Call It Sleep Summary
Henry Roth

Call It Sleep - Henry Roth - 1934 Introduction Henry Roth's 1934 novel Call It Sleep is based loosely on the author's own experiences growing up as a Jewish American in New York City dur... Read more

Henry Roth's literary reputation rests entirely and securely upon Call It Sleep (1934). The single novel is so emotionally moving and so artistically elegant that it has made Roth an important literar... Read more

Critical Essay by Walter Allen The 'thirties, in America even more than in England, was the period of socially conscious fiction and of much theorizing about what was called the proletarian no... Read more

Critical Essay by Tom Samet [There has] been nearly unanimous agreement among critics that the … closing episodes [of Call It Sleep] witness a radical transfiguration of David Schearl. Whether... Read more

In the following interview, Roth discusses the mystical element in Call It Sleep, and describes his relationship to Israel. Five years ago, when I first met Henry Roth, it was in the same but in a ... Read more

In the following review, Alter discusses Roth's Call It Sleep and asserts that his new volume, Shifting Landscape "provides the outlines of a spiritual autobiography." The haun... Read more

In the following essay, Adams analyzes the importance of sound as a signifier of power in Roth's Call It Sleep. "The squalor and filth, the hopelessness and helplessness of slum life ... Read more

In the following review, Alter compares Roth's two novels, Call It Sleep and Mercy of a Rude Stream, complaining that the latter does not have the emotional depth or novelistic tension of the f... Read more

In the following essay, Ribalow asserts the importance of Roth's Call It Sleep in a discussion of how it expresses the Jewish immigrant experience in America and how it portrays the pains of ad... Read more

In the following essay, Knowles traces the history of critical discourse about Roth's Call It Sleep and briefly analyzes Roth few short pieces of fiction written since the novel. In reviewin... Read more

In the following essay, Ledbetter discusses the relationship between Roth's Call It Sleep and other proletarian novels of the 1930s. He asserts that "Roth's achievement is a novel... Read more