Word: portnoy
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Portnoy's Complaint, Roth...
...their handling of Philip Roth's celebrated new novel, Portnoy's Complaint, the nation's editors and reviewers faced one of modern journalism's increasingly recurrent challenges to taste and sensibilities. The problem was not how to judge the book (with few exceptions, critics called it a masterly novel of the Jewish genre), but how to convey its sexual content and earthy language without using THOSE WORDS...
...Portnoy's Complaint, Roth...
...about his background, though. "I'm not smart, but then you tell me who is. I shoulda gone to an Ivy League college, then I coulda lied like the rest of them jerks wearing the striped ties." He seems overly proud of his limited tastes in literature. "Portnoy's Complaint! I don't read nothin' that ain't written in English...
...consolation, Roth doesn't ask the reader to identify with Portnoy (although, his experience isn't so ethnic that it lacks any larger application). Rather, Roth sets the reader beside Dr. Spielvogel. "Moral: nothing is never ironic," Portnoy tells us. We are then asked to put his joke into context. We must decide whether to laugh--the immediate response--or whether to be appalled by the self-deprecating clown who performs before us. Spielvogel solves the problem by answering with a single, ambiguous one-liner. Roth--after the 275 page monologue of Portnoy's Complaint-- calls it Spielvogel's "PUNCH...