A Diving Rock on the Hudson: A Novel (Mercy of a Rude Stream) [Paperback]

Henry Roth (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mercy of a Rude Stream | Publication Date: March 15, 1996

Painting a grand panorama of New York City in the Roaring Twenties, Henry Roth once again draws us into the adolescent world of Ira Stigman. Through this absorbing narrative, Roth evokes a bygone- a time of innocence shadowed by forbidden experience, for Ira's fateful story is that of a tormented teenager doomed to near madness by the twisted, violent urges within his own heart. So intense and consuming is a secret carried by the young Ira that it can only be revealed by the old man, seventy years later, in streams of cathartic torrents that free him from the shackles of his past.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Even those who haven't read the late Roth's previous two books in this series (Mercy of a Rude Stream and A Diving Rock on the Hudson) will be profoundly affected by this third installment in the life of Roth's alter ego, Ira Stigman. A rich, provocative portrait of a mind in turmoil and a soul in torment, it is recalled, like the earlier books, both through the eyes of the young Stigman and through the musings of his now elderly self to his computer, called Ecclesias. The slum-raised Ira continues his friendship with Larry Gordon, who has introduced him to the refinements of an upper-middle-class Jewish milieu. Larry's lover, poet and CCNY professor Edith Welles (aka Eda Lou Walton), initiates Ira into the even more rarefied world of New York intellectuals and literati in the 1920s (Margaret Mead, Louise Bogan, Leonie Adams). The 20-year-old Ira is wracked by guilt about his incestuous relationships with his sister and his cousin; his turbulent feelings of social and intellectual inferiority; his sexual yearning for Edith, compounded by fears of betraying Larry. These memories of his youth are intermingled with the ruminations of the octogenarian Ira/Roth, concerning the dire events that would later occur: his decades-long writer's block after the publication of Call It Sleep when he was 28; his frequent depressions and inability to rise above blue-collar jobs, which meant that his wife, M, a promising composer when they met at Yaddo, was forced, as family wage earner, to abandon her creative career; his alienation from Judaism, which was not to end until the late 1960s. In these revelations, and in the candid scenes of life among barely Americanized, Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants and their rebellious offspring, Roth expresses his anguish with wrenching candor and self-loathing; he is consumed with bitterness about two wasted lives-his and M's. Yet in recounting Ira's release from "the bondage he had imposed on himself more than 70 years ago," Roth has wasted nothing. The continuing epic, to be revealed in further books, will surely constitute one of the most remarkable literary creations of this century. First serial to the New York Times Magazine.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A Diving Rock on the Hudson has the verisimilitude only a few rare works of fiction manage to achieve . . . The story of Henry Roth is one of the most remarkable in American literature."--Joan Smith, San Francisco Examiner

"[A Diving Rock on the Hudson] applies a torque to the mind's geometry that literary events rarely do."--Marc Shechner, Chicago Tribune

"As provocative as anything in the chapters of St. Augustine or Rousseau."-Stefan Kanfer, Los Angeles Times Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Picador (March 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312140851
• ISBN-13: 978-0312140854
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,132,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars James Joyce meets Bernard Malamud, October 21, 1999

By 

Marc Ardizzone (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Diving Rock on the Hudson: A Novel (Mercy of a Rude Stream) (Paperback)

You have to feel a little bad for Henry Roth. Reading this mostly painful novelization of his tortured teenage years brings to mind the angst of a Bronx-born Stephan Dedalus, only this time Christ on the Cross and the fires of purgatory have been replaced by the tyranny of an overbearing Eastern European yiddisher mamma, a hot-headed ne'er do-well, abusive father, and a feeling of irreconcilable cultural dislocation that makes one better appreciate the plight of the immigrant.

While Roth's "Diving Rock" is undeniably haunted by the ghost of Joyce, its voice is also uniquely "Rothian," -- resonant with the language and poetry that sometimes arises from the disharmonious meshing of cultures - the poetry that is all the best and the worst of this place we call America. I wish Mr. Roth had come unblocked decades ago - who knows what other songs he might have sung?

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank Heaven for Mr. Roth..., March 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Diving Rock on the Hudson: A Novel (Mercy of a Rude Stream) (Paperback)

He proves that Great Writing still lives; real, from-the-gut writing. It's possible that he might, as the previous reviewer has said, have given us other brilliant "songs" but I for one am quite happy with all he has given. "Call It Sleep" proves that some writers only need one masterpiece to take their place in history. Today we are so greedy - we want our writers to give us book after book - we chew them up and spit them out. I plan to cherish the body of work this man has created. How many Hope Diamonds does a person need before he can be declared rich? And how many books by Henry Roth do we need before we can say that he has enriched our lives?