SOURCE: "The Desolate Breach Between Himself and Himself," in The New York Times Book Review, January 16, 1994, p. 3, 29.

In the following review, Alter compares Roth's two novels, Call It Sleep and Mercy of a Rude Stream, complaining that the latter does not have the emotional depth or novelistic tension of the first.

There is something utterly improbably about the appearance of a second novel by Henry Roth after 60 years of silence, and the new book can scarcely be read except against the enigmatic background of that silence. The haunting story of Mr. Roth's career has often been told—most recently in these pages by my Berkeley colleague, the novelist Leonard Michaels.

Call It Sleep, Mr. Roth's stunning first novel, was published in 1934, when he was 28. The reviews were mixed, at least in part because the prevailing political climate put some critics out of sympathy with a novel that was...