{"product_id":"9781931082808","title":"Novels, 1967-1972: When She Was Good \/ Portnoy's Complaint \/ Our Gang \/ The Breast","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this, the second volume of The Library of America’s definitive edition of the collected works of Philip Roth, published by special arrangement with the author, the range and inventiveness of Roth’s fiction is dazzlingly displayed in four extraordinarily diverse works.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhen She Was Good\u003c\/i\u003e (1967) is the trenchant portrait of Lucy Nelson, a young midwestern woman whose perception of her own suffering turns her into a ferocious force, “enemy-ridden and unforgivingly defiant,” as Roth would later describe her. A small-town 1940s America of restrictive social pressures and foreclosed opportunities provides the novel’s background.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe publication of the hilarious \u003ci\u003ePortnoy’s Complaint\u003c\/i\u003e (1969) was a cultural event that turned Roth into a reluctant celebrity. The confession of a bewildered psychoanalytic patient thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality yet held back by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood, \u003ci\u003ePortnoy\u003c\/i\u003e unleashed Roth’s comic virtuosity and opened new avenues for American fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eOur Gang\u003c\/i\u003e (1971), described by Anthony Burgess as a “brilliant satire in the real Swift tradition,” Roth effects a savage takedown of the administration of Richard Nixon (who figures here as Trick E. Dixon). Written before the revelations of the Watergate scandal, \u003ci\u003eOur Gang\u003c\/i\u003e continues to resonate as a broad and outraged response to the clownish hypocrisy and moral theatrics of the American political scene.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Kafkaesque excursion \u003ci\u003eThe Breast\u003c\/i\u003e (1972) introduces David Kepesh in the first volume of a trilogy that continues with \u003ci\u003eThe Professor of Desire\u003c\/i\u003e (1977) and \u003ci\u003eThe Dying Animal\u003c\/i\u003e (2001). \u003ci\u003eThe Breast\u003c\/i\u003e prompted Cynthia Ozick to remark, “One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47044009656560,"sku":"9781931082808","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781931082808_p0.jpg?v=1763638444","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781931082808","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}