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jobly's review against another edition
4.0
Many reviewers seem to concentrate purely on the Rabelaisian qualities of 'Portnoy's Complaint' and it's certainly not for those who are at all squeamish about the sexual or scatological. But Roth's novel is about so much more than this. While Portnoy's monologue to his psychoanalyst is undoubtedly sex-obsessed, what Roth explores most profoundly is the experience of being a Jewish man growing to maturity in mid 20th Century America. It's a novel about identity and belonging, or, perhaps more accurately, identity-confusion and alienation. The novel is at times laugh-out-loud funny, but when dealing with the central character's desperate attempts to find a place for himself in a world he feels so at odds with, the narrative is also extremely sad and moving.
Its also an interesting work in terms of how it deals with issues of maleness more generally. Like 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Fight Club', this belongs to a post-war trend (particularly, it seems, among American Novelists) in literature to explore the theme of masculinity in crisis. Unlike Kesey or Palahniuk, though, Roth manages to avoid being guilty of misogyny. This may not be true of Portnoy himself -his narrative is often reprehensible in how it describes and discusses women - but Roth establishes a clearly unreliable narrator who we are not asked to entirely trust or like. In this way we are allowed to peer through the cracks in Portnoy's tirade and see the narrative's women in a far more complex and sympathetic light than the narrator does. The women here, we come to understand, are also struggling to find firm footing in the world and our sympathy for them grows the more they feature in the narrative. Part of Portnoy's tragedy is that he cannot seem to understand that, in their own way, the female characters are trying to find the same things he is.
It's a novel which will inevitably upset or even outrage many readers, indeed it seems designed to do this, but I'd strongly encourage the reader to see past the scabrous surface and see the wit, thoughtfulness and subtlety that lies beneath.
Its also an interesting work in terms of how it deals with issues of maleness more generally. Like 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Fight Club', this belongs to a post-war trend (particularly, it seems, among American Novelists) in literature to explore the theme of masculinity in crisis. Unlike Kesey or Palahniuk, though, Roth manages to avoid being guilty of misogyny. This may not be true of Portnoy himself -his narrative is often reprehensible in how it describes and discusses women - but Roth establishes a clearly unreliable narrator who we are not asked to entirely trust or like. In this way we are allowed to peer through the cracks in Portnoy's tirade and see the narrative's women in a far more complex and sympathetic light than the narrator does. The women here, we come to understand, are also struggling to find firm footing in the world and our sympathy for them grows the more they feature in the narrative. Part of Portnoy's tragedy is that he cannot seem to understand that, in their own way, the female characters are trying to find the same things he is.
It's a novel which will inevitably upset or even outrage many readers, indeed it seems designed to do this, but I'd strongly encourage the reader to see past the scabrous surface and see the wit, thoughtfulness and subtlety that lies beneath.
qvt93's review against another edition
5.0
It's really culturally Jewish. I was reminded of Californication at some points, in a good way! While The Monkey is no Rosa Saks, well, that's kind of her whole point. I started and finished reading this book in Berlin, for irony's sake.
In all seriousness, Roth is a really really talented writer. See, look:
Best quote:
"What I'm saying. Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds—as though through fucking I will discover America."
Rest:
"It is an iron-cold January day, dusk--oh, these memories of dusk are going to kill me yet"
"Let them eat eels and frogs and pigs and crabs and lobsters; let them eat vulture, let them eat ape-meat and skunk if they like—a diet of abominable creatures well befits a breed of mankind so hopelessly shallow and empty-headed as to drink, to divorce, and to fight with their fists. All they know, these imbecilic eaters of the execrable, is to swagger, to insult, to sneer, and sooner or later to hit."
"Every girl he sees turns out (hold your hats) to be carrying around between her legs–a real cunt. Amazing! Astonishing! Still can't get over the fantastic idea that when you are looking at a girl, you are looking at somebody who is guaranteed to have on her–a cunt! They all have cunts! Right under their dresses!"
"Look, at least I don't find myself still in my early thirties locked into a marriage with some nice person whose body has ceased to be of any genuine interest to me–at least I don't have to get into bed every night with somebody who by and large I fuck out of obligation instead of lust."
"How can I give up what I have never even had, for a girl, who delicious and provocative as once she may have been, will inevitably grow as familiar to me as a loaf of bread? For love? What love? Is that what binds all these couples we know together–the ones who even bother to let themselves be bound? Isn't it something more like weakness? Isn't it rather convenience and apathy and guilt? Isn't it rather fear and exhaustion and inertia, gutlessness plain and simple, far far more than that "love" that the marriage counselors and the songwriters and the psychotherapists are forever dreaming about?"
"I want Thereal McCoy! In her blue parka and her red earmuffs and her big white mittens–Miss America, on blades! With her mistletoe and her plum pudding (whatever that may be), and her one-family house with a banister and a staircase, and parents who are tranquil and patient and dignified, and also a brother Billy who knows how to take motors apart and says "Much obliged," and isn't afraid of anything physical, and oh the way she'll cuddle next to me on the sofa in her Angora sweater with her legs pulled back up beneath her tartan skirt, and the way shell turn at the doorway and say to me, "And thank you ever so much for a wonderful wonderful evening," and then this amazing creature–to whom no one has ever said " Shah! " or "I only hope your children will do the same to you someday!"–this perfect, perfect-stranger, who is as smooth and shiny and cool as custard, will kiss me–raising up one shapely calf behind her–and my nose and my name will have become as nothing."
"No, you pray and you pray and you pray, you lift your impassioned prayers to God on the altar of the toilet seat, throughout your adolescence you deliver up to Him the living sacrifice of your spermatazoa by the gallon–and then one night, around midnight, on the corner of Lexington and Fifty-second, when you have come really to the point of losing faith in the existence of such a creature as you have been imagining for yourself even unto your thirty-second year, there she is, wearing a tan pants suit, and trying to hail a cab–lanky, with dark and abundant hair, and smallish features that give her face a kind of petulant expression, and an absolutely fantastic ass."
"Who knows what I was up to? Maybe I was up to nothing. Maybe I was just being myself. Maybe that's all I really am, a lapper of cunt, the slavish mouth for some woman's hole. Eat! And so be it! Maybe the wisest solution for me is to live on all fours! Crawl through life feasting on pussy, and leave the righting of wrongs and the fathering of families to the upright creatures! Who needs monuments erected in his name, when there is this banquet walking the streets?"
' "But, Your Honor, she is of age, after all, a consenting adult—' "DON'T BULLSHIT ME WITH LEGALISMS, PORTNOY. YOU KNEW RIGHT FROM WRONG. YOU KNEW YOU WERE DEGRADING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. AND FOR THAT, WHAT YOU DID AND HOW YOU DID IT, YOU ARE JUSTLY SENTENCED TO A LIMP DICK. GO FIND ANOTHER WAY TO HURT A PERSON." '
In all seriousness, Roth is a really really talented writer. See, look:
Best quote:
"What I'm saying. Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds—as though through fucking I will discover America."
Rest:
"It is an iron-cold January day, dusk--oh, these memories of dusk are going to kill me yet"
"Let them eat eels and frogs and pigs and crabs and lobsters; let them eat vulture, let them eat ape-meat and skunk if they like—a diet of abominable creatures well befits a breed of mankind so hopelessly shallow and empty-headed as to drink, to divorce, and to fight with their fists. All they know, these imbecilic eaters of the execrable, is to swagger, to insult, to sneer, and sooner or later to hit."
"Every girl he sees turns out (hold your hats) to be carrying around between her legs–a real cunt. Amazing! Astonishing! Still can't get over the fantastic idea that when you are looking at a girl, you are looking at somebody who is guaranteed to have on her–a cunt! They all have cunts! Right under their dresses!"
"Look, at least I don't find myself still in my early thirties locked into a marriage with some nice person whose body has ceased to be of any genuine interest to me–at least I don't have to get into bed every night with somebody who by and large I fuck out of obligation instead of lust."
"How can I give up what I have never even had, for a girl, who delicious and provocative as once she may have been, will inevitably grow as familiar to me as a loaf of bread? For love? What love? Is that what binds all these couples we know together–the ones who even bother to let themselves be bound? Isn't it something more like weakness? Isn't it rather convenience and apathy and guilt? Isn't it rather fear and exhaustion and inertia, gutlessness plain and simple, far far more than that "love" that the marriage counselors and the songwriters and the psychotherapists are forever dreaming about?"
"I want Thereal McCoy! In her blue parka and her red earmuffs and her big white mittens–Miss America, on blades! With her mistletoe and her plum pudding (whatever that may be), and her one-family house with a banister and a staircase, and parents who are tranquil and patient and dignified, and also a brother Billy who knows how to take motors apart and says "Much obliged," and isn't afraid of anything physical, and oh the way she'll cuddle next to me on the sofa in her Angora sweater with her legs pulled back up beneath her tartan skirt, and the way shell turn at the doorway and say to me, "And thank you ever so much for a wonderful wonderful evening," and then this amazing creature–to whom no one has ever said " Shah! " or "I only hope your children will do the same to you someday!"–this perfect, perfect-stranger, who is as smooth and shiny and cool as custard, will kiss me–raising up one shapely calf behind her–and my nose and my name will have become as nothing."
"No, you pray and you pray and you pray, you lift your impassioned prayers to God on the altar of the toilet seat, throughout your adolescence you deliver up to Him the living sacrifice of your spermatazoa by the gallon–and then one night, around midnight, on the corner of Lexington and Fifty-second, when you have come really to the point of losing faith in the existence of such a creature as you have been imagining for yourself even unto your thirty-second year, there she is, wearing a tan pants suit, and trying to hail a cab–lanky, with dark and abundant hair, and smallish features that give her face a kind of petulant expression, and an absolutely fantastic ass."
"Who knows what I was up to? Maybe I was up to nothing. Maybe I was just being myself. Maybe that's all I really am, a lapper of cunt, the slavish mouth for some woman's hole. Eat! And so be it! Maybe the wisest solution for me is to live on all fours! Crawl through life feasting on pussy, and leave the righting of wrongs and the fathering of families to the upright creatures! Who needs monuments erected in his name, when there is this banquet walking the streets?"
' "But, Your Honor, she is of age, after all, a consenting adult—' "DON'T BULLSHIT ME WITH LEGALISMS, PORTNOY. YOU KNEW RIGHT FROM WRONG. YOU KNEW YOU WERE DEGRADING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. AND FOR THAT, WHAT YOU DID AND HOW YOU DID IT, YOU ARE JUSTLY SENTENCED TO A LIMP DICK. GO FIND ANOTHER WAY TO HURT A PERSON." '
johndiconsiglio's review against another edition
Before American Pie’s protagonist found creative uses for deserts, the late-great Philip Roth beat him to it—with liver. His 1969 classic is remembered (fairly) for its outrageousness & (unfairly) as an extended Jewish joke. In a monologue to his therapist, Portnoy fumes about his suffocating parents & lusts after shiksas. (“The Raskolnikov of jerking-off,” Portnoy bookends with 1996’s Mickey Sabbath, who could give anyone a rub for his money.) It cemented Roth’s reputation as literature’s l’enfant terrible &, to critics, a self-hating Jew. He’s more complicated. “Why are you doing this to me?” v. “Why can’t I ever stop loving you?”
brenlibros's review against another edition
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
jleclerc21's review against another edition
4.0
This book was filthy and I loved it. It managed to combine sex with humor, although the sex part is treated the way a 13-year old boy would.
thingtwo's review against another edition
5.0
Quick read, rather bawdy; great excuse to say 'No, Thanks!' to Mom's liver dinner.
seaton731's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
michael5000's review against another edition
2.0
Portnoy's Complaint has not, it seems to me, aged well. It also seemed to me not to have aged well when I read it in high school, in perhaps 1985, and I think I was right although I didn't really know why I was right at the time. In 1985, the swingin' phase of the sexual revolution and the heyday of Freudian psychoanalysis, although really only a decade and change in the past, felt like a foreign country. Today, what seemed at the time like naughty but virile sexual braggadocio is generally recognized as abusive behavior, and so not really very funny.
Why is it still on lists? Well, it is well crafted and well-paced, with a narrator who is at once unreliable and all too reliable. But I bet it's on its way out.
Why is it still on lists? Well, it is well crafted and well-paced, with a narrator who is at once unreliable and all too reliable. But I bet it's on its way out.
mitchellhb's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0