Novel
Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth · 1969
Synopsis
Alexander Portnoy, thirty-three, Assistant Commissioner for Human Opportunity of the City of New York, talks without stopping to his psychoanalyst, Doctor Spielvogel. He tells of his Jewish childhood in Newark, a mother who threatens him with a bread knife when he refuses to eat, a constipated father who sells life insurance in black neighbourhoods, his affair with a model he nicknames the Monkey, and his shame, his desire, his guilt. The monologue makes up the whole book.
Context
The book, extracts from which had appeared in a journal as early as 1967, made its author a celebrity overnight. Its form is that of a session, a continuous monologue addressed to an analyst. Gershom Scholem saw in it the book of which antisemites dreamed; Australia banned it in 1969, before removing it from its list two years later. Its author spent the rest of his life answering readers who confused him with his character. Ernest Lehman made a film of it in 1972.
Who it is for
A novel in a single block, in crude and comic language. Everything comes through the patient's voice. Translated by Henri Robillot, translation revised in 2017 under the title La Plainte de Portnoy.
Prizes and reception
Number one on the bestseller lists in the United States for fourteen weeks in 1969, and the book that defines its author in the eyes of the public.
Sources for this page 14
The pages consulted to check this page.