Goodbye, Columbus
September 5, 2005
The Arts and Leisure section of yesterday’s New York Times tells us that Philip Roth has become only the third living writer to have his works published by The Library of America (Eudora Welty and Saul Bellow were the other two). The first two volumes are out, and the first volume, of course, features, Goodbye, Columbus.
You can read the original review of Goodbye, Columbus from the May 17, 1959 New York Times. Considering that it went on to win The National Book Award, this is a fairly tepid review.
I came to read Goodbye, Columbus years after my own discovery of Roth. My boyhood friend Sean McCarthy told me about Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. We were probably 11 or so. Just guessing, as it was published in February of 1969, a few months before my 10th birthday, but I didn’t meet Sean until 5th grade, or a year later. Sean had older brothers who told him about the sex scenes, so Sean and I would sneak upstairs from the children’s library and into the adult library and read the book standing in the stacks.
(By the way, considering the temptations my own sons face today, this story seems oddly quaint.)
When I finally read Goodbye, Columbus in college, I was deeply moved. I was the right age for the story, and I imagined myself an Italian-American Neil Klugman. I read it again probably 10 years ago, and was still moved. It’s time to read it again, I think.
Posted by Bill Trippe at September 5, 2005 12:22 PM
