In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess’s interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess’s list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Graham Foster submits Philip Roth’s notorious novel Portnoy’s Complaint to examination with academic and writer Matthew Shipe.

Portnoy’s Complaint is structured as a monologue to a psychotherapist. Alex Portnoy reveals his inner life and obsessions, including his sexual predilections, his strange relationship with his mother, and his attendant feelings of shame. If the novel’s themes are shocking, Anthony Burgess praises Roth’s ‘great literary skill to make so fierce a theme the occasion for such uproarious comedy.’

Philip Roth was born in New Jersey in 1933. His first book was the story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which was released in 1959. He went on to write 28 novels, including The Human Stain, The Plot Against America, and American Pastoral, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. Throughout most of his career, he taught comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He died in 2018.

Matthew Shipe is a Teaching Professor in the English Department at Washington University in St Louis. He is the author of Understanding Philip Roth and the editor, with Scott Dill, of the collection Updike and Politics: New Considerations. In 2015, he won the John Updike Review’s Emerging Writers Prize for his essay ‘The Long Goodbye: The Role of Memory in John Updike’s Short Fiction.’ From 2016-2024, he served as the President of the Philip Roth Society. He currently serves as the co-executive editor of Philip Roth Studies and is on the Executive Board of the John Updike Society.

Books mentioned in this episode

By Philip Roth:

• Goodbye, Columbus (1959)
• Letting Go (1962)
• When She Was Good (1967)
• The Breast (1972)
• The Ghost Writer (1979)
• Zuckerman Unbound (1981)
• The Counterlife (1986)
• The Facts (1988)
• Operation Shylock (1993)
• Sabbath’s Theater (1995)
• American Pastoral (1997)
• I Married A Communist (1999)
• The Human Stain (2000)
• The Plot Against America (2004)
• Nemesis (2010)

By others:

• Rabbit, Run by John Updike (1960)
• Couples by John Updike (1968)
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo (1969)
• Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
• The Coup by John Updike (1978)
• Rabbit is Rich by John Updike (1981)
• The Tunnel by William H. Gass (1995)
• ‘Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think’ in Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (2005)
• Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem (2013)
• Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss (2017)
• Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar (2020)
• Small Rain by Garth Greenwell (2024)

This page contains affiliate links which help support the charitable work of the Burgess Foundation.

In previous series of Ninety-Nine Novels, we learnt about authors including James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Nadine Gordimer, Vladimir Nabokov and Christopher Isherwood, among others. These episodes are available at your favourite place to get podcasts.

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The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.

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