Henry Roth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Henry Roth | |
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| Born | February 8, 1906 Tysmenitz, Galicia, Austro-Hungary |
| Died | October 13, 1995 (aged 89) Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| Occupation | novelist, short story writer, |
| Nationality | American |
| Genres | Fiction, fictional prose |
- For the English-born anthropologist see Henry Ling Roth
Henry Roth (8 February 1906 - 13 October 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer.
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[edit] Biography
Roth was born in Tysmenitz near Stanislav, Galicia, Austro-Hungary. His first published novel Call It Sleep (originally published in 1934) achieved a second life since its re-publication and critical re-appraisal in the 1960s when it sold 1,000,000 copies and was hailed as an overlooked Depression-era masterpiece and classic novel of immigration. It is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Jewish American literature. Call It Sleep was dedicated to his then mistress and muse, Eda Lou Walton.
After the book's publication, Roth began and abandoned a second novel and wrote several short stories. In the early 1940s he abandoned writing, and moved from New York to Maine and later New Mexico, and worked as a firefighter, laborer, and teacher, among other occupations, before retiring to a trailer park in Albuquerque.
Roth originally didn't welcome the new-found success that Call It Sleep received, valuing his privacy instead. However, he soon began to write again, at first short stories. At the age of 73, he began work on a series of novels that grew to six volumes, with final editing completed shortly before his death. The first four of these were published (two of them posthumously) as a cycle called Mercy of a Rude Stream while the last two manuscript volumes remain unpublished. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States in 1995.
Roth failed to garner the acclaim some say he deserves, perhaps because he failed to produce another novel for sixty years. His massive writer's block after the publication of Call it Sleep is often attributed to Roth's personal problems, such as depression, political conflicts, or his unwillingness to confront events in his past that haunted him, such as having incestuous relationships with both his sister and cousin, which are written about in the later work.
[edit] Bibliography
- Call It Sleep (1934)
- Nature's First Green (1979)
- Shifting Landscape: A Composite, 1925-1987 (1987)
- Mercy of a Rude Stream Vol. 1: A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park (1994)
- Mercy of a Rude Stream Vol. 2: A Diving Rock on the Hudson (1995)
- Mercy of a Rude Stream Vol. 3: From Bondage (1996)
- Mercy of a Rude Stream Vol. 4: Requiem for Harlem (1998)
[edit] External links
- "Writer, Interrupted: The Resurrection of Henry Roth" by Jonathan Rosen, from The New Yorker
- "Freight", short story in the September 25, 2006 issue of The New Yorker
- "The Last Minstrel" Daniel Mendelsohn on Roth (audio recording)
[edit] References
- Leonard Michaels, "The Long Comeback of Henry Roth: Call it Miraculous," New York Times Book Review, August 15, 1993
- Kellman, Steven G., Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth (W.W. Norton, 2005).
- New Yorker Magazine, August, 2005
- New Yorker Magazine, May 29, 2006
