SOURCE: "The Bonds of Love," in The Nation, Vol. 263, No. 8, September 23, 1996, pp. 25-30.

In the following review, Berman discusses how Roth's From Bondage was changed and how its impact was lessened when crucial scenes concerning incest were cut from the published edition.

Henry Roth, who died last year at age 89, wrote one of the great novels of the century, Call It Sleep. It is the story of a poor Jewish boy on the Lower East Side, trying to survive and grow in a world where it was dangerous to go out and maybe even more dangerous to stay in, and yet where life was holy. Roth not only assimilated D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce and William Faulkner but, on his first try, wrote a Bildungsroman that was entirely worthy of them. No one has ever written better about how it is to be a child, an immigrant, a...