Goodbye, Columbus is a brutal, funny collection of short stories about second and third generation Jews assimilating in suburban America in the mid-twentieth century.
I really liked this complicated stories with their complex, well-drawn characters. Philip Roth does not shy away from showing the darker, pettier sides of suburban America, but he doesnt wallow in it, either. The characters are selfish, lustful, silly, yet never really less than real. I feel that I've known each of these characters. Never more so than in the opening novella from which the collection gets the title. It struck a really familiar chord in me, from its portrait of the suburban home, to it's detailing of the romantic fling the narrator has, and the concerns and worries and obsessions of the characters. In fact, it's eerie how much it pulled me in; I could feel the air conditioning, feel the heat of the summer, smell teh sweat on skin...
I'm not Jewish, but I almost felt Jewish reading this. Make no mistake, there is not a single story here that doesn't concern Jewishness. Judaism is wrapped around these stories and inseparable from them. But they transcend that.
Being set 60 or 70 years ago(published in 1959) hasn't really dated the stories too much, other than a few terms(colored boy, for example)and a few details. Overall, it really felt fresh to me. There's a bitter sadness to these stories, and an beautiful anger--and a wicked sense of humor. I chuckled to myself more than a few times.
And man, can he write!
There are some powerful stories here which range they range from incredibly good to unbelievably good--more than a few disturbing moments too. They're probably the best short stories I've read since I read JD Salinger in the 90s. In fact, I'd say they resemble JD Salinger. They're sort of a mix of Salinger and Saul Bellow, but funnier.
I highly recommend this book to anybody who likes great 20th century AMerican literature.
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