You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Scan barcode
raamkay's review against another edition
4.0
Hilarious coming of age tale. I laughed out loud all the way through. Brilliantly written insight into a boys journey to adolescence
greenanole's review against another edition
4.0
lots of sex. and funnies. and neurotic jew-dom. thumbs up
billyshakez's review against another edition
4.0
This transcends its own vulgarity – placing it beyond easy dismissals as mere literary porn – by using sex to explore pretty much everything else: history, culture, identity, religion, politics etc.
It is full of coarse comic riffing and inanity, but it is a brutal portrait of life, a great work of comic irony.
Roth's language, and how he blends caustic humor with serious themes (racism, politics, sex, marriage, family, etc.), has inspired some to label him the greatest living American author. Whether he deserves that or not, I can't say.
It is full of coarse comic riffing and inanity, but it is a brutal portrait of life, a great work of comic irony.
Roth's language, and how he blends caustic humor with serious themes (racism, politics, sex, marriage, family, etc.), has inspired some to label him the greatest living American author. Whether he deserves that or not, I can't say.
michaelontheplanet's review against another edition
4.0
Let my peter go: like Virginia Woolf with an unlimited supply of viagra, Roth's monomaniac sex pest Portnoy can't stop his interior monologue. And joyous stuff it is, ranting on about genitals, intercourse, erections, penetrations, stimulation, simulacra, Jewish parents, women's underwear, and masturbation. Endless masturbation. If forced to categorise this would have to go under Jewish onanism or onanistic Jews. As an eight year old, I looked up masturbation (it sounded like something unpleasant you might need to get a cream from the chemist for) in the ancient Chambers dictionary kept in the study. It didn't have a definition for television. But it did have masturbation. "Self defilement" it stated. Shocked, I avoided it for ages. I wish I'd read this instead. Pure, marvellous filth.
kirsten48's review against another edition
4.0
My biggest complaint about this book is that it made my mother say the word "masturbation" to me. When I told her what I was about to read she responded with, "Well, I hope you enjoy excessive scenes of masturbation."
Okay, so she wasn't entirely wrong with her cleverly veiled critique, but I found that there was much more to the novel than self-love.
I enjoyed spending a couple of days inside the mind of Alex Portnoy. I am not Jewish, I'm not male, I have a child and visit my parents on a regular basis. I think it is a testament to Roth's consistent writing and character development that I was not only interested in Portnoy but could (at times) relate to him.
This novel will probably not change my life but it was a fun and interesting look inside another world.
amyheap's review against another edition
2.0
It's a bit of a relief, finishing Portnoy's Complaint. At first, I really enjoyed the amusing journey into an American Jewish boy's childhood, but, by the end, I found Alex very tiresome. His obsession with his penis, his inability to be content and his being generally disagreeable, was wearisome. There were parts I found very interesting, but I am happy to say goodbye.
cat_ansell's review against another edition
4.0
I finally have a name for the affliction I've suffered from for all these years!
hank_moody's review against another edition
2.0
In the late 1960s, a time of sexual revolution and flower children, young Philip Roth took his parents out to dinner to tell them that he was going to publish a novel that could cause some commotion, especially among the Orthodox Jewish community, because of its content. His mother, in the typical manner of Sophia Portnoy, the mother of the protagonist of the novel that Roth mentioned to his parents, replied that he was "living in delusion" and that "no one would read his novel", although Roth had already gained some fame in literary circles.
Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for his mother, the novel sold millions of copies, became a cult classic, got banned in several countries for its content, and was named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century in the English language. Is "Portnoy's Complaint" really such a good novel, or did it succeed thanks to the wave of popularity enjoyed by Jewish comedians of the time, sexual awakening, and obscene content that Roth did not hesitate to use? It can be said that it is a combination of all three of these factors.
Alexander Portnoy is a stereotypical American Jew, as we have come to know about them through numerous films and books. Woody Allen comes to mind, among others. A neurotic, sexually frustrated man with an Oedipus complex who lives in the shadow of his controlling mother. He calls himself the "Raskolnikov of jerking off" and, as he puts it, "lives in the middle of a Jewish joke" and tries to live the life he wants while opposing the culture of which he is a victim, which leads to his meeting with a psychologist whose sessions make up "Portnoy's Complaint". Through several sessions between Portnoy and the silent psychologist who only speaks at the end of the novel, Portnoy takes us through his childhood, adolescence, student life, all the way to the present and his journey to the promised land, Israel.
Roth tried his best to write the most shocking novel possible, and to make it a middle finger to Jewish society and culture, because what else can you call what he wrote? A controlling mother who teaches her son to pee by touching his penis while calling him sweet names, keeping track of what he eats and what comes out of him, and calls him a "lover" at the age of 33. His father is a completely irrelevant figure, a man who lives in the shadow of his wife and suffers from constipation. All the women who decide to sleep with him are shikses or women of low morals. Of course, they are not Jewish, because this is a form of Portnoy's fight against society, and when he finally decides to find a woman to marry in Israel, she looks like his mother, and he cannot get an erection with her. Portnoy masturbates with an apple, his sister's panties, and beef liver on his way to a Bar Mitzvah, which is a strong symbolism because chopped liver is a traditional Jewish dish served for Bar Mitzvahs.
When I say that Roth is trying his best, it really is so. He imposes his humor, which after a certain time becomes tiring and ceases to be funny, which is always a problem with authors who write these types of confessional novels because they don't know how to stop and have to be funny at all costs, at least in their heads. Frederic Beigbeder with his novels can be an example. Also, humor is a subjective thing, and maybe I'm just not the right audience for it. I believe that American Jews can find themselves more here.
"Portnoy's Complaint" has a certain quality, the one where Roth makes the perfect victim of culture and shows what happens when tradition and culture have too much influence on people. The problem is in the way it is portrayed because the novel has not aged well and if it were written now, Roth would have become a victim of cancel culture in the blink of an eye due to the depiction of female characters in his novel, i.e. Portnoy's view of them, because of the sex scene of mother and son, because of rape (because the scene in which Portnoy persuades the girl to perform fellatio despite her opposition is nothing more than rape because it does not mean no).
Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for his mother, the novel sold millions of copies, became a cult classic, got banned in several countries for its content, and was named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century in the English language. Is "Portnoy's Complaint" really such a good novel, or did it succeed thanks to the wave of popularity enjoyed by Jewish comedians of the time, sexual awakening, and obscene content that Roth did not hesitate to use? It can be said that it is a combination of all three of these factors.
Alexander Portnoy is a stereotypical American Jew, as we have come to know about them through numerous films and books. Woody Allen comes to mind, among others. A neurotic, sexually frustrated man with an Oedipus complex who lives in the shadow of his controlling mother. He calls himself the "Raskolnikov of jerking off" and, as he puts it, "lives in the middle of a Jewish joke" and tries to live the life he wants while opposing the culture of which he is a victim, which leads to his meeting with a psychologist whose sessions make up "Portnoy's Complaint". Through several sessions between Portnoy and the silent psychologist who only speaks at the end of the novel, Portnoy takes us through his childhood, adolescence, student life, all the way to the present and his journey to the promised land, Israel.
Roth tried his best to write the most shocking novel possible, and to make it a middle finger to Jewish society and culture, because what else can you call what he wrote? A controlling mother who teaches her son to pee by touching his penis while calling him sweet names, keeping track of what he eats and what comes out of him, and calls him a "lover" at the age of 33. His father is a completely irrelevant figure, a man who lives in the shadow of his wife and suffers from constipation. All the women who decide to sleep with him are shikses or women of low morals. Of course, they are not Jewish, because this is a form of Portnoy's fight against society, and when he finally decides to find a woman to marry in Israel, she looks like his mother, and he cannot get an erection with her. Portnoy masturbates with an apple, his sister's panties, and beef liver on his way to a Bar Mitzvah, which is a strong symbolism because chopped liver is a traditional Jewish dish served for Bar Mitzvahs.
When I say that Roth is trying his best, it really is so. He imposes his humor, which after a certain time becomes tiring and ceases to be funny, which is always a problem with authors who write these types of confessional novels because they don't know how to stop and have to be funny at all costs, at least in their heads. Frederic Beigbeder with his novels can be an example. Also, humor is a subjective thing, and maybe I'm just not the right audience for it. I believe that American Jews can find themselves more here.
"Portnoy's Complaint" has a certain quality, the one where Roth makes the perfect victim of culture and shows what happens when tradition and culture have too much influence on people. The problem is in the way it is portrayed because the novel has not aged well and if it were written now, Roth would have become a victim of cancel culture in the blink of an eye due to the depiction of female characters in his novel, i.e. Portnoy's view of them, because of the sex scene of mother and son, because of rape (because the scene in which Portnoy persuades the girl to perform fellatio despite her opposition is nothing more than rape because it does not mean no).