VANISHED EMPIRES
Dedicated to classics and hits.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Movie Review: Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland
Posted by catdirt at 7:40 AM 0 comments
Labels: movie review
Call It Sleep (1934) by Henry Roth
The 1934 publication date of Call It Sleep should come with an asterisk, because it wasn't until a mid 1960s revival that this modernist bildungsroman of the Jewish-American experience in the Bronx and Brooklyn was hailed as a classic. Call It Sleep is also a famous 20th century one off- Roth didn't publish another novel for forty years. The main aspects of Call It Sleep to understand is that Roth was familiar with James Joyce and the tenets of literary modernism, in terms of utilizing stream of conscience narrative and the incorporation of non-standard English into his writing. For Roth, the other languages include Aramaic (the language of the Old Testament), Hebrew and Yiddish(Hebrew and German language spoken by many Jewish immigrants from Germany/Eastern Europe.)
So, the narrative style (stream of consciousness) combines with multiple languages, all rendered phonetically in English, and it tells the important story of what it was like to grow up a Jewish-American immigrant in New York City in the early 20th century. Perhaps Roth's biggest mistake was writing it so close to the time period depicted. What read in the 1960s as a lost modernist classic may have read as a pale imitation of Joyce in 1934. My sense is that Call It Sleep was probably favorably noticed upon publication but didn't permeate into the general population the way that the work of Hemingway and Fitzgerald did.
I don't believe that Call It Sleep is widely read these days, certainly I'd never heard of it outside of the 1001 Books project, and I am a Jewish-American myself. I would have expected my parents to have a copy, or for it to have been mentioned by a classmate in school in the context of books like The Basketball Diaries or Catcher in the Rye. Henry Roth's status as a one hit wonder has also likely contributed to his general neglect as an Author. I think some Authors obtain classic status with later works and then people go back and look at earlier books and elevate them, but if an Artist only has one major work, that project is impossible and there is no interplay between works. This interplay between various works of a single Artist is something that can contribute to the maintenance of a larger audience years after publication.
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Harlem - 1,001 Books: A Library of America
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
The Bronx: 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA
Monday, April 22, 2024
Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1920s literature, American Literature, Audiobook, book review
Friday, April 19, 2024
A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich (1973) by Alice Childress
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1970s literature, American Literature, book review
Thursday, April 18, 2024
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry (2017) by Ned and Constance Sublette
Posted by catdirt at 9:09 AM 0 comments
Labels: book review, world history
Solar Bones (2016) by Mike McCormack
Posted by catdirt at 9:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 2010s literature, book review, irish literature
What I'd Rather Not Think About (2024) by Jente Posthuma
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 2020s literature, book review, European Literature, new release
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
And Now You Can Go (1993) by Vendela Vida
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1990s literature, American Literature, book review
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