"The title novella, Goodbye, Columbus, the story of a summer romance between a poor young man from Newark and a rich Radcliffe co-ed, is both a tightly wrought tale of youthful desire and a satiric gem that takes aim at the comfortable affluence of the postwar boom. Here and in the stories that accompany it, including "The Conversion of the Jews" and "Defender of the Faith," Roth depicts Jewish lives in 1950s America with an unflinching sharpness of observation." In Letting Go, a sprawling novel set largely against the backdrop of Chicago in the 1950s, Roth portrays the moral dilemmas of young people cast precipitously into adulthood, and in the process describes a skein of social and family responsibilities as they are brought into focus by issues of marriage, abortion, adoption, friendship, and career. The novel's expansiveness provides a wide scope for Roth's gift for vivid characterization, and in his protagonist Gabe Wallach he creates a nuanced portrait of a responsive young academic whose sense of morality draws him into the ordeals of others with unforeseen consequences. Library of America #157
Author
Witty and ironic fiction of noted American writer Philip Milton Roth includes the novels Portnoy's Complaint (1969), American Pastoral (1997), and The Human Stain (2000). He gained early literary fame with the collection Goodbye, Columbus (1959), winner of National Book Award of 1960, cemented this fame with his bestseller, and continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The novels of Zuckerman began with The Ghost Writer in 1979 and include winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In May 2011, he won the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement in fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip\_...
