Letting Go by Philip Roth

First published: 1962

Type of plot: Satiric realism

Time of work: The 1950’s

Locale: Chicago, New York, Iowa, and Pennsylvania

Principal Characters:

• Gabriel (Gabe) Wallach, a young literature professor at the University of Chicago
• Paul Herz, Gabe’s friend and colleague at the University of Chicago
• Martha Reganhart, Gabe’s mistress, a divorcée and the mother of two children
• Libby Herz, Paul’s wife

The Novel

Letting Go is a book about literature, filled with literary references. The characters in the novel partially define themselves by the books that they have read. The novel focuses on the young academic crowd of the decade of the 1950’s—particularly on three characters: Gabe Wallach, a young instructor in the humanities, and his friends Paul and Libby Herz.

Apparently, Philip Roth intended Gabe to be a Jamesian hero: the man with an independent income, living a good life, with a career that he cares about, but always wrestling with a vague guilt. The story of Gabe’s tribulations with his family and friends is complex and compassionate, but the telling often is bogged down in excessive detail. Roth displays here, as he would again and again throughout his career, his infallible ear for American and Jewish-American dialogue. Too much of a good thing, however, can weigh down the best-conceived story.

Much of the story is told in flashbacks, as the reader learns how the characters reached the points where the narrative picks them up. The lives of these characters have not been easy. The Herzes, particularly, have been disaster-prone. A mixed marriage (Paul is Jewish, Libby, Catholic) has built-in stresses, but these are part of a larger pattern: The Herzes struggle endlessly with every aspect of their lives. Although Libby is Catholic, when she becomes pregnant she has to have an abortion because of their economic situation and her own precarious health. Roth treats this episode at great length and with a Dreiserian relentlessness that would surprise readers who know him only by his later fiction.

Indeed, Roth has a remarkable gift for representing the nightmarish disasters that befall those who leave themselves defenseless by living with what he considers complete sincerity. The book is often powerful, as well as brilliantly perceptive. At the end, however, the reader is not certain whether Roth likes his characters—or even if he likes humanity very much. Although the reader follows Gabe and his friends from Iowa, where they were graduate students, to Chicago and New York, and learns about all the sordid details of their lives, they remain somewhat unconvincing as human beings.

The Characters

Gabe Wallach is meant to be a complex and thoughtful character, but actually he is overshadowed by the other characters in the book. When the reader first encounters him, he is brooding over the death of his mother and involved in a moral and psychological struggle with his father. He later has an affair with Martha Reganhart, a young divorcée who loses custody of her two small children because of her relations with him. Later, when one of the children accidentally kills the other while they are away with their father, Martha breaks off the affair. Gabe feels heartbroken, guilty, and wounded. Meanwhile he has been involved with his friends Paul and Libby Herz. He is drawn to the thin, neurotic Libby, although Paul is his best friend. Finally, after he has helped Paul and Libby adopt a baby, he embarks for Europe, to mend his emotional wounds and continue his search for his identity.

Paul Herz, however, passes through even greater tribulations. Married to the intense, hysterical Libby, who is always suffering from physical and emotional problems, Paul wants to accomplish something great but never seems to be able to make any progress. The Herzes suffer from both poverty and a kind of will to doom; their marriage often seems grim and cannibalistic, despite the few moments of real affection that creep into the narrative. After her abortion, Libby develops kidney trouble which makes it dangerous for her to have a child. Eventually, Paul lands a good job in Chicago, but he immediately antagonizes the chairman of the department. When they decide to adopt a baby, the waiting lists are too long, and Libby cracks up in front of the social worker who is sent by the adoption agency to interview her. Libby’s efforts at psychoanalysis with a Dr. Lumin in Chicago are not fruitful, and she continues to dwell on thoughts of suicide.

Martha Reganhart is a much more dynamic, sensible person than the others. She is a full-blown woman, with two children and a pragmatic view of life. When she encounters troubles, she fights back rather than moaning and wailing about her fate. One feels that she is the only character in the book of whom Roth really approves.

Many of the minor characters in the book, such as Paul’s two uncles, Asher and Jerry, and his cousin Claire, emerge as vivid personalities with their own foibles and peculiarities. They vanish from the story all too abruptly, however, never to be heard from again, and the reader wonders why so much space was lavished on them. Indeed, when reading about yet one more aspect of Paul or Libby’s misery, the reader wishes that Uncle Asher would make a reappearance and lighten the narrative for a while.

Critical Context

Letting Go, Roth’s first novel, was one of the most eagerly anticipated novels of the last several decades. Roth had demonstrated such brilliance at such a young age with his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a collection of five short stories and the title novella, that it was believed that there was almost no limit to what he could achieve. That first book received the National Book Award, but when this vast, six-hundred-page novel appeared, the critical reaction was mixed. Many readers were disappointed by its diffuseness and by the long, dull stretches that separate the brilliant passages. Line by line, the writing was admired, but it was thought that much of the narrative simply was superfluous; the novel’s parts were considered more successful than the whole. Yet, as one reviewer noted, it was one of the more ambitious novels published in 1962, and certainly one of the most memorable. In this first novel, Roth was trying to achieve very specific literary goals. The book is structured around a mixture of irony and affirmation such as is found in the books of Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Bernard Malamud. Roth may not have been entirely successful in sustaining that mixture, but the effort pointed his work in a profitable direction. This novel is much looser and freer in construction than are the stories in Goodbye, Columbus; the writing of it was a liberating experience for Roth. From this, he went on to write When She Was Good (1967), in which he focused on characters other than the Jewish Americans about which he usually wrote, and then, his most famous book, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). Thus, although Gabe Wallach’s philosophical and spiritual quest bogs down in Freudian ponderings, Letting Go was an important step in the development of Roth’s career. Gabe wallows in his past, unable to come to terms with it. He seems to be a whining and ineffectual hero, afflicted by encroaching despair and an inability to move forward. By contrast, Portnoy, Roth’s most celebrated protagonist, seizes his existence and wrenches meaning from it. When he looks at his past, he comes to grips with it. Roth learned a great deal from Letting Go, and his later books are the richer for it. After one more experiment with realism (When She Was Good), Roth focused increasingly on satire, which is where his genius lies. Although he still portrayed the angst of the human condition, he never again made the mistake of allowing his characters to tell one another for page after page how much they were suffering.

Bibliography

Cooper, Alan. Philip Roth and the Jews. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Cooper explores the spectrum of Roth’s writing, including his early works, the “post-Portnoy seventies,” and the Zuckerman novels. An excellent overall critical view.

Gentry, Marshall B. “Ventriloquists’ Conversations: The Struggle for Gender Dialogue in E. L. Doctorow and Philip Roth.” Contemporary Literature 34 (Fall, 1993): 512-537. Gentry contends that both Doctorow and Roth are different from other Jewish authors because of their incorporation of feminist thought into traditionally patriarchal Jewish literature. He notes that their reconciliation of feminism and Judaism could alienate them from both groups, but he commends their attempt.

Greenberg, Robert M. “Transgression in the Fiction of Philip Roth.” Twentieth Century Literature 43 (Winter, 1997): 487-506. Greenberg argues that the theme of transgression pervades Roth’s novels and allows the author to penetrate places where he feels socially and psychologically excluded. An intriguing assessment of Roth’s work.

Halio, Jay L. Philip Roth Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1992. Halio offers a brief biographical sketch of Roth as well as in-depth discussions of his works. Includes a chapter entitled “Letting Go: Varieties of Deadly Farce.” Also includes helpful notes and a selected bibliography for further reading.

Halkin, Hillel. “How to Read Philip Roth.” Commentary 97 (February, 1994): 43-48. Offering critical analyses of several of Roth’s books, Halkin explores Roth’s personal view of Jewishness, as well as other biographical elements in his works.

Podhoretz, Norman. “The Adventure of Philip Roth.” Commentary 106 (October, 1998): 25-36. Podhoretz discusses the Jewish motifs in Roth’s writing and compares Roth’s work with that of other Jewish authors, including Saul Bellow and Herman Wouk. He also voices his disappointment concerning Roth’s preoccupation with growing old as expressed in his later novels.

Rodgers, Bernard F., Jr. Philip Roth. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Rodgers provides a critical and interpretive study of Roth, with a close reading of his major works, a solid bibliography, and complete notes and references.