Goodbye Columbus

Philip Roth was born on March 19, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey, and died on May 22, 2018, in New York City. In addition to the short story collection Goodbye Columbus, which was his literary debut, he is the author of nearly 30 novels. He has won numerous prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral. Many of his works enjoy widespread popularity, and several have been adapted for the screen, including Goodbye, Columbus, a film directed by Larry Peerce and released in 1969. Roth’s work is defined by its intermingling of comedy and drama, its exploration of Jewish American identity, and its probing of middle-class sexual mores. These themes are very present in Goodbye, Columbus, with the portrayal of the Patimkins outside of Newark in “Goodbye, Columbus” or the struggles of Lou Epstein as his affair is uncovered in “Epstein.” Of Roth’s many novels, one to enjoy recent popularity after his death is The Plot Against America, an alternate history novel in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt loses the 1940 election to Charles Lindbergh, a Nazi sympathizer. The novel follows a Jewish family from Newark, New Jersey, as they navigate a new America in which antisemitism is more accepted.