SOURCE: "Waves of Memory," in WP Bookworld, February 5, 1995, p. 5.

In the following review, West discusses the confessional and autobiographical nature of Roth's A Diving Rock on the Hudson, pointing out that Roth asserts that the book is a work of fiction.

Stationary there on a brown promontory studded with stubs of girder, he has just trudged past us carrying a fishing rod, or he has been there forever. Behind him a tug makes its minor bow-wave in the cobalt blue water, and above him, as if the heavens are rending, a shower of white cloud reaches him. All he has on are dun shorts and a loose-fitting undershirt. This is Ira Stigman, Henry Roth's adolescent Jewish hero drawn by the jacket artist, and the scene—stirring, spacious, rugged—corresponds to a lovely page of writing early on in the novel, when we hear how Ira, a walker in...