Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

This "landmark of the American literary century" (Boston Globe) is finally published as one volume, appearing with a brilliant new introduction.

Sixty years after the publication of his great modernist masterpiece, Call It Sleep, Henry Roth, a retired waterfowl farmer already in his late eighties, shocked the literary world with the announcement that he had written a second novel. It was called, he reported, Mercy of a Rude Stream, the title inspired by Shakespeare, and it followed the travails of one Ira Stigman, whose family had just moved to New York’s Jewish Harlem in that "ominous summer of 1914."

"It is like hearing that…J. D. Salinger is preparing a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye," the New York Times Book Review pronounced, while Vanity Fair extolled Roth's new work as "the literary comeback of the century." Even more astonishing was that Roth had not just written a second novel but a total of four chronologically linked works, all part of Mercy of a Rude Stream. Dying in 1995 at the age of eighty-nine, Roth would not live to see the final two volumes of this tetralogy published, yet the reappearance of Mercy of a Rude Stream, a fulfillment of Roth's wish that these installments appear as one complete volume, allows for a twenty-first-century public to reappraise this late-in-life masterpiece, just as Call it Sleep was rediscovered by a new generation in 1964.

As the story unfolds, we follow the turbulent odyssey of Ira, along with his extended Jewish family, friends, and lovers, from the outbreak of World War I through his fateful decision to move into the Greenwich Village apartment of his muse and older lover, the seductive but ultimately tragic NYU professor Edith Welles. Set in both the fractured world of Jewish Harlem and the bohemian maelstrom of the Village, Mercy of a Rude Stream echoes Nabokov in its portrayal of sexual deviance, and offers a harrowing and relentless family drama amid a grand panorama of New York City in the 1910s and Roaring 20s.

Yet in spite of a plot that is fraught with depictions of menace, violence, and intense self-loathing, Mercy of a Rude Stream also contains a cathartic, even redemptive, overlay as "provocative as anything in the chapters of St. Augustine" (Los Angeles Times), in which an elder Ira, haunted by the sins of his youth, communes with his computer, Ecclesias, as he recalls how his family's traditional piety became corrupted by the inexorable forces of modernity. As Ira finally decides to get "the hell out of Harlem," his Proustian act of recollection frees him from the ravages of old age, and suddenly he is in his prime again, the entire telling of Mercy his final pronouncement.

Mercy of a Rude Stream is that rare work of fiction that creates, through its style and narration, a new form of art. Indeed, the two juxtaposed voices—one of the "little boys swimming in a sea of glory," the other of one of those same boys "in old age being rudely swept to sea"—creates a counterpoint, jarring yet oddly harmonious, that makes this prophetic American work such an lasting statement on the frailties of memory and the essence of human consciousness.

Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels includes A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park, A Diving Rock on the Hudson, From Bondage, and Requiem for Harlem.

Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels by Henry Roth

From reader reviews:

Clemencia Torres:

What do you consider book? It is just for students since they're still students or the idea for all people in the world, the particular best subject for that? Merely you can be answered for that query above. Every person has distinct personality and hobby for each other. Don't to be forced someone or something that they don't would like do that. You must know how great along with important the book Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels. All type of book is it possible to see on many sources. You can look for the internet sources or other social media.

John Davis:

What do you regarding book? It is not important to you? Or just adding material when you require something to explain what the one you have problem? How about your extra time? Or are you busy person? If you don't have spare time to perform others business, it is make you feel bored faster. And you have spare time? What did you do? Everyone has many questions above. They have to answer that question simply because just their can do that will. It said that about publication. Book is familiar in each person. Yes, it is appropriate. Because start from on pre-school until university need this Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels to read.

Daryl Pena:

Nowadays reading books become more and more than want or need but also get a life style. This reading addiction give you lot of advantages. Advantages you got of course the knowledge even the information inside the book that will improve your knowledge and information. The knowledge you get based on what kind of book you read, if you want attract knowledge just go with knowledge books but if you want sense happy read one with theme for entertaining for instance comic or novel. The actual Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels is kind of reserve which is giving the reader erratic experience.

Margaret Phillips:

Are you kind of busy person, only have 10 or even 15 minute in your time to upgrading your mind ability or thinking skill possibly analytical thinking? Then you are receiving problem with the book when compared with can satisfy your short period of time to read it because all of this time you only find e-book that need more time to be examine. Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels can be your answer mainly because it can be read by you actually who have those short spare time problems.