by Jesse Marinoff Reyes ( Jesse Marinoff Reyes Design, Maplewood, N.J. )
Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories
Meridian Fiction, 1960
Design: Paul Rand
Goodbye Columbus, Phlip Roth
Rand’s lyrical, playful cover for the paperback version of Roth’s first bookâmaybe the last time one of Roth’s works would be handled with a light touch over the eventually pervasive “big book” formula applied to successful commercial writers.
Generational colleague Saul Bellow gushed in a back cover (or “back ad” or “verso”) blurb, “Goodbye Columbus is a first book but it is not the book of a beginner. Unlike those of us who came howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair, and teeth, speaking coherently. At twenty-six he is skillful, witty, and energetic and performs like a virtuoso.”
The 1959 (when it was published in hardcover) book would win the National Book Award for 1960.
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