The heart is half a prophet," reads the Yiddish proverb which opens the collection—and the stories catch some of the foibles Roth observed growing up in the Jewish community. But Roth also touches on sexual repression, a theme he'd revisit to much success later in his career. The title story — "Goodbye, Columbus" —is a 140-page novella about the quirky romance between a socially-climbing college girl and her middle-class boyfriend. The last bittersweet joke is that the relationship ends when the parents discover her diaphragm, and she's afraid to keep seeing him. "I took a train that got me into Newark," the narrator reports sadly, "just as the sun was rising on the first day of the Jewish New Year. I was back in plenty of time for work.