Philip Roth

Goodbye, Columbus ends when Neil visits Brenda in Cambridge both of them avoiding families (and work) during the Jewish holidays for their tryst and b shares w n 2 letters from her parents - their reactions to mother's discovery of b's diaphragm that she had oddly left at home. N correctly surmises that she wanted her ps to know about her sexuality - but it remains a mystery ( Bcz b wont open up in any way to n or to us) as to whether she wanted to break w her family or to break w Neil. The letter from her father is a classic piece of ventriloquism as Roth perfectly mimes his voice and mannerisms right down to odd capitalizations and exuberant grammar - this is the first and only time in the novel that mr p becomes full as a character ( I think some of this material became spoken dialogue in the movie). N leaves Brenda and his footsteps take him to a Harvard library, which of course reminds him of his work - and of the huge gap btw him and b - as wide as the gap btw Cambridge and Newark. He has a path to choose and takes a night train back in time for work - another "goodbye" tho we sense that the mature narrator of this story looking back on his life is not doing so from the ref desk at the Newark pl but from a place much more like Harvard. It is striking how little b shows of intelligence or intellectual curiosity. She's just competitive in everything and of course would do all it takes to get into "the best a schools" as she says several times. A strange and wistful end to this sardonic coming of age novella.

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