SOURCE: "Henry Roth's Call It Sleep: Ethnicity, "The Sign," and the Power," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, Summer, 1979, pp. 268-72.

In the following essay. Walden discusses David's quest for peace and a sign from God in Roth's Call It Sleep.

Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, justifiably called one of the great achievements in American writing in this century, was Roth's only novel, a tour de force composed of equal parts of sensitive writing, deep psychological insights, and great ethnic empathy. It was a profound study of an American slum childhood, suggestive of the Great Russians, wrote Lewis Gannett. It revealed more of the actual conditions of living in New York's East Side than any other book extant, said Horace Gregory. Above all, Kenneth Burke said, the book dealt fluently with the psychological phenomena of orientation and rebirth. To me, it is all these, but it is also...