Re-reading Goodbye Columbus

 

Recently, I was re-reading some of the stories in Philip Roth’s book Goodbye Columbus in audiobook form while making dinner. I especially enjoyed the stories “Conversion of the Jews”, “Defender of the Faith”, and “Epstein”. They are humorous and irreverent stories about Jewish boys and men who have trouble following the rules.

Then, today, I was reading Zuckerman Bound, the first section, the Ghost Writer. The big theme of the book is what should a Jewish story look like. In that story, Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has had some moderate success publishing those stories I mentioned in the first paragraph. However, Nathan’s father and others in his mostly Jewish section of Newark question whether it might be better to write stories about heroic and virtuous Jews. One member of the community writes a letter expressing his concerns including a few questions:

TEN QUESTIONS FOR NATHAN ZUCKERMAN 

1. If you had been living in Nazi Germany in the thirties, would you have written such a story? 

2. Do you believe Shakespeare’s Shylock and Dickens’s Fagin have been of no use to anti-Semites?

10. Can you honestly say that there is anything in your short story that would not warm the heart of a Julius Streicher or a Joseph Goebbels?