Portnoy’s Complaint.

ROTH, Philip [Richard Benjamin].

$1,500.00

Item Number: 141291

New York: Random House, 1969.

Signed limited first edition of Roth’s breakthrough novel. Octavo, original cloth, slipcase. One of 600 numbered examples signed by Philip Roth and additionally by actor Richard Benjamin, who starred in the 1972 adaptation. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. The slipcase is in fine condition. An exceptional example.

Along with Saul Bellow's Herzog, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint defined Jewish American literature in the 1960s. Roth's masterpiece takes place on the couch of a psychoanalyst, an appropriate jumping-off place for an insanely comical novel about the Jewish American experience. Roth has written several great books--Goodbye, Columbus and When She Was Good among them, but it is perhaps Portnoy's Complaint for which he is best known. "Philip Roth has the fineset eye for the details of American life since Sinclair Lewis" (Stanley Edgar Hyman). Named by Modern Library as one 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. It was the basis for the 1972 film starring Richard Benjamin and Lee Grant.