho de la novela están narrados en modo de corriente de conciencia (el autor era un ferviente admirador de Joyce, con quién esta novela siempre estará en deuda).

“Uno puede preguntarse mil veces por qué vive, y no morir sin embargo”

La obra nos cuenta, desde el punto de vista del protagonista y permutando entre la tercera y la primera persona, entre el lirismo en la descripción del entorno, la dureza de los diálogos y el exabrupto grotesco de las discusiones familiares, el transcurrir de la vida de David, un niño judío y pobre de siete u ocho años, en un barrio marginal de Nueva York a principios del siglo XX. David vive entre la inmensa felicidad que le proporciona la cercanía de su madre, el arquetipo de mujer judía, protectora, servicial y amantísima madre, y el miedo paralizante que le provocan los continuos brotes de cólera de su padre, un ser orgulloso, inseguro, de los que van por la calle buscando gestos de burla en aquellos con los que se cruza, incapaz de mantener un trabajo más allá de unos pocos días y atormentado por una sospecha.

Como ya habrán podido deducir, no es la infancia de David el paraíso despreocupado y feliz que muchos añoran (lo que prueba lo poco fiable que es la memoria), sino una pesadilla de temores, silencios, incomprensiones y ocultaciones, con el pecado y la culpa siempre presentes (es realmente llamativo el lugar que ocupa la sexualidad, para bien y casi siempre para mal, en las novelas de los autores judíos), donde se huye de los goyim como si fueran apestados, y donde la pandilla de amigos, en lugar de ser un refugio, es un grupo jerarquizado siempre predispuesto a la burla y a la humillación pública. Un mundo que choca frontalmente con el carácter hipersensible y miedoso del chico que, con una poderosa imaginación, no tomará siempre las mejores decisiones, entretejiendo así los hilos del drama familiar que estallará dramáticamente en sus capítulos finales.

“Hubiera podido también llamarlo sueño. Solo yendo hacia el sueño cada pestañeo de sus párpados podría provocar una chispa en la nebulosa yesca de la oscuridad… Solo hacia el sueño tenían fuerza los oídos para recoger de nuevo y reunir el alarido estridente, la voz ronca, el grito de miedo, las campanas, el pesado aliento, el rugido de las multitudes y todos los sonidos que yacían fermentándose en las tinas del silencio y del pasado.”

Una relectura que no se resiente del paso del tiempo.

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

“From time to time a sudden gasp would shake him as though the waves of grief and pain had run his being’s length and were returning now from some remote shore.”

First published in 1934, this is a compelling story of a family of Jewish immigrants living in New York City in the early 1900s. It is told from the perspective of David who is about 7 to 9 years old during the course of the book. David is a very timid child, afraid of his father Albert at home (not unreasonably) and afraid of the streets. He is devoted to his extremely protective mother.

Many parts of the book are written in a stream of consciousness. I thought the author did a wonderful job exploring the disjointed thoughts of this child. However, I think the fact that I listened to the audiobook made his thoughts easier to follow than they would have been if I had been reading the book. I probably would have also had a problem with the parts written in dialect or in Yiddish. George Guidall did a really excellent job with the narration. 4.5 stars

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best immigrant novel ever written.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with the boy in this book. Proust, pay attention. A serious child who loves his mama doesn't have to whine. And this kid faced much more adversity than having to go to bed during dinner parties.

Back when NKOTB still signed posters for squealing girls, I lived for sleeping over at a friend's house. Most of my friends attended the same church I did, but didn't live for church. They were allowed to breathe and have two piece bathing suits. I was not. My parents lived like a light on a very high hill, a mountain really, and though you could see our shining example for miles, miles! I was oxygen deprived and craved color. Sleepovers were times of reckless abandonment for me, and by reckless abandonment I mean watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off without permission (it wouldn't have been granted anyhow) and swimming in neighborhood pools full of boys past dark and thinking that maybe, if I was lucky, sin would present itself. Coming up for a deep breath of glorious air after trying to talk to my friend through the chlorinated water, I'd see things poolside through kaleidoscope vision. If it was dark the street lights over the fence would be nothing but fuzzy glowing orbs. Walking home, everything was comfortably hazy and muted. And when I think of the memories from my childhood, this is the way I see them, with the edges rubbed off.

So, it was not difficult for me to adapt myself to the stream-of-consciousness narrative regarding the boy here. He was seeing things and recording them alongside his feelings before being able to understand them or explain them. And when he was alone he'd take these small streaks of experiences back out of his brain and sift through them, matching them up with things he'd heard his mother or aunt say, turning the tumblers in his mind until a click! of recognition, and he'd suddenly realize under what category this experience should be filed.

The boy has a category for his father- stark, severe, brutal. A category for his mother- soft, kind, laughter. A category for things he wants to know more about- Hebrew, Isaiah, fire, his apartment in regards to the city, why his father hates him, the basement. He's got categories galore. There are levels here to the boy's childhood and development that Roth captures perfectly. Absolutely perfection. And then there's the dialect.

The dialect almost derailed me at times. Paragraphs and paragraphs of dialogue, much of which I had to read aloud three or four times like Eliza Doolittle with marbles in her mouth before getting things right. But there was humor. And it was the humor, the black humor, that saved me. I marked the numerous Yiddish curses shouted to try to work them into my verbal repetoire. I loved those curses. They were an affirmation of life.

I would write about the spiritual imagery present in the book, the lure of the cross for a boy who gets beaten by a man waiting for a Messiah to come in glorious violence and avenge him his sufferings, but it would take too long and I'd become entangled. But it is there, hiding in the corners, waiting for the reader to dig at it and uncover a revelation.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

After 20 years of attempting to break open this novel (Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, I have finally finished it, thanks to a challenge. Once I finally was able to deal with the long sections written in dialect form (something I find very difficult to read), deal with the interspersed writings in Yiddish as well as other languages (also written in a dialect-a double whammy), I discovered an amazing novel.

A breathtaking, horrifying, gorgeous novel: poem, journalism, stream of conscious, realist, psychological, social-impossible to define. I can't say I ever found it easier to read; I can say I found it impossible to stay away from. The only way I could read it was by becoming deeply immersed in it, reading carefully line by line, word by word even.

The story is of a Jewish family, immigrants from Poland and one major theme of the text is the immigrant experience. They, as are most of the people living around them, are dislocated, cut off not only from family and friends and familiar landscapes but from their culture, their very language. Their speech is reproduced in dialect only when they are attempting to speak in English, in their native Yiddish the speech is rendered in perfect English, showing us their ease and eloquence in their mother tongue.

The story is also that of the streets of the Lower East Side, surrounded by tenements, overcrowded, teeming with people, life, clashing cultures, children adrift in families unmoored from their past and still unattached to their brilliant. Poverty is almost the least of their problems. Dirt, smells, noise-unbelievable noise of trolleys and trains and people screaming-"hollering", a word I haven't heard since my father died, to each other, at each other, pushing, fighting. All I remember as a child shopping on Delancey Street on a Sunday (back then, only the Jewish stores on the Lower East Side of Manhattan were allowed to be open on Sundays and I remember the terrifying crowds, loud, shoving and my terror that I would be separated from my parents).

The story is also a very personal one of three years in the life a boy (aged 6-9), whose father is often violent, paranoid to a clinical degree, who shouts, rages and beats the child who turns desperately to his gentle, adoring mother who, unable to speak English and thus even more isolated than the father, turns to her son as well as her emotional lifeline. The boy, David, is sensitive, gifted (very likely to some extent a portrait of the author, Henry Roth).

Published originally in 1934, the book was barely noticed. It is now considered an American classic. I wish I could quote from the book but it seems impossible to convey its power through any one sentence or paragraph. The book works in rhythmic sections that in an almost musical way resonate off, contrast with, and highlight aspects of the work in a way that resists easy description.

A difficult work still but one that pays off close reading many times over. This book was well worth the effort I put into reading it. I am grateful I did not give up on it, even after so many years. I feel as though through its reading I have been changed, both as a reader and as a human being.

[david · Rating 4 out of 5]

The weather for the last two days has been spectacular. Not a cloud in the rich blue sky, the temperature sitting at a perfect 72 degrees, with a gentle ten miles an hour breeze. How do I know? I looked it up on weather.com. No, I did not go out this weekend. I was reading. I even had to make a ‘numbah one,’ as it is described by the young boy in this novel, for the last four hours of it. But I could not. I was reading.

I, for some very odd reason, am stuck in a period in which I never existed. That would be from the mid 1800’s to the early 1900’s. And most of the time I find I am stuck in Britain. Luckily, although this book was published in the early 1930’s, I am finally in America. And I am glad to visit the country again. And I am in the lower east side of Manhattan for a change. No longer in Piccadilly, Lower Slaughter, or Southampton. I ‘jumped the pond’ as the English may refer to it.

This book is not for everyone. It is a story, partially, of the immigrants that flooded New York during the early part of the nineteenth century. Its protagonist has an endearing name, David. David is a young boy and we witness through his eyes the process of integrating and assimilating into this new world with others who have traveled here from other parts of the world. However, we know, that this is a difficult transition for even the smartest and strongest of us. And through the eyes of a child it is even more interesting.

It is layered, it is textured, it is engrossing. It is not a simple escape. It is not a quick read even if you read quickly. I know, for me, much of the symbolism has escaped my limited cranial capacity. But the little I did understand I am still crunching. There is a lot going on here. As one might guess, there are relatives, and parents, and neighbors and all the havoc you would expect if you were to come here during this period, go through the intimidating agency on Ellis Island, and decide to live near Manhattan.

This author, who many may not have heard of previously, Henry Roth, is no slouch. He is in the camp of elites, such as some of the Old Russians, the Hemingway’s, Bellows, etc. So, for you who may like hidden symbolism and the art of fine literature, it may be a choice. Most of the characters are Jewish immigrants, and although any culture has their own unique challenges, miens with the current zeitgeist, a familiarity with Judaism lessens the heft of the tale. For me, I like reading about all people from any place in any situation. Let me also add, that Roth is wide, not narrow. There are references to Christianity and other faiths hidden within his passages. Roth is ecumenical and inclusive, but his clues are not always obvious.

So, okay, four to four and a half stars from your guide here. And if you follow me and what I read, I can suggest several doctors to you. Especially eye doctors and psychologists and philosophers. Just give me a ring, and you too can come and wander the variegated unknowns in life with me.

[Petra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what to make of 450+ pages told through the eyes of a 6-8 year old child, with a child's thoughts, a child's understanding and a child's limited understanding.
The story is told in 3 styles: the straightforward English style being the parts where people are speaking Yiddish, the phonetic dialect parts to supposedly show how difficult it is for immigrants to understand English and stream-of-consciousness style of David's thoughts (a child's thoughts). The phonetic sections were difficult to get through and I didn't find that the three styles melded well. It made the story uneven.
David is withdrawn, nervous, gets spooked by a look. He's a mama's boy of a kid. This is his story of life in the Lower East Side of New York. A book told through his eyes, at his age, isn't riveting. Quite honestly, there isn't a story here; just a kid's life in New York. Pleasant enough in some ways but with no plot, no story, no ending.....just 3 years of a kid's life.

[William Shoemaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the beauty of Joyce with none of his pretension, accessible and poetic, spiritual and religious. By far my most intense reading experience.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible - I've never read anything like it. I was expecting an immigrant experience story, a sort of "American Tail" rife with descriptions of seders and gefilte fish the way Mama used to make and so forth. This is NOT that. This book is completely original, intensely personal, and very disturbing. Disturbing not because of a specific event (e.g., rape, abuse, etc. - though those things, or at least close relatives of those things, do happen), but because, for the 400 or so pages of the book, you're made to look at the world in such a strange and horrifying way, and this view of the world seems so real, like it couldn't possibly have been invented by some author experimenting with "character" and "style" - meaning that somewhere, out there, there is someone for whom this is real life.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

To read Call It Sleep, one wouldn't automatically assume that it was published in 1934. There's a timelessness to the story, and the writing smells modern and familiar; I would have sworn it was published in the 70s or 80s and was just going to be a nice work of historical fiction. I'm think it is interesting to note that it was published during the Great Depression in America, and I wonder if that accounts for the lack of sales during its time. Perhaps readers weren't ready for it, perhaps it was too close to home for readers to feel comfortable with it. Who knows - but they definitely missed out.

This is a story of immigration focusing on an Austrian-Jewish family who have just come to America. The father, Albert, has been there for some time in order to begin to create a new American life for his wife, Genya, and son, David. The story is primarily David's story, told from his third-person perspective. He is close to his mother, perhaps abnormally close, and for as close as he is to Genya he is just as removed from his father.

Some readers may be turned off by the fact that this book has 448 pages and is primarily entirely about David's experiences to assimilate to his environment - his struggles to be understood by his neighbors, his strong desire to be accepted by his peers, etc. His physical fear of his father creates enough anxiety about staying home with his mother, but often the streets fare little better. His self-confidence is low and it oozes from the pages just how much he wants to belong.

I've seen comparisons of this book to James Joyce. All I can say to that is UGH. I do not and will not hide the fact that I dislike what I have read by Joyce, and any comparison to his writing could easily turn me off from something else. Luckily I forged through the Introduction where the comment about Joyce comes up. I can see the relationship, particularly towards the end of Call It Sleep as the reader is taken on a stream-of-consciousness adventure with David; but this change in text actually works and feels like an appropriate choice on the part of the author - something I can not say with any certainty I feel Joyce accomplished. But to each their own.

Roth was able to capture the sounds, the smells, the sights, the milieu of New York City in the early 20th century. I felt like I could understand the immigrant experience, I did not feel that far removed from how a 6-7-8-year-old immigrant boy felt in this brand new country he had just been thrown into. I was connected to the story the same I way I felt connected to Herman Wouk's City Boy which I had to read in high school. It's like Roth took that story and exploded it, put it up on a big-screen TV for an entire football stadium to see. This doesn't bonk City Boy off my list of favorites necessarily, but I do recognize that Call It Sleep does manage to be an adult version - much like Tom Sawyer is good, but Huck Finn is just a bit more mature.

[Aleksandra Pasek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Była to dla mnie przede wszystkim książka o dzieciństwie, a w dalszej kolejności o żydowskości, a jeszcze kolejnej - o emigracji. Czytało się tę historię potoczyście - ciężko mi znaleźć lepsze słowo - z przyjemnością, ponieważ jest napisana i przetłumaczona niezwykle sprawnie.
Powieść w pełnym tego słowa znaczeniu - fantastyczny materiał na film (choć istnieje ryzyko, że amerykanie zrobiliby z niej melodramatyczny wyciskacz łez, a ja bym przez 2 godziny była zmuszona do wywracania oczami). Plastyczne opisy, wyraziści bohaterowie i wciągająca fabuła i mówię to ja, a ja fanką książek pisanych z perspektywy dziecka bynajmniej nie jestem (bowiem jestem stara od urodzenia xD). Polecam kupować (póki jest, bo podobno schodzi na pniu) i czytać w te niewesołe przedwiosenne wieczory. Będzie to dobra ucieczka - choć na chwilę - od rzeczywistości. Amen.

[Yair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memo to Saul Bellow THIS is how you write an American Jewish novel. Joking aside, and with little in the way of preamble, please allow me to say that this truly is an opus of the rarest kind. Akin to Melville's Moby Dick and Jones' From Here to Eternity, this work is the result of a soul laid bare and detailed with the heaviest, the most austere, but in the end, most telling kind of language. Though some of the dialogue (better parsed as dialect) is hard to read (probably more so for those without at least a cursory knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish) this partial opacity is a necessary sacrifice at the altar of verisimilitude. And authentic it reads as, through the eyes of main character David Schearl, we see the dank squalor and raw feeling of his existence. Interspersed between the bouts of brutality (namely by way of David's viciously complex father Albert and the bullies of the story's later turns) there are moments of description in the text that bespeak a gorgeous sense of the beauty inhering in the urban and the squalid. I could write volumes more in laudatory verbiage but just, please, read this book if ever you've wondered about the truth of the immigrant experience in general, and the Jewish Ashkenaic American Exile in particular, it brings tears of alternating despair and joy, like the average life, I guess.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fino a poco tempo fa, ero convinta che esistessero due grandi Roth della letteratura: Philip e Joseph. In realtà, i grandi Roth sono tre: c’è anche Henry Roth, un autore statunitense che, purtroppo, è poco conosciuto a causa delle vicende editoriali del suo primo e più celebre romanzo, “Chiamalo sonno”. Il romanzo è stato pubblicato nel 1934 e, all’epoca, è stato accolto in modo divisivo dalla critica: da un lato, è stato lodato per l’approfondimento psicologico, la complessità del simbolismo e le parti molto liriche; dall’altro, è stato criticato per il disimpegno, per il fatto che non denuncia la situazione proletaria di immigrati ebrei negli Stati Uniti. A seguito della pubblicazione, Roth ha avuto una crisi d’identità che l’ha spinto a lasciare la New York culturale alla volta del Maine e gli ha causato un blocco creativo di decenni. È per questo motivo che “Chiamalo sonno” è finito nel dimenticatoio, e vi è rimasto fino agli anni ’60, quando una piccola casa editrice ha deciso di ristamparlo, dandogli la visibilità che si merita.
 
“Chiamalo sonno” è, in apparenza, un classico romanzo di formazione con protagonista David Schearl, ebreo nativo della Galizia e immigrato negli Stati Uniti nel 1907. Estremamente sensibile, David è diviso tra l’amore incondizionato per la madre, dolce e premurosa, e la paura per il padre, freddo e violento. Nel corso di qualche anno il bambino, girando per i sobborghi proletari di New York, si trova ad affrontare le proprie paure e impara il significato di amicizia, tradimento, morte e fede.
 
Ma, in realtà, quello di Roth è tutto fuorché un romanzo di stampo classico. Il suo punto di forza è, infatti, il grande sperimentalismo, su due piani: linguistico - con la commistione di tantissime lingue, tra cui l’inglese, il tedesco, l’italiano, lo yiddish e l’ebraico - e stilistico - il romanzo alterna una narrazione tradizionale a flussi di coscienza alla Joyce e a cambi di prospettiva alla James. Questo sperimentalismo, unito alla molteplicità delle tematiche affrontate - che spaziano dalla filosofia alla psicanalisi - rendono il romanzo il punto di confluenza di tutto il ‘900.
 
Un piccolo capolavoro, insomma: un romanzo stratificato, che si può leggere sia come romanzo ebraico che come romanzo americano, che sorprende a livello intellettuale e al tempo stesso coinvolge a livello emotivo, e che si chiude con un finale di una potenza e di un lirismo unici.
Mi auguro con tutto il cuore che Roth diventi conosciuto al pari dei suoi omonimi.

[Marika_reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Nazwij to snem” uznawana za klasykę literatury amerykańskiej po raz pierwszy została opublikowana w 1934 roku, w Polsce wydana w latach 70-tych, a teraz (przepięknie) wznowiona przez @artragepl @ksiazkoweklimaty 💙 I prośba ode mnie - wśród morza nowości nie przegapcie tej wyjątkowej premiery !
Żydowska rodzina Schearl - matka, ojciec i syn - emigruje do Stanów gdzie osiedla się w nowojorskich slumsach. Życie w tej niby „Krainie Złota” na pewno nie jest przykładem klasycznego american dream, a cały proces odnajdywania się w nowym środowisku i próby integracji opowiedziana jest oczami najmłodszego członka tej rodziny, Dawida. I choć nie jest napisana w pierwszej osobie, lecz w trzeciej (uff) to dosłownie siedzimy w jego głowie i miejscami można to określić pewnego rodzaju strumieniem świadomości choć raczej pośrednim. Obserwujemy wszystkie wydarzenia tu i teraz, odczuwając emocje głównego bohatera jednocześnie z nim. Szczególnie te silne emocje, których tu nie brakuje - te związane z ogromną miłością do czułej matki czy te z potwornym strachem przed surowym ojcem. Ale zdecydowanie wiecej tutaj tych niepokojących odczuć i właściwie przez całą historię mamy wrażenie, że za rogiem kolejnej strony czai się coś niedobrego.
Gęsta to powieść, mięsista, czasami można się pogubić w chaosie wydarzeń, ale czyta się jak złoto. Tematów wiele bo oprócz procesu asymilacji imigrantów, mamy w tle nowojorskie głośne i brudne ulice, żydowską społeczność, odkrywanie swojego pochodzenia, potrzebę akceptacji, pytania o Boga i mase innych wątków do odkrycia pomiędzy słowami. Bardzo polecam !

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finally done with this horrendous book! It was so long, and practically nothing happened in it. The main character is a whiny, snivelling, cowardly little boy who goes around living in fear. The awful dialogue throughout the book is both excessive and confusing, and David's stream-of-consciousness internal monologues are extremely irritating. It's over 400 pages of insufferable pain, and at the end, nothing really happens. Nothing is resolved. One of the worst books I've ever read.

[Andrew]

This sounds terribly vulgar, but I just couldn't get over Roth's ham-fisted attempts to transliterate New York street-kid English to the written page. My mental reading voice makes each sentence sound like Feivel from An American Tail.

There were some utterly lovable scenes, and some memorable characters. I'd kick it with Aunt Bertha any day of the week. But the bulk of the story was simply pleasant, honest, and unexceptional.

And then the ending, holy crap. Suddenly, Roth takes flight on this bizarre modernist experiment, and it is the absolute most appropriate way to tell the story he's trying to tell. Whoa! There's a sort of comedown from the high of the ending, and I finished the book exhilarated, but I wasn't sure, really, how I felt about the 400 pages that preceded that ending.

[Tijana]

Detinjstvo ume da bude najmučnije životno doba, prepuno groznih i nejasnih (ili pak odviše jasnih) strahova, i ova je knjiga cela o tome. Tok svesti malog i permanentno zastrašenog deteta, plus sirotinjski kvartovi kao u"Bilo jednom u Americi", plus dijalozi nemilosrdno preneti uz sva moguća jezička odstupanja friških imigranata: teško, sporo i tegobno čitanje uz pokoji prosev svetlosti tu i tamo.

[Robert Dunbar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading -- for the nintieth time.

[Krzysztof Cieślik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chciałbym przeczytać ją po raz drugi tak, jakby to był pierwszy raz

[Michał Michalski · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/5

[willowbiblio · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But she didn’t know as he knew how the whole world could break into a thousand little pieces, all buzzing, all whining, and no one hearing them and no one seeing them except himself.”
———————
The first sentence that tells us the passengers are going from the stench and throb of steerage to stench and throb of New York tenements lets us know this new life isn’t easier and our characters will face significant challenges.

We also know that Albert and his wife are disconnected and have diverged even more in their time apart. David’s father is an angry stranger from their moment of introduction and remains as such for much of the novel.

There are so many moments David has to navigate like the sexual abuse from another child, his mother‘s confusing relationship with Luter, and growing up as an immigrant Yiddish-speaking Jew in New York. Having David’s perspective as the focus of the novel keeps us as emotionally confused and in the dark as him, especially about the adults in his life. David is also trying to understand religion and the meaning of God while surrounded by different interpretations.

I think this is an excellent study of childhood terror and rationality. Everything feels like the most important experience ever to David, which is a really essential feature of a child’s lack of perspective. The showdown between David and all the adults was a very clean way to wind together all of the plot points and hints about history.

This was such an engaging book, and I found myself really rooting for him as he continued to grow and understand himself and the world.

[Tittirossa · Rating 4 out of 5]

1993. Nach Osten, Vienna, Cescky Crumlov, Brno, Bratislava, Budapest, Cracovia, Praga, Trieste (saltando Berlino perchè in 20 giorni la quantità di cose belle e nuove che si possono vedere ha un limite, in me) in compagnia di un bambino polacco ebreo che vede le cose e fa sogni strani.
In mezzo a campi di concentramento, cimiteri ebraici, sinagoghe, ghetti e atrocità varie. Tra abbazie benedettine nel mezzo della puzta (e multe di sedicenti poliziotti ungheresi) e terme favolose. In un Est che è sconcertante, che ha cancellato i segni esteriori di 40 anni di comunismo in 4 anni di riacquistata libertà. Se ne respira l'aria però, la mentalità, la povertà (la vetrina del supermercato di Cracovia con in esposizione solo rotoli di carta igienica) ad ogni angolo. Bratislava è l'esempio migliore dello scempio del regime. Ma lo squallore, la miseria, la mancanza di generi (alimentari e non), di fantasia, di pulizia, di ordine, di educazione civica, tutto questo si finisce per apprezzarlo quando si arriva in Austria. La ricerca di Mauthausen porta via una giornata, visto che non ci sono cartelli da nessuna parte e solo seguendo quelli del Krieg-zimiter ci si arriva. Campi ordinatissimi, come prati, punteggiati da mucche ornamentali per ravvivare un paesaggio di struggente monotonia.
Da Roth traspaiono un affetto e un ricordo vivissimo proprio di questa parte bucolica, i campi, la fattoria ....

[Charlie Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest book I have ever read which attempts to let the reader understand and explore from the point of view of a child. As this is done so well, this can actually be a frustrating experience at times, but necessarily so. A masterfully worked emotional journey. Also a stand out novel on the immigrant experience. The dialogue is exceptional, which is far more than I can say for the bulk of what I read; real fly-on-the-wall authenticity. The plot is gripping and unpredictable, and the writing sublime. I hope that in time it will come to be regarded as a classic in the absolute sense, not just bracketed into fields such as Jewish Classic or Immigration Novel. I know that one can sometimes be drunk on the euphoria of finishing a book, and a review written straight after can be a little pumped up, but in this case I feel confident in my assessment, due to the quality of writing.

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prossima rilettura dopo mille anni fa ( ahimè non ricordo nulla), grazie ad un gruppo di amiche lettrici.
E ne avrei altri di questo autore per il quale chiedere la creazione scheda, ma con calma …

[Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not award five stars to any books lightly, but this marvelous evocation of early-20th century New York through the eyes of a young immigrant boy easily earns this rating.

Davy emigrates from Eastern Europe as a child. He comes with his mother to join a father who has been in the United States for some years, saving money for their passage. His mother is strong and stalwart, while his father is bitter and suspicious. In this mix, Davy tries to make sense of life in New York City, shuttling between the rough-and-tumble of his street companions and the emotional welter of his family.

One of the most brilliant aspects of the book is Roth's use of language. He renders the broad accent of the native New Yorkers phonetically (and a few times illegibly) while writing the Yiddish translation as a more smooth and formal language. This creates a vital divide between the two worlds, especially since his mother speaks almost no English.

Much of the flow of the novel is the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of Davy as he goes through one crisis after another. He knows he cannot please his father, though he would love to try. Roth has a wonderful feel for what it is to be a child, to blow minor problems all out of proportion and small wrongdoings into life-and-death struggles. In one crucial section, for instance, Davy is bullied into pandering his cousin for an older boy, and this "sin" and the fear of retribution for it drive him to emotional and physical extremes that an adult or even an older child would never experience. It is a major accomplishment to make this reaction vivid for us, and Roth seems to have such a clear understanding (and perhaps recollection) of this emotional state and an unerring ear to evoke it that a reader can only marvel.

Emotionally, this is not an easy book to read. This is a family in conflict on nearly every level: religious, relational, familial, financial, not to mention the disruption of the uprooting from a particular cultural milieu to one so entirely different as to be essentially another world. All of this Roth takes in stride and gives to us with an honesty that is as admirable as it is hard to read. Still, I cannot recommend this book too highly. Davy's is a journey we should all share.

[Griffin Alexander]

The last book I will finish for this year, this momentous year, when I became a father and now at its end my own father died, and how we spoke of this book on his deathbed, and how he said he had admired it greatly in his youth, this book of youth though so different from his, and how he is gone and all is reassembled in the closing of his eyes behind glasses, all the sparking flying images and experiences that burst against his cornea and his mind leaving their impressions, which impressions are now inaccessible, can no longer be carried out by his voice into the world, buried in decaying stew of brains within his skull as I type this, and how there was so much of his life I did not know, but that some was obfuscated in order to lend it a glow of grandeur, a grandeur in ellipsis that life in banal detail can never lend. I hope he is resting now beyond struggle, having gone out whole dodging the surgeon's saw, and before he slept I hope he felt it all again, every last thing, of what it was to be here, in this brief wedge of light between the granitic hulk of interminable darkness. For you Dad, let's call this hoped for remembrance sleep, and would that it brought you some modicum of peace.

[Kate Levin · Rating 4 out of 5]

People like this book for all kinds of reasons. Most important to me has always been that Roth is really good at rendering what it's like to be a scared kid, especially how painful it is to become aware of things one was happier not knowing.

[Samantha (AK) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Library renewals are a wonderful thing. I started reading this nearly six weeks ago, (For comparison, Delaney’s Dhalgren only took me three.) and I think--buddy reads notwithstanding--this is the longest I’ve ever spent on a work of fiction.

Call it Sleep is the story of the young David Schearl, an immigrant Polish Jew on the Lower East Side of NYC between 1911 and 1913. Caught between his love for his mother, his fear of his violent father, and the degradation of slum life, it is ultimately a story about adaptation, assimilation, and rebirth. That’s a poor description, but further summary without spoilers is improbable so I’ll move on.

I understand that this is widely considered a masterpiece of modern literature. Critically speaking, I get it, and on some level I even agree, but the vast temporal and cultural gap between myself and Henry Roth (rendered still-wider by the dialect and 1910s colloquialisms that dominate the text) leaves my appreciation mostly intellectual. Except for the last section, it didn’t resonate with me.

The writing itself alternates between three modes. First, the straightforward prose of David’s Yiddish-speaking home. Second, the dialogue-heavy language of the street. Finally, the embellished language of David’s solo walks and daydreams, which also inserts itself in the midst of the other two.

Normally, I don’t mind well-written dialect in books. But Call it Sleep was a challenge. I found myself reading many pages under my breath to parse the ‘street’ dialogue, which is rendered in direct phonetic transcription. While intellectually fascinating, and an ingenious way of distancing the reader from their own native tongue, it made for a frustrating reading experience; any time that David was out and about the text ran something like this:

“G’wan tell ‘im,” someone urged.
“I wuz dere too!” another put in.
“Waid!” Kushy hastily cautioned them. “My brudder!” And leaning out so he could view both wings, “Hey youz kids, gid odda hea. G’wan!”
“Naa!” The six year olds at either wing blustered. “Skidoo!”
“Street ain’ yours!” stubbornly.
“Wann ged a lam onna eye?”
“I’ll tell mama,” one of the juniors threatened.
“I’ll give yuh now!” Kushy half-rose.
Sulkily, they slid along the curb a few feet away from the rest. [273]

At the other extreme, when David is alone, the writing shifts into a high-literary register. Often, these come as walls of text, but they still make for beautiful reading. One of my favorite examples comes when David climbs onto the rooftop of his tenement building:

The immense heavens of July, the burnished, the shining fathom upon fathom. Too pure the zenith was, too pure for the flawed and flinching eye; the eye sowed it with linty darkness, sowed it with spores and ripples of shadow drifting. (--Even up here dark follows, but only a little bit) And to the west, the blinding whorl of the sun, the disk and the trumpet, triple-trumpet blaring light. He blinked, dropped his eyes and looked about him. Quiet. Odor of ashes, the cold subterranean breath of chimneys. (--Even up here cellar follows, but only a little bit) And about were roof-tops, tarred and red and sunlit and red, roof-tops to the scarred horizon. Flocks of pigeons wheeled. Where they flew in lower air, they hung like a poised and never-raveling smoke; nearer at hand and higher, they glittered like rippling water in the sun. Quiet. Sunlight on brow and far off plating the sides of spires and water-towers and chimney pots and the golden cliffs of the streets. To the east the bridges, fragile in powdery light. [276]

I’ll admit, I like the last mode best. It’s wordy, but interesting, and Roth does a good job capturing the frenetic imagination of David’s six- to eight-year-old existence. I remember that kind of loosely-associated perception of the world; it’s hard to write, but Roth succeeds. I still can’t say that I enjoyed the book, but there’s a fair bit of imagery that’s going to stick.

Conclusion: While a very interesting and valuable portrait of Jewish immigrant life, and also a livable depiction of NYCs Lower East Side c.1910… I am so very glad to be done with this. At this stage in its existence, Roth’s novel is an artifact, and I don’t love the setting enough to bridge the gap.