"Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories" by Philip Roth

Roth's freshman work, published when he was only 26.  Roth has guaranteed his place in American literature, despite the claims that he is just a Hemingway imitator.  The stories in this book, of which the title story is almost a novella, are concerned with the everyday lives of Jewish-Americans and how does being Jewish color the American experience without detracting from it, but quite on the contrary, adding and enriching it.  The stories are wonderfully vibrant, full of real life and dialogue, and Roth manages to make the mundane details relevant and enticing.  The title story is about a working class Jewish boy who falls in love with a girl from a rich Jewish family.  Although initially their relationship is going well, eventually the differences in their class and world-views will lead to inevitable break-up, however it is the process of story telling which is so amazing in Roth, as he manages to convey the warmth, charm and authenticity of real life and real people, with all their mannerisms, shortcomings and occasional nastiness.

The second story, "The conversion of the Jews" is a powerful reflection on the Jewish identity and its place in the Christian-dominated North-America.  Another masterful description of Jewish Sunday school, the proverbial Good Rabbi and the smothering Jewish mother.  The third story "Defender of the Faith" about wartime observance of Jewish tradition and the conflict in the Jewish Corporal between following his secular job and giving due respect to his ancestral religion and compatriots.  "Epstein" is probably my favorite story in the book: humorous, everyday, and yet deep and reflecting the deepest human urges and motivations.  "You Can't tell a man by the song he sings" talks about Roth's high school experience in Newark, NJ, and an encounter with a bully who turns into a friend and then into a bully again.  The final story "Eli, the Fanatic" follows a common story in Roth's writing about coming to terms with being jewish and all the baggage it comes with, and yet trying to 'fit in' and be like everybody else in the environment.  Eli, a respected lawyer in a largely gentile, upper-class, suburb, is given the task to 'discipline' the newly settles Jewish orphanage, with kids orphaned from the Holocaust, and make them less conspicuous and intrusive to the wealthy suburbanites.

It is a hearth-warming book, full of human warmth and hope, a gem in modern literature.