Portnoy's Complaint
by Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) , died of two days ago. 85 years old!(My TJKCB note: didn't know this until got a note of SP... ""First book I read in English was Portnoys Complaint by Phillip Roth.!! I thought I was living in Paradise.!! Great writer.!!""))
One way to know a writer's style is to look at his life, below. No wonder he "was known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity"
 Roth in 1973 | |
| Born | Philip Milton Roth March 19, 1933 Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Died | May 22, 2018 (aged 85) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Education | Bucknell University (BA) University of Chicago (MA) |
| Period | 1959–2010 |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Spouse | Margaret Martinson Williams (m. 1959–1963) Claire Bloom (m. 1990–1995) |
Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist.
Roth's fiction, regularly set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity.[1]
Roth first gained attention with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, for which he received the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.[2][3] He became one of the most awarded American writers of his generation. His books twice received the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel American Pastoral, which featured one of his best-known characters, Nathan Zuckerman, a character in many of Roth's novels. The Human Stain (2000), another Zuckerman novel, was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. In 2001, in Prague, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize.
Personal life and death[edit]
While at Chicago, Roth met the novelist Saul Bellow, as well as Margaret Martinson in 1956, who became his first wife in 1959. Their separation in 1963, along with Martinson's death in a car crash in 1968, left a lasting mark on Roth's literary output. Martinson was the inspiration for female characters in several of Roth's novels, including Lucy Nelson in When She Was Good and Maureen Tarnopol in My Life as a Man.[24] A post-operative breakdown mentioned in the pseudo-confessional novel Operation Shylock (1993) and others[25][26][27] drew on Roth's experience of the temporary side effects of the sedative Halcion (triazolam), prescribed post-operatively in the 1980s.[28][29]
Roth was an atheist who once said, "When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place."[30][31] He also said during an interview to The Guardian: "I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie", and "It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion—I don't even want to talk about it. It's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me."[32]
In 1990, Roth married his longtime companion, English actress Claire Bloom. In 1994 they separated, and in 1996 Bloom published a memoir, Leaving a Doll's House, that described the couple's marriage in detail, much of which was unflattering to Roth. Certain aspects of I Married a Communist have been regarded by critics as veiled rebuttals to the accusations in Bloom's memoir.
Roth died at a Manhattan hospital of congestive heart failure on May 22, 2018, at the age of 85.[33][34][35]
 First edition cover | |
| Author | Philip Roth |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Paul Bacon[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Publication date | January 12, 1969 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 274 |
| ISBN | 978-0394441986 |
| OCLC | 218657 |
| Preceded by | When She Was Good |
| Followed by | Our Gang |
Portnoy's Complaint is a 1969 American novel by Philip Roth. Its success turned Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver.[2] The novel tells the humorous monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor," who confesses to his psychoanalyst in "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language."[3][4] Many of its characteristics (such as comedic prose, themes of sexual desire and sexual frustration, and a self-conscious literariness) went on to become Roth trademarks.[citation needed]
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Portnoy's Complaint 52nd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time included this novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005."[5]
Contents
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Structure and themes[edit]
Structurally, Portnoy's Complaint is a continuous monologue as narrated by its speaker, Alexander Portnoy, to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Spielvogel; Roth later explained that the artistic choice to frame the story as a psychoanalytic session was motivated by "the permissive conventions of the patient-analyst situation," which would "permit me to bring into my fiction the sort of intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language that [...] in another fictional environment would have struck me as pornographic, exhibitionistic, and nothing but obscene."[3][4]
Portnoy is "a lust-ridden, mother addicted young Jewish bachelor",[3] and the narration weaves through time describing scenes from each stage of his life; every recollection in some way touches upon his central dilemma: his inability to enjoy the fruits of his sexual adventures even as his extreme libidinal urges force him to seek release in ever more creative (and, in his mind, degrading and shameful) acts of eroticism;[citation needed] also, much of his dilemma is that "his sense of himself, his past, and his ridiculous destiny is so fixed."[3] Roth is not subtle about defining this as the main theme of his book. On the first page of the novel, one finds this clinical definition of "Portnoy's Complaint", as if taken from a manual on sexual dysfunction:
Portnoy's Complaint: A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature ...
The title also alludes to the common literary form of complaint, such as "A Lover's Complaint", which typically presents the speaker's comments on being a spurned lover.
Other topics touched on in the book include the assimilation experiences of American Jews, their relationship to the Jews of Israel, and the pleasures and perils the narrator sees as inherent in being the son of a Jewish family.
Portnoy's Complaint is also emblematic of the times during which it was published. Most obviously, the book's sexual frankness was both a product of and a reflection on the sexual revolution that was in full swing during the late 1960s. And the book's narrative style, a huge departure from the stately, semi-Jamesian prose of Roth's earlier novels, has often been likened to the stand-up performances of 1960s comedian Lenny Bruce.
The novel is notable for its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver[2] which Portnoy's mother later serves for dinner.[6]
Writing[edit]
Roth had begun work on Portnoy's Complaint in 1967, before publication of his novel When She Was Good that year. The piece had its genesis in a satirical monologue Roth had written to accompany a slide show proposed for inclusion in the risqué revue Oh! Calcutta! that would focus on the sexual organs of the rich and famous.
While the slide show would never come to fruition, Roth found part of the accompanying monologue about masturbation salvageable. Roth re-fashioned the material for the novel and sold a chapter of the book, entitled "Whacking Off", to Partisan Review. Progress on the novel was slow because Roth was suffering from writer's block relating to his ex-wife, Margaret Martinson, and the unpleasant notion that any royalties generated by the novel would have to be split equally with her. In May 1968 Martinson was killed in a car crash in Central Park. Roth's writer's block lifted and following Martinson's funeral he traveled to the Yaddo literary retreat to complete the manuscript.[7]
Responses, reviews and attacks[edit]
The publication of the novel caused a major controversy in American public discourse. The two aspects that evoked such outrage were its explicit and candid treatment about sexuality and obscenities, including detailed depiction of masturbation, which was revolutionary in the late 1960s; and the irreverent portrait of Jewish identity.[4] It sparked an uproar in the Jewish community, even among New York intellectuals such as Irving Howe and Diana Trilling.[4]
Censorship[edit]
In 1969 the book was declared a "prohibited import" in Australia. The Australian publisher, Penguin Books, circumvented the importation ban by having copies printed in Sydney in secret and stored in fleets of moving trucks to avoid seizure under state obscenity laws.[8] A 1967 agreement between the Commonwealth of Australia its states put in place an effort at uniform censorship whereby imported books would be handled by the Commonwealth and the states would prosecute using state laws the publication and distribution of locally published books on the federal banned books list.[9] However, South Australia bucked the system when it came to Portnoy's Complaint, declaring that it would not prosecute sales of the work made to an adult who made a direct enquiry of the vendor, provided the books were kept behind the counter.[10]
Attempts to prosecute Penguin and any bookseller carrying the book were successful in Victoria and Queensland, failed in Western Australia (where "works of recognised artistic, scientific or literary merit" were immune under the local statute, notwithstanding that they may have been obscene) and New South Wales, where prosecutors gave up after two trials resulted in hung juries. The book was removed from the federal banned list for importation in June 1971, the federal government recognising the absurdity that local publications could be sold legally in three states and the Australian Capital Territory. The Portnoy matter was a watershed in Australian censorship law, marking the last occasion on which the censorship of a literary publication came before the courts.[11]
Many libraries in the United States banned the book because of its detailed discussion of masturbation and its explicit language.[4]
Allusions to the title[edit]
The popularity of the novel has caused the title to become a sort of shorthand for any form of sexual malaise or activity. In his autobiography, Dick Cavett wrote that on one occasion when a male guest was unable to appear on his talk show, Cavett jokingly told the studio audience the guest could not attend because he was "suffering from Portnoy's Complaint", a comment which the network censors decided to cut from the broadcast tape. Gore Vidal once quipped to Claire Bloom, Roth's second wife: "You have already had Portnoy's complaint [her previous husband]. Do not involve yourself with Portnoy."
On the 8 September 2010, episode of The Daily Show, as part of an extended segment on the amount of violence in major religious texts, Jon Stewart and John Oliver have a debate wherein Stewart claims the book as the main text of Judaism, in response to Oliver's demand of a disavowal regarding the violence depicted in portions of Hebrew sacred texts.
In her metafictional novel Culture Shock (Duckworth 1988), Valerie Grosvenor Myer wrote of a satirically presented married couple among her characters:
Let us consider my Jean and Jack ... I weighted the scales by presenting them in the rôle of parents ... fictional parents are usually set up as Aunt Sallies to be knocked down ... Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Nickleby, Mrs. Portnoy; Old Capulet, Mr Dorrit, Dr Sloper.
In the Get Smart original TV series, in the fifth-season episode "Do I Hear a Vaults?", aired on 8 May 1970, Maxwell Smart alludes to the book being hidden in a public library.
The Mad Men character Don Draper is briefly shown reading the novel in the season seven episode of the series titled, "The Monolith."
On the TV series Californication, in the episode titled "Coke Dick and the first kick", a female writer for Rolling Stone magazine calls one of Hank Moody's early novels "the retarded man's Portnoy's Complaint".
In the Family Guy episode "Peter, Chris, & Brian", Brian Griffin makes several references to Portnoy's Complaint, clearly not having read the book and assuming it was about a "port noise complaint".
In the Bojack Horseman episode "Ruthie", Princess Carolyn remarks "Who knew Portnoy had so many complaints?" in response to fictional actress Courtney Portnoy.
Film adaptation[edit]
In 1972, the novel was adapted into a film written and directed by Ernest Lehman, and starring Richard Benjamin and Karen Black.
