Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love.
Goodbye, Columbus is accompanied by 5 other short stories, including
The Conversion of the Jews,
Defender of the Faith,
Epstein,
You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings, and
Eli, the Fanatic. They range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender, and illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and neighbors in the new postwar America of the '40s and '50s. Philip Roth is the author of more than 20 books, including
Operation Shylock,
I Married a Communist,
Sabbath's Theater, and Pulitzer-Prize winner
American Pastoral.
