SOURCE: "'The Noisiest Novel Ever Written': The Soundscape of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring, 1989, pp. 43-64.

In the following essay, Adams analyzes the importance of sound as a signifier of power in Roth's Call It Sleep.

"The squalor and filth, the hopelessness and helplessness of slum life are remorselessly presented and the cacophony never ceases—this must be the noisiest novel ever written." Walter Allen's remark identifies one of the most striking and unusual features of Henry Roth's novel: this text opens up a world of sound as few others seem to do. Although most fictional imagery is, like our language itself, overwhelmingly visual, Call It Sleep offers many lessons in the verbal evocation of "soundscape"—a term coined by the composer R. Murray Schafer in his highly original study of the sonic environment The Tuning of the World. Schafer advances...