VARIETY
THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS
For a writer in his late twen–
ties, writing almost exclusively
about Jewish subjects, Philip
Roth has had an unusual suc–
cess. Amid general acclaim, he
has won a Houghton Mifflin
Literary Fellowship, the 1958
Aga Khan Prize for Fiction,
and, most recently, the National
Book Award, which designates
Goodbye, Columbus
as the best
American f i c t ion published
during 1959.
One could discredit much of
this applause-the Aga Khan,
for example, on the grounds
that J ewishness is the latest
t h i n g in Harvard literary
circles. Yet the quality of Mr.
Roth's writing has been attested
to by two expert Jewish critics
-Irving Howe and Alfred
Kazin, and by our most highly–
praised Jewish novelist, Saul
Bellow.
1
Each of these knowl–
edgeable men verifies Roth's
portrait of the Jewish upper–
middle class and sets forth
qualified but positive claims for
his merits as a novelist. I think
1.
In
The New Republic,
June 15,
1959; The Reporter,
May 28,
1959; and
Commentary,
May,
1959, respectively.
they are mistaken on both
counts, and that their mistake
is grounded in a basic ignor–
ance of the people Roth writes
about.
All three of Mr. Roth's dis–
tinguished supporters correctly
identify the major force behind
his novel as an indictment of
the Jewish upper-middle class
-that large body of Jews who
have made it to the top as
merchants and professional
men. Mr. Howe puts the
matter nicely:
The best parts of
Goodlrye,
Columbus,
done with a dead–
pan malicious accuracy, are
those in which Mr. Roth
sketches the manners and
morals of the Patimkins....
Mr. Roth skillfully-I suppose
the word had better be, ruth–
lessly - charts the.
varieti~s.
of
ami a b
I
e vulganty,
arnmste
snobbism and sheer mindless–
ness....
To the uninformed reader all
of this might seem to.
verg~
o?
caricature, but I think It IS
ferociously exact....
If
one is to object to these
stories on non-literary grounds,
out of a concern for the feelings
or reputation of middle class
American Jews, it can be done
only by charging that, in effect,
Mr. Roth
is
a
liar.
And
that, I
am convinced, he is not.
But Mr. Roth
is,
in the
j
