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P&RTIS&N REVIEW
introduces the theme of terror, this time sustained on a newer and higher
note. Drawing its image from a biblical passage, The Coal symbolizes
for the child David, the unknown darkness become power, strength and
God, unknowable and all-powerful. The device of The Rail reveals
David invoking God, the power of darkness, as he draws electric fire from
the matrix of a trolley tracks' third rail. The atavistic behaviour of a
child from six to nine years of age, recapitulates in a modern urban en–
vironment, the savage's fears in the face of nature. This time the symbols
are contemporary, but the experience remains universal.
Call It Sleep
is more than the best novel of Jewish-American life to
appear up to the present time. This first novel by Henry Roth can
easily take its place as one of the most outstanding books of the past ten
years.
Call It Sleep
is the most promising first novel since Joyce's
Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man.
JosEPH WoLF
