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Summary: one of the best debuts of any writer, ever
Review: Philip Roth is a great writer. Yeah, we've all heard this at one point or another (at least those of you taking and wasting time to read a review of one of his books). This was Mr. Roth's first published work, a short novel and five short stories that forced us to realize this man had arrived violently on the scene as a powerful literary force. Let's talk about the stories in this collection:"Goodbye, Columbus" is, honestly, without the standard hyperbole so many people slab into reviews such as this, one of the best novels I have ever read. It was written by a twenty-five year old man who was only going to get better (as his work from the mid-1980s to the present firmly establishes) yet here we have the wisdom of our great American gods. It is a beautiful story, funny and painful and filled with truths anyone in those recent post-college, still-not-finding-one's self perspective could learn and grow from. I love this story, and it is filled with agonizing self-analytical material that shows who it is we are dealing with, the intellect and the passion, the savagry and the wit. There are not too many single stories of American authors I could recommend more highly than this book, in particular the five page sequence from which this story gets its title. It is haunting and true, one of the rare glories of English in narrative form. If for nothing else, get this book to read this lovely novella. It is, profoundly, a masterpiece (not a term I use lightly either, being the bitter cynic I am--check out other reviews I've written--I can get rather mean)> Among the other stories, the most celebrated is "Conversion of the Jews", and for good reason. This is another gorgeously written tale about self-discovery and the agony of those questions all beginning with 'Why?' Here is a story questioning faith, questioning the idea of God or a higher power that has been transformed into such a makeshift mythology by all the varying faiths, why bother, it asks, what is the point and is it real and who are we and why are we here and why why why why why? This is a great story. Sadly, this collection is begun with the two tales I have so widely praised. The remaining stories are good--very good, in fact, but following up "Goodbye, Columbus" and "Conversion of the Jews", something is lost as they are unable (quite understandably--what 25 year old author is going to maintain such sustained greatness? It took Roth 27 years to return to this passion in "The Counterlife", and then he expanded from there, getting better and better progressively, and never looking back)to keep up the fascination. Now this is not to say there is anything wrong with these other stories. Had they been all there was in this collection I would have looked back with nodding approval and said, "Hey, this guy is going somewhere." But they are not the first two stories and are almost awkwardly placed as an aftermath of a developing great author. Get this book urgently, and read them all. Just don't allow yourself to be soured by the slightly lesser material following the first two masterworks.
Rating: 
Summary: Only the strong survive
Review: Philip Roth obviously doesn't believe in stretching his imagination too much - the main story here and most of the supporting shorter stories revolve around Jewish boys growing up around Newark, New Jersey. His real strength however lies in his ability to take these characters and describe and examine what makes them tick, and imbue them with just enough personal identity to distinguish them from each other and allow them to sink into our consciousness.
"Goodbye Columbus" the story is a touching tale of a summer romance between two individuals from very different social circles. There isn't much plot, not very much happens and the moral dilemma that ultimately shapes the fate of the relationship is a bit hard to relate to in these promiscuous times. Roth doesn't spend much time on that aspect of the plot, presuming perhaps that his contemporary reader would be only too familiar with the portrayed dilemma. Reading it at the start of the 21st century I feel unable to fully empathize with the protagonists' situation. However the prose is well observed, the situations and dialogue are witty and amusing and although the ending is a bit weak, I feel the beauty of the writing transcends generational barriers. The short stories are more pointed, and pithier, and perhaps make for better reading. As in Roth's other work, the characters are mostly very Jewish, and many revolve around particularly Jewish themes, feelings and situations. However I still found myself well able to identify with the narrators, despite being handicapped by my obvious goyishness.
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Summary: Early glimpses of brilliance
Review: Philip Roth shows early glimpses of his brilliance in this collection of short stories. For Roth fans, the real treat here is seeing the author's work as a young man. If you are like me and have read all of his books from the 1990s, you probably have an image in your mind of an author in his 60s. His writing always comes across as somewhat autobiographical, and most of the main characters in his books over the past ten years have been Jewish men entering their golden years. Because of this, I was a bit surprised to read a book of his in which the main characters are almost all young Jewish men. This just reinforces the notion that Roth has always tried to stick with what he knows, and that his writing stems more from his experience than from his creativity. In my mind he's the best writer out there.
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Summary: Short stories are much better than the title work.
Review: Philip Roth was unknown to me until I noticed 3 of his books in my roommates collection. I chanced across a copy of this book at a Salvation Army. Man, can this guy write! I wasn't that impressed with Goodbye Columbus; the characters weren't too likeable. (actually, a lot of his characters aren't that likeable.) But "Defender of the Faith", about some Jewish soldiers in WWII, blew me away. Absolutely one of the finest short stories I've ever read, right up there with Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt". The other short stories are also of highest quality, especially "Conversion of the Jews". Be warned, though. He deals with very sensitive issues about the Jewish people & faith. And he doesn't pull punches. As a gentile, I took his comments in stride, but I can see where people might get offended. There were a few times when I said "He did not write that, did he?" However, these issues are obviously very personal to him, and he must write what he feels. A highly recommended book.
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Summary: Like Judy Blume's Forever but mean...
Review: Reading this book I felt like I was reading Judy Blume's Forever but from the male perspective, in which that loser character from Forever gets to speak for himself and reveal just how much of a loser he really is. Romance between working class Jew and Jewish American Princess and the tensions. My girlfriend told me that it reminded her of me in that the working class guy is constantly challenging and fighting with his girlfriend in order to cover up his own insecurities. Our relationship got better after that. You don't really pay attention to the psychological aspect the first time because it's all about sex, when are they going to have sex, how often are they going to have sex, is she going to get birth control? And like i said before, the female character is not at all like the subdued Ali MacGraw in the movie. She's a harpy from the main characters perspective. When the story ends on a Portnoy's Complaint type note you are both laughing and sorrowful. The other stories are ok. Not great. THey also follow the idea of Jewish assimilation and how it works and doesn't work for Jews. The one about the soldier that uses shared ethnicity as an excuse for getting out of work is good and The Conversion of the Jews is for anyone whose ever hated Hebrew School.
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Summary: An enjoyable story for teenagers and adults.
Review: Roth has written a wonderful, easy to read story that contains many themes relating to teenage lives. The novel begins as a cute love story that keeps you interested and carries lessons on love VS lust in relationships. The relationship between Brenda and Neil is similar to that which many of us experience and are able to relate to. The content and message of the novel provide an enjoyable book to read.
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Summary: The best book ever written about Newark?
Review: The book's brilliant. Here's one thing that's not in the book that perhaps sheds some light on understanding the title: Across the street from the Newark Library, where the lead character works, is a park containing a statue of Christopher Columbus. After reading this book many years ago, I was puzzled by the title. The "Columbus record" scenes to which the title refers did not seem as climactic and important to be highlighted. The Columbus record belongs to a second tier character, and yes, while the scene undergirds themes of coming of age and loss, the scene just didn't seem to be that important. But when you tie that coming-of-age theme to the statue of the explorer across from the lead character's workplace, where Neil no doubt ate lunch regularly, then you realize that Goodbye, Columbus, is Philip Roth's Goodbye to Berlin. (I refer especially to the last scene in Berlin, in which all the characters in Isherwood's novel are having a picnic...no big deal, until you realize they are Jews and homosexuals and intellectuals and everyone else who, if they fail to get out, will be doomed shortly by the Third Reich. And all of it is left unsaid, the history is left to comment on the work on its own.) In Columbus, the stakes are lower but analogous. The lead character is going to leave Newark ... he still works there, but he's going to say goodbye to that statue across the street, by extention the city. It's all unsaid but after the lead character gets out of Newark, the construction of I-78 will mean the beautiful neighborhood where Neil and his family lived will be torn apart; after that, Newark faces a particularly corrupt administration that starts the flight of businesses and sets the stage for the three days of devastating riots in 1967 (the ruins of which stood for more than 20 years) and the flight of half the population from the city. Goodbye to Columbus was written while the forces that destroyed Newark were inchoate, but it only means that in this case, Roth was prescient.
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Summary: Roth sets the mood
Review: The first five chapters of Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus follow his protagonist Neil Klugman through a romanticized post college summer. Roth introduces this straightforward prose with a sentence that does not waste anytime, "The first time I saw Brenda"(p 3). This sentence draws the reader quickly into a book that does not spend pages on exposition, rather Roth starts out with action and fills in any gaps as they arise. This writing style is beautiful to read, and perfectly matches the quick, to the point feeling of a summertime romance. The story, like the prose, is not over packed. It begins, as stated, with the first time Neil meets Brenda Patimkin. The feeling of young love jumps off the first page, when Neil watches Brenda walk away, "She caught the bottom of her suit between thumb and index finger and flicked what flesh had been showing back where it belonged. My blood jumped" (p 3). And the reader, along with Neil, is hooked on Brenda from the beginning. Roth is careful to make the feelings in the book apparent, from the first we feel as though we are about to embark on a summer of relaxation and love. But Roth's love is not married couple adult love; it is love like the cashier in Updike's A &P. It is love at first sight. It is pretty girl by the pool kind of love. This feeling of Neil's love for Brenda is only made stronger by Roth's evocation of summer. The dominant feeling in the book though, is lust. Neil begins his relationship with Brenda after watching her at the pool, and after that he is always bringing sex to the foreground of he book. The description of Neil and Brenda's escapade in the pool shows Neil's youthful obsession with the female body, "Her breasts swam towards me like two pink-nosed fish and she let me hold them"(p 17). It does not end there; after he ate dinner with Brenda's family he sat at his desk in the library and, "watched the hot high-breasted teen-age girls walk twitchingly up the wide flight of marble stairs"(p 32). And he describes his lust for other women as "academic and time passing" showing that may not feel anything towards the girls that walk by him, but that should not stop him from thinking about them (p 32). The constant remembrance of sex in the novel is the most effective method Roth uses of getting his mood across. Without it the spirit of summer, young love, and adventure would be gone. Neil and Brenda's relationship would be dull and flat; the afternoons at the library would be spent solely on thinking about work, and story would be deflated. Roth did not, however, write an erotic book that talks only about sex. He does recognize what a key role sex, lust, and love play in the lives of his twenty-year-old characters. He uses it as a framework for which to place the deeper, less common story.
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Summary: A brilliant beginning
Review: The great brilliance and talent of Philip Roth announce themselves to the world in this first book. Much of what Roth would be later admired for is present in this work. A remarkable capacity for creating memorable characters, a tremendous liveliness and humor in language, a somewhat sarcastic view of American reality mixed up with a deeply romantic and idealistic one, fervent sexual interest. There is also in these works the kind of criticism of his home- team, the American Jewish family which would make him anathema to certain leading figures of the Jewish literary ( Irving Howe) and cultural establishment. The major piece of writing , the novella ' Goodbye Columbus' seems like it is the heir apparent to ' The Great Gatsby'. There is a mastery of tone , precociously mature. That tone and that control will lead to the less successful line in Roth's writing, in which the narrator ( When She was Good) and the writer appear to be seeking entrance to the cathedral of Jamesian Anglo- American literature. This novella has many skilled and interesting pieces of writing excellently evokes the world of Jewish American suburbia its business and family worlds. The love affair between Neil and Brenda Patinkin has a certain unsatisfactory quality especially in his ungenerous portrait of Brenda. The scene with the little black boy in the library fascinated by the works of Gaugin may be sentimental but is quite moving. As for the stories they too have a brilliance, and they also have that criticism of middle - class Jewish piety which Roth will be lambasted for .These are very good pieces of writing and would stand well on their own. But when Roth wrote ' Portnoy's Complaint ' he changed the way his previous work would be seen .And all would be understand as simply preliminary to that outrageous work of true literary genius. This is a fine book, but that is a great one.
Rating: 
Summary: No Thanks!
Review: The movie infatuated sub-literate "reviews" of this adaptation immediately turned me off, they can probably only ingest it in audio format. The Amazon no-name who misspelled HARLAN ELLISON's name didnt help, he's a vastly better writer than roth, and the only reason I was going to buy these tapes, guess not.
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