Source: "In Defense of Philip Roth," in Chicago Review, Vol. 17, Nos. 2 and 3, 1964, pp. 84-96. In the following excerpt, Isaac examines Roth's protagonists in Goodbye, Columbus, "Defender of the Faith, " and "Eli the Fanatic," concluding that his characters "are men in the middle, lacking a sure sense of values. "

On the range of literary criticism, Philip Roth has been targeted by Jews and Gentiles, literary authorities and laymen, as an exploitative, narrow-minded reinforcer of Jewish stereotypes; a writer who is dedicated to portraying, as one Rabbi editorialized several years ago in the New York Times, "a melancholy parade of caricatures." Some have even attacked his works as dangerous, dishonest, and irresponsible. Roth has rebuked these accusations from the time he was made famous in 1959 by Goodb...