Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories (Philip Roth)
“I don’t like Philip Roth,” I said to them, the Roth-y groupies. But their teary eyes and gesturing hands drive me to change my mind, to give the man another chance after the boring travesty that was The Human Stain.
“Try his original, the award-winning, break-through, tour-de-force Goodbye, Columbus,” they told me. “Give him another chance.”
So I did. And now I come back to the teary groupies and I say: “I don’t like Philip Roth.”
He’s so topical, so timely. With Human Stain, he brought up the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. In this work of years before, it’s mostly about premarital sex and contraception and sleeping with one another versus marriage. It’s about the extended adolescence during and right after college, when we should have grown up a bit but haven’t. And it’s about the choices we make — or nearly make, and then reverse at the last moment — that change everything, from which part of town you will live in to what kind of job you’re going to have. Oh, and premarital sex.
All Roth wants is to tell the reader his point of view on current topics of interest. He couldn’t get a radio show, so he writes fiction. Ok, ok, ok. That is harsh. He’s a good writer of fiction — the use of fruit in the novel to illustrate financial success, for instance. But COME ON PEOPLE! He’s almost a John Grisham, except he tackles more than one theme and isn’t as action-oriented.
His prose touches me in no way, at least not in any way a well-written magazine article couldn’t do. I feel no spark of inspiration or empathy. I feel only coldness and method. Please? Can someone explain it for me? Is it just that Roth is a “man” writer, or what? Or is it just that he’s stumbled on some good insights about controversial issues at exactly the right times to reap all the awards?
Anyone?
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars - Mediocre vacation reading
Award-Winning, Fiction, Short Stories |2 Responses to “Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories (Philip Roth)”
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I know I read Roth in another lifetime (high school, I think) and it was “Goodbye, Columbus.” I don’t remember much about the book (read another lifetime ago) but I do remember I didn’t like it. And, if it was in high school, I would have been among the teary eyed over almost anything my “senior rhet” teacher assigned. He was totally awesome.
My version was my European history teacher, who got in trouble with the principal for using curse words in class and stood on his desk once or twice Dead Poet’s Society style. I read Machiavelli for that man.
Maybe if HE’D recommended Roth …