A Reconsideration of Philip Roth and the Jews

While Norman Podhoretz is known today primarily for his political writings, he was also a literary critic of exceptional discernment. Podhoretz, in 1957, was responsible for the appearance of Philip Roth’s first piece of published fiction. Commentary would later publish Roth again, as well as an enthusiastic review of Goodbye, Columbus by Saul Bellow. Yet Podhoretz and Commentary eventually went in one direction, and Roth in another. In 1998, Podhoretz wrote an analysis of the novelist’s oeuvre and development. The piece is worth reading for this tidbit alone, about the initial encounter between these two soon-to-be giants of American Jewish letters: