The Story Archive

Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth · 1969 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Alexander Portnoy, thirty-three and assistant commissioner of human opportunity for the City of New York, lies on his analyst's couch and talks without stopping about his mother, his appetites, the bathroom door he locked as a boy and the shame that outlasted all of it. The obscenity is the argument, not the decoration. It sold in the hundreds of thousands and turned a serious young writer into a national scandal.

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