“Psychoanalysis and Laxatives”: Philip Roth’s Composition of Portnoy’s Complaint

Lecture by Dr Andrew Dean (UCL). Portnoy’s Complaint is among Philip Roth’s most notorious novels – its representation of the erotomania of a young Alexander Portnoy, ‘the most unforgettable character,’ has delighted and appalled readers since. But how did this burst of creativity come about? The lecture will use Philip Roth’s papers at the Library of Congress, as well as his personal library in Newark, New Jersey, to show how Roth developed the distinctive voice of Portnoy’s Complaint. I will suggest that coming out of these materials, in particular a previously unseen alternative ending for the novel, we can see the book as far more engaged with concepts of Jewish masculinity – matters of unmanning in the Diaspora – than has previously been understood. Understanding Roth’s comic strategy of gender inversion, I argue, deepens the novel’s thinking about desire, masculinity, and ideas of the nation.