Portnoy's Complaint

by Philip Roth

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.

Editions of Portnoy's Complaint

ISBN 9780375507939	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 2002	Price $5.99
ISBN 9780449202913	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 1985	Price $1.38	Good
ISBN 9780671736156	Binding/Format Book	Publisher Simon & Schuster	Date 1991	Price $3.95	Good
ISBN 9780224616522	Binding/Format Book	Publisher Cape	Date 1969	Price $4.00	Good
ISBN 9780394608105	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 1983	Price $21.70	Very Good
ISBN 9780394441986	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 1969	Price $3.94	Used - Good
ISBN 9780679756453	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Vintage Books	Date 1994	Price $2.85	Good
ISBN 9781568493244	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Buccaneer Books	Date 2007	Price None Available
ISBN 9780061986413	Binding/Format Compact Disc	Publisher Harperaudio	Date 2009	Price $24.65	NEW

Media 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."

First Line

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself.

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