SOURCE: "The Fiction of Henry Roth," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. XI, No. 4, Winter 1965–1966, pp. 393-404.

In the following essay, Knowles traces the history of critical discourse about Roth's Call It Sleep and briefly analyzes Roth few short pieces of fiction written since the novel.

In reviewing the publication history of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, one is struck by the aptness with which its title describes the long period of its obscurity. The novel was first published late in 1934, a year that produced Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, Graham Greene's It's a Battlefield, John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra, William Saroyan's The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. The same year saw the publication of forty-three other works considered memorable enough to be listed in the second edition of Annals of English Literature (1961). Call It Sleep is not listed...