Synopsis
Philip Roth's 1969 novel--brilliant, bawdy, shocking, and hilarious--tapped into the so-called "sexual revolution" of the late 1960s in its eagerness to break taboos. Its confessional frankness and irreverent take on family life changed American literature forever. Structured in the form of a long session with his psychoanalyst, the book explores lawyer Alexander Portnoy's failures as a man and a lover. Portnoy's troubles can be traced to the repressive, hypocritical, and anti-Semitic culture in which he was raised--and more specifically, in his mind, to his comically overbearing Jewish mother. The book was not only a best-seller; it has been called one of the best American novels ever. Echoing the tradition of the great Jewish standup comics like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT went on to influence such famously neurotic American pop culture icons as Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1969-01-01 |
Industry Reviews
"[Roth] is not an easygoing 'humorist' but a writer whose view of life is harsh, whose intellectual temper is fanatical, who likes his material to get defiant and wild, who works narratives out to a point which in its hysterical sharpness is not unlike a real suffering Jewish mama's....Portnoy in heat is particularly funny. Even when he graduates from the nearest receptacle to other bodies, sex remains his favorite form of protest. In the wildest throes, his bitterness is more in evidence than his passion, and his life remains, as always, furiously mental."
New York Review of Books - Alfred Kazin (02/27/1969)
"[W]ith PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, Philip Roth has finally come up with the existentially quintessential form for any American-Jewish tale bearing--or baring--guilt. He has done so by simply but brilliantly casting his American Jewish hero--so obviously long in need of therapy--upon a psychoanalyst's couch...and allowed him to rant and rave and rend himself there. The result is not only one of those bullseye hits in the ever-darkening field of humor, a novel that is playfully and painfully moving, but also a work that is certainly catholic in appeal, potentially monumental in effect--and, perhaps more important, a deliciously funny book, absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious...[A] brilliantly vivid reading experience."
New York Times Book Review - Josh Greenfeld (02/23/1969)
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