Philip Roth
In today's episode, we present James Ley’s hilarious and deeply serious review of The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins. James channels the memorable prose of Philip Roth himself. Mullins’s book chronicles the legal spat that surrounded Penguin's attempt to publish Portnoy's Complaint, Roth's controversial novel that was considered lewd and offensive by Australia's censuring authorities.
... (read more)The Trials of Portnoy: How Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system by Patrick Mullins
Jolley Prize, Fay Zwicky (1933-2017), Miles Franklin Award shortlist, Porter Prize, Conversational Calibre, Memoirs of historians, Philip Roth ...
... (read more)Promiscuous: Portnoy’s Complaint and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness by by Bernard Avishai
‘It wasn’t like that in the book’ is one of the commonest and most irritating responses to film versions of famous novels. Adaptation of literature to film seems to be a topic of enduring interest at every level, from foyer gossip to the most learned exegesis. Sometimes, it must be said, the former is the more entertaining, but this is no place for such frivolity.
... (read more)In The Ghost Writer (1979), the first of the nine Philip Roth novels in which Nathan Zuckerman plays a major role, the young Zuckerman uses a family squabble over an inheritance as the basis for a short story. His father is appalled. Why would Nathan depict his own family in such an unflattering light, perpetuate negative Jewish stereotypes, and give ammunition to anti-Semites? ‘You are not somebody who writes this kind of story and then pretends it’s the truth,’ his father despairs. ‘But I did write it,’ Nathan replies. ‘I am the kind of person who writes this kind of story.’
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