Brenda-less future A Voice intones:

Brenda-less future A Voice intones: “Life calls us, and anxiously if not nervously we walk out into the world and away from the pleasures of these ivied walls. But not from its memories . . . .” “We shall choose husbands and wives, we shall choose jobs and homes, we shall sire children and grandchildren, but we will not forget you, Ohio State . . . .” The record ends with a litany of goodbyes: “goodbye, Columbus . . . goodbye, Columbus . . . goodbye . . .”Because Philip Roth has, over the years, been a strongly autobiographical writer, I cannot but think that there was a Brenda in a summer of his youth. And though, in the novella’s last paragraphs, Neil gazes through the window of a darkened library, closed for the night, looking at a wall of books, it is not the dull life of a librarian that the young man is seeing in his Brenda-less future