In an original essay, Philip Roth considers the experience of rereading his classic novel “Portnoy’s Complaint,” first published 45 years ago, in 1969. Six other authors, including Lydia Davis, Marilynne Robinson and George Saunders, also reflect on their own earlier works. These essays were written for T in anticipation of an auction in December in which 75 first-edition books annotated by their authors will be sold through Christie’s to benefit PEN American Center.

Philip Roth on ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’
Rereading “Portnoy’s Complaint” 45 years on, I am shocked and pleased: shocked that I could have been so reckless, pleased that I was so reckless. I certainly didn’t understand while at work that henceforth I was never to be free of this psychoanalytic patient I was calling Alexander Portnoy — indeed, that I was on the brink of swapping my identity for his and that, subsequently, in many minds, his persona and all its paraphernalia would be understood to be mine and that my relations with people known and unknown would shift accordingly.

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