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The Historian, and Call It Sleep
Aug. 25th, 2005 08:54 amFinished The Historian last night. My thoughts, behind the cut.( Read more... )
Have started Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, sparked by the recent essays in the New Yorker and NYTimes Book Review inspired by the new bio just out. What I thought I was getting into was a modernist masterpiece about the immigrant experience. What I'm mostly getting is a clingy frightened little boy who looks to be getting a lot of bad breaks through the 500 plus pages. If I wanted to read about a fearful and mother-obsessed young boy, I could be rereading Proust, wherein at least a lot of really cool things eventually happen, if the reader is patient enough. (For example, slash fans, every adult male in the book but two, including the ones who've spent pages angsting over their unfaithful mistresses, turn out to be gay.) ( Read more... ) Plus, no annoying attempts at dialect. I will stick with the Roth though, since as a good proto-English professor I may need to be able to speak intelligently about him someday.
Have started Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, sparked by the recent essays in the New Yorker and NYTimes Book Review inspired by the new bio just out. What I thought I was getting into was a modernist masterpiece about the immigrant experience. What I'm mostly getting is a clingy frightened little boy who looks to be getting a lot of bad breaks through the 500 plus pages. If I wanted to read about a fearful and mother-obsessed young boy, I could be rereading Proust, wherein at least a lot of really cool things eventually happen, if the reader is patient enough. (For example, slash fans, every adult male in the book but two, including the ones who've spent pages angsting over their unfaithful mistresses, turn out to be gay.) ( Read more... ) Plus, no annoying attempts at dialect. I will stick with the Roth though, since as a good proto-English professor I may need to be able to speak intelligently about him someday.
