BOOKS
95
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A CHILD
CALL
IT SLEEP,
by Henry Rcth. Robert Ballou, New York,
599
pp.
S2.50. . . .
• -·,
During
t~e
past few years the American reading public
has
been pre–
sented with steadily increasing literatu-re stemming from Jewish-American
sources. A new generation of wri<te.rs -has •arisen, educated in American
schools, influenced by
·~rban
and cosmopolitan .civilization, articulating the
life of the first 'American generation; Chronicling the terror and wond·er
of the child who must face not only a strange world, but find himself alien
to his parents' traditions as well.
This writer is in an anomalous position. On the one hand his life has
been life in a medieval world
with
inedieval values. His parents have
transplanted their culture from the Russian, Polish and Galician ghettos.
On the other hand the author has been a student of the best in mod·;:rn
literature; he has read Joyce and Proust, he is familiar with Symbolist
literature, he is no stranger to Marxist philosophy and practice. Cata–
pulted from the eleventh century into the twentieth; this has been the
painful predicament his generation has faced. It is also the fertile soil
from which his fresh work springs. There is an added element. Sons of
immigrants ten years ago, still had a chance to climb out of their class.
The sons today remain sons of the proletariat.
Mike Gold and Samuel Ornitz wrote the outstanding books of an
earlier group. Their work created an exotic aura about the ghetto. It
stemmed from the muckracker literature of the Dreiser era and viewed
their life as romantic color material for fiction.
Essentially the experience of the earlier as well as of the more recent
writers is similar, but, new methods and influences in literature have made
the recent work more mature, dealing more skillfully and profoundly
with life.
Call It Sleep
by Henry Roth is the latest work produced in this group.
It is also the most finished work of art. Henry Roth's book is con–
ceived in intense poetic and psychological terms and is written in a rare
and distinguished manner. At times he is guilty of overwriting, but these
moments are few. The book for the most part is documented with acute
and sensitive details of tenement life. It is remarkable for its undt:rstand–
ing of child psychology and relationships and its transcription of the gutter
language ot slum children. Roth has ·enricher the American language by
·recording accurately this Anglicized jargon of the ghetto.
The novel is the story of a child of six years. It is conceived in four
symbols-The Cellar, The Picture, The Coal and The Rail. Though
the conception
'Of
the author remains partially obscure, in creating these
symbols certain Freudian implications are apparent. The Cellar ·repre–
sents the terror of the six-year old child making his first contacts with the
world beyond his home. The Picture introduces a haunting l-eit-motif
into the story. It projects the mother's past and David's dim awareness
of a hidden and secret motivation for his terrifying life. The Coal re-
