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Portnoy's Complaint (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations Series) »

Authors: Harold Bloom (Editor), Gabe Welsch (Editor), Harold Bloom (Translator), Gabriel Welsch (Contribution by), Harold Bloom
ISBN-13: 9780791075821, ISBN-10: 0791075826
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Chelsea House Publishers
Date Published: September 2003
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Harold Bloom

One of our most popular, respected, and controversial literary critics, Yale University professor Harold Bloom s books about, variously, Shakespeare, the Bible, and the classic literature are as erudite as they are accessible.

Book Synopsis

Both an outrageous capstone to America's sexual revolution and an expose of Jewish-American angst, Portnoy's Complaint inspired readers to vitriol and ecstasy upon its publication in 1969. Alexander Portnoy's struggle to balance intellectual well-meaning and a wide-ranging libido against Jewish upbringing in a gentile nation is captured in a series of psychoanalytic sessions with an off-stage Dr. Spielvogel. Lauded for its narrative technique, its insight into psychoanalysis, and the sheer audaciousness of its author, Portnoy's Complaint became an embattled classic, whose stature is still debated today.

	Editor's Note	vii
	Introduction	1
	On Portnoy's Complaint	5
	Philip Roth's Psychoanalysts	11
	In the American Grain (Portnoy's Complaint)	27
	Portnoy's Prayer: Philip Roth and the American Unconscious	43
	Rebellion Against Jewishness: Portnoy's Complaint	61
	Good Girls and Boys Gone Bad	73
	Portnovian Dilemmas	83
	The Jew's Complaint in Recent American Fiction: Beyond Exodus And Still in the Wilderness	101
	Oedipal Politics in Portnoy's Complaint	119
	The Alex Perplex	129
	The Jewish Mother: Comedy and Controversy in American Popular Culture	163
	Reality Shift: Philip Roth	189
	Chronology	207
	Contributors	209
	Bibliography	213
	Acknowledgments	217
	Index	219