It is hypothesized that the condition arises from the mother-child relationship. Roth prefaces the novel with a faux definition of "Portnoy's Complaint", as though it were a medical disorder "in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longing, often of a perverse nature" including exhibitionism, fetishism, auto erotica, and so on, leading to feelings of shame. Which, as any longtime, serious reader of literature should know, does not preclude it also being tremendously entertaining. There's been a lot raunchier and more explicit stuff available since 1969.īut Philip Roth is a serious literary writer and Portnoy's Complaint is serious literature. This couldn't be just because it's about sex. Plus, it's earned a seemingly permanent place in the admittedly low-brow culture with references popping up all over. How many of those early readers and non-readers would be shocked to discover that far from fading from fashion after being replaced on the bestselling lists by scandalous successors, Portnoy's Complaint has lasted more than four decades and counting? In fact, today it's practically considered an American modern classic. Lots of people assumed a compulsion to masturbate was the protagonist's "complaint". Even if you never read Portnoy's Complaint then, you'd heard the novel dealt with masturbation. It was one of the naughtier books-but not the naughtiest-in a long line of books that scandalized some and enticed many in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
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