Goodbye, Columbus

Goodbye, Columbus is a collection of stories written by Philip Roth. Released in 1959, it is Roth's first published book.

Stories within[]

Goodbye, Columbus
The Conversion of the Jews
Defender of the Faith
Epstein
You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings
Eli, the Fanatic

Publisher's summary[]

Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters.

Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender and that illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora.

Sources[]

Goodreads
Wikipedia

Works of Philip Roth
Early novels (1959-1977) Goodbye, Columbus, Letting Go, When She Was Good, Portnoy's Complaint, Our Gang, The Breast, The Great American Novel, My Life as a Man, The Professor of Desire Middle novels (1979-1993) The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, The Prague Orgy, The Counterlife, Deception, Operation Shylock Later novels (1995-2010) Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain, The Dying Animal, The Plot Against America, Everyman, Exit Ghost, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis Miscellany Goodbye, Columbus, Reading Myself and Others, A Philip Roth Reader, Zuckerman Bound, The Facts, Patrimony, Shop Talk Major and recurring characters Nathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth, Neil Klugman, David Kepesh, Gabe Wallach, Lucy Nelson, Alexander Portnoy, Trick E. Dixon, Word Smith, Peter Tarnopol, Mickey Sabbath, Swede Levov, Nathan Zuckerman, Marcus Messner, Simon Axler, Bucky Cantor, Arnie Mesnikoff