Source: "Good Girls and Boys Gone Bad," in Philip Roth, Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1981, pp. 9-85.

In the following excerpt, Jones and Nance examine the themes connecting Goodbye, Columbus, "Epstein, " "Conversion of the Jews, " and "Eli, the Fanatic. "

Goodbye, Columbus

Of Roth's major characters, Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus most passively accepts the sway of casual circumstance in his life. In this, Roth's first departure from the short story, the surface plot is the familiar theme of the summer romance. Neil Klugman, the poor Jewish boy from Newark, has a summer affair with Brenda Patimkin, the affluent Jewish girl from suburban Short Hills, who is home on vacation from Radcliffe. Neil spends his vacation from his job at the library in Newark with Brenda and the Patimkin family, but the love affair dissipates after she returns to college.

The sense of temporariness and impermanence that characterizes not only...