When Philip Roth published his novel Zuckerman Unbound 45 years ago, The New York Times called it an 'act of contrition.' The literary critic George Stade read it as an autobiographical account of Roth's experiences as the author of Portnoy's Complaint, the virtuosically neurotic tale of a nice Jewish boy trying to either shake or embrace his sex obsession, which made Roth famous when it came out, in 1969. Portnoy is a tremendous novel: I'm on record in this magazine arguing that it's a great American one. Upon its release, though, it got decidedly mixed reactions. Readers, rabbis, and reviewers accused Roth of anti-Semitism, misogyny, sexual excess, deviance, and creative gimmickry. In Commentary, Irving Howe wittily if wrongly claimed that the 'cruelest thing anyone can do with Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.' In Zuckerman Unbound, Roth's recurring stand-in, Nathan Zuckerman, seems to regret having written his version of Portnoy's Complaint at all. He accuses himself of...
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