Letting Go

• Publisher:   Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged
• Number Of Pages:  
• Publication Date:   2009-09-15
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   1441801111
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9781441801111

Letting Go is Philip Roth’s first full-length novel, published just after Goodbye, Columbus, when he was twenty-nine. Set in 1950s Chicago, New York, and Iowa City, Letting Go presents as brilliant a fictional portrait as we have of a mid-century America defined by social and ethical constraints and by moral compulsions conspicuously different from those of today.
Newly discharged from the Korean War army, reeling from his mother’s recent death, freed from old attachments and hungrily seeking others, Gabe Wallach is drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate student in literature, and to Libby, Paul’s moody, intense wife. Gabe’s desire to be connected to the ordered “world of feeling” that he finds in books is first tested vicariously by the anarchy of the Herzes’ struggles with responsible adulthood and then by his own eager love affairs. Driven by the desire to live seriously and act generously, Gabe meets an impassable test in the person of Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, a formidable woman who, according to critic James Atlas, is masterfully portrayed with “depth and resonance.”
The complex liaison between Gabe and Martha and Gabe’s moral enthusiasm for the trials of others are at the heart of this ambitious first novel. “[Roth] has the finest eye for the details of American life since Sinclair Lewis.” — Stanley Edgar Hyman

I went back and read Goodbye Columbus, then Letting Go on purpose and just loved Letting Go even more the second time around. Roth was showing flashes of his magic with his short stories, but his first novel was masterful. Oh, those poor shiksas ... The second read was better than the first ....

This vast novel of urban Jewish academic life in the mid-1950s (first published in 1961) is a dark, brooding meditation on birth, death, family, and the inescapable angst of life. Our "hero" Gabe Wallach and Paul and Libby Herz, the married couple his life is entwined with, are at first graduate students in literature in Iowa and then young faculty members at the University of Chicago. Gabe reluctantly and bafflingly becomes more and more involved in the depressing and difficult lives of Paul and Libby. In many ways this is an existentialist novel and reflects the basic ideas of existentialism, which was so popular in the 1950s. Gabe, and the others, are constantly faced with choices, some trivial seeming, others momentous, and must confront their freedom and their inability to ground their choices or even understand their choices. Among the momentous choices are Gabe's and Paul's rejection of traditional Jewish religion and life. This is a novel of secular Jewish life and its compromises and difficulties. Gabe's mother has just died, and he is drifting away from his New York dentist father. Paul is Jewish, from Brooklyn, but Libby is a Catholic who converts to Judaism. They met and loved as students at Cornell. Both Paul and Libby are shunned by their families, which leads to tragic consequences. Gabe and his friends are just beginning to explore the leading edges of the Sexual Revolution and are struggling with issues that today seem rather obsolete. Nevertheless these first glimmerings of women's liberation and sexual freedom caused all sorts of turmoil for those in the avant guard. Roth captures the angst, fear, depression, and exhilaration of those exploratory days. In line with the theme of sexual liberation and the existential angst this can cause, the novel is a sensitive examination of the emotional dangers of abortion. The plot of this novel is structured around the motivations and disastrous emotional effects of Paul and Libby's decision to abort Libby's unexpected pregnancy. Thus this novel can be considered to be a warning and alarm about having an abortion without fully realizing how wide and deep can be the consequences. In this way Letting Go is somewhat like John Barth's Sabbatical. Both of these novels, I think, could fairly be called "anti-abortion novels" but not overbearing, not political--they are sympathetically and complexly anti-abortion. Letting Go by Philip Roth is not for those who want a quick and easy, entertaining read. The book is long, slow and at times agonizing. There are seemingly endless pages of dialogue, dialogue that circles and circles and does not seem to get anywhere. It reminds me of those French art movies of the 1950s and early 60s where the characters just talk and talk and talk. But Roth is such a fine writer, has such a good ear for dialogue, and is able to marshal so many details that this novel, for me, was gripping, absorbing, and troubling. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s (Jewish, urban, academic) and the reality of this novel is almost frightening, uncanny.

Three-and-a-half stars. As much as I dislike some of what Roth has written, I can't deny that he's one of the greats in American literature. "Letting Go" reads as you might expect Roth's first novel to read--that is, it's ambitious, outrageous, and (most of the time) brutally honest. Themes that Roth would go on to expand upon later (Jewish identity, the problems of sex and love and marriage, the desire to find meaning in great works of literature) are evident here in spades. But it also reads like a *first* novel--meaning, Roth was still finding his footing and not without a few fumbles. The book is ambitious, no question--too ambitious, I think. It's as though Roth is trying to consolidate the entire human condition into one novel, which though admirable, is impossible to do. He's grappling with mature themes and questions, but the result is one of dilution. He paints his characters and issues in broad strokes; no particular theme or question gets its full due, despite the book's staggering length. Roth clearly learned his lesson with "Letting Go"--his subsequent novels were much more pointed and concise. Other drawbacks: the male characters, as is typical of most Roth novels, are drawn far more convincingly than the females, who are too often portrayed as screeching, manic-depressive nags; Roth wanders too often from his narrative course (which accounts for the 630 pages)--for example, the shocking event that transpires in Part 5 is a blatant plot device that screams of insecurity on Roth's part and does nothing to shed light on his characters; and the overall dreariness of the characters and their nihilistic views of life often inspires, not empathy, but eye-rolling. The strongest aspects of "Letting Go" are the strongest aspects of Roth as a writer: some of the sharpest dialogue out there; some beautifully rendered details and scenes; a genuine seriousness that pervades the work; and a fine portrayal of early-mid-life disenchantment. Most impressive is Roth's ability to show a 1950s America that is about to undergo a radical moral and social change. For a number of reasons, this book reminds me of "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike; but despite its flaws, I like "Letting Go" a lot more. This book should have been 200 pages shorter, but that's beside the point. What Roth has done for American literature in the 40 years since "Letting Go" was published more than makes up for his early fumbles and shortcomings--and, in fact, renders them rather fascinating.

Your favorite book isn't necessarily the greatest book you've ever read: it's just the one that speaks most directly and resonately for you. This is my all-time favotite, and I've read all of Roth. I love the characters, the structure, even the typeface and lay-out design. I first read this book in its old orange mass-market paperback edition way back in the late 80s, in celebration of my leaving graduate school in order to go write my first novel--a novel, I'll go ahead and admit, influenced sharply by "Goodbye, Columbus," which I had also recently read and adored--and for the next couple of years, as I toiled away at that novel, I kept picking up my beat-up copy of "Letting Go" and reading it at random, the way people used to read the Bible: I'd stroke the binding, smell the paper, re-read the notes I scribbled in the inside of the jacket. Later, when I was too poor to do so, I shelled out $65 for a mint-condition first edition of the Random House hardcover edition, complete with a flawless book jacket. After my kids and my wife, that's what I'm grabbing when my house catches on fire. I revere Roth as much as I want to argue with him--he's not the greatest confrontational writer of our time for nothing--and yet this one I remove from that great corpus and insert directly into the fabric of my own life.

Don't listen to the negative reviews. I read this book 3 times, the first at age 16. I am now 53. It is my favorite of Roth's work. The fact that he wrote it at age 29 makes it even more remarkable. Make up your own mind.

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