American Literature / Unit 16 AML 1525 short lesson, about 20 seconds
*Portnoy's Complaint* and Alexander Portnoy
Captions available
The idea
In the nineteen sixty-nine best-seller, a New York City administrator named Alexander Portnoy tells a silent psychoanalyst off-colour stories of his boyhood. The witness calls it outrageous, and it is the novel most often used to identify Roth on an examination.
In practice
A patient talking, an analyst silent.
Where people slip
The whole book is one side of a session.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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