Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

Rating:
Summary: Great relationship story
Review: I have tried to read Portnoy's complaint and just couldn't get very far. I can't really remember why now. I thought this might be more accessible Roth and indeed it was. The title story just rings so true about a summer love. The people and their feelings are just dead on. The Conversion of the Jews was kind of bizaare though. I enjoyed the story and what Roth was trying to say about religion but just didn't understand Oscar all that well. The book as a whole piqued my cutiosity enough to hunt around the house for my copy of Portnoy's Complaint to try again. At least read the title novella it will keep you going through the rest of the stories.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Book
Review: I think this is a good book even though I enjoy reading other kinds of books (like science fiction.) However, what I found special about this one is that it is very realistic. The characters and the situations in the novel makes you feel this happened in real life. The book is about the summer romance between two teenagers: Brenda Patimkin (one rich girl) and Neil Klugman (a poor boy). Neil sees her for the first time swiming in a pool, and falls in love with her. After that, they begin to love each other romantically; but after awhile they start having problems with each other, which will make you wonder if they'll stay together as a couple (but that's for you to read.) I'd say it is an entertaining book; it has funny parts, sad parts, happy and romantic. I haven't read other Roth novels, but this one is very good written. If you enjoy realistic novels, then it's a good choice.

Rating:
Summary: "I'm dark"
Review: I'm not a huge fan of Roth at all, and when discussing him, I always seem to forget that he wrote these stories. It really does seem like the work of a different author; a brighter, more clever and inventive one; namely, younger. Maybe the mold of cynicism just set around him at a certain point as he aged, in which case Goodbye, Colombus stands as his first and last good work.

First of all, the writing is first-rate modern American, a light but not overly breezy style, something like Bellow. Especially in the title story, the subtle humor is very effective, and he has a Salingerian gift for making the last sentence of a paragraph resonate. The themes, also, that continue throughout the stories are well-developed and intriguing; in 'Defender of the Faith,' he shows how a very convincing sociopath takes advantage of his Jewish identity and uses it as a weapon; in a story the title of which I can't remember, a young boy rebels against the oppressive Jewish instruction of his elders; then, later, in 'Eli the Fanatic,' Roth shows a man discovering solace in the stark rituals of traditional Judaism. The issue is examined from many angles. 'Epstein' is more suggestive of his later work and somehwat distasteful, very bleak, but a convincing portrait of an aging and frustrated Jewish man. 'You can't tell a man by the song he sings' is lighter and has little relation to the theme of Judaism, in case you were beginning to think Roth couldn't write about anything else.

The title story is easily the best; the rest are just accesories. While the romance which it depicts never really seems justified (what does she see in him to begin with?), the writing is superlative and the characters interesting, and the semitragic conclusion more moving than it really should be. In this story, Roth displays a delicacy which is foremost among the things he inexplicably loses later on; he seems to like these characters, even the spoiled and decadent family, and stops to linger on minor details with a real zest for description.

Reading these stories made me think I had judged Roth too quickly after reading only two of his books; I read another, and was disappointed again. Stick to this one.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: classy first book
Review: Though definitely not his best work, _Goodbye, Columbus_ is an impressive first effort from one of the best authors of the second half of this century. Throughout the book one can sense the style Roth was creating for himself, and though this book doesn't exhibit that breathless virtuosity of prose, that mastery of the English language, of his later books, it's still a nice read.

The novella _Goodbye, Columbus_ is a love story and a quiet meditation on a different type of "class struggle," and a better example of Roth's style -- not to mention a better story -- than his next two books, _Letting Go_ and _When She Was Good_. The first of the five stories, "The Conversion of the Jews," is a bit sick, but entertaining for that very reason. The middle three stories are a bit lackluster, but the book ends in high style, with "Eli, the Fanatic," a story that manages to be both a moving story about conflicting loyalties (the goyim or the Jews) and a hilarious portrait of a nervous breakdown.

I would not recommend this book to those just starting to read Philip Roth (try the Zuckerman Bound trilogy instead), but for anyone wondering where Roth's career started, it's an excellent book.