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REQUIEM FOR HARLEM, VOL. 4
Roth, Henry
1998 8073 ABOUT THE BOOK Requiem for Harlem, Vol. 4 FROM THE PUBLISHER Henry Roth tells the love story of Ira Stigman, an inept senior at City College, who has fallen for his patron, the fragile Edith Welles, an NYU professor and muse of modern poets, whose seductive powers with men have placed her in competition with the aspiring anthropologist Marcia Meede. Despite his growing sexual attraction to the older woman and a feeling of profound alienation which he shares with Edith alone, Ira is unable to break the ties that bind him not only to his greenhorn parents in Harlem but also to his nubile first cousin Stella, whose nocturnal escapades have created a major family scandal. Reflecting back on the arc of a life that was unerringly tragic, the old man, Ira, preparing himself for his imminent passing, realized that, despite "his dark sullen telepathy," he was never ale to break the cruel bonds, "the sinister cyst of guilt," that made him as much a reflection of his tyrannical father as that of his sweet, maternal mother, gradually driven mad by the voices of her own tortured past. Yet as the narrative drives relentlessly to its startling conclusion, the voice of the old man diminishes almost completely while the 1927 narration takes precedent. As Ira Stigman decides to get "the hell out of Harlem," his act of recollection frees him from the ravages of old age, and suddenly he is in his prime again, as if this tale were his very last gasp. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly The fourthand finalvolume 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. (Mar.) Library Journal This last installment of Roth's massive fictional memoir (From Bondage, LJ 6/15/96) finds his alter ego, Ira Stigman, about to leave childhood and Harlem forever behind as he begins an affair with Edith, a refined NYU English professor. Roth portrays his youthful self severely here, dwelling on the guilt and self-hatred resulting from an incestuous relationship with his sister and an affair with a young cousin. While this novel may resemble Remembrance of Things Past in size and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in purpose, it isn't the equal of either. Still, it's a powerfully evocative, if idiosyncratic, depiction of a young writer's coming of age in the lost world of immigrant Jewish New York. Libraries owning the previous volumes will want this one also. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/97.]Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass. Allegra Goodman Henry Roth's series of novels, "Mercy of a Rude Stream," is...the attempt of an octagenarian to recapture and understand the astonishing creative energy of his youth....if it is hard to sympathize with either the egocentric youth or the rueful old man, taken together they meld into a living whole. This is Roth' St. Martin's Press 0-312-16980-9 / 9780312169800
Hardcover As New New York
Price:
15.93 USD
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