Goodbye, Columbus.

ROTH, Philip [Richard Benjamin.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 146869

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1959.

First edition of the author’s first book and winner of the National Book Award. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed Philip Roth on the title page and additionally by the director of the film Larry Peerce and by actors Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, who starred in the 1969 film. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Sanford Roth. Also laid in are signed notes from Benjamin and MacGraw. A unique example.

"Goodbye Columbus, a Houghton Mifflin Literary Award, is Philip Roth’s first book, and an impressive one. There is blood here and vigor, love and hate, irony and compassion. Mr. Roth has written a perceptive, often witty and frequently moving piece of fiction." The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender that illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora. Saul Bellow wrote upon review of Goodbye, Columbus, "Unlike those of us who come howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair, teeth, speaking coherently. He is skilled, witty, energetic and performs like a virtuoso." It was the basis for the 1969 film starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, directed by Larry Peerce. The screenplay, by Arnold Schulman, won the Writers Guild of America Award.