Word: roth
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, by Philip Roth. Laid out on a psychiatrist's couch, a 33-year-old Jewish bachelor delivers a frenzied and funny monologue on sex and guilt reminiscent of scatological nightclub performances by the late Lenny Bruce...
...this happiness. As America sinks deeper into its illness, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep a step ahead of it. It is necessary to be sicker than Mencken was 40 years ago, sicker then Lenny Bruce was ten years ago, sicker than Philip Roth was last week...
...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...
...Chicago Sun-Times circled warily, citing Roth's "generous use of the saltier nicknames for our reproductive organs and their congress with one another." In the New Republic, Critic Anatole Broyard tried arch humor, calling the book "a sort of Moby Dick of masturbation." Many newspapers and magazines fell back on tradition, using initials and dashes for familiar obscenities. Considering its usual soberness, the New York Times Book Review surprised its readers by permitting its reviewer to repeat verbatim some of Portnoy's sex-obsessed plaints...