Word: roth
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...garageman's problems began with the French publication last April of Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth's novel about a guilt-ridden, sex-obsessed young lawyer. Complained the Parisian Portnoy: "My wife read the book and very nearly had a nervous breakdown. I have two daughters at the Sorbonne, and their friends thought it a great joke to say, 'What a father you've got!' " On top of that, he added, "Alexander Portnoy and I are both Jewish." Worst of all, Portnoy's business partner is named Victor Branli, and branler...
Portnoy took his complaint to a Paris civil court in an attempt to bar Gallimard, the publishing house, from selling any more copies until the hero's name is changed. Argued the publisher's lawyer: "There is no risk of confusion. Philip Roth's hero is a New York lawyer. Our adversary is a French garage owner. This hero is not odious or detestable. He is touching." Besides, the attorney added, "How can you expect an American writer to investigate whether somewhere abroad there is a living person with the name of his hero...
Last week Judge André Rouanet de Vigne-Lavit rejected Portnoy's request for a court order to change the name of Roth's hero, but he did suggest that Armand's next step might be to seek damages. Portnoy has not yet decided whether to pursue the action...
...only because of the echoes of his mother's personality, Gould's situation bears at least a superficial resemblance to Philip Roth's fictional character, Alexander Portnoy. The noted psychologist...
...wonder he watched his step. Gould is the product of a frustrated and confused childhood that he has never outgrown. His early life sounds like a black-comedy nightmare by Philip Roth out of Bruce Jay Friedman?an anxious tale of well-meaning error populated by an overbearing mother, an overshadowed father and all the tensions that go with being an only child in a middle-class Jewish household. His trouble began in an apartment in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, a claustrophobic 21 rooms where Elliott shared a bedroom with his parents until he was eleven years...