falturani's review against another edition
4.0
After several false starts over the years, I finally read Goodbye, Columbus (1959) all the way through. Last fall with no copy on hand, I had been eager to read Roth's second book and first full-length novel, Letting Go (1962). It's not a title of his that many people are familiar with these days, dwarfed by his success later that decade with Portnoy's Complaint, more recently with American Pastoral and The Plot Against America, and of course back with his first book, which established his reputation -- or rather, his many reputations. As such, Letting Go is not, I think, widely available these days, and my only copy of it is in the first of the Library of America volumes devoted to Roth's output; as it's coupled here with Goodbye, Columbus, I saw this as an opportunity to finally finish that one and get a better sense of his earliest writings. I'm going to try to piece together a somewhat coherent review of both but will likely just ramble from thought to thought.
I'll briefly touch upon Goodbye, Columbus, which might seem a fairly uneven collection but is perhaps a fair reflection of Roth's talents and the directions in which he would go -- melancholic stories of love, pitch-perfect comedic pieces, Newark nostalgia (even in the 50s). The first time I read the title novella, I didn't care much care for it and found the two characters, Neil and Brenda, quite grating. I may not have been any more sympathetic to Neil this time round, but appreciated it more with this reading. "Defender of the Faith," "Epstein," and "Eli, the Fanatic" are great at exploring different kinds of tension -- "Defender" and "Eli" with (the Jewish) community, assimilation and modernity, and "Epstein" with the midlife, marital and cultural. "Conversion of the Jews" was hilarious, and I don't think I completely processed "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song he Sings."
The only references I've ever seen to Letting Go were made by Larry McMurtry, who has called it the best exploration of a particular social milieu, one like Roth which he had been a member of: graduate school in the 1950s. When I came upon the first reference, in his book-length rumination on storytelling, modernity and the west, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, I was simply pleased that one of my favorite writers had favorably referenced another. Both had entered graduate studies in English literature around the same time, McMurtry at Rice and Roth at Chicago, and both emerged, as McMurtry put it, doctorateless. Aside from my own general curiosity about or false nostalgia for the 1950s, I consider academia and the lives of writers in that period a rich scene in terms of our cultural and intellectual history. (Stray note: I've often found reminders in Roth's writings that while our culture and world may often be utterly perplexing, it's continually perplexing and always has been. Though much has changed since the transitional period of the 50s in which Letting Go takes place, some of what he paints still resonates today. One of the more trivial but still funny examples from the novel has to do with the clear division that had already arisen then between those engaged in "criticism" and those in "creative writing," something that has only become more pronounced over time.)
Letting Go centers on Gabe Wallach, part-time narrator, but he is one of a handful of characters whose forays into adulthood, love and sex Roth explores. Wallach is the least attached of any of the characters here but finds himself entangled in a number of lives, sometimes incidentally, sometimes as an attempt at meaningfulness. The novel starts in Iowa City, where Wallach is a grad student in English and meets the creative writing PhD candidate Paul Herz, whose own circumstance in life is almost exactly the opposite of Gabe's. Both are Jewish men from New York and in their 20s, but Gabe is independently wealthy and Paul eternally hapless; Gabe is after love and untethered, Paul has found himself in a young but already troubled marriage; Gabe is much loved by his father and seeking room to grow as a result, while Paul and his wife Libby have been entirely disowned by their parents. Gabe and the Herzes all move a lot throughout the 50s, seeking but never quite finding the right station (figuratively and geographically), and end up for a while together again in Chicago, where the bulk of the book is set and Gabe and Paul teach at the U of C. While there, Gabe winds up involved with Martha Reganhart. A fiercely intelligent woman and the single mother of two, she has been left to contend with the social constraints of the 50s, the constraints of parenting and pursuing her own happiness, largely on her own.
This seems to me at once both more and less measured than the other works of Roth's I've read and sampled. More in the sense that there is little of the narcissism or chauvinism his later material would be charged with; the male characters here may occasional make unfortunate, cringe-worthy statements and actions, but these are presented as ultimately human flaws. Though one is portrayed as fairly hysterical, the women in this novel are fairly well drawn, their desires and opinions are not given short shrift, and it's clear that all of the characters here are simply confused with their lives.
The novel is less measured, though, in its sprawl, which is not to say it's indulgent or a bore; on the contrary, it was nice to get lost in. Whereas his later works pivot on -- hone in on, really -- some artistic conceit (playing with history, the form of the novel itself, or the relation a writer has to his work, of autobiography to fiction), this would be better characterized, like those early stories were in miniature, as a contemplative character study. Indeed, along the way there are some profound scenes and narratorial musings, the most striking of which anticipates the opening lines and much of the thematic terrain of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. That is to do with the predicament of our one life and of meaning(lessness); though each novel is also characterized by a slow-building crescendo and focuses on a few male and female characters, the two share little else in common, stylistically and otherwise.
I think I'll be chewing on this one for a while. I can't say it was everything I hoped it would be, but it was definitely satisfying. As always, I continue to love great prose stylists and Roth is one of them.
I'll briefly touch upon Goodbye, Columbus, which might seem a fairly uneven collection but is perhaps a fair reflection of Roth's talents and the directions in which he would go -- melancholic stories of love, pitch-perfect comedic pieces, Newark nostalgia (even in the 50s). The first time I read the title novella, I didn't care much care for it and found the two characters, Neil and Brenda, quite grating. I may not have been any more sympathetic to Neil this time round, but appreciated it more with this reading. "Defender of the Faith," "Epstein," and "Eli, the Fanatic" are great at exploring different kinds of tension -- "Defender" and "Eli" with (the Jewish) community, assimilation and modernity, and "Epstein" with the midlife, marital and cultural. "Conversion of the Jews" was hilarious, and I don't think I completely processed "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song he Sings."
The only references I've ever seen to Letting Go were made by Larry McMurtry, who has called it the best exploration of a particular social milieu, one like Roth which he had been a member of: graduate school in the 1950s. When I came upon the first reference, in his book-length rumination on storytelling, modernity and the west, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, I was simply pleased that one of my favorite writers had favorably referenced another. Both had entered graduate studies in English literature around the same time, McMurtry at Rice and Roth at Chicago, and both emerged, as McMurtry put it, doctorateless. Aside from my own general curiosity about or false nostalgia for the 1950s, I consider academia and the lives of writers in that period a rich scene in terms of our cultural and intellectual history. (Stray note: I've often found reminders in Roth's writings that while our culture and world may often be utterly perplexing, it's continually perplexing and always has been. Though much has changed since the transitional period of the 50s in which Letting Go takes place, some of what he paints still resonates today. One of the more trivial but still funny examples from the novel has to do with the clear division that had already arisen then between those engaged in "criticism" and those in "creative writing," something that has only become more pronounced over time.)
Letting Go centers on Gabe Wallach, part-time narrator, but he is one of a handful of characters whose forays into adulthood, love and sex Roth explores. Wallach is the least attached of any of the characters here but finds himself entangled in a number of lives, sometimes incidentally, sometimes as an attempt at meaningfulness. The novel starts in Iowa City, where Wallach is a grad student in English and meets the creative writing PhD candidate Paul Herz, whose own circumstance in life is almost exactly the opposite of Gabe's. Both are Jewish men from New York and in their 20s, but Gabe is independently wealthy and Paul eternally hapless; Gabe is after love and untethered, Paul has found himself in a young but already troubled marriage; Gabe is much loved by his father and seeking room to grow as a result, while Paul and his wife Libby have been entirely disowned by their parents. Gabe and the Herzes all move a lot throughout the 50s, seeking but never quite finding the right station (figuratively and geographically), and end up for a while together again in Chicago, where the bulk of the book is set and Gabe and Paul teach at the U of C. While there, Gabe winds up involved with Martha Reganhart. A fiercely intelligent woman and the single mother of two, she has been left to contend with the social constraints of the 50s, the constraints of parenting and pursuing her own happiness, largely on her own.
This seems to me at once both more and less measured than the other works of Roth's I've read and sampled. More in the sense that there is little of the narcissism or chauvinism his later material would be charged with; the male characters here may occasional make unfortunate, cringe-worthy statements and actions, but these are presented as ultimately human flaws. Though one is portrayed as fairly hysterical, the women in this novel are fairly well drawn, their desires and opinions are not given short shrift, and it's clear that all of the characters here are simply confused with their lives.
The novel is less measured, though, in its sprawl, which is not to say it's indulgent or a bore; on the contrary, it was nice to get lost in. Whereas his later works pivot on -- hone in on, really -- some artistic conceit (playing with history, the form of the novel itself, or the relation a writer has to his work, of autobiography to fiction), this would be better characterized, like those early stories were in miniature, as a contemplative character study. Indeed, along the way there are some profound scenes and narratorial musings, the most striking of which anticipates the opening lines and much of the thematic terrain of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. That is to do with the predicament of our one life and of meaning(lessness); though each novel is also characterized by a slow-building crescendo and focuses on a few male and female characters, the two share little else in common, stylistically and otherwise.
I think I'll be chewing on this one for a while. I can't say it was everything I hoped it would be, but it was definitely satisfying. As always, I continue to love great prose stylists and Roth is one of them.
y3ti's review against another edition
emotional
funny
tense
slow-paced
2.0
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Stories is brilliant. Letting Go is crap.
samhouston's review
4.0
I first read Goodbye, Columbus in the late sixties and did not really appreciate it as much then as I did upon this second reading. It is a rather vivid portrayal of Jewish family life of the 1950s-1960s period that is both telling and touching. While the novella is not exactly a coming-of-age piece, it is the next best thing, the story of a couple of young people who fall instantly, if temporarily, deeply in love. A striking aspect of the story is how different things were regarding birth control when this was written: the couple has to claim they are married in order to obtain anything other than a condom, for instance. Also striking, is just how unlikable and selfish the narrator is on this second reading, an impression I do not recall from my first reading all those years ago.
The "Five Short Stories" start out strongly, with the second one ("Defender of the Faith") and the third ("Epstein") being my two favorites. Of the five, the only one I disliked (and I strongly disliked it) is the last one, "Eli the Fanatic."
The Library of America volume that includes "Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories" is of the usual high quality of everything produced by that publisher.
The "Five Short Stories" start out strongly, with the second one ("Defender of the Faith") and the third ("Epstein") being my two favorites. Of the five, the only one I disliked (and I strongly disliked it) is the last one, "Eli the Fanatic."
The Library of America volume that includes "Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories" is of the usual high quality of everything produced by that publisher.
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