Philip Roth: Novels and Stories 1959-1962: Goodbye, Columbus & Five Short Stories / Letting Go (Library of America) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Ross Miller (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For the last half century, the novels of Philip Roth have re-energized American fiction and redefined its possibilities. Roth's comic genius, his imaginative daring, his courage in exploring uncomfortable truths, and his assaults on political, cultural, and sexual orthodoxies have made him one of the essential writers of our time. By special arrangement with the author, The Library of America now inaugurates the definitive edition of Roth's collected works. This first volume presents Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories, the book that established Roth's reputation on publication in 1959 and for which he won the National Book Award, and his first novel, Letting Go (1962).

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.

From the Back Cover

PHILIP ROTH: NOVELS AND STORIES 1959-1962
Ross Miller, editor

This first volume of The Library of America's definitive edition of the collected works of Philip Roth, published by special arrangement with the author, presents the two books that inaugurated his literary career. Of Roth's first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories, Saul Bellow wrote: "Unlike those of us who come howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair, teeth, speaking coherently. He is skilled, witty, energetic and performs like a virtuoso." This masterpiece of character analysis and social description is joined here by Letting Go, Roth's first full-length novel, a powerful and ambitious study of the youthful struggle to become independent that is also an extraordinary social tapestry of 1950s America.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 913 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; First Edition edition (August 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931082790
• ISBN-13: 978-1931082792
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #144,035 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where greatness began, November 30, 2005

By	W. P. Strange "Bill's shelf" (Williamstown, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Philip Roth is a giant of American literature, and this select volume by the Library Of America is a perfect addition to everyone who cares about great literature and likes to see where the greatness began and how it grows in the world of literature. Philip Roth's stature is right up there with Twain, Whitman, Hawthorne, Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Faulkner. He writes with clarity, and honesty about life, love, death, and has a sense of humor that is sometimes so subtle it is missed. To complain about the size of the print on the binding is as irrelevant as it is mean spirited. Great writers provide substance, how the publisher presents it is of little real consequence. This, and the second volume are a must for all bibliophiles.

35 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars SOURING ON THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA, October 28, 2005

By	sky (Colorado) - See all my reviews

The one star is not for Philip Roth, who of course is a major American novelist. The one star is for the book designer. Is Philip Roth such an incomparably great writer that, unlike James and Faulkner and Melville, his name needs to be emblazoned in giant white letters on the spine of the book? For the first time in the LOA series, the author's name does not appear in horizontal white calligraphic script; instead, it appears in giant white letters running vertically the length of the spine. So when you look at your bookshelves loaded with LOA volumes, "ROTH" leaps out at you.

I grow increasingly disenchanted with the LOA. It started promisingly enough, with the Northwestern-Newberry texts of Melville, the Univ. of California/Mark Twain Project texts for Twain, the Polk/Blotner texts for Faulkner, etc. Major writers complete in the most authoritative texts available -- a simple recipe for success.

Now, to fill its overly ambitious, overly prolific publishing schedule, LOA publishes journalism and second- and third-rate authors such as Dashell Hammett, Dawn Powell, and Paul Bowles. Why? Partially, at least, because the copyright on these authors' works is owned by Random House/Vintage, which seems to have a death grip on what LOA publishes. Commercial interest has, inevitably, overridden and diluted the initial vision of a canon of truly great American literature.

Not to mention that the series started with 1400- or 1500-page volumes being the norm. New volumes routinely have half that number of pages. The bean counters are doing math somewhere...

My two cents: publish fewer volumes and concentrate on the indisputably major authors. (Where is Melville's poetry?!) And publish no works by writers whose work has not passed out of copyright and into the public domain. Let time do its work of sifting out the writers who truly matter. Instant canonization is a farce. Unlike France with its comparable Pleiade series, America is a young country -- so of course the series will have fewer volumes. So what? LOA is sacrificing quality for quantity and going for the almighty dollar.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The stories tell us a star is born The novel a disappointment, September 4, 2005

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

The stories announce Roth to the world. The long title story 'Goodbye Columbus' seems to announce that a successor to F. Scott Fitzgerald has at last appeared in the world of American writing. The freshness, the youth , the energy, the romanticism tempered by irony. 'Goodbye Columbus' is not Gatsby but it signals the coming of a great new star.
In the other stories too Roth appears with a mastery beyond his age, a techical skill and brilliance, a power of irony, a delightful humor.
He also comes with an offensive irrevence and critical view of Jewish American middle - class hypocrisy. But I believe that as Roth himself would later intimate even the fiercest of that criticism ( as it would come late in the true genius work, 'Portnoy') bore in it a tremendous amount of real feeling, identification, love.
Roth too is a superemely American writer concerned with the broader American destiny and meaning. His politics are not to my taste but one feels in his writing a real sense of the touch and taste of American life, an exuberant appreciation.
These are the first writings of what will become a major American writer.
It is interesting that the novel is in my judgment a flat disappointment. And Roth's career does have many flops mixed in with the gems. Perhaps that is the price of experiment or speaking in many voices.
But the opening stories, the 'Goodbye Columbus' collection is a winner.