Requiem For Harlem
Mercy Of A Rude Stream Volume 4 - ‘A masterpiece, not remotely like anything else in American literature'
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
'A landmark of the American literary century' Boston Globe
Sixty years after the publication of his great modernist masterpiece, Call It Sleep, Henry Roth returned with Mercy of a Rude Stream - a sequence of four internationally-acclaimed epic novels of immigrant life in early-twentieth century New York.
Ira Stigman's polarised life has never been more difficult. On one side is Edith Welles, his supporter, friend and lover; she believes in him. On the other is his shameful immigrant origins, his poverty, his family with their arguments and lack of sophistication. Then there is his incestuous relations with his sister and his cousin, who may be pregnant.
This fourth and final volume, published posthumously, brings to a close one of America's most extraordinary literary odysseys.
'The literary comeback of the century' Vanity Fair
'As unquenchably vibrant with life as the immigrants whose existence it commemorates' Sunday Times
'A dynamic and moving event . . . a stirring portrait of a vanished culture . . . a poignant chapter in the life-drama of a unique American writer' Newsweek
'Although it is sixty years since a new novel by Mr Roth last hit the bookshelves, it has been worth the wait' The Economist
'Fresh and touching' Wall Street Journal
'A precision of detail which brings the sounds from the tenements, the heat of the sidewalk steaming off the pages' Sunday Express
'A meticulous evocation of a now-distant episode of the American experience' New York Times Book Review
Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels includes
1) A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park
2) A Diving Rock on the Hudson
3) From Bondage
4) Requiem for Harlem.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The fourth--and final--volume of Roth's astonishing, largely autobiographical bildungsroman, Mercy of a Rude Stream, retains the brilliant insight of the previous volumes with only a fraction of their suspense. The story picks up in 1927, six months after volume three, From Bondage, left off. Still living in the Harlem slums with his parents and young sister, City College senior Ira Stigman is on fire with Milton's poetry and wracked by guilt over his sexual relations with his 16-year-old cousin Stella. Although the reader has known since volume three that Ira's eventual deliverer and muse will be his NYU English instructor (and the mistress of his best friend), Roth delays the inception of this affair until the novel's conclusion and meanwhile dwells on what seem red herrings: Stella's pregnancy scare and her grandfather's apparent discovery of her trysts with Ira. Roth, who died in 1995 (leaving two more novels, which will be published separately), covers little new ground here, although the writing displays its usual nuance and technical virtuosity. The novel's most interesting revelations concern the mental illness of Ira's mother's and Ira's ruthlessness in getting the "hell out of Harlem," even if it means betraying his best friend or brutalizing Stella. This is a chilling portrait of selfishness struggling through art towards justification.
