Goodbye, Columbus

The title story of the collection, Goodbye, Columbus, was an irreverent look at the life of middle-class Jewish Americans, satirizing, according to one reviewer, their "complacency, parochialism, and materialism." It was controversial with reviewers, who were highly polarized in their judgments.[8]

The story is told by the narrator, Neil Klugman, who is working in a low-paying position in the Newark Public Library. He lives with his Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max in a working-class neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. One summer, Neil meets and falls for Brenda Patimkin, a student at Radcliffe College who is from a wealthy family living in the affluent suburb of Short Hills. The novella explores the classism which afflicts the relationship, despite the fact that Brenda's father, Ben, came from the same environment as Neil. The issue of ethnic assimilation is intrinsic, as Brenda is more assimilated than Neil.

The title “Goodbye, Columbus” is a quote from a song that was sung by the departing seniors, including Brenda's brother, Ron, at their graduation from the Ohio State University at Columbus. Ron dearly enjoys listening to a record of the song that evokes his years as a varsity athlete on a campus where sports are big. By listening to the record for a few years and later having Neil listen along, he is given continuing proof of the Patimkins' success at assimilation. As the story proceeds, Neil finds that his relationship with Brenda is falling apart. Thus, the alma-mater nostalgia of the novella's title can be heard as a choral parallel to Neil's saying goodbye to the affluent, assimilated world of the Patimkins and, in his unreported future, remembering, re-evaluating and possibly, in low moments or periods, missing it and them.

A New York Yiddish theater song of 1926 (seven years before Philip Roth's birth) includes lyrics whose translation is "I’m going home....I’m going to Palestine....Goodbye, Columbus."[9] The rhythm of this Jewish song is that of a march. The novella’s title restates or points at the proud and emotional rejection of assimilation that was belted out in this song by an East-European Jew who had immigrated to the U.S. This song's Columbus is not a campus but rather the man who induced Europeans to follow him to America, and its "Goodbye" (unlike the one in the college song) is neither a sentimental summation nor a grateful or admiring one.

The title functions as a trick: to tempt and enable a reader to simultaneously hear the point that is made by "Goodbye" in each of the two songs (two incompatible points), while watching Neil ambivalently and uncomfortably tip back and forth between the two of them, and to simultaneously feel those attitudes and Roth's attitudes toward them, in order to see, among other things, the incompleteness and distortedness of each of the three goodbye-sayers' view of what he is saying goodbye to. It is a magic trick, though not of the kind that stops the members of a magician's audience from glimpsing what is happening two feet away from what they have all fixed their gaze on. Quite the contrary: The trick illuminates what is murky and unconscious.

This short story, which first appeared in The Paris Review in 1958, deals with the themes of questioning religion and being violent to one another because of it.

Ozzie Freedman, a Jewish-American boy about thirteen years old, confronts his Hebrew school teacher, Rabbi Binder, with challenging questions: especially, whether it is possible that God gave the Virgin Mary a child without having intercourse. Rabbi Binder interprets Ozzie's question about the virgin birth as impertinent, though Ozzie sincerely wishes to better understand God and his faith. When Ozzie continues to ask challenging questions, Binder slaps him on the face, accidentally bloodying Ozzie's nose. Ozzie calls Binder a bastard and, without thinking, runs to the roof of the synagogue. Once there, Ozzie threatens to jump.

The rabbi and pupils go out to watch Ozzie from the pavement and try to convince him not to leap. Ozzie's mother arrives. Ozzie threatens to jump unless they all bow on their knees in the Christian tradition and admit that God can make a virgin birth, and furthermore, that they believe in Jesus Christ; he then admonishes all those present that they should never "hit anyone about God". He finally ends by jumping off the roof onto a glowing yellow net held by firemen.

The story—originally published in The New Yorker—deals with a Jewish American army sergeant who resists the attempted manipulation of a fellow Jew to exploit their mutual ethnicity to receive special favours. The story caused consternation among Jewish readers and religious groups, as recounted in chapter five of Roth's 1988 memoir The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography.[10]

The title character goes through a crisis, feeling at age fifty-nine that by accepting the responsibilities of business, marriage, and parenthood, he has missed out on life, and starts an affair with another woman.

An unnamed narrator recalls the events surrounding his meeting with Alberto Pelagutti, a troublemaker, in high school.

The assimilated Jews of a small community express fear that their peaceful coexistence with the Gentiles will be disturbed by the establishment of an Orthodox yeshiva in their neighborhood.