Henry Roth

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Henry Roth (born February 8, 1906 in Tysmenitz near Stanislau , Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , Austro-Hungarian Monarchy ; † October 13, 1995 in Albuquerque , New Mexico , USA ) was a Jewish-American novelist and writer of short stories .

Life

Roth's family emigrated to the United States around 1908 and lived in different neighborhoods in New York. After graduating from school, Roth studied biology at the City College of New York from 1924 . He had a relationship with his college English professor, Eda Lou Walton, daughter of the politician William Bell Walton , who also assisted him in writing his novel Call It Sleep , published in 1934 . It describes the childhood of a son of Jewish-Galician immigrants in the poor New York East Side and bears autobiographical traits. The book is considered a masterpiece of this genre.

A second novel, which he wanted to write as a proletarian novel after joining the Communist Party of the United States , did not succeed. After the termination of the relationship with Walton, he married the composer Muriel Parker in 1938, they had two sons. He stopped writing to a large extent and got by as a casual worker and later as a poultry farmer. In 1968 the family moved to New Mexico .

In 1964 a new edition of Call It Sleep appeared , which made him known again. In the last years of his life he wrote the autobiographical novel cycle The Grace of a Wild Stream .

Others

In 2018, an excerpt from Call It Sleep was the topic of the English Abitur exam in Baden-Württemberg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In Baden-Württemberg there was the petition "English Abitur 2018 Baden-Württemberg unfair!" From the student side. The debate about this met with an international response.

Works

  • Call It Sleep . Ballou, New York 1934.
  • Nature's First Green . Targ Editions, New York 1979
  • Shifting Landscape: A Composite, 1925-1987 . Published by Mario Materassi. Jewish Publ. Soc., Philadelphia 1987, ISBN 0-8276-0292-8 .

Romantic tetralogy "Mercy of a Rude Stream":

  • Volume 1: A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park . St. Martin's, New York 1994, ISBN 0-312-10499-5 .
    • German: The grace of a wild river . Übers. Heide Sommer. Beltz, Weinheim 1996, ISBN 3-88679-707-4
  • Volume 2: A Diving Rock on the Hudson . St. Martin's, New York 1995, ISBN 0-312-11777-9
    • German: A floating rock on the banks of the Hudson . Übers. Heide Sommer. Beltz, Weinheim 1997, ISBN 3-88679-709-0
  • Volume 3: From Bondage . St. Martin's, New York 1996, ISBN 0-312-14341-9
    • German: The Entfesselung . Übers. Heide Sommer. Ullstein, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89834-013-9
  • Volume 4: Requiem for Harlem . St. Martin's, New York 1998, ISBN 0-312-16980-9
    • German: Requiem for Harlem . Übers. Heide Sommer. Rotbuch, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3434531394 , with afterword & glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew expressions

Texts from the estate:

literature

Web links

Web links to the student petition English Abitur 2018 Baden-Württemberg unfair!

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Muriel Roth, 82, Dies; Pianist and Composer , Obituary, in: New York Times , February 15, 1990
personal data
SURNAME Roth, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH near Stanislau, Galicia
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1995
Place of death Albuquerque , New Mexico