Goodbye Columbus by Phillip Roth

The titular story of “Goodbye Columbus” is by far the best. It’s a peak Roth story in its reckoning; the things we are drawn to in people as means to an end within ourselves are the same things we hate them for: without the later rumination on the fear of losing freedom which becomes arduous in books like “When She Was Good”. If there are stages of life that are the best apparatuses for expressing the soul’s lifelong plights, Roth’s was when he was young, which alters the cadence of his work about aging (ex. Sabbath’s theatre). The death of youth can only be, skillfully, misconstrued.