Portnoy's Complaint

I have a rather hazy memory. When I was a teenager, probably around 16 or 17, I first read "Portnoy's Complaint".

I either carried my paperback copy with me to my grandmother's condo or perhaps just mentioned to her that I was reading the book. Oh, what a blunder that was. She was extremely displeased with my choice of reading material and didn't hesitate to let me know.

This was many years before Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize, which made him more respectable in the eyes of the American Jewish community.

To be honest, though, even if he had already won the Pulitzer at that time, Grammy likely still would have regarded "Portnoy's Complaint", and probably anything else by Roth, as a shanda fur die goyim and something best avoided by her grandson.

As an already somewhat lapsed Jew at that time, I found the novel to be hilarious, shocking, and frighteningly accurate, albeit a bit exaggerated.

Now, at more than double the age I was then, I decided to revisit "Portnoy's Complaint" for the first time. Partly, I wanted to see if it had held up for me after all these years, and partly to compare it with the few other Roth novels I've read in recent years, such as "The Anatomy Lesson" and "The Plot Against America".

So, what did I discover? As an older and now completely lapsed Jew, I still found "Portnoy's Complaint" to be hilarious, shocking, and frighteningly accurate, with a touch of exaggeration. It also towers above the other Roth novels I've read.

As far as I can tell, there's "Portnoy's Complaint", and then there's everything else he's written.

I won't bore you with too many details about the book's content here. Either you've already read it and don't need me to tell you about it, or you should read the book yourself, and I don't want to spoil it for you by recounting the best parts.

(Frankly, the whole book is great, and singling out the best parts would be a rather daunting task.)

But I do have one caveat: I'm not sure how well this book would resonate with anyone who didn't grow up as a male in a Jewish family in America.

I'm not saying that other people shouldn't read this book – they should – but I am saying that much of both its comedy and its meaningfulness is likely to be lost on all readers who aren't male American Jews.

As just one small example, only such a reader could truly appreciate the brilliance of a suicide note, from a son to his mother, mentioned in passing:

Mrs. Blumenthal called. Please bring your mah-jongg rules to the game tonight. Ronald

"Portnoy's Complaint" is filled with profanity (including judicious use of the dreaded c-word), sexual depravity (and not just the famous meat scene), and ethnic stereotypes (including a hilarious depiction of the home life of WASPs).

I've seen some people criticize this book for being too much of a comedy, too prone to Borscht Belt-style humor. Well, yes, but so what? The book is intended as a comedy, and the entire novel even ends with a punchline – and not just any punchline, but a punchline that wouldn't be out of place on a Catskills stage.

Anyhow, there's no need for me to say much more about "Portnoy's Complaint". Plus, I find it easier to write lengthy reviews of books I hate than ones I love wholeheartedly.

Much like Alexander Portnoy, I'm not very good at being positive and upbeat. I'm just glad that the book held up as well as it did for me after all these years.

Sorry, Grammy.

Seghe, seghe, seghe.

In this book, there are a lot of saws. Do you remember the voyeurism combined with the saws in this book? Well, forget about it.

“But Pietro, in this book there are the same things, why is it okay here and not there?”

By now we are on familiar terms, you can call me Pie.

“But Pie, in this book there are-“

The book is a long monologue of Alex Portnoy visiting his psychologist. His life has always been tied to an overly anxious mother and an overly sick imaginary father who can't poop. And for some reason that I think can remind us of the adolescence of all us boys, our Alex starts to get into saws. But guys, a lot of saws.

The problem is that Alex would like to do... what shall I tell you? I'll tell you, anyway it's intuited right from the start... Alex would like to indirectly be his mother.

And in this book, despite the absurdity of the situations in which our Alex gets himself into, it works. Why?

Because the protagonist knows very well that he is sick and accepts it by telling it with open sincerity without giving himself bourgeois airs that he knows he doesn't have.

Philip Roth shows himself to be a writer as he should be. He takes grotesque and super cringe situations that cause tension in the reader, and breaks the tension with the exaggerated irony that accompanies his entire monologue. Lolita, for example, follows a similar pattern.

Well done, Philip.

The only off-key note - more for Pietrino than for the coherence of the story - is the style of these extremely long chapters in which Alex hammers the reader with an enormous uninterrupted stream of consciousness, which in the long run slightly bothered me. But anyway it is undoubtedly a highly recommended book.

Also because as I see it, Portnoy's Complaint winks a strong eye and I think it is in all respects the 2.0 version of another pillar of 20th-century contemporary reading that deals with similar themes. Perhaps less elegant and with the accelerator pedal always pressed to the floor, but I noticed a strong similarity with...

Are you thinking of the same book that I'm thinking of?

Write it in a comment below, because anyway we are thinking of the same thing.

Peace Off

It has recently come to my attention that my book reviews often deviate from the actual book.

I wonder why one would want to know about the book when all they have to do is click on the blurb and then engage in fascinating reading about, say, where I bought my milk last Tuesday or my most vivid childhood memory.

Yet, I strive to please, so here is my sincere attempt to tell you something about this book. The book seems to be about sex, guilt, and more sex and guilt, with mom's fault and dad's fault thrown in.

Now that I've, no doubt, piqued your interest and compelled you to pick up the book, let me share some of my personal thoughts. Growing up conservative Christian, I'm no stranger to guilt. I can relate to the excessive guilt in the book.

Guilt has taught me several things. For example, if I don't clean up the clutter, someone else will have to. Flour is not cheap, and ingredients should not be wasted. Pre-marital sex is bad, and being gay is even worse.

I found the book hilarious in its familiarity. Some passages that particularly amused me include when he ate pudding he shouldn't have and when he talked to his "doctor."

Beyond the humor, I also appreciated other aspects of the story. I loved the line about sticking his dick up their backgrounds.

In conclusion, I think I nearly cried at one point, and this might indicate hormonal fluctuation or that I'm a sensitive genius. Regardless, I felt sorry for the protagonist at one point.

And thus concludes my thorough look at Portnoy's complaints and the ever-present "ME, ME, ME" in my review.

3.5 ależ to szalona książka

It is truly an amazing and perhaps a bit crazy book. The story it tells takes the reader on a wild ride through a world full of unexpected twists and turns. The characters are vividly brought to life, each with their own unique personalities and quirks. The author's writing style is engaging and captivating, making it difficult to put the book down once you start reading.

Whether it's the thrilling plot, the richly detailed settings, or the complex relationships between the characters, this book has something for everyone. It challenges the reader's imagination and takes them on a journey they will never forget.

Overall, 3.5 ależ to szalona książka is a must-read for anyone who loves a good adventure and a bit of craziness in their books. It will leave you on the edge of your seat, eagerly turning the pages to see what happens next.

When Philip Roth sent Portnoy's Complaint to the press, his chance of winning the Nobel Prize became zero. The book caused a huge scandal. The puritans, humorless individuals, and Kabbalah symbolism experts protested. "This is the book that all anti-Semites have prayed to be published," exclaimed the scholar Gershom Scholem in an angry review.

Many journalists hypothesized that Philip Roth had gone crazy. Others reported that he was already in the hospital, in a straitjacket. Some rabbis demanded his expulsion from society. Indeed, the author had not portrayed him very sympathetically in the book (cf. pp. 71, 185-186). The novel became a bestseller: in 1969, 450,000 copies were sold.

There are novels in which the hero confesses (and justifies) himself in front of a judge, the most famous being Lolita, Nabokov's novel, but I wouldn't skip Hocus pocus by Kurt Vonnegut jr. either. In Portnoy's Complaint, the protagonist confesses to a psychoanalyst, the new type of priest in the 20th century, and awaits a precise diagnosis. Philip Roth uses as an epigraph to the book a passage from the essay "The Uncircumcised Penis," published by psychologist O. Spielvogel in a prestigious international psychoanalysis journal, a passage that describes the essence of the hero's suffering (Alex is Spielvogel's client):

"The patient does not obtain real sexual satisfaction either from fantasies or from the erotic act itself, these rather causing him an overwhelming feeling of shame and the fear of not being punished [by castration]" (p. 5).

Alex Portnoy does not propose "free associations," but tells, furious with himself and humanity, his life: he has already reached 33 years old, the age of fundamental questions. Even if in front of a psychoanalyst you can use all the words in the vocabulary, the language is obscene and, from a certain moment on, boring. The story only gets to the point in the second part, when Alex Portnoy became an official at the New York City Hall and had some real erotic experiences (Kay Campbell = The She-Devil, Sarah Maulsby = The Pilgrim, Mary Jane Reed = The Midget).

Surely, the novel is challenging and excessive. But it was published in the era of "sexual liberation" (the 1960s-1970s of the last century) and, through its problematic, it contributed to the understanding that, in human life, Eros has a much more important role than the puritans and moralists of both sexes believed. Through the voice of Portnoy, centuries of systematic repression of sex and the body are avenged.

Roth's novel is, of course, also a satire on psychoanalysis and the way of going, whenever you feel a twinge in the amygdala area of the brain, to a renowned specialist. If you don't sense the sharp irony of the author, it is easy to misinterpret the book, to confuse fiction with reality.

But what is poor Portnoy looking for with the psychoanalyst? He doesn't really know either. He didn't have a traumatic childhood (he exaggerates), he was a prize-winner, he found out that he has an IQ of 158, the same as Einstein's, he got an honorable job. The fact that his parents (possessive, of course) sometimes hit him on the head is not a reason to become a neurotic. No one becomes a neurotic just because they were repeatedly called to mass, even if they stuffed themselves with pastries in the city and had stomachaches.

In the end, Portnoy's Complaint records the futile search for a non-existent culprit. Alex's revolt has no precise source. It is visceral. I doubt that Dr. Spielvogel will succeed in curing him...

The case of an American Jew caught between the perfection demanded by his parents and personal freedom is truly touching and universal!

Alexander, for me at least, is not the typical living Jew in the US, oppressed by a highly exemplary education. Nevertheless, his parents have chosen a path for their son. The latter, finding this life dull and exacting, throws himself into the most insatiable sexuality (starting from childhood). He is a universal being who exists everywhere in the world. He could be Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. However, he doubts the belief and the significance of this compatibility and these morals. He no longer has faith in the foundation of the family or marriage.

So, Alexander's monologue in front of his psychiatrist (or rather the reader) continues with humor and a Roth-esque style - childhood stories (being a "big masturbator") and sex stories (especially with the Monkey). Alexander hesitates between living according to his family's expectations or the free life that eludes him due to the impossibility of making a choice. As a result, he has no real experience; he only has an image, a pale copy of life. Additionally, he develops a very pessimistic view of marriage, a tragicomic vision!

Alexander touches and captivates us with his perspective on things. He doesn't deny his roots or hate his parents but opposes certain practices or beliefs.

Roth is able to present the soul of an American Jew without stereotypes, with excellent control over his character's personality and humor (I wouldn't say it's like Woody Allen) that is full of irony (original).

This is the book that catapulted Philip Roth into both fame and scandal.

Portnoy, a mother-obsessed sexual maniac, is actually quite uproariously funny. Who else but the author of the equally darkly humorous Sabbath's Theater would have his character engage in such a bizarre act as masturbating with a cow liver? This book and the subsequent reaction to it served as the impetus for the Nathan Zuckerman series of books, which allude back to the public's response with a mixture of awe and dismay. The book itself is a classic, exquisitely written with Roth's unique literary finesse.

If I were to draw a comparison between Roth and another writer fixated on onanism, I might select France's Houllebecq. However, Houllebecq seems to struggle to string together more than two paragraphs before delving into such themes. In contrast, Roth has an uncanny ability to truly inhabit his characters, breathing life into them and making them feel like real, living beings. I found that Houllebecq's characters lacked depth and a fundamental understanding of humanity. They are merely cogs in a masturbatory wheel. While the wheel itself is vividly described, the overall tone is so nihilistic and fatalist. This is one reason why he is favored by the extreme right, who decry decadence and believe that God or their conceptions of right and wrong should be imposed, as they assume that given free will, humans will inevitably be depraved. Roth's perspective is less cynical. He acknowledges the presence of evil in the world, but attributes it to conscious choices rather than the world's inherent immorality or some archaic notion of fate.

RIP (1933 - 2018). One of America's literary titans has left our midst.

If we want to believe the author, "Portnoy's Complaint" (it could also be "Portnoy's Lament", both refer to the novel and the English "Complaint" has both meanings) had no intention of achieving any kind of Jewish-parental catharsis but rather a liberation from traditional narrative forms. It may be that it's not right to contradict someone who, unfortunately, can no longer defend himself, but I think he must have had a great time attacking a certain way of feeling Jewish, whether it was far from his own or not.

We are in the 1960s and what was then considered dirty or repulsive in terms of sex may no longer be so much or may no longer amaze us in the same way, and yet the controversy will always follow this lustful Alexander Portnoy, a Jewish lawyer, of great intelligence and professional success, obsessed with sex with non-Jewish girls, "shikse", who possess the halo of depravity that being the dark and prohibited object of desire attributed to them in their community confers, and therefore the shortest path to escape from his Jewish condition, addicted to compulsive masturbation and oral sex, allergic to the commitment of fidelity that is almost always imposed in a relationship, sentimentally skeptical...

He is an apostate and critical of everything specifically Jewish, without this meaning any kind of sympathy with Christianity which he qualifies as supine stupidity, and pathologically prone to blaming his mother, a "worry-generating machine", for always burdening him with her finicky moral conscience, and his weak and constipated father for leaving him in her hands without providing him with any male model to counterbalance the castrating figure of his mother.
And what better way to get out everything he had inside, since as a Jew confession was completely out of the question, than the uncensored and unvarnished release that a psychoanalyst promotes. Here we have, therefore, Alexander Portnoy lying on the couch, unable to manage his life, overwhelmed by shameful desire, with his conscience as his main enemy and invaded by guilt in a delirious, dirty, perverse, provocative and, I have taken a long time to say it, extremely funny monologue.