Source: "Tough-minded Mr. Roth," in Contemporaries, Little, Brown and Company, 1962, pp. 258-62.

In the following favorable review of Goodbye, Columbus, which was originally published in Reporter on May 28, 1959, Kazin commends Roth's innovative presentation of the Jew as an individual, particularly in the title novella .

Several weeks ago I was awakened, while reading the New Yorker, by Philip Roth's "Defender of the Faith," a story with such extraordinary guts to it that I went around for days exhilarated by the change in the literary weather. Mr. Roth's story described the agonizing moment of decision in the life of Sergeant Nathan Marx, a combat veteran sent back to the States in 1945 to train troops. Sergeant Marx found himself being cajoled into obtaining special favors for three Jewish recruits until, lied to once too often, he punished the ringleader with deliberate harshness. The story ended with a picture of troops preparing...