Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

David Rampton (University of Ottawa)
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Although Philip Roth has arguably been America’s most versatile, ambitious and celebrated novelist since he published

Portnoy’s Complaint

in 1969, it will always be the novel most closely associated with his name, and this for multiple reasons. In it, Roth found a voice that resonated with a new generation and large reading public, the voice of Alexander Portnoy, an intelligent, articulate, self-dramatizing, aggrieved young man, a sex-obsessed, self-confessed “Raskolnikov of jerking off” (

Portnoy

, 18), desperate to tell all about the subject of his life and loves. Roth also found his own voice, or rather another voice, one that enabled him to create a ribald, satiric portrait of a certain type of Jewish upbringing and enlarge the comic possibilities of the American novel. That…

2520 words

Citation: Rampton, David. "Portnoy's Complaint". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 September 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2610, accessed 12 October 2024.]

2610 Portnoy's Complaint 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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