Portnoy's Complaint book cover

Portnoy's Complaint (1969) is American writer Philip Roth's fourth and, to date, still most popular novel, with many of its characteristics (ribald, comedic prose; themes of sexual desire and sexual frustration; a self-conscious literariness) having gone on to become Roth trademarks. Portnoys Complaint book cover This image is a book cover. ... Portnoys Complaint book cover This image is a book cover. ... 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933) is a Jewish-American novelist who is known for his 1959 collection, Goodbye, Columbus, as well as his sexually-explicit comedic novel Portnoys Complaint (1969) and for his late-90s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997), I Married a... Ribaldry is the third and somewhat neglected genre of sexual entertainments, something different from either pornography or erotica, yet is often confused with them. ... Sexual frustration describes the condition in which a person is in a state of agitation, tension or anxiety due to a quantity of sexual activity and/or sexual satisfaction that is less than the persons sex drive, or where they are sexually aroused but unable to act on the...

Structurally, Portnoy's Complaint is a continuous monologue as narrated by its eponymous speaker, Alexander Portnoy, to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Spielvogel. This narration weaves effortlessly through time and describes scenes from each stage in Portnoy's life, with every recollection in some way touching upon Portnoy's 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. 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 ripped from the pages of a manual on sexual dysfunction: A monologue, which comes from the Greek words mono and logos meaning one word, is a speech by one person directly addressing an audience. ... Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods within the field of psychotherapy that seeks to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. ... In fiction, a narrator is a voice or character who tells the story. ... Eroticism is an aesthetic focused on sexual desire, especially the feelings of anticipation of sexual activity. ...

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...

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 (most prominently, emasculation) inherent in being the son of a Jewish family. Emasculation is the removal of the genitalia of a male, notably the penis and/or the testicles, by surgery, violence, or accident (see castration). ...

Portnoy's Complaint, in addition to its purely literary status as a "comic masterpiece", is also emblematic of the times during which it was published. Most obviously, the book's sexual frankness was both a product of and an inspiration for 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 '60s comedian Lenny Bruce. The sexual revolution was a substantial change in sexual morality and sexual behavior throughout the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ... The 1960s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... Photograph of Henry James Henry James, OM (April 15, 1843 - February 28, 1916), son of Henry James Sr. ... The legendary Richard Pryor hits the money line A stand-up comedian or stand-up comic is someone that performs comedy in an informal way, talking to the audience with the absence of a fourth wall. ... Lenny Bruce being searched by a policeman Lenny Bruce (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), born Leonard Alfred Schneider, was a controversial Jewish-American stand-up comedian and satirist of the 1950s and 1960s. ...

Biographical Underpinnings

Ever since its publication, speculation has abounded as to how much of Portnoy's Complaint is fiction and how much is thinly-veiled autobiography. Roth himself pokes fun at these parlor games in his 1985 novel Zuckerman Unbound, where alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman is continually accosted by clue-less strangers who cannot believe he was exercising the creative faculties of a writer when he wrote the sex scenes in Carnovsky (the alter-novel to Portnoy's Complaint). Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character who has appeared as the narrator or protagonist of (and often functions as an alter ego in) most of Philip Roths dozen or so works of fiction published since the late 1970s. ...

Still, by cross-referencing data from interviews, the autobiography of ex-wife Claire Bloom, Roth's own pseudo-autobiography The Facts, and his more biographically mimetic Zuckerman novels, the following can be established about Portnoy's Complaint with a high degree of certainty: Claire Bloom (born Patricia Claire Blume on February 15, 1931) is a British actress. ...

• The novel began as a dinner-table comedy routine delivered by Roth to New Republic drama critic Robert Brustein and their circle of mutual New York City friends (The Facts)
• Like Portnoy, Roth was heavily influenced as an adolescent by the World War II radio dramas of playwright Norman Corwin. Both teenage Portnoy and teenage Nathan Zuckerman (cf. I Married a Communist) produce politically-didactic radio plays as their first forays into literature, and so it is highly likely Roth began his career with a similar work of juvenalia (I Married A Communist Interview)
• Portnoy's career as a civil rights attorney reflects Roth's own Popular front-inspired civic idealism; when he was visited by lawyers from the Anti-Defamation League to discuss the controversy over a story in Goodbye, Columbus, Roth recollects that: "as a high school senior thinking about studying law, I had sometimes imagined working on their staff, defending the civil and legal rights of Jews" (The Facts)
• The central female character of Portnoy's Complaint, Mary Jane Reed (aka "The Monkey") is a caricature of Roth's first wife, Margaret Martinson. Specifically, the women share the same neurotic need to submerge themselves in Portnoy's/Roth's Jewish identity so as to co-opt some of the same family love that was missing from their own lives (Claire Bloom's Leaving a Doll's House, The Facts).
• Roth and Portnoy share the same birth-year (1933) and birth-place (Newark, New Jersey)
• The various high literary references (intertextuality) made by Alexander Portnoy (to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Yeats) reflect Roth's own tastes, as they recur in novels narrated by different characters, including ones (for example, Mickey Sabbath of Sabbath's Theater) who are not sufficiently educated to realistically be able to toss off such references

Cover from the August 30th, 2004 issue. ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atomic bomb. ... Norman Corwin is an American writer, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing. ... I Married A Communist is a Philip Roth novel concerning the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, known as Iron Rinn. ... Popular Fronts comprise broad coalitions of political and other groups, often made up of oppositioners or left wingers, and often united against particularly stringent circumstances. ... This article is in need of attention. ... Goodbye, Columbus book cover (1999 UK edition) Goodbye, Columbus (1959) is the title of the first book of fiction published by the American novelist Philip Roth. ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Skyline of downtown Newark as seen from the Newark Bay Bridge. ... Intertextuality is a relationship between two or more texts that quote from one another, allude to one another, or otherwise connect. ... Leo Tolstoy, pictured late in life Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (?) (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й; commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910, N.S.; August 28, 1828 – November 7, 1910, O.S.) was a Russian novelist, social reformer, pacifist, Christian anarchist, vegetarian, moral thinker and an influential... Fyodor Dostoevsky. ... W.B. Yeats in Dublin on January 24, 1908. ... Sabbaths Theater (1995, ISBN 0679772596) is a novel by Philip Roth about the exploits of 64-year-old Mickey Sabbath. ...

Trivia

• Gore Vidal, author of Myra Breckinridge (1968), quipped to Roth's second wife, Claire Bloom: "You have already had Portnoy's complaint [her previous husband]. Do not involve yourself with Portnoy."
• In a late 1990s interview, Roth called Freud "this great tragic poet, our Sophocles."

Following in the footsteps of Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint was in 1972 made into a film starring Richard Benjamin and Karen Black. The results were decidedly less successful than the first movie, with Leonard Maltin calling it a "cinematic massacre". Gore Vidal, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, known better simply as Gore Vidal, (born October 3, 1925) is a well-known American writer of novels, plays and essays, and a public figure for over fifty years. ... Myra Breckinridge (1968) is a satirical novel by Gore Vidal written in the form of a diary. ... See also: 1967 in literature, other events of 1968, 1969 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Claire Bloom (born Patricia Claire Blume on February 15, 1931) is a British actress. ... The 1990s refers to the years 1990 to 1999; the last decade of the 20th Century, but in an economical sense The Nineties is often considered to span from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 to the September 11 attacks in 2001. ... A Roman bust of Sophocles. ... Goodbye, Columbus book cover (1999 UK edition) Goodbye, Columbus (1959) is the title of the first book of fiction published by the American novelist Philip Roth. ... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... Richard Benjamin (born May 22, 1938 New York City, New York) American actor and film director. ... Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces Karen Black (born July 1, 1945) is an American actress, screenwriter, singer and songwriter. ... Leonard Maltin (born December 18, 1950 in New York City) is a well-known and influential American film critic. ...

External Resources

• Portnoy's Complaint #52 on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century
• Portnoy's Complaint (Internet Movie Database entry) A 1972 filming of the book.