Synopsis
A harrowing family drama narrates the tragic story of Ira Stigman, who carries a grave secret that is finally revealed when he is an old man, freeing him from the chains of his past, but not from his Faustian bargain. National ad/promo.
Reviews
A bombshell explodes in this second volume of the sextet, Mercy of a Rude Stream, as Roth reveals a secret that was surely one of the reasons for his 60-year writing block after the publication of Call It Sleep, his classic 1934 novel of immigrant adolescence. In the first volume of this series, his portentous hints about a dark side of Ira's sexuality may have seemed excessive; here, his alter ego, Ira Stigman, makes a shocking disclosure: a long interval of incest with his younger sister, as well as the seduction of a younger cousin. As the author/narrator continues to bare his soul to his computer, Ecclesias, readers will begin to understand the remorse, guilt and mental anguish that for a long time prevented Roth from thinking or writing about the events that form the basis for his fiction. Indeed, as he confesses that Ira's sister was not even present as a character in the first draft of this novel, written in 1979, there is a palpable sense of the writer's heart-wrenching torment. The novel succeeds in other respects as well. Simultaneously, we are inside the mind of a troubled adolescent and that of an aged but still mentally vital man, a man engaged with words, with concepts, obsessively reconsidering the role of the artist and in particular his own responsibility in portraying events truthfully. Not only his perverted sexual impulses but also his image of himself as a gauche outsider in both gentile and Jewish upper-middle class society pervades the narrative. Ira recounts his bumbling, feckless behavior during the years 1921-1925. Expelled from high school for stealing, he briefly considers diving into the Hudson rather than revealing to his impoverished parents that he has squandered the opportunity for which they have sacrificed the income that he otherwise might earn. He resumes high school elsewhere, later enters CCNY and encounters another Jewish student, Larry Gordon, who typifies the cultured world to which Ira feels he can never aspire; through Larry, he meets the professor at NYU who will become his lover in the next volume. As in his previous books, we are given a haunting picture of a vanished social class, the first generation of American children of Jewish immigrants from European shetls, living in bleak tenements, aware they are crude and uncouth by the standards of American society. This novel alone would stand as a brilliant literary achievement; one eagerly awaits the remaining work from this gifted writer.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
One of last year's more significant literary events was the re-emergence, after 60 years of silence, of the author of the highly regarded Call It Sleep (1935). This second installment of Mercy of a Rude Stream (following A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park, LJ 12/94) continues the saga of Ira Stigman, teenage son of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, as he struggles to find his way in the larger world. Narrated by the now elderly Ira, it effectively evokes both life in 1920s New York and the angst of adolescent existence. In Ira's case, this angst results not only from the growing distance that separates his and his parents' views of the world but from uncontrollable urges that drive him to violate one of society's strongest taboos. Close beneath the surface of Ira's story, however (and sometimes on top), lies Roth's own story-the reason for his long silence, his need to break "the shackles on the spirit of the artisan himself," his confirmation that in his previous work he had not been totally honest, that "he was not an innocent," and that by not admitting this he had lost his way. Like the earlier volume, this one belongs in most academic and public libraries.
--David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The second volume in Roth's magnificent series, Mercy of a Rude Stream (a phrase taken from Henry VIII), considerably ups the emotional and philosophical ante from the first, A Star Shines over Mt. Morris Park (1993). Roth's hero and alter ego, Ira Stigman, has just started high school and is about to be expelled. In the grip of fear, shame, and despair, he heads for his favorite spot along the Hudson, a flat rock perfect for diving. As he stands and gazes at the rushing river, he experiences an epiphany that gives him the strength to accept his fate. This "covenant with the river" becomes a touchstone for Ira as he pursues his education and attempts to envision a future greater than that of his waiter father's. As he works at various unsatisfying jobs, his two close friends become emblematic of two possible lives. Billy represents the wholesome outdoor life and a career in science, while wealthy and cultured Larry opens the door to the alluring world of literature. But Ira's future also depends on how he comes to terms with an appalling secret about his relationship with his sister. Roth has written a classic bildungsroman, a deliberate variation, in fact, upon Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but he has broadened the perspective by bringing the author into the narrative. Ira in his eighties is writing about Ira in his teens, confessing the truth about his youth for the first time. Roth's passionate epic about the life of a Jewish immigrant writer is taking shape as a major literary event. Four more volumes are planned. Donna Seaman
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