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. "]

Philip Roth is generally concerned with society and its values—the new society that second generation Jews are emerging into and recreating. Goodbye, Columbus, the novella that lends its title to a collection of stories, suggests the complex and irrational position of the rich, semiassimilated Jew in suburban society. The sporting goods tree, the old refrigerator filled with fruit, the active Jewish club lady who has never heard of Martin Buber, are part of a series of signs and indices telling us exactly what has happened to Jewish life. When an extra place is set at the Patimkin table for Mickey Mantle every time the Yankees win a doubleheader, we have not only a sign of the corruption of Jewish tradition but an indication of where modern Jews look for their messiah. Mr. Patimkin, who has made his money manufacturing sinks, is the last member of a dying tribe. Proud of the hard bump in his nose, representing the last vestige of visible Jewishness, he is equally proud that he has the money to have his daughter Brenda's nose fixed.

The whole story is suffused with a sense of reduction. It is a satiric demonstration of how the house of modern Judaism rests on a base of vulgar and mindless materialism. Ron Patimkin's wedding gives us an entire gallery of the nouveaux riches.

There was Mrs. Patimkin's side of the family: her sister Molly, a tiny buxom hen whose ankles swelled and ringed her shoes, and who would remember Ron's wedding if for no other reason than she'd martyred her feet in three-inch heels, and Molly's husband, the butter and egg man, Harry Grossbart, who had earned his fortune with barley and corn in the days of Prohibition. Now he was active in the Temple and whenever he saw Brenda he swatted her on the can; it was a kind of physical bootlegging that passed, I guess, for familial affection. Then there was Mrs. Patimkin's brother, Marty Kreiger, the Kosher Hot-Dog King, an immense man, as many stomachs as he had chins, and already, at fifty-five, with as many heart attacks as chins and stomachs combined. He had just come back from a health cure in the Catskills, where he said he'd eaten nothing but All-Bran and had won $1500 at gin rummy. When the photographer came by to take pictures, Marty put his hand on his wife's pancake breasts and said, "Hey, how about a picture of this!" His wife, Sylvia, was a frail, spindly woman with bones like a bird's. She had cried throughout the ceremony, and sobbed openly, in fact, when the rabbi had pronounced Ron and Harriet "man and wife in the eyes of God and the state of New Jersey."

The long, sad monologue of Leo Patimkin, whose territory is "from here to everywhere," tells of how his wife made "oral love" with him after seders because she got drunk from the wine. Jewish holidays, rather than representing a heightened sense of reverence for Jewish values, turn into opportunities for licentiousness. Rosh Ha-Shonah is merely a chance for Neil to get off work and go up to Boston to continue his sexual romance with Brenda. When he leaves her and returns to work on the Jewish New Year, a skillful irony has been woven into the story. Neil participates in serious self-searching and undergoes a personal rebirth not because he believes in the religious efficacy of Rosh Ha-Shonah, but simply because the holiday has provided him with an opportunity to see his girl.

It is not just Jewish life that suffers bitter satiric and ironic reduction. New Jersey, just the other side of the Hudson, is seen as " . . . the swampy meadows that spread for miles and miles, watery, blotchy, smelly, like an oversight of God." We get this again in a longer passage, revealing a superb sense of social awareness and poetic perception.

The park, bordered by Washington Street on the west and Broad on the east, was empty and shady and smelled of trees, night, and dog leavings; and there was a faint damp smell too, indicating that the huge rhino of a water cleaner had passed by already, soaking and whisking the downtown streets. Down Washington Street, behind me, was the Newark Museum—I could see it without even looking: two oriental vases in front like spitoons for a rahjah, and next to it the little annex to which we had traveled on special buses as schoolchildren. The annex was a brick building, old and vinecovered, and always reminded me of New Jersey's link with the beginning of the country, with George Washington, who had trained his scrappy army—a little bronze tablet informed us children—in the very park where I now sat. At the far end of the park, beyond the Museum, was the bank building where I had gone to college. It had been converted some years before into an extension of Rutgers University; in fact, in what had once been the bank president's waiting room I had taken a course called Contemporary Moral Issues.

This long lyrical passage, this hymn to Newark, New Jersey that sees not only the modern irony that allows a bank to be so easily converted into a school, but can with a sense of pride look back into time and connect George Washington with whatever modern meaning the place might have—all of this immediately brings to mind the writing of Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby with its intermingling of romantic innocence and materialistic corruption. And all of it associated with the ethos of a particular period and the personality of a nation. In short, Philip Roth treats Jews as people, and people—ancient and modern—are corruptable.

Goodbye, Columbus could easily be thought of as F. Scott Fitzgerald looking for Zelda, thirty years later in Jewish New Jersey. I have even seen it suggested that this story represents the Gatsby-meets-Daisy-in-Louisville incident in The Greaty Gatsby. [James Friend, "Nakedness and Night Again: The Influence of The Great Gatsby on Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus." Unpublished] Roth has not only a heightened sensitivity to the sweep of the past, but can read the future in the matrix of the present.

Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks was in the heart of the Negro section of Newark. Years ago, at the time of the great immigration, it had been the Jewish section, and still one could see the little fish stores, the kosher delicatessens, the Turkish baths, where my grandparents had shopped and bathed at the beginning of the century. Even the smells had lingered: whitefish, corned beef, sour tomatoes—but now, on top of these, was the grander greasier smell of auto wrecking shops, the sour stink of a brewery, the burning odor from a leather factory; and on the streets, instead of Yiddish, one heard the shouts of Negro children playing at Willie Mays with a broom handle and half a rubber ball. The neighborhood had changed: the old Jews like my grandparents had struggled and prospered, and moved further and further west, towards the edge of Newark, then out of it, and up the slope of the Orange Mountains, until they had reached the crest and started down the other side, pouring into Gentile territory as the Scotch-Irish had poured through the Cumberland Gap. Now, in fact, the Negroes were making the same migration, following the steps of the Jews, and those who remained in the Third Ward lived the most squalid of lives and dreamed in their fetid mattresses of the piny smell of Georgia nights.

Roth does what Fitzgerald was never able to do until late in his life—display a sense of sympathy for a social or racial class one rung below, standing just where the narrator might have stood a generation earlier. . . .

Unlike Gatsby, Neil refuses to pay the price. He will not sacrifice his moral integrity for a comfortable position in the Patimkin household, even if it means losing Brenda. Indeed, the final dimensions of the story more readily suggest Nick Carroway's decision to give up the girl who cheats at golf, the slightly immoral sportswoman Jordan Baker, than Gatsby's fatal quest.

Neil is at least half aware of some of the less savory emotions that make up his complex desire for Brenda. At the beginning it clearly partakes of aggressive social climbing, not unmixed with some envy of what he does not have. After making love to Brenda for the first time, it feels just like beating her spoiled younger sister in a game of ping-pong. Twice he tells himself and the reader that he is on the verge of proposing marriage. But each time he substitutes a provocative act for what would have been a very reassuring one. The first time he thinks of marriage, he instead suggests to Brenda that she acquire a diaphragm. The idea completely unnerves her, as it robs the relationship of its romantic spontaneity. In spite of Brenda's reluctance Neil pushes the matter, never giving her the word of assurance she seeks, arguing only his personal pleasure. The second time he considers suggesting marriage occurs at the conclusion of the story when he goes to Boston to visit her. She is upset because her mother has discovered the diaphragm in her drawer. Neil, instead of acting as a source of sympathy, aggressively and accusingly attacks her for, what is at worst, an unconscious slip. When Brenda indicates she will spend her Thanksgiving vacation with her parents rather than with him, Neil leaves her. Had Neil been a little more comforting and loving to a girl who had just registered them in a Boston hotel as man and wife, perhaps her choice would have been different.

Neil knows of the frightened insecurity beneath the beautiful, proud, self-assured facade. He has seen her angry rivalry with her mother, and made love to her in the attic at her command when she could not find the hundred dollar bills her father had hidden for her inside the old sofa. If sex partakes of an aggressive acquisitiveness for Neil, Brenda uses it to console herself for what she imagines to be an unsuccessful struggle with her mother. The discovery of the diaphragm not only hurts her mother, but forces her to pay attention to Brenda and open her arms wide to her. It is not only a struggle with the mother, but for the mother.

A careful reading of this story suggests that neither Neil nor Brenda is in love with the other. Each practices a halfunconscious act of self-deception so that each can more freely enjoy both the psychological and sensual gratifications that their sexual relationship provides.

There is something of love there, too; or at least a good potentiality for it. But any final judgment about how well it might have worked, changing this or postulating that, is impossible. The reason: Neil is an unreliable narrator, and he not only does not give us enough real information, but his own judgment is too clouded by his involvement with the entire Patimkin family. Neil is too worried about himself become a kitchen sink man under Mr. Patimkin's tutelage, or the horse that wins the race under Brenda's. This selfconcern prevents him from ever exploring the depths of Brenda's soul, and leaves the impression with the reader that she has none. With his rich imagination, Salinger-like sensitivity, and intelligent tone, Neil is certainly a sympathetic center of reflection; but his judgment is flawed by an intense reaction to the pleasures and dangers of the only real antagonist of the story—the vulgar materialism of middle class Jewish life.

This is not to say the story is irreparably flawed. The antagonist, modern Jewish suburban life, is real and accurately described. Neil's rejection of Brenda is meant to represent a rejection and condemnation of this way of life. Since this is the obvious and successful purpose of the writer, it might be too much of a scruple to suggest that Brenda, with Neil's help and love, could become something else. Indeed, it would have turned the story into a sentimental romance and shoved the social criticism to the rear, burying it under the triumphant emotion of emerging love.

Whatever the faults, Goodbye, Columbus is a rich and deeply moving story, provocative in many directions. It marks the successful working of a significant theme: the rejection of Jewish life, not because it is too Jewish, but because it is not Jewish enough, because it is so dominated by and infused with the American ethos that it partakes of the same corruption, offering no significant alternative. . . .

The characters created by Philip Roth are men in the middle, lacking a sure sense of values. They are continually concerned with complex alternatives. Placed in problematic situations, they are forced to think their position through and come out with a new formulation. Two value systems clash and a sympathetic character makes a significant choice.

"Defender of the Faith" is a clear demonstration of this technique. Sgt. Marx, a war hero returned to the states to conduct basic training, has no special sense of his Jewish identity. But when a young soldier in his company begins to manipulate his sympathies on the basis of their common Jewish background, this sense is tugged and wakened. The effect of Sheldon Grossbart and his shrewd maneuvers is exactly opposite to what he intends. Repelled by the young boy who seeks special favors, Marx is even more disgusted by his commanding officer who manifests a crude streak of casual prejudice: "Marx, I'd fight side by side wth a nigger if the fellow proved to me he was a man." When this officer falsely quotes Marx to the brass hats in Washington as saying that certain Jews tend to be pushy, Marx finds himself pushed against his will into Grossbart's corner. Trapped between two antipathies, two grotesque distortions of attitudes toward Jewishness, Marx is forced to redefine his identity.

Ironically, Marx's sense of Jewishness is so completely aroused that he becomes hostile to the obnoxious and selfish Grossbart when the screw of manipulation is turned one notch too tight. On discovering that Grossbart has succeeded in having his orders changed so that he will be sent to Ft. Monmouth instead of the Pacific, Marx uses all his influence to change them back again. This action partakes of the vindictive, as Marx hmiself admits. But he has done it, he tells the angry and hurt Grossbart, "for all of us." Sgt. Marx has taken an action that appears callous and even "anti-Semitic," unless understood as arising out of an honest conflict that profoundly wrestles with the problem of how best to serve Jewish interests. The solution is one that sacrifices the interests of one not very likeable member of the tribe to an abstract principle of absolute justice. The concerns of Judaism are consequently translated from simply self-preservation, to a prophetic vision of universal justice. Sgt. Marx's small action recapitulates the most significant transformation of social thought during the biblical period.

All this makes the story sound more rhetorical than it truly is. There is yet one element to be mentioned that permits multiple interpretations of the total plot. The reader is allowed to see the psychological workings of the central character's mind, and is therefore able to second guess some of his avowed motives for acting. The reader is even prompted in this direction by Marx's admission of vindictiveness. Whether or not the action that sends a boy off to combat and possible death is based on lofty principle is left for us to determine. At the end of the story the reader and critic is the man in the middle.

"Eli the Fanatic" is an even more interesting variation of this approach to plot. Here the central character has a history of nervous breakdowns; hence the significance of anything he does can be easily disqualified on psychological grounds. Eli Peck, chosen to be spokesman for the Jewish community because of his legal background, has the unpleasant assignment of asking a group of refugees to move. They have established a Yeshivah and are violating zoning laws that make no allowance for a school in the area. But the legal concerns are merely a ruse and rationalization. The Jewish community, located in a suburb of New York City, is worried what their Christian neighbors will think when they see these Orthodox Jews with their black clothes, beards, and peos.

By making both the rabbis and their homeless charges former inmates of German concentration camps, Philip Roth has set up sign posts for sympathy so that no one could possibly be pulling for the wrong side. The demarcation between good and evil is absolutely clear. Not only does Eli have to contend with the anxiety of representing a bad cause, but his wife is about to give birth for the first time. If this weren't enough, Eli learns that one of the rabbis was castrated by the Nazis. All of these vectors of anxiety impinge upon Eli, forcing this man in the middle to seek a compromise that will permit the Yeshivah to remain, and simultaneously to put to rest the fears of his Jewish neighbors. He convinces the castrated rabbi to take off his black gabardine and dress in a green tweed suit of Eli's. But then the extraordinary and unexpected happens. Eli dons the clothes he has persuaded the rabbi to give up, and walks through the center of town to pay his first visit to his new born son.

The large question of Eli's mental stability causes the validity and courage of the the act to come into question. It can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways. It is either a manifestation of an intense neurosis that drives a man to parade his deviation from expected norms, or an act of immense courage that overcomes the pressures toward conformity in order to demonstrate one's true identity. Is Eli a saint or a nut? A prophet or a fool? The story is carefully structured so that you can almost read it either way.

Almost, but not quite. The signs are subtle, but they suggest an answer. It is the sharp and biting depiction of Eli's wife that points the way. Herself in therapy, she is constantly trying to "understand" Eli when he is upset. Playing the therapist with him, she always assumes in a condescending way that whatever Eli is excited about is only a cover for deeper and more chronic turmoil. This becomes an ongoing ad hominem attack that is never willing to face the rightness or wrongness of his opinions. Acts and attitudes are reduced to a psychological necessity, and as such are dismissed. This is a perfect caricature of the psychologically oriented literary critic whose interpretation of this story would end after pointing up the evidence for viewing Eli as a guilt-ridden compulsive. The ridicule Roth heaps on Eli's wife indicates what he thinks of her, and he accomplishes it by just letting her talk. In one instance she claims to be having a kind of Oedipal relationship with her unborn child. A pretty good example of a priori reasoning.

Eli is to be taken very seriously, because within him two competing cultures are struggling for dominance. American's homemade moral system of rational pragmatism does battle with a weaker but more ancient and durable adversary, traditional Judaism. Certainly Judaism has its obtuse absurdities, its tale of a divine request for child sacrifice. But is it any more absurd than Main Street, Suburbia, USA, as we get it from Roth:

The Mayor's wife pushed a grocery cart full of dog food from Stop N'Shop to her station wagon. The President of the Lions Club, a napkin around his neck, was jamming pennies into the meter in front of the Bitin-Teeth Restaurant. Ted Heller caught the sun as it glazed off the new Byzantine mosaic entrance to his shoe shop. In pinkened jeans, Mrs. Knudson was leaving Halloway's Hardware, a paint bucket in each hand. Roger's Beauty Shoppe had its doors open—women's heads in silver bullets far as the eye could see. Over by the barbershop the pole spun, and Artie Berg's youngest sat on a red horse, having his hair cut.

And on it goes, documenting the nightmarish quality of the American quotidian.

In the final scene Roth underlines the myth and ritual of modern medicine. Eli stands talking to his baby, telling him how he will always commemorate this day by walking around once a year in a black suit, when the doctors descend upon him to give him a shot. Roth very carefully contrasts the white of the doctors—white shoes, white gowns, white skull caps—with Eli's black. And we see in the last paragraph of the story that these colors are meant to communicate a complicated metaphoric meaning:

And in a moment they tore off his jacket. The cloth gave in one yank. Then a needle slid under his skin. The drug calmed his soul, but did not touch it where the blackness had reached.

What we have here is medical science, metaphoric for all of modern thought, winning a false and superficial victory over ancient Judaism. A false victory because the black, with its associations of things sour, stale, and old, also represents the strange power of an authentic religion that touches an area of the soul inaccessible to tranquilizing drugs.

Can there be any doubt that Philip Roth means to condemn a society that turns zoning laws into subtle instruments of persecution? If Eli is a fanatic, he is a prophet as well. But the society he seeks to instruct with a dramatic act is too corrupt, too insulated, too hard of heart even to try to understand the meaning of Eli's suffering. Eli is trying to redeem the viciousness, masking itself in a sophisticated modern rationalism, of the American Jew. But none of his neighbors are sensitive enough to see, to feel, to understand. Once again modern society is the real villain; and the American Jew, to the extent to which he has steeped himself in America's peculiar mythos, is a visible sign of this villainy.

No wonder, then, that the rabbis rage at the writing of Philip Roth. He has exposed and ridiculed the very system that has nourished American Judaism to an unparalled position of wealth and power. Goodbye, Columbus continually implies what "Eli the Fanatic" boldly states: American Judaism has become the willing servant of an immoral society, corrupted by the very force it should oppose.