When Newark native Philip Roth was a student at Rutgers University–Newark in 1950 (before transferring to Bucknell University), the Newark Public Library became a second home for him. The novelist even had  his alter ego Neil Klugman, the protagonist of his novella Goodbye, Columbus, working at the library after graduating from Rutgers–Newark. Roth recently donated his collection of roughly 4,000 volumes to the library. “He was a product of this city, and he contributed all the powers of his imagination to this city in book after book,” says novelist Benjamin Taylor. “What more fitting gesture than … the record of his formation as  a writer should find its ultimate home here.”