Word: portnoy
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...them with something 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...
...many other contemporaries who consistently qualify. Humorists go strictly for laughs, and more power to them. Roth and Elkin take a different direction; they pretend that they would gladly stick to brass tacks and the big issues if only the world were not so loony. The hero of Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Roth's most celebrated novel, cries out to his psychiatrist: "Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and I'm living it in the middle of a Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke - only...
Clearly Richler's hero does not have Alexander Portnoy's complaint. There are troubles enough. When first encountered, Joshua, 47, is recovering from multiple fractures suffered in an accident whose cause remains cloaked until novel's end. There are other details with delayed explanations. Why is this father of three and husband to the beautiful Pauline Hornby wearing lacy panties while talking to the police? Why is Pauline hospitalized with a nervous breakdown? Is Dr. Dr. Mueller (he has two degrees) really an ex-Nazi living on Ibiza...
...that Mazursky did not buy the movie rights to McFadden's book. Instead, they went to Sidney Beckerman, a producer whose credits include the legendary film desecration of Portnoy's Complaint. Next to Serial, Portnoy seems like an earnest failure. Not only is McFadden's cool point of view lost, but so are her satirical targets. Though Serial is set in the present-day San Francisco suburbs, it might as well unfold in '50s Dubuque. Most of the characters are whining, repressed squares who, at heart, disapprove of free sex, drugs, divorce and teenagers. For some...