Word: portnoy
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...Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth...
During his recovery, Roth the character learns from his friends in Israel that there is an imposter giving lectures and interviews around Jerusalem who lets himself be identified in the press as the author of Portnoy's Complaint and The Counterlife. This Philip Roth looks exactly like the original--he wears the same outfit down to the worn-at-the-elbow tweed sports jacket and worn-at-the-heels brown loafers. In a fragile mental state, Roth the character decides to go to Israel to chase the man down, still wary that the imposter is a latent drug-induced hallucination...
...Venice Huber, dancing their youth away -- and, because they are Rudnick people, constantly refreshing it. With its Evelyn Waugh drawl, Social Disease is Rudnick's revenge on the less- than-zilch nightlife novels of the mid-'80s. So I'll Take It (1989) must be his anti-Portnoy. A Jewish boy who loves and enjoys his mother -- call the cops! Paul's mom Selma and her sisters Lillian and Hilda are the models for Hedy Reckler and her bargain-hunter siblings. The novel is "only" about a New England shopping tour, on which Hedy's son Joe hitches a ride...
...Throughout his career, which is now in its 36th year, Roth has reacted with high exasperation to suggestions that his novels document his life or reveal anything about him except his imagination. It hasn't helped his case, of course, that he has filled his best books (among them, Portnoy's Complaint, My Life as a Man and The Ghost Writer) with heroes who, like him, are brainy, funny, Jewish men -- usually writers -- with intense memories of Newark, New Jersey, childhoods. But Roth has argued all along, most elaborately and entertainingly in The Counterlife (1987), what ought...
...have to excuse me now. I've got to rummage through the Square to find tonight's present for my Santee. Although she's Jewish, I won't be giving her chocolate Hannukah coins, or Portnoy's Complaint or gefilte fish. That still leaves me with plenty of options. I hope she likes espresso...