Word: complaintant
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Smith denied that allegation, saying that since no formal inquiry was made the University could not have expected him to keep them posted, and that Bok made no such complaint in the letter...
Philip Roth once described himself as part Henny Youngman and part Henry James. His severest critics, however, treated him as if he were part Lenny Bruce, part Meyer Lansky. The studious, law-abiding author of Portnoy's Complaint was regarded by some to have distorted his heritage for a few laughs and committed a profitable act of cultural gangsterism. Judging from his published responses, Roth was surprised that he had caused such a fuss. One does not, after all, have to be Alfred North Whitehead to understand that the characters in Portnoy are amusing words on paper...
...what a clever idea for a novel. In Zuckerman Unbound, a sequel to The Ghost Writer, Newark-born Nathan Zuckerman has made a million dollars with Carnovsky, an ethnic and sexual extravaganza that resembles Portnoy's Complaint. Zuckerman's problem is not sex but a reluctance to indulge in the conventional rewards of his money and fame. Says André Schevitz, his agent: "First you lock yourself away in order to stir up your imagination, now you lock yourself away because you've stirred up theirs...
Like the end of Portnoy's Complaint, the conclusion of Zuckerman Unbound suggests a new beginning. Nathan even shows his impatience when he says, "Being a poor misunderstood millionaire is not really a topic that intelligent people can discuss for very long." As a sturdy vehicle for Roth's comic genius, Zuckerman may show up again: Will he travel to Prague and discover Franz Kafka as an aged steam-bath attendant? Will he beget children who grow up to be literary critics? Will he win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and have to return it when everything...
...louder, by force-feeding your own sounds into your ears." Manhattan Computer Executive Michael Starr, 43, suggests that the private concert "is a great way of snubbing the world. Can you imagine if Philip Roth had had one growing up? He'd never have written Portnoy's Complaint. He never would have heard the nagging...