_Summer Reading
pick up her daughter at school. So, ex-
cept for himself the place was vacant.
Old bore, they would think — he
had broken his resolution not to in-
trude on his re-edited manuscript, not
to intervene with extraneous or current
reflections into his already revised
texts. But he was 86 years of age now,
and could brush off previous resolu-
tions, if he chose. Even so, his doing so
now gave him a sense of guilt, of sin-
fulness in breaking his own pledge
made to himself Maybe he ought to
delete this intervention too, this bit of
Nestorian garrulity. But the fact was
it was more than that, more than an
instance of the garrulity of senescence.
The seemingly rambling passage
played a key role. Unless he deleted the
material that followed, and he was ob-
viously loath to, his sense of rightness
required his interlude. In short, his
present intrusion, in this, the month
of May, in the year 1992, into a text
considered final two years ago was nec-
essary, if he would include what fol-
lowed, and he would. The balance,
figuratively and literally, of the long
dialogue already recorded aboard the
ride on the El needed respite, needed
relief He hoped his aside had provid-
ed it. Anyway — he adjured himself
— only in extreme cases, such as this,
a dilemma between inclusion or dele-
tion of work already accepted, would
he permit himself another such in-
fringement, another such flouting of a
solemn contract he had made with
himself Well, have fun, Stigman, he
heard mind speak to itself Have fim.0
Copyright (c) 1995 by Henry Roth. From
the book Mercy of a Rude Stream, Volume
II: A Diving Rock on the Hudson. Reprint-
ed with permission from St. Martin's Press
Inc., New York, N.Y.
ixty years of literary silence written over 15 years. The first book,
broken by a six volume flood. A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park,
Where was Henry Roth all was published a year ago. The sec-
those years after the early fame of ond, A Diving Rock on the Hudson,
came out this year, with one more
Call It Sleep?
Tool and die maker, farmer, psy- scheduled to be published each year
chiatric aide far removed from his until the series is complete.
In the first book, Mr. Roth ex-
New York immigrant roots.
His long-submerged Jewish iden- plains that "he had to deal with (his
Jewishness) afterward in a
serious vein, not as hu-
morous counters, some-
thing, the little he knew,
the essential plug he had
retained of his Jewishness,
of Jewish tradition. Odd.
And when he tried to pluck
it out ... creative inanition
followed."
David Schearl of Call It
Sleep is now Ira Stigman,
also the son of immigrant
parents — a cold father
and a doting mother. A
Diving Rock is set in New
York City in the roaring
'20s. And, continuing the
tity reappeared technique of the first volume, par-
Henry Roth:
From the
during the Six- allel to Ira's story are the journal-
vantage point of
Day War when he like ruminations of Ira as an old
old age.
thought Israel man. He is unabashedly Henry Roth
might be destroyed by Soviet-backed reviewing his abysmal childhood.
A renewed vigor has emerged in
Arabs. Gradually, Mr. Roth returned
Mr.
Roth's last years allowing fiction
to his writing and recognized his
and
autobiography to mingle freely
Jewish identity.
and
unconventionally. The results
He renounced communism and
are
spectacular.
his stubborn muse finally surren-
dered in 1979. The result was the
— Judith Bolton-Fasman
six-volume mix of fiction and auto-
Special To The Jewish News
biography, Mercy of a Rude Stream ,
-
PH OTO BY HARVEY WANG
S
30
PETER YU NDT
Gradually Acknowledging
His Jewish Identity
The Lib rary o I M 1
MELVIN JULES BUKIET
.Final moments in a university library that
catalogs human suffering....
IP hen he was
finished, Dr. Ri-
cardo was alone
with his roomful of
gray cylinders. The
camera was off, and
the lady was gone. He
sat in her chair, still
warm, and stared at the empty lens of the
videotape machine. Looking down, he no-
ticed that the arm of the chair had been
scratched clear through to the stuffing, a
mixture of straw and compressed fibers.
Obviously one of the interviewees had been
so tormented, his or her fingernails punc-
tured the supple leather surface.
The library had money enough to repair
the damage or replace the chair. But Dr. Ri-
cardo was curious whose memories evoked
such a reaction. He supposed he would never
know. The cameras focused on the subjects'
faces while he focused on the words.
He reached into his breast pocket and re-
moved the pack of cigarettes he had pur-
chased earlier in the day. He had smoked for
years, stopped for years, and recommenced
when he started his series of interviews.
W
"The fences were electrified. This was a
blessing. One could always kill oneself when
the pain grew too tremendous. Many people
availed themselves of the facility."
Dr. Ricardo lit a cigarette and inhaled.
The very process was soporific. So he fell
asleep, and twisted in the soft contours of
the chair, his head filled with images of his
parents' home in Bala Cynwyd, outside of
Philadelphia, ringed with barbed wire, on
fire. Ashes from his cigarette dropped to the
exposed stuffing.
Soon Dr. Ricardo wore a crown of flames,
yet still he slept.
The flames spread. They rode across the
seam of the carpeting on the floor and
caught at the papers on his desk.
The fire passed into the storage room,
and climbed the shelves. There the cylinders
buckled under the heat, and they popped
open, the tapes writhing like snakes in a
burning cave, and the words of the wit-
nesses escaped, and the pictures created by
their words escaped. The guard towers, the
barbed wire, the fires blackening the sky,
escaped into the air along with the smoke.
Throughout the dormitory, the young law
students woke with shrieks often-or. Their
dreams were tainted; their beds turned to