From Bondage.; Volume III: Mercy of a Rude Stream

An elderly, physically frail writer, Ira Stigman finds solace, redemption, and peace as he recreates a love triangle of his youth, in a poignant tale of spiritual self-examination set against the backdrop of 1920s literary Manhattan. First serial, The New York Times Magazine.

The third volume in the late Roth's ongoing autobiographical cycle, Mercy of a Rude Stream, is very much of a piece with its predecessors--A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park (1994) and A Diving Rock on the Hudson (1995). It continues the story of Roth's alter ego, Ira Stigman, now seen wrestling with his artistic and sexual demons as he struggles toward manhood in 1920s Manhattan and also, some 60 years later, as the elderly Ira labors to make sense of missed opportunities and flawed life choices, carrying on an extended, fragmented ``conversation'' with his computer (``Ecclesias''). This latest novel fictionalizes Roth's longtime affair with NYU teacher and poet Eda Lou Walton (here: Edith Welles), and it's drenched in the kind of self-conscious literary talk that most writers indulge in, then dispense with, in their early work (though, to be fair, Roth does communicate effectively the beady excitement felt by young intellectuals sharing a contraband copy of Joyce's Ulysses, as well as the hopeful Ira's discovery, through reading Joyce, ``that it was possible to commute the dross of the mundane and the sordid into literary treasure''). There are too many lengthy disquisitions on favored writers and writing, and--conversely--a plodding recounting of Ira's peregrinations from one unfulfilling day job to another. Still, Roth writes ferocious, flinty dialogue (the scenes between Ira and his younger sister, and former lover, Minnie are charged with an unforgettable admixture of erotic heat and guilty hatred) and pulls off some remarkable technical effects in balancing the young Ira's dreams of literary accomplishment against his aged self's resigned understanding that ``performance with words was the only option open to him, the only tramway out of himself.'' It's odd, and sad, to realize that Roth, who died last October, may eventually be better remembered for this deeply flawed final work than for his one incontestable masterpiece: Call It Sleep (1934), the book of his youth. (First serial to the New York Times Magazine) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This third installment of Roth's six-volume saga, Mercy of a Rude Stream (LJ 1/94) continues the story of Ira Stigman, son of East European Jewish immigrant parents and now college aged, as he struggles to find his way in 1920s New York. But, like the previous volumes, it is also the story of Ira the octogenarian writer who, nearing the end of his life (Roth died last October at the age of 89), is trying to come to terms with both the forces and the choices that shaped it. Paralleling Roth's own experience, this volume focuses on the beginnings of what was to become a decade-long affair between Ira and NYU professor Edith Welles. The themes of guilt and redemption permeate this often lyrical depiction of both the immigrant and the artistic experience. Highly recommended.?David Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this third volume of Roth's now-posthumous magnum opus, Mercy of a Rude Stream, tortured hero Ira Stigman is nearly 90 and hard at work on an unwieldy autobiographical novel. Alternating between Ira's fiction and his current state of mind, Roth offers a provocative exploration of the vagaries of memory. Novelist Ira picks up the story in the 1920s just as young Ira has unwittingly become the third wheel in a precarious love affair between his best college friend, Larry, and their intrepid English professor, Edith. While Larry struggles to satisfy his lover and his literary ambitions, Ira--deeply ashamed of his furtive couplings (described in earlier installments of the series) with his sister and his young cousin--finds some relief in the bohemian ambience of Greenwich Village and in reading James Joyce. Roth does go on rather tiresomely about matters Joycean, but nothing can dilute the power of this unsparing analysis of one man's seemingly endless battle with himself. Donna Seaman