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News Fri Jul 17 2009
1960 NBA Winner: Goodbye, Columbus
The National Book Award blog continues their reminiscences of past winners with the 1960 winner Goodbye, Columbus, by University of Chicago grad student Philip Roth.
Writes Liz Rosenberg, a National Book Awards judge and author of Home Repair: "I am always struck by the perfection of Goodbye, Columbus, however many times I read and teach it. It is the perfect Jewish American novel--perfect in its pacing; plotting; its metaphors (the librarian's 'behind barging against his suit jacket like a hoop'); its fruitful Edens: 'There were greengage plums, black plums, red plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches, long horns of grapes, black, yellow, red, and cherries, cherries flowing out of boxes and staining everything scarlet...and on the top shelf, half of a huge watermelon, a thin sheet of wax paper clinging to its bare red face like a wet lip. Oh Patimkin! Fruit grew in their refrigerators and sporting goods dropped from their trees!' One could die happy after writing a passage like that."
