波特诺伊的怨诉 (1969)

波特诺伊的怨诉是菲利普·罗斯于1969年创作的一部小说。 这部小说对性的的描写非常直白，作者在小说中详细介绍了如何使用各种道具进行手淫。 1998年，这部小说被列入20世纪百大英文小说，排名第52。时代杂志也将这部小说列入“1923年至2005年时代百部最佳英语小说”榜单中。

Portnoy's Complaint is a 1969 American novel by Philip Roth. Its success turned Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props. The novel tells the humorous monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor", who confesses to his psychoanalyst in "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language."

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Portnoy's Complaint 52nd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time included this novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005."

Structure and themes

Structurally, Portnoy's Complaint is a continuous monologue by narrator Alexander Portnoy to Dr. Spielvogel, his psychoanalyst; Roth later explained that the artistic choice to frame the story as a psychoanalytic session was motivated by "the permissive conventions of the patient-analyst situation," which would "permit me to bring into my fiction the sort of intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language that ... in another fictional environment would have struck me as pornographic, exhibitionistic, and nothing but obscene."

The novel is set primarily in New Jersey from the 1940s to the 1960s. Portnoy is "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor", and the narration weaves through time describing scenes from each stage of his life; every recollection in some way touches upon his central dilemma: his inability to enjoy the fruits of his sexual adventures even as his extreme libidinal urges force him to seek release in ever more creative (and, in his mind, degrading and shameful) acts of eroticism; also, much of his dilemma is that "his sense of himself, his past, and his ridiculous destiny is so fixed." Roth is not subtle about defining this as the main theme of his book. On the first page of the novel, one finds this clinical definition of "Portnoy's Complaint", as if taken from a manual on sexual dysfunction:

Portnoy's Complaint: A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses perpetually are warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature ...

The title also alludes to the common literary form of complaint, such as "A Lover's Complaint", which typically presents the speaker's comments on being a spurned lover. Other topics touched on in the book include the assimilation experiences of American Jews, their relationship to the Jews of Israel, and the pleasures and perils the narrator sees as inherent in being the son of a Jewish family. Portnoy's Complaint is emblematic of the times during which it was published. The book's sexual frankness was a product of and a reflection on the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. The book's narrative style, a departure from the stately, semi-Jamesian prose of Roth's earlier novels, has been likened to the stand-up performances of 1960s comedian Lenny Bruce. The novel is notable for its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver which Portnoy's mother later serves for dinner.