Portnoy's Complaint Summary
Philip Roth

Everything you need to understand or teach Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.

Portnoy's Complaint Summary & Study Guide
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30 Portnoy's Complaint Lessons
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Portnoy's Complaint Summary

This well-known novel, once-controversial because of its graphic sexual and religious content, is the story of Alexander Portnoy, a profoundly troubled young Jewish man struggling with several disquieting obsessions. Narrated from a passionate, highly articulate and frantic stream of consciousness point of view, the book explores themes relating to the nature and purpose of sexuality, Jewishness, and freedom.

This narrative of one man's tortured explorations of his past and present is...

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Philip Roth Biographies (5)

Philip (Milton) Roth

8,301 words, approx. 28 pages

In 1974, Philip Roth wrote a satirical novel about baseball which he entitled The Great American Novel. The title refers to the parodies of a number of classic American novels in the book, but it al... Read more

Philip (Milton) Roth

7,675 words, approx. 26 pages

One of the dominant voices of American-Jewish literature during the past two decades, Philip Roth has had an ambivalent, even troubled, response to the Jewishness of his congenial material. He was bor... Read more

Philip (Milton) Roth

21,971 words, approx. 74 pages

[This entry was updated by S. Lillian Kremer (Kansas State University) from her entry in DLB 173: American Novelists Since World War II, Fifth Series, pp. 202-234.]A major writer of twentieth-century ... Read more

Philip Roth

1,227 words, approx. 5 pages

The American author Philip Roth (born 1933) used his Jewish upbringing and his college days for the basis of many of his novels and other works.Roth used his experiences in growing up in the Weequahic... Read more

Philip Roth

12,812 words, approx. 43 pages

Biography EssayIn 1973, Philip Roth wrote a satirical novel about baseball which he entitled The Great American Novel. The title refers to the parodies of a number of classic American novels in the ... Read more