Philip Roth’s first book, Goodbye, Columbus, was published 50 years ago this week. I first read it in tenth grade English class at New Canaan High School. Twenty-eight years later the title story remains a favourite, and the doomed love of Neil and Brenda still tugs at my heart:

What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love, and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing—who knows—into winning? I was sure I had loved Brenda, though standing there, I knew I couldn’t any longer. And I knew it would be a long while before I made love to anyone the way I had made love to her. With anyone else, could I summon up such a passion? Whatever spawned my love for her, had that spawned such lust too? If she had only been slightly not Brenda . . . but then would I have loved her? I looked hard at the image of me, at that darkening of the glass, and then my gaze pushed through it, over the cool floor, to a broken wall of books, imperfectly shelved.

Sometimes we need not only thank the author who wrote something that remains so indelibly with us but also those who introduced us to such works. Thanks, Dr Benjamin. Yours was the first class that taught me how to read and therefore how to write.