Portnoy's Complaint (Vintage Blue)

I resisted reading this piece of trash when it was first released in a blaze of controversy some 50 years ago but in a moment of weakness, out of sheer curiosity, I recently purchased it for my Kindle because it was dirt cheap.

Now, half a century later, 'Dirt' and 'cheap' are still two very appropriate words to apply to this book. If you like reading about a guy whose sexual deviations know no bounds then this is the book for you. It has nothing else going for it.

Excellent character development, great one line punch lines...storyline was quite disappointing, should have been edited down. Dated psychology and overtly sexual innuendo. Certainly written for its time!

I’ve been reliably informed that Philip Roth is a good author. It’s been suggested to me that Portnoy’s Complaint is an important book in the American literary scene. I try not to be judgemental about books I don’t like.

But to be clear: this book is just plain bad.

It’s not awful; that would require more of an effort. It’s not repulsive; that would require it to make more of an impact- or any impact at all, for that matter. It’s a string of jokes that manages to not be funny, and a outright pornographic text that manages to be as interesting as a piece of mouldy bread.

If you’re feeling generous (and I don’t) you might say that the book is a psychological portrait of a neurotic man struggling with his urges, that it debates the feeling of alienation and the fetishising of those one perceives to belong to the society one wishes to join- the society of gentiles, for Portnoy, a higher social class for the Monkey. And yes, I suppose it does debate such themes, but it drowns in the terrible writing.

I’m glad I’ve read it so I know what people are talking about, but really, if you want a good book, look elsewhere.

This book starts out kind of interesting, but then you really begin to see why the title includes the word "complaint." It really is just one big, long complaint. Much of this complaining has to do with sex. It's really overdone in the sex department.

Some excellent, humorous writing swamped with unpleasant sexual descriptions and hostility to women.
Not something to listen to in mixed company.
The reading by Ron Silver is terrific. His ability to change pace, volume, and tone makes it a personal story telling, far more engaging than reading it yourself.

Having enjoyed several books by Phillip Roth (Nemesis and The Human Stain) I thought I should read this book which is regularly deemed a classic. The format of the book, as the main character Portnoy delivering a meandering monologue to his silent psychiatric therapist was unusual and I found the narrative rambling and disjointed. I did not find much humour in monologue, but a lot of complaining, cynicism, hubris and criticism. I found the complete absorption with himself and his perceived problems tedious, and the description of his overbearing and besotted mother and ineffectual father very clichéd, as the typical Jewish family. But what I found most disturbing and offensive was his totally cynical and callous and disrespective treatment of his many female partners. His total obsession with heartless and loveless sex, and his often brutal and crude language added an unpleasant feeling to the narrative. Portnoy is a most unattractive character, and I was pleased to finish the book!

I put off reading this book literally for decades, and I should not have. The title always threw me off; I anticipated a dense, agonizing, too personal and ultimately dull psychological expurgation. I have finally read it—in two days—and realize once again that I am not alone. Loved it. Yeah, it’s got plenty of deep and personal psychological expurgation, but it sure isn’t dull. Portnoy is me, well, almost. While I didn’t suffer the suffocating Jewish upbringing, I managed to marry into it at age 23—my very own Newark-born and bred Jewish Monkey right out of this book, so incredibly similar, right down to the ridiculous handwriting and syntax—so I know from the guilt and the kvetching.

So yeah, Portnoy was (is) consumed by sex in all its astounding shapes and forms and variations, the pure depravity and the filth. I get it. And he has to square that with his overbearing, judgmental, suffocating yet moral and ethical upbringing, the perceptions of the public in which he interacts, the social circles in which he moves, and his own very private expectations and requirements for the perfect mate. Yeah, I get that, too. Been there, done all of it.

So, this is a great book for guys, as it shows you (we) are not alone. It’s a fun story, funny and raunchy, and gets better, and deeper, as it goes on, with a great punch line. Women will not identify nearly as much with Portnoy and his issues, and may well feel nothing but hostility from its necessarily one-sided perspective, but I’ll recommend it as a spot-on glimpse of men, as good instructive reading for women willing and able to take it on and think upon it.

And there is a reason it’s not read in schools. The language is most definitely adult, as is the subject matter. The language is stark and direct, a distinctly adult read. But not a difficult one; this is not a vocabulary workout.

Bottom Line: I should have read this 40 years ago. Don’t wait; read it now.

Well I have read "Portnoy's Complaint." I saw commentary on line that Phillip Roth was the best American novelist since Faulkner and with that I took it upon myself to read some of his novels. I remembered seeing reviews for one of the Nathan Zuckerman novels back in the '80s and also remembered the movie of "Goodbye Columbus" with Richard Benjamin and Ali McGraw from the early '70s. With the memory of teh Zuckerman reviews, I picked out the 'Zuckerman Bound" collection to begin with. It was clear to me in reading those four novels that they were are response to the reactions that greeted "Portnoys' Complaint." I didn't see any evidence in those novels of the greatest American novelist since Faulkner. Indeed, to me, they seemed rather or maybe more than rather mediocre. They appeared to be more of a argument between Roth and his critics than stand alone novels. To understand what was going on with this and the assertions about "the greatest american novelist since Faulkner", I decided to read "Portnoy's Complaint."

I'm not sorry I read this novel. It is truly comic. Roth shows real skill in his ability to modulate the emotions contained in his text. He can move the mood from comic to tragic and back within a few lines. I'll have to read more of Roth to see if he is "The greatest American novelist since Faulkner". I enjoyed this novel. There is insight shown in Roth's description of his coming of age in the US. Well, some insight. I don't think that there is anything in this novel that I was not aware of before I read it. It is very well executed for what it does. Perhaps the standard of "the greatest American novelist since Faulkner" led to creates expectations that any real novel would find difficult to meet

This is considered one of the most important American novels of the 20th century. It is definitely a novel to be studied – and indeed the author now has a journal devoted to his writing. In 1969 it was banned in many countries and even today might seem explicit. It is written from the perspective of a certain kind of 1960s man who based his lifestyle choices on Playboy. Chapters appeared in Esquire magazine before publication to excite interest and boost sales – with success. Philip Roth never looked back.

The format is that of a monologue by Alexander Portnoy to his psychiatrist – indeed one could read this really as the “complaint” of the title, rather than the sexual pathology revealed therein. It is a lament on the stress of being brought up in a Jewish family in New Jersey. Alex has put behind him the prejudice and struggle faced by his parents and is now successful – but fails to satisfy his father and mother, and indeed still feels burdened by being Jewish, particularly in his sex life.

Academic studies focus on what the novel means or meant for Jews in America, how successfully it addressed or resolved their “success at a price”.

The modern reader - Jewish or non-Jewish – finds talented writing undoubtedly, and an early exploration of the Jewish-American family, now commonplace, but she will also be confronted by misogyny, and casual racism. Of course, this was very much of the time. However, you cannot ignore now, for example, a detailed description of Alex’s failed attempt at rape – not least because we are expected to empathise with Alex as he endeavours to deal with his failure.

I finished this as much to know why it is so acclaimed and I went on to look at some of the analyses and critiques. But I didn’t really enjoy it. Perhaps I would have done so in 1969.

While his two previous books, Letting Go and When She Was Good, were both excellent, it is with his third full-length novel, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), that Phillip Roth put himself firmly into the top tier of American novelists of the second half of the 20th century. The book pulls off the very difficult feat of being both highly entertaining and highly insightful.

Presented in the form of a monologue by the titular Alexander Portnoy to his psychiatrist, it serves as both a marathon-length Catskills standup routine and as a serious meditation on assimilation, prejudice, love, commitment and integrity. Portnoy is, to put it bluntly, a bit of a sh-t, his relationships with women poisoned by irredeemable promiscuity that he blames on his parents and on growing up Jewish in the anti-semitic America of the mid 20th century.

Of course, as we only get Portnoy’s first-person perspective on things, everything he says should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Comparable to two other classic book-length self-justifying first-person rants, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Portnoy’s Complaint is pitch perfect in tone and realistically colloquial in phrasing and vocabulary while remaining just stylistically idiosyncratic enough to be memorable. This is a book that’s a blast to read aloud.

While Portnoy veers all over the place in relating what is basically the story of his life to that point (he is 33), there is enough chronological logic to the narrative that no reader should get lost in the reminiscences. It flows from his early childhood growing up first in a diverse section of Jersey City and then in a much more homogeneously Jewish section of Newark. These are the notorious chapters dealing with Portnoy’s obsession with masturbation, and they are utterly hilarious, especially, I suspect, to a guy.

Then come his adolescent and young adult years, which Portnoy spends flitting from relationship to relationship with gentile women, particularly a college romance with a politically active Iowa farm girl and later with a neurotic and ill-educated young woman from the back woods of West Virginia, who Portnoy patronizes mercilessly (among other things, he refers to her as The Monkey).

When it first came out, Portnoy’s Complaint was notorious for its graphic descriptions of sex, particularly Portnoy’s onanistic misadventures. Today, that part is uncontroversial, though funny as hell. But what makes it a classic is Roth’s insight into his character and the world he lives in, all communicated in one of American literature’s finest first-person narratives. Simply put, Portnoy’s Complaint is one of the best American novels of the 20th century.

Disorderly conduct and feelings of shame. To break the law, all you have to do is go ahead and just break it. That's what Alex Portnoy found out on the day when he ate his first lobster, at age 15. After that transgression, he might just as well proceed to worse deeds. The same night he masturbated on a public bus, while a sleeping girl was sitting next to him.

Freud would surely have loved Roth's ode to and persiflage of the Oedipus Complex. As did I, when I first read it, decades ago. Does it still work now at second reading, decades later? Not entirely. It has fallen out of time a little.
And one more thing: I had forgotten the last chapter, which I find unfunny and repulsive. No spoilers here though.

Alex Portnoy, the narrator, grows up in a Jewish petit bourgeois family in Jersey. Dad works for a Boston based goy company. Mom rules the small family of 4, which includes Alex' big sister. Dad is a little goofy, while mom, with her mothering, is too good for her own good. She is bossy, anxious, protective and adoring. Her little boy is everything to her.
Racism is a part of life, both ways. Anti-Semitism is taken for granted, and repaid by anti-goyism. Dad, as a Jew, can never be a boss in his goy company. He understands that. It doesn't keep the family from looking down on somebody. Choice falls on Dad's insurance customers from the lesser parts of towns. Or the cleaning woman, who isn't even considered a shikse, because she is black.

The plot gives space to one of Alex's failed affairs, for dramatic purposes: a semi literate fashion model, who fulfills all his sexual fantasies, but is not socially fitting, neither to his Jewish sense of shame, nor to his intellectual pretensions and political ambitions.

Alex' main subject is himself, his rebellions, his masturbations, his obsession with the female organs. Writing this way about such sex addiction is no longer sensational. It can be a big yawn now. The narration is a monologue, addressed to a shrink. Adult Alex is a young star in the political establishment of New York. That type is still around today, we know their names. Alex didn't have the benefit of smart phones and social media.
Though the book hasn't aged so well, due to the fact that its provocations have become common place, it is still a sharp portrait of some segments of society at its time. Pity for the suicidal closing pages.

Alexander Portnoy is a successful lawyer in his thirties, doing important work for the downtrodden. He is well respected, and even famous to a degree. He ought to be able to be happy and have a nice secure relationship. His parents aggressively wonder why he hasn't settled down with a nice girl and started a nice family. He does, after all, have the responsibility of carrying on the family name.

Alex sometimes wonders this himself. Thus this book, which is a stream-of-consciousness monologue of Alex's life. He knows that there is something very wrong in his relationships with women. He can't seem to make himself stay with one; he is constantly thinking that there is a better one right around the corner and he doesn't want to miss out. Also, when in a relationship, he has very little respect for the woman he's with. He always manages to find some fault in her personality or her education. Maybe it's his parents' fault?

This book takes us all the way back to the beginning, when Alex was a tiny child, smothered by his Jewish mother, trapped in a family in which he is the golden boy and his tantrums and whims are largely tolerated. He is fawned over, given the best of everything, and he can't seem to escape the constant attention and focus of his mother and father. Perhaps this is what led to his obsession with his own body and, eventually, with sex. Alex talks us through his life, including much attention to how often and where he masturbated as an adolescent, and eventually to his sexual flings as he ventured out into the world and out of his parents' control. Nothing satisfies him, and even talking through it as he does over the course of this book seems to do no good in solving the mystery of why he can't settle down.

At times this book was exceptionally funny and clever. I liked reading the dryly cynical way Alex's idyllic childhood was turned into an object of scorn and ridicule; it reminded me of the way almost all teenagers treat their families as if they are ruining their lives. There was something very adolescent and angsty about how Alex described his life with his parents. Parts of this book were very sad, though, and all of Alex's relationships were so dysfunctional, it was easy for me to believe that he would be baffled by what what was consistently going wrong. By the end of the story I was getting a bit tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. The pattern of how Alex was treating the women in his life had become predictable and was no longer so amusing.

For nearly fifty years Portnoy's Complaint has retained a reputation as one of the raunchiest and most profane non-pornographic novels of its time, or maybe of all time. This is somewhat true, the book is filled to the brim with sexual misadventures and fowl language, although there is much more to the story than that. Like all great novels, Portnoy's Complaint is about a lot of things, from ethnic pride to religion to complicated family relations to sexual fulfillment, and all the while Alex Portnoy is the kind of man who—once he is confronted with the chance for a happy life—is unable to accept it. A neurotic Jewish man who struggles with romance and sexuality? That sounds like something out of a Woody Allen film, and to an extend it is; I wouldn't be surprised if Allen read Roth's novel before working on Annie Hall, although I can't blame the book for becoming something of an archetype. Even if that is true, Portnoy's Complain does so much right that I can't help but enjoy it immensely.

On the surface it is a comedy, and an incredibly funny one at that, but Philip Roth is too good an author to write merely a comedy. No, he has to do something more than that, something to compliment the humor, something more meaningful and somewhat autobiographical. If you take just a few minutes to look at Roth's biography, then read Portnoy's Complaint, it won't take long to find that Roth and Portnoy share more than a few qualities; both were born in 1933 to Jewish parents, raised in Newark and grew up to perform quite well academically, rejected religion and Zionism and ultimately experienced several failed relationships. Roth had already been divorced once by the time he began writing Portnoy's Complaint in 1967, and there is this anxiety evident in several passages as to whether Portnoy can find love, settle down and become the proper family man he wants to be. Despite fighting for all the right causes, our protagonist finds that he is no hero, but rather a troubled young man who doesn't quite know where or when his life went wrong. It hits closer to home than you might expect.

I can see some reviewers comparing Portnoy's Complaint to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, although I think it bears a much stronger resemblance to James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. You can spot the similarities if you've read that book already. Still, it doesn't take a genius to appreciate Portnoy's Complaint; along with Goodbye Columbus it's the best book to get started with Philip Roth, and I have a strong feeling I'll be reading more of his work in the near-future.

This book is unlike any I have read. Fascinating, honest, at times titillating and at times disgusting. Having had the WASP experience I found the exploration of being Jewish confusing and interesting. I think most of what he deals with is not limited to anything to do with a Jewish upbringing, perhaps more about being male or American male, than any religious or even ethnic. He does poignantly describe the anxieties of negotiating life's seemingly contrary motivations. This book will rattle in my head for some time to come!

Took me about half the book to understand what the hell it was. After that it wasn't really that bad, but still a bit boring. The small-boy style of telling a story that dominated the majority of the first part really annoyed me. At least the way I remember it now.

If you ever wanted to imagine "50 Shades of Grey" but from a Jewish perspective, this may be the closest you'll ever come. Like that hit that has redefined the taste of the masses as "much worse than we originally suspected", it features a sexually explicit storyline featuring a person with substantial control freak tendencies, mundane taste in women and a really exotic taste for meat in ways that the butcher never anticipated. Unlike that future classic, however, it's funny where it's actually meant to be. It's the novel where Philip Roth basically makes his transformation into PHILIP ROTH, literary superstar, the fellow we know and love and are sometimes frustrated by, and the sheer notoriety of the novel would follow him for years until even he had to make fun of it via sort of stand-in Nathan Zuckerman and his delightful literary book about doing it, "Carnovsky". Questions of "how much of this did he make up" would dog him for years, as if people couldn't comprehend that a guy whose job it is to make up things for a living wouldn't be able to figure out that certain things are universally funny, and are even funnier when you add a slab of liver to it.

This is the kind of novel you're either going to be thoroughly engrossed and amused by, or are going to find it meanderingly obsessive and with so many personal details that even a reality TV star would be like "Whoa, pal, TMI." It basically concerns one thing, and one thing only, and that is Alexander Portnoy, and his constant quest for sexual gratification, one that seems to touch every single aspect of his life, from his relationship with his family to women to Israel and the Jewish experience in America, one that seeks to touch it all over the place, touch it gently and touch it hard, sometimes even touching itself in the process. It's told as one long stream of consciousness rant, ostensibly Portnoy telling all his worries to an extremely patient psychiatrist, who probably never thought that a simple question of "Tell me what's troubling you" would lead to a breaking dam of woes, spilling out one after the other and hardly in a linear fashion. Portnoy details his life, growing up with his pleasant but overbearing parents, discovering that his sexual flowering is more like an algae bloom, sudden, rapid and before you know it, all over the place. He tells us about the various girls he meets in the process as he wanders about searching for love and satisfaction, not necessarily in that order.

Most of the subject matter here will seem familiar to anyone who has read even a little bit of Roth in his prime, especially if you're like me and bouncing around his career at random. For the most part a lot of the things that become tropes in later novels start out there, so the shock of the new that greeted readers on its publications may not quite be there. Still, there's a hilarious focus to this that the other novels seem to lack and the very thing that may turn off some readers (namely, Portnoy's constant complaining) is what gives the novel the edge. Stripped of the winking smirks toward portions of his life and the almost reflexive need to go meta exactly when the book doesn't need it, this book comes across as exactly what it should be, one guy adrift in a sea of troubles of his own creation and not completely understanding how that happened, even as the recollections of bizarre events pile on top of each other like madly breeding pancakes. Even with the familiarity of some of its concept, a lot of it comes off as new and fresh because of the sheer singlemindedness of the affair.

And it helps that it's funny. Roth would rarely be this funny again and a large part of that is how well he captures Portnoy's speaking voice as he monologues seemingly in one long sentence, this great rush of words that only gets more and more hilarious as you imagine him getting increasingly hysterical as recounting his life story only winds him up further, until you can almost hear the veins popping out of his neck as he strains to convey the sheer tortures that follow him around every day. He pleads, he cajoles, he rails and rants and pities himself to such an absurd degree that it goes past narcissism into something far greater, like he becomes nothing but pure ego. And when sex really enters the picture the book takes off completely into another stratosphere, featuring prose explicit enough to make a dominatrix blush, especially when his sexuality blossoms and he discovers the manly joys of self-gratification, proceeding to reenact the song "Orgasm Addict" to an insane degree, his narrative voice nearly rising to a screech as he attempts to express just how far he's willing to go, even to the realm that is nowadays probably relegated to weird fetish sites in dark corners of the Internet.

The prose (and by definition, Portnoy's voice) is more than strong enough to carry it and it helps that Roth hardly pauses for breath when he gets going, allowing our narrator room to argue with himself, adore himself, berate himself, all the while presumably while his poor psychologist sits there and wonders if he should be doing something professional to stop this. But he's as amused as the rest of us are. Portnoy seems to possess some self-awareness of how obsessed he is but is unable to stop himself to any sane degree and given a captive audience, he spills everything in the same way he spills his seed, holding nothing back and not really caring what it stains in the process. A novel for both the literary sophisticated thirty-five year old in me and the thirteen year old in me, he proves that James Joyce didn't steal all the good dirty jokes. A lot of what transpires here will crop up again (and again and again) in other Roth novels in various configurations but this is where it all starts and probably the only time you'll ever see all the components assembled at once in an unstoppable force. It's a kind of synergy that's hard to replicate, the kind that comes with a "here goes nothing" attitude and while he would go on to write novels that were considered better or more important, he never would write anything quite like that this. But the genius of it, of course, is that you only need to do it once.

Philip Roth really gets inside the skin of Alex Portnoy, the thirty-three-year-old Commissioner of Human Rights (or something) in John Lindsay's New York of the 1960s. We see his development from an emic point of view from the age of about four until his current maturity. First his domineering and demanding family, then his adolescent relationships with his schoolmates and girls of varying degrees of accessibility and virture, then his adventures with three grown-up women. It ends with the ululation of a psychologicall fragile and mortally wounded antelope.

We'll never know exactly how much of this character study is autobiographical. Certainly its more accidental features -- growing up in Newark, swimming in Olympic Park, masturbation. (I take masturbation among adolescents to be pretty much universal; at least I hope it is.) But certainly not ALL of it.

The three shikses, or Gentile women, that Portnoy involves himself with are surely chosen for their emblematic qualities. "The Monkey" is a sexually voracious redneck model from Appalachia who, at 29, wants to settle down and get married. She represents the uneducated, the gorgeous, the bourgois. "The Pumpkin" is plump and comes from a Wasp Middle West family in a clean house with shutters and an elm tree, where everyone asks, "How are you?" and says, "Slept like a LOG." She's educated, though, a student at Antioch, just too bland for the sophisticated Portnoy. "The Pilgrim" is a member of the New England elite, an ex-preppy who knows how to ride horses on the vast acres of her family's Connecticut estate. The three are humanized stereotypes and Roth must have developed the characters to give us Portnoy's view of the way in which the world of the Goyim is divided -- one dumb hillbilly, one fat farmer's daughter, and one snobbish aristocrat.

Well, I used the word "stereotypes" but they're recognizable stereotypes. Or at least so it seems to me. In high school I attended the high-school Homecoming games on Thanksgiving that Roth describes, except I was on the other side, Hillside High School. The local color is -- let's call it evocative, as well as hilarious.

But the book is really about Portnoy's savage digging into his own psyche. From time to time he erupts into capital letters. LET'S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID! LET'S PUT THE OY BACK IN GOY! LET MY PENIS GO! He's pretty rough on the Goys. As usually depicted in his pink nightgown Christ looks like a fairy to Portnoy. He's rough on the Israelis too. He finds himself symbolically impotent when he tries to make love to a big, tough, contemptuous red-headed Israeli Lieutenant, although he's down on the floor begging her for nothing more than an opportunity to assault her with his drooping tongue.

He's roughest of all on the Jews her grew up with. He weeps for the sacrifices of his father and, especially, his balabusta mother -- but it's that GUILT that's keeping him in chains. He's like Buridan's ass, starving to death mid-way between two stacks of hay: his allegiance to the values his family have beaten into him, along with their conviction that he'll never make it, and his desperation to break free of those values and find a life of his own, an independent life.

It's an adult story with a great deal of vulgarity in it, sometimes side splitting.

A Jewish doctor once told me, "No offense, but I think you really have to be Jewish to understand this." Well, I suppose it depends on your ability to get inside Portnoy's skin. You don't need to do half the job that Roth did.

This wonderful "novel" contains a lot of Yiddish slang that I remember from my childhood and youth and a lot that I do not remember and that are not to be found in an online glossary of Yiddish expressions. Some sort of guide or glossary would have been helpful.

I put "novel" in quotes because this is not a novel in any standard sense of the term. It is cast in the form of an endless monologue that Alex Portnoy is inflicting on his doctor or psychotherapist. Who or what Dr Spielvogel may be is never made clear. And is this a real monologue or only imagined? In the course of Alex's complaints to a supposed Dr Spielvogel a great deal comes out about his life and loves, and hates, but no plot or story line emerges. Also a great deal of what comes out seems to be confabulation, fable, and outright falsehood, and much of it is, of course, exaggeration. Alex is a master of exaggeration.

Why would anybody be interested in Alex's exaggerations and confabulations and constant self-absorbed kvetching? I don't know. I can't explain it, but this book is absolutely fascinating, hilarious, gripping, disgusting, very very sad, and even, yes, edifying. Roth is a genius no doubt about that. How he can make some jerk's endless kvetching so enthralling is a mystery to me. It's not the sexy stuff of which there is much. That was wretched and fulsome, and I believe intended to be. It's not the humor which is deep and throaty; that helps relieve the depressingness. There is something about the utter humanity of Alex that gripped me by some vulnerable part of my mental anatomy and wouldn't let go. I didn't particularly like Alex, I wouldn't want to be his friend--oh that would be tiresome--and I didn't identify with or sympathize with him. Like Macbeth (or Lear, speaking of kvetching), he's endlessly fascinating.

I haven't finished Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid but I suspect that would be a fascinating comparison to Portnoy's Complaint as another completely different kind of story of growing up in American in the mid-20th century. Bryson is just the sort of mid-American wholesome Iowa goy that Alex envies, dreads, and excoriates through much of his diatribe. I suspect that Bryson is the perfect "other" to Roth's Portnoy.

As a small coda I would like to mention that one of the most delightful and touching aspects of Alex's monologue is his portrayal of his relationship with his older sister Hannah. When he is young she is in the background, almost a nonentity, but as he develops and develops his neuroses and hang ups she emerges as a kind and comforting soul. She is the only person portrayed with any sympathy in the book. Although she is not fore-fronted, Hannah is the human heart of Roth's "novel."

I knew exactly three things about "Portnoy's Complaint" when I picked it up and opened it to the first page: that it was one of those important, Great-American-Novel-type books; that it was about a neurotic Jewish man; and that it was obscenely filthy. Finishing it, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Yes, it was about a neurotic Jewish man, and nearly every page touches upon some aspect of sexuality with a candor and vulgarity that few novelists would dare even forty years later. But was it a great novel? My feelings in that regard were mixed.

I couldn't help looking over the other the store reviews, especially the handful of negative ones. I saw many of my own feelings reflected there: the story was just TOO crass and over-the-top; Alexander Portnoy is a thoroughly disagreeable character; at times the novel struggles under the weight of its own psychoanalytic self-importance. Although this novel seems to have attracted more than the average number of intelligent, literate reviewers, when I read the negative reviews I couldn't help thinking that many of them had missed the point - and by extension, so had I. It's not that there was anything wrong with my observations. What I hadn't realized right away was that what I was feeling was exactly what the author had intended me to feel.

"Portnoy's Complaint" isn't meant to be an accurate representation of reality. It's a comic representation of one man's neurotic worldview. As a writer myself, I appreciate the challenge of telling a story via an unreliable narrator - and I have to admire how brilliantly Philip Roth has pulled it off here. Everything we know about Portnoy, about his family, his lovers, his formative years, we learn from Portnoy himself. Portnoy's world is full of obnoxious stereotypes and grotesque caricatures because those are the terms in which he thinks. What matters is not so much whether young Alex's mother was really so overbearing, his father so pathetic, as he makes them out to be; what matters is that he believes that they were. Was his upbringing the root of his neurosis, or is he simply looking for a place to lay the blame? We may never know.

After I finished this novel (nearly all of it in the last 24 hours, including a 120-page chapter with an unprintable name which I read in one sitting), I felt as if I had wallowed in filth - but not because it was a "dirty book." "Portnoy's Complaint" may be famous for its frankness and crudity, but there's nothing titillating or erotic about the sex in this book. Like Portnoy himself, we are wallowing in this debauchery without any real savor. Portnoy's experiences are often very funny, but also painful. (The chapter "Whacking Off" left me indescribably grateful to have been born female.) Ultimately, sex in this novel is not about interpersonal connection or even selfish physical pleasure; instead, it's the way that Alexander Portnoy lives out his own self-loathing, and it is Portnoy's self-loathing, rather than his sexual escapades, that left me feeling unclean when I set down the book.

This caustically funny, yet ultimately unsettling novel ultimately succeeds because, although Portnoy as a character is impossible to like, he's also impossible not to relate to. Portnoy's 300-page monologue is self-important, vulgar, sentimental, pusillanimous, offensive, whiny, hypocritical, full of bigotry and hyperbole and trumped-up self-pitying self-justification - but do we not all carry these things within us, our own worse selves, pieces of our minds we hate to examine too closely for fear that we might not actually be the patient, generous, tolerant folks we believe ourselves to be?

"Portnoy's Complaint" is an intense and stunning piece of work. At the same time, I can't imagine ever wanting to read it again.

For someone whose only real exposure to Jewish culture growing up was watching "Seinfeld" on TV, "Portnoy's Complaint" seems like a good accompaniment. Looking back from the 21st Century, the life of Alexander Portnoy seems almost like "Seinfeld" if network censors had allowed you to see what went on in the bedroom in all its grisly detail. And like "Seinfeld," Portnoy's neurotic struggle against the opposite sex and his meddling parents is terribly funny.

To do the obligatory plot summary of "Portnoy's Complaint" is difficult because instead of following a traditional plot arc, the story is told in a more stream-of-consciousness way as Portnoy describes his issues to the psychologist we never see or hear. To put the story in a chronological order, Alex Portnoy grew up as the youngest child of Jewish parents in Newark, New Jersey. His father was an insurance salesmen in poor neighborhoods, working 12 hours a day to sell insurance and then coming home to work equally hard to move his bowels. His mother was lord of the manor, overseeing the running of the house while smothering Alex throughout his childhood to the point that he confused his teacher for his mother all through kindergarten. This gives Alex a bit of an Oedipal complex, compounded by a guilt complex from the way his parents use guilt to manipulate him all through high school. Alex seeks refuge in sex--first with himself and then with a variety of women. In 1967 this might have made him seem like a sexual deviant, but now days it's not so shocking--make of that what you will. An affair with an underwear model he labels "The Monkey" for her love of bananas and a disastrous trip to the new state of Israel lead Alex into therapy. The story ends before we know whether the therapy was successful or not.

The way the story is written, it's hard not to laugh even as Alex talks about cultural angst, guilt, and prejudice. Even as he talks about his bedroom escapades, it's still hard not to laugh and that keeps the reader from turning on Alex. If not for the humor it would be easy to see Alex as a whiny, disgusting pervert. Much as it would be easy to see Seinfeld as a womanizing boor if the situations he and his friends landed themselves in weren't so funny. So it's the humor that provides insulation from the most shocking revelations.

The downside of that is being insulated also makes it hard to take the novel as seriously as perhaps one should. Because at the root of Alex's non-linear ramblings are serious issues about bigotry and cultural identity. It's hard to see all that when you're too busy laughing.

I may just be a goy whose only knowledge of Jewish culture comes from sitcoms and books--not that there's anything wrong with that--but I found this book enlightening and entertaining. You should too.

That is all.

I hate Alex Portnoy, the protragonist of the novel, yet I couldn't stop reading this book. To me, that's a sign of a talented writer. The main character has few, if any, redeeming characteristics. He's an egomaniac. He's inconsiderate. He's obsessed with sex. He's a nasty human being in almost every way, yet (as long you're not easily offended) you can't stop reading about him.

"Portnoy's Complaint" is written as if it's the words of a patient confessing to his shrink. Portnoy wants to know what's wrong with himself, but before he can find out he shares his life story from childhood to his mid-thirties, and the vast majority of his story revolves around his relationship with his parents, being Jewish, and his obsession with sex.

I think what makes Portnoy fascinating is that there is probably a little bit of him in every man, though few of us may be comfortable admitting it. So it's interesting to read about him from a male perspective. From a female perspective I'd imagine he would be an interesting character if only because he shows just how depraved a man can be. I guarantee that after reading the book you'll be able to identify at least one Portnoy in your life--someone who has wasted their talents on selfish pursuits, yet they are so egotistical that they blame their shortcomings on everyone else, including their parents.

This book is ridiculously funny because no matter how absurd it gets, you can't help but realize that it's all too close to the truth.

I saw on the "60 minutes" television show that some Jews are upset that Roth has revealed so many Jewish secrets to the Gentile world in his many books. Having just read "Portnoy's Complaint" I understand that sentiment.
Roth teaches us Gentiles a lot of what it means to be Jewish. He teaches us some Jiddish. He points out the priority that the Jews place on marrying only other Jews. He laments the Jews preoccupation with their 2,000 year old "wandering Jew" status. And he marvels at the completely Jewish state of the state of Israel.
Before I read this novel I knew a little about Jewish culture. I had heard the word "goyim" (meaning gentiles) before, but "shiske" I did not know. Evidently it means a female gentile or perhaps a blonde female gentile. Shiskes are important to this novel. Portnoy spends all his energy is pursuit of shiske females must to the consternation of his Jewish parents. In so doing Portnoy attempts to cast of the mantle of his Judaism. Portnoy complains to his Dad that he is tired of "being a suffering jew". Roth is saying that the Jews cling to their suffering status in order to maintain cohesion in their ranks. And woe to the Jew who tries to marry outside his tribe lest he dilute the race. In the case of Alexander Portnoy's, his family members try to derail his relations with Gentile girls.
Philip Roth might have been one of the first "great" writers I have read to address headlong the theme of men and their compulsion to have sex--either by themselves, as the young Alexander Portnoys compulsion to masturbate, or sex with a female. This topic is the main focus of the book. We've always know that it is true that men think about sex pretty much all day long. But Roth is the first writer I have seen write about this at length.
The humour in this novel--yes it is laugh-at-loud funny--left me unprepared for the extreme sadness of Roth's latest novel "The Human Stain".

"You are the most unhappy person I have ever known. You are like a baby."

This assessment is given to the title character near the end of the story, after the reader has spent hundreds of pages within his mind, being privy to the darkest and most perverted images likely to be found in a modern novel. Though short and to-the-point, it is also accurate; Alexander Portnoy goes throughout his life with a fascinating mixture of narcissism and self-loathing, and directs his venom at all the major forces in his life. The brunt of this is given to his Oedipal mother, his hapless father, his own anti-semetic feelings about his Jewishness, and any unfortunate woman who gets in his path. Everything combines in a fresh yet easily understood stream-of-consciousness style to form a portrait of a stunningly neurotic man, who is as revolting as he is (dare I say?) likeable. Roth is at his peak here- the book is compulsively readable, hilarious, yet given to moments of creepiness and an overall thread of barely-contained (until the end) hysteria. It's a difficult book to critique, but a major work of one of America's masters. A must-read for all but the sheepish.

It is interesting to me that the person who reviewed this book just prior to me seemed to judge it as a failure, whereas their characterization of it is fairly accurate. *Portnoy's Complaint* *is* in actuality the rantings of a frustrated individual who feels the need to express their anger at their situation. In fact, that's the entire point.
I certainly enjoy this book every time I pick it up. In fact, the reference that sparked my curiousity came from a wonderful Woody Allen short story whose title escapes me. Roth's ascerbic prose is at peak form here, and considering the direction he took (which is fine, in my opinion), *PC* is his most readable work prior to 1996's *American Pastoral.* His characters are vivid and unique, as usual, and while *PC* does feature Roth's signature abrupt ending, for once, it fits rather well.
What I've found most fascinating about this work is that the history and complaints of Alexander Portnoy are extremely similar to those I've heard expressed by Asian-Americans who were raised in the US between 1970 through the present. The level of familial pressure and guilt laid upon Roth's narrator are quite equal to countless stories I've heard of like upbringings in households of first-generation immigrants. While obviously not everything parallels (no strict dietary laws unless one is patently Buddhist), the vast majority of it fits, sometimes almost frighteningly so.
I leave with a warning and a recommendation. If one is easily offended by sex matters and graphic language, one should avoid this volume. However, I have recommended this book in the past to several of my friends, all of whom have enjoyed it, and I do so now for the curious who have had the patience to read to this end of this quaint review.

Although dealing specifically with the tribulations of growing up as a Jewish male in the baby boom, the constant self-deprecating humor in this book is something that any western man should be able to appreciate. From cover to cover, this book offers the glorious schadenfreude of knowing that no matter how confused you may be about your own sexuality, Alexander Portnoy has it even worse.
The book's subject matter should be and occasionally succeeds in being disturbing. Portnoy's upbringing by doting, yet critical and controlling parents leaves him transfixed between conscience and desire. In rebellion against both his parents and the Christian society around him, he seeks out destructive sexual relationships with gentile women. At the same time, he cannot enjoy these relationships, and so even when he wants only meaningless, emotionless sex and the degradation of his partner, he succeeds only in degrading himself. The protagonist narrates these events with continual self-criticism and outrageous humor, however, so rather than being disturbed by his actions, the reader (the male reader, anyway) finds himself laughing and even identifying with Portnoy.
Only at the very end do Portnoy's neuroses become so degrading, and his humor so thin, that one can no longer laugh. This is the point of the book's brilliance: the reader experiences an epiphany that the book should have been disturbing, and the fact that Portnoy was able to cloak the nature of his life experiences as a sick, albeit hilarious, joke is doubly disturbing. As long as the world contains sexually repressed men, this book will be a classic.

This "classic" is more than a little bit dated, but it does feature some of the best stream-of-consciousness prose I've ever encountered. Alexander Portnoy is brilliant, driven, troubled, conflicted about his faith, shamelessly chauvinistic (sometimes downright misogynistic), and self-indulgent. His nearly 300 pages of narrative from a psychiatrist's couch brings us from his youth in the Jewish working-class of Newark to his "present" as a Great Society reformer and back again innumerable times. It ultimately doesn't lead anywhere that I was able to discern, but the vignettes of growing up in the 1940s and experiencing the changes of the following decades are wonderfully vivid, and the looks inside his own psyche through the years are often all too believable. (Much as I hate to admit it, teenage Portnoy's struggle to reconcile his left-wing politics with his longing for a wife who looks like she stepped out of a Laura Ashley catalog in her angora sweater and tartan skirt is painfully familiar to me!)
On the other hand, his memories of his parents' obsessive concern with bodily functions (or the lack thereof) and his recollections down to the most absurd details of his stormy sex life (sometimes with women who were just as neurotic as him, more often with various inanimate objects) often left me hoping the good doctor would just tell him to grow up already. I can see why Roth's frank sex and masturbation scenes were considered so innovative in 1967, but in a more liberated age they often come across as overwrought, sexist and, well, bad. Still, for all that, his retrospective look into adolescent sexuality and familial relationships from an adult perspective is second to none. So is his evocation of the paradox of a successful young adult still torn between craving parents' approval and bristling against their rules and expectations, something you don't have to be Jewish or male to appreciate. If Roth's most famous book hasn't aged as well as I'd hoped, it's still worth a read.

There are many reasons to read PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, some historical, some aesthetic. It is an important book historically because it was one of the first novels to deal in depth with Jewish identity and with an explicitly Jewish family. If one looks for American Jewish novels before the work of Roth and Bellow, one will be rather stunned at how few books there were. Most writers of Jewish descent before Roth and Bellow wrote as assimilated authors, partly because of a deep suspicion in American society as a whole against Jews. Today it is often forgotten that even in the 1940s many young Jewish intellectuals changed their last names in efforts to escape the "Jew quotas" maintained by many American universities. Hollywood, though most studio heads were Jewish, invariably erased all Jewish identity in films. Alexander Portnoy's rants about his astonishing Jewish family may seem familiar today, but at the time it was very nearly without precedent.

Then there is the aesthetic dimension. Roth's writing about growing up Jewish in a goyishe world would have meant little if he hadn't also done it so well. This truly is one of the funniest novels that I have ever read. I would rank it slightly behind CATCH-22, but equal to such other comic novels as John Barth's THE SOT-WEED FACTOR and Stanislaw Lem's THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS. Absolutely no one has ever written about sex with so much wit and humor. And no one has created such a phenomenally awful yet funny family as Roth has in inventing the Portnoy family. The sister may be nondescript, but absolutely no one reading the book will ever be able to forget Portnoy's mother, with her endless and all pervasive obsessions, or his father, with his lifelong striving to achieve intestinal health through consistent bowel movements.

The novel is also important for being one of the first American novels to deal frankly with the central character's sex life. The two unavoidable facts of Portnoy's life are that he is 1) Jewish and 2) absolutely obsessed with sex. These two facts overwhelm anything else that can be said about him, even his own moral convictions that lead him to a life of public service. There is the implication that the particular nature of his Jewish upbringing--as a kosher Jew in a Christian culture--has played a crucial role in the molding of his sexuality, for while his sexual obsession hasn't been created by society, the particular ways that it is expressed has. Portnoy has no interest in Jewish girls, but only in non-Jewish women who he imagines (or perhaps they imagine) he can save, but whom he in fact exploits and abuses. The apex of the novel is his mistreatment and exploitation of a beautiful model whom he dubs The Monkey. His inability to treat his sexual conquests with respect and humanity is connected with his inability to escape his outsider status as a Jew in a Christian culture. But he is also a man without a country, as seen in the end of the novel where he attempts unsuccessfully to rape a young Israeli woman he meets in Israel.

So, in the end, PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT functions as a seminal Jewish novel, a highly successful comic novel, a sexual confession, and a moral novel. He doesn't offer any solutions to Portnoy's dilemma; he doesn't show how he can begin to relate to women with any degree of respect. He doesn't solve any problems; he merely shows that these moral dilemmas exist. The novel in the end might have a didactic purpose, but Roth possesses such a gigantic comic gift that the reader will hardly notice that they are receiving a moral lecture.

This is a modern classic that I only recently discovered. It's a very funny, insightful and original look at a man struggling with his identity. Although the (anti?) hero, Alexander Portnoy, is Jewish, and extremely conscious and self-conscious about this, the novel is expansive enough in scope to reach issues of universal importance. Philip Roth has written some other very good books (the only other that I've read, and with which I was equally impressed, is American Pastoral) and he seems to have a knack for expressing the psychology of a particular type of American Jewish male. What is fascinating about the Portnoy character is that Roth makes no effort to make him especially likable or sympathetic. I can imagine that women in particular will not have much patience with Portnoy's sexual compulsion. Yet this makes him an unusually well-rounded character whose flaws are openly exposed for all the world to see. The novel takes the form of a confession on the part of Portnoy to a silent (till the very last sentence) psychoanalyst. The narrative takes place while he is in his thirties, but he jumps around in time from his early childhood to recent events. It is surprising how engrossing this is, considering the absence of a linear plot or the usual coherence of time passing. Even books that use the technique of flashbacks usually follow a sequential order of events; Portnoy's Complaint is a seemingly arbitrary stream of consciousness, yet it remains compelling (and frequently hilarious) throughout.

Portnoy's central conflict is his inability to reconcile his desire for freedom, especially sexual freedom, on the one hand, and his strong moral upbringing at the hands of very religious and overprotective parents on the other. He laments that he is the butt of every joke about a boy oppressed by Jewish parents. Portnoy's family is as ambiguous as he is; they love and care about him at the same time as they smother him and try their best to keep him in a state of perpetual guilt. Portnoy has also been raised to distrust goys (non-Jews). He has extremely complex and ambivalent feelings about this, as he simultaneously resents and yearns for the acceptance of the goy world. This is most notably expressed in his relationships with "shiksas" (non-Jewish women), who, he confesses, he has a desire to win over as a way to feel equal to goys. Yet he has just as much trouble committing to relationships with Jewish women.

Portnoy is, in may ways, an obnoxious narrator. He is extremely narcissistic, dramatizing minute details of his life into matters of supreme importance. Yet this is also one of the book's strengths, as it gives the reader full access to Portnoy's personality and inner self. The reader can easily see through Portnoy's attempts to glamorize and exaggerate, and at the same time come away with a grudging admiration for his attempt to be honest about himself. I listened to the audiobook version, in which Ron Silver does a superb job of capturing Portnoy's complex personality. Well worth reading for anyone fascinated with human psychology.

Alexander Portnoy, a brilliant 33 year old man (born the same year and raised in the same general area of the country as the author, by the way), recites his troubled, over-sexed past, in a rambling, stream-of-conscousness confession to his psychologist, the silent Dr. Spielvogel. Along the way, we learn about his over-bearing mother, his whipped constipatory, but well-meaning father, and his strange incompatable girlfriend Monkey, often accompanied by a detailed description of a peculiar form of masturbation or some other perverse act of a sexual nature. Alex, you see, mocks being Jewish, but prefers his religion to Christianity which he considers totally ridiculous. There's a sort of twist at the end of the book: Portnoy's real reason that he's seeing a psychologist is not apparent until it's revealed (pretty much every character in this book should be in extensive therapy).

I certainly was entertained by "Portnoy's Complaint" and could imagine why it caused such shock when it was written. However, in my humble opinion, it absolutely does not merit being considered one of the top 100 American novels of the 20th century, which it usually is. It's just not that great.

Also, I have to differ with all the reviewers who felt that this novel was humorous. In fact, in my opinion the book is far more sad and disturbing than funny. Sure, there are funny scenes, but Alex is a rather pathetic individual who hates, not only the women he's with, but himself as well. The character I found the most odious by far, however, was Alex's mother, Sophie. I kept wondering how anyone could grow up to become so overbearing and smothering. While she fed and clothed her children, and loved them in her own destructive way, her basic parenting method was to teach her children fear and guilt. Fear the Christians, fear getting injured, fear living your life. Feel guilty about almost anything that isn't proper in Sophie's mind. To me, Sophie was emotionally abusive, and I think Philip Roth would agree. Alex's forays into bizarre forms of masturbation were clearly an escape from his absurdly overbearing mother.

Some reviewers made interesting comparisons of "American Pie," "Seinfeld," and other contemporary examples to "Portnoy's Complaint." I'd rather hang out with Jerry, Elaine and George (but not Kramer anymore!) any day.

Alex Portnoy complains to his analyst about the consequences of his Jewishness and his Jewish upbringing. But the book can be seen as more about obsessiveness than it is about Jewish culture, per se. Moreover, time and again comfortable cultural conventions are laid open to expose their essential fradulence including but hardly limited to religious tenets.
Alex's mother is obsessed with maintaining a perfect Jewish househould not only for herself but for the world to see and that includes Alex. Of course perpetual anxiety and oftentimes hysteria pervade the Portnoy household as any shortcomings must be eradicated. But, if anything, possible inferiorities are internalized only to seep out later. The Alex that emerges leads what amounts to a double life. On the one hand he is a "do-gooder" ( a perfect person) publicly acknowledged for his service to mankind, but on the other hand a compulsive Alex is fixated on sex as the only aspect of his life that is significant to him. Ultimately the conflicts are too much for Alex, hence an analyst.
There is a lot to digest in this book. It is humorous, outrageous, and would be offensive to the tender-hearted, but it is far more a study on personal and social dysfunction. The question is has Roth captured a reality in a manner that informs or captivates. The answer here is an unqualified, yes.

In "Portnoy's Commplaint", we meet Alexander Portnoy. The insinuation seems to be that being smothered by his mother and father as a child turned him into somewhat of a nymphomaniac. This premise leads to numerous awkward situations that make this book laugh out loud funny at times. Portnoy tells the story as if he were talking to his therapist.

From that uncomfortable first line in which he discusses the belief that his mother and elementary school teacher were the same person in different dress, we see Portnoy's parents tripping over themselves to please their son while virtually ignoring their overweight daughter. Young Alexander is a brilliant student in school, but he hides an extremely overactive hand in the activity of masturbation. His lust for the orgasm transfers into his life as a sexually active adult. As an unmarried employee of the government, he chooses women only to meet his desires. This puts him into situations in which he sees women such as "Monkey" who are a little rough around the edges. His drive comes to a head as he meets a Jewish girl that reminds him of his mother, only to be rejected by her because of the Americanized way he lives.

This final girl Naomi also completes the second theme of the book, the loathing of religion. While Portnoy openly mocks the Christian faith, he sees nothing but Christian women until his encounter with Naomi. This completes a cycle in which Portnoy feels scorned by the entire religious establishment.

Portnoy seems bent on self-destruction. It seems as though he is trying to destroy himself by contracting disease and seeing women that under-nourish his intellectual needs. At the same time, he does everything possible to run away from the faith he is raised in. One can not be certain of an overall message in the book, but the awkward situations and one-liners make for a very entertaining read.

Like so many things in this world: you either love them or hate them. This book would be one item added to that list.

The topics of this book can frustrate and upset countless readers. It is semi-autobiographical - which delivers mainly Jewish humor - about the sexual frustrations of the New Jersey raised Jewish boy of his just-before-the-baby-boomer generation. From that backdrop, you are then sent to read hundreds of pages about masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, and more. To some, no matter how well written, these topics are taboo and not for their enjoyment.

The style of this book is a stream of consciousness narrative, flowing in and out, jumping topics and times in truly narrative fashion, reflecting basically on sexual conquests and mores. It is like a very long session with a psychologist or psychiatrist. And, appropriately ends with, "So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?"

Published when the play "Hair" was rocking the charts [1969], this book is as much about its time as it is about Jewish frustration. Having grown up in those times in a Jewish neighborhood, I liked this book - but did not love it. I loved some portions - his desecration of rabbis is unparalleled when he writes, "Oh God, oh Guh-ah-duh, if you're up there shining down your countenance, why not spare us from here on out the enunciation of the rabbis! Why not spare us rabbis themselves! Look, why not spare us religion, if only in the name of human dignity!" More of the times than of Jewish humor, yes?

Between the writing style and topics, may readers will be upset. The seemingly "private jokes" often utilizing Yiddish to accentuate their cynical zingers, really could be applied to other ethnicities, save the Yiddish terms. But, New York/New Jersey humor, even if about "clean" topics can be beyond reader's desired topics. Just not for this reader.

There are screaming times in this book when Roth shows that his comedic writing style is equal to the best stand up comics of his generation. He proves in this book, and perhaps "Goodnight Columbus", that he was a forerunner of the great cynical humor which pervaded movies and television from his generation forward. His style is copied throughout Norman Lear's mega-successful series, is perhaps what made Woody Allen a social hero in the 1970's, and may be the creator of other modern comics - including Howard Stern whose attempts to shock people about sexual innuendo today are no more revolutionary than what Roth provides in this novel.

For social importance, this is a great novel. For humor it is a great novel. As for comfort in reading, it is a good novel. I would not force this book upon any of those who may be insulted or shocked by its topics. Hence, I deliver my endorsement with caution.

Philip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint' offers the reader a fresh take on the Novel while never forgetting the tradition of the great writers that came before him.

Porntoy's complaint is a character study in the form of a monologue made by Alexander Portnoy, a successfull Jew. However, Alex suffers from an inner conflict that is dividing and tormenting him. On one hand he loves his family, and he serves his community dutifully. On the other hand he is tormented by his childhood and his overbearing mother. He's also a bit of a sexual deviant, and feels guilty for indulging in a number of sexual fetishes.

The book is incredibly funny. You'll laugh out loud at the Alex's recollection of his childhood, masterbating in the bathroom while his mom calls into him, "Don't flush Alex! I want to see what's in your stool!"

The book is also highly influential. Philip Roth has invented the "Self Loathing Jew". If you're at all a fan of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, then you simply MUST read this book. It's obvious that David got many of his comic ideas about Jewishness from directly from Roth.

If there's a complaint I have about the book it would be that the novel feels incomplete. I found myself hoping throughout that we'd get to hear Alex engage in some dialoge with his shrink. Instead the whole book is a monologue made by Alex, directed at his shrink. Sometimes this approaches on overwhellming, but the length of the novel and it's pacing and the variety and quality of the antecdotes from his past keep the reader intrueged.

What exactly does Alex tell his Shrink? Well, he spends most of the time talking about his overbearing Mother. He tells about his high school addiction to masterbation. He talks about his on again off again relationship with his girlfriend 'The Monkey'. As well as previous relationships he had durring college. Finally, he talks about his trip to Israel and his sexual exploits there.

This book is the extremist version of Holden Caufield's abhorrence of modern day culture and the problems that are encountered by male teens. And when I say the "extremist" version I mean it. This book is hysterical - the situations that the protagonist, Portnoy, puts himself through are unbelievable. Holden Caufield can continue to fantasize himself as the Catcher in the Rye, however, I much prefer, the perverted and convoluted mindset of Alex Portnoy and the sexual tribulations that control his life. I can't say that I identify with Alex Portnoy, but I do find his rants and superstitions much more amusing and fascinating to listen to. I shouldn't be surprised at the randy writing of Phillip Roth after reading his much acclaimed Sabbath's Theater - but I have to admit the uninhibited and uncontrolled outbursts in the book were indeed hysterical and surprising.
I'd like to further note, that I very much enjoyed Roth's afterward, and I'd like to know if what he wrote was true about his discovery of a piece of paper left behind in a restaurant in Chicago that helped shape what Roth wrote about in his writing career. I do highly recommend this book - it is intended for someone with an open mind and frankness about sexuality.

Most people will, by now, have seen the neurotic, self-loathing/loving, Jew with mommy issues schtick somewhere before, so "Portnoy's Complaint" may not pack as potent a punch as it originally did in 1969. Regardless, Roth's book feels like the best, most authentic version of said schtick that I've read or watched anywhere.

In case you don't already know what the book is about and haven't read the description, it's basically the narrator rambling to his psychiatrist (the psychiatrist has one line in the entire book) about his sexual desires, repressions, motivations, etc., many of which are influenced by his Jewish upbringing and the presence of his overbearing mother.

I thought most of the book was very, very funny. I laughed sympathetically at the characters that the narrator was complaining about, while often laughing simultaneously AT the narrator for getting so worked up about things.

I've seen/heard people complain about gratuitous depictions of sex and masturbation. One of the book's main themes is the narrator's simultaneous sexual obsession, guilt, and self-repression, so yeah, there are some sex scenes and some masturbation scenes. A couple of the sex scenes do get a little adventurous, but it's probably nothing you've never heard of before. In fact, if you've A) masturbated and B) had sex (these should both be prerequisites to reading "Portnoy's Complaint"), you're probably not too prudish for anything in here. It's a bit of a shame that the book has a reputation for sexual outrageousness, because it contains some of the most genuine descriptions of sexual desires and motivations.

The only weak point of the book for me was the ending, which seemed a bit rushed and not all that strongly connected to the rest of the book. However, given that the book is basically comic ramblings about a horny kid growing up and trying to deal with his stereotypically shrewish Jewish mother, the plot was never a focus and the end was always going to feel a little abrupt. All in all, it's well worth reading for the humor, the depiction of growing up Jewish in 20th century Newark, and the honest exploration of sexual motivations.

For everyone who thinks the epitome of gross-out humor is "There's Something About Mary", Philip Roth went farther almost thirty years earlier. What's more outrageous? The hair gel, or the piece of meat in "Portnoy's Complaint"? Besides crossing the line of decency for hilarious results, "Portnoy's Complaint" is a fascinating stream-of-consciousness novel that reveals the true thoughts, fears, and neuroses of a young man. The book is so audacious, it has inevitably identified Philip Roth in the eyes of many readers. This effect has led Roth to examine the results of fame on a writer in many of his following books, under the guise of Nathan Zuckerman. Read this first, and then read the rest. Just one thing: DON'T SKIP TO THE LAST PAGE! Trust me, you won't want to ruin the effect the last paragraph will have on everything else in the book (it's the only novel i can think of with a punchline). That said, read the book!