Requiem for Harlem: Mercy of a Rude Stream Volume IV, A Novel [Paperback]

Henry Roth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1998 | Series: Mercy of a Rude Stream (Book 4)

Completed just months before Henry Roth's death, the four-volume works of Mercy of a Rude Stream has become an epic American literary event. Here, in Requiem for Harlem, Roth tells the psychologically lacerating love story of Ira Stigman, a senior at City College, who has fallen for Edith Welles, NYU professor and muse of modern poets. Set both in the fractured world of Jewish Harlem and in the bohemian maelstrom of Greenwich Village, Requiem for Harlem provides a fitting epitaph that concludes the literary exodus that propelled Roth from alienation to artistic and personal redemption.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's a shame that Henry Roth died in 1995, because now readers will never know what happens to his fictional alter ego, Ira Stigman, once he leaves City College. For readers familiar with Roth's series of autobiographical novels, Requiem for Harlem is the last of four books chronicling the childhood and young adulthood of Stigman; for those who have not yet discovered Roth, consider reading the first three in the series to get a handle on the dark, complicated, and rich world Ira Stigman occupies. Set in 1920s Harlem, Roth's novels explore the life of Jewish immigrants. In earlier volumes, the reader meets Ira, his sister Minnie, his cousin Stella, and his parents. Home life for the Stigmans is hardly heartwarming: the parents are locked in a violent marriage, and the children are involved in incestuous relationships. By the time Roth and Stigman have reached the events chronicled in Requiem for Harlem, Ira and Minnie are no longer sleeping together, but Ira and Stella are.

Requiem for Harlem follows Ira through his college years and his attempts to separate from his family, his neighborhood, and his own past. His childish passions for Minnie and Stella give way to his attraction to an older woman, Professor Edith Welles--an attraction that is as complex in its own way as his earlier relationships with his sister and cousin. It's unfortunate that there will be no further volumes taking us through the rest of Ira's life, but for those who wonder what happened to him, there is the example of Henry Roth to guide us. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The fourth?and final?volume of Roth's astonishing, largely autobiographical bildungsroman, Mercy of a Rude Stream, retains the brilliant insight of the previous volumes with only a fraction of their suspense. The story picks up in 1927, six months after volume three, From Bondage, left off. Still living in the Harlem slums with his parents and young sister, City College senior Ira Stigman is on fire with Milton's poetry and wracked by guilt over his sexual relations with his 16-year-old cousin Stella. Although the reader has known since volume three that Ira's eventual deliverer and muse will be his NYU English instructor (and the mistress of his best friend), Roth delays the inception of this affair until the novel's conclusion and meanwhile dwells on what seem red herrings: Stella's pregnancy scare and her grandfather's apparent discovery of her trysts with Ira. Roth, who died in 1995 (leaving two more novels, which will be published separately), covers little new ground here, although the writing displays its usual nuance and technical virtuosity. The novel's most interesting revelations concern the mental illness of Ira's mother's and Ira's ruthlessness in getting the "hell out of Harlem," even if it means betraying his best friend or brutalizing Stella. This is a chilling portrait of selfishness struggling through art towards justification.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Picador (December 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312202059
• ISBN-13: 978-0312202057
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN AMAZING REQUIEM FOR HENRY ROTH, May 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Requiem for Harlem: Mercy of a Rude Stream Volume IV, A Novel (Paperback)

There is an extraordinary pain and energy to REQUIEM FOR HARLEM which makes you remember it long after you have finished it. It also has the feel of a thriller -- fast, daring, sexual, morally challenging, yet when you are confronted at the end with the unspeakable crimes, not so much of Ira but of his father, you begin to understand the psychic pain that belonged both to Roth and his alter-ego, Ira Stigman. One only wishes that Roth had been younger and could have written more fiction on this level, but there is a sad wisdom to be gleaned that could only come of an author nearing the end. For anyone who thinks that contemporary American literature lacks big or philosophically probing themes, I urge them not only to read REQUIEM FOR HARLEM but also the entire quartet of MERCY OF A RUDE STREAM. Roth has yet to be rediscovered for his final masterpieces, but the time for these books will come, as surely as it did for CALL IT SLEEP.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important novels in American literature., March 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Requiem for Harlem: Mercy of a Rude Stream Volume IV, A Novel (Paperback)

Henry Roth wrought one of the most overwhelming, literate and important works in late 20th century American literature with "Mercy of a Rude Stream."

Never in my young life have I read a contemporary work of fiction with as much raw frustrated energy and literary intellect. If there could be an American Hugo of the soul then perhaps Roth is it. This final book, and the three before it, have profoundly and fundamentally changed my view of the world and of my beloved city, New York, for ever more. I only wish that there was more of Roth to read, and that there were more readers of Jewish fiction who care to create a groundswell of appreciation for Roth. The pain in these four novels is worth it, I feel as if I have ended a long frienship now that "Requiem" is over.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scruffy and slummy, July 17, 2003

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Requiem for Harlem: Mercy of a Rude Stream Volume IV, A Novel (Paperback)

Ira Stigman thought he was a glutton. Ira went through a crisis when he thought he had made his cousin Stella pregnant. He enjoyed the company of his friends, Edith and Larry. He told Edith secrets he thought would discredit him in her eyes. It is May, 1987, the author recalls that his (fictitious) father, born in 1878, was singled out for an interview in 1966 when he was eightly three years old. He described his job as a Roll Call waiter. His father was honored because in the previous year the author had a best seller. The author notes that the interview was typically a matrix of confusions, confabulations, inventions, contradictions. He said most of this was for reason of his father's incurable tendancy to evasions. The author ponders the question, what made the inhabitants of East Harlem scruffy and slummy. He had been raised with superstitions. He was to leave home and live with Edith. Mrs. Shapiro, one of the neighbors, had once saved Ira from a terrible thrashing. He sees her when he comes to move his things and tell his mother and his father good by. The volume contains an editor's afterward by Robert Weil. It is the last book of a quartet, MERCY OF A RUDE STREAM, completed by a very old man who died October 13, 1995.