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Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

3.70 · Rating details · 58,624 ratings · 3,030 reviews

The famous confession of Alexander Portnoy, who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Hilariously funny, boldly intimate, startlingly candid, Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

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Paperback, 274 pages

Published May 18th 1995 by Vintage (first published 1969)

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Apr 27, 2015 Glenn Sumi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-library-100, contemp-classics, guardian-1000

Updated May 22, 2018: R.I.P. Philip Roth. Author of some of the defining works of the late 20th century (and even some of the early 21st). What a magnificent second act you had... and what a legacy you leave behind.

***

21 Random Thoughts After Reading Philip Roth’s Classic Portnoy’s Complaint 46 Years After Its Controversial Publication

1. I’ve read three or four Philip Roth books, but how have I never read this, which catapulted him to literary fame – or at least notoriety and celebrity – in the ...more

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Aug 28, 2007 Malbadeen rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Sarah's other pervey friends

Recommended to Malbadeen by: Sarah (what a perv)

Shelves: confused-or-informed-my-sexuality

It's recently been brought to my attention that my book reviews frequently are not actually about the book. And I'm wondering why would you want to know about the book when all you have to do is click on the little blurb about the book and then get on with the fascinating reading about...oh, say where I bought my milk last Tuesday or my fondest/most traumatic childhood memory, etc, etc.
And, yet. I aim to please so here is my sincere attempt to tell you something about this book. It (the book) go ...more

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Feb 19, 2014 G.R. Reader rated it did not like it

Portnoy's Complaint was my first husband's favorite book, and he used to quote from it all the time. When we got divorced (it wasn't amicable), my lawyer asked how I'd feel about using that fact in court. I was strongly tempted but told him after careful consideration that it was below the belt.

As it turned out, my instincts were sound. The judge knew Philip Roth personally, and it would have been a disaster. I only discovered this several years later and was amazed at what a close call I'd had.

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Mar 06, 2019 Em Lost In Books rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, stand-alone-read, 4-star, 1960-69

What a dirty little book! Kudos to Mr. Roth for writing something this scandalous half a century ago.

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Sep 11, 2018 David Schaafsma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction-20th-century, roth

'Enough being a nice Jewish boy. . . Let’s put the id back in yid”—Alex Portnoy

Portnoy's Complaint: "A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature."

I have had a couple intense years of reading Roth, rereading some, but mostly reading much I had not read. Recently Roth died, RIP, and then I read his last four short books, and decided to come full circle back to my (I think it was) first and possib 'Enough being a nice Jewish boy. . . Let’s put the id back in yid”—Alex Portnoy

Portnoy's Complaint: "A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature."

I have had a couple intense years of reading Roth, rereading some, but mostly reading much I had not read. Recently Roth died, RIP, and then I read his last four short books, and decided to come full circle back to my (I think it was) first and possibly the most read of his books, Portnoy’s Complaint, which reads almost as if it were a joyous comic farce. As with many other of his books, it begins with a male boy character, Alex, who struggles mightily with his Jewish Newark working class identity, and since he is a teenager, specifically with his parents. Roth, as with most of his other books, does not hide his character’s sexual life; instead he celebrates (and then analyzes, and sometimes problematizes) it in all its Rabelaisian glory.

Portnoy’s Complaint is sort of known as the Great American Novel of Teenaged Masturbation. In this book, Alex Portnoy is not at 14 having sex, but he calls himself “the Raskolnikov of jerking off,” and this is how the book comically opens, focusing on this. There is, later, a lot of sex in the book, usually related humorously—and for the time, but probably still now, for many, shockingly—explicit and what people used to call “foul-mouthed,” but it is clear his more serious subject is what it means to be Jewish in America; while making fun of himself he also satirizes his fellow Jews, sometimes brutally. The sex-obsessed Portnoy is in this tale confessing to his analyst; he is trying to figure out how to be Jewish (or not) in America, exploring these issues through the various women—Jews, gentiles—he is with. The joy of sex, the joys and madness of Jewish life, and atheism, all three topics are persistent themes in Roth across most of his work, and are here from the very first.

It is 1969, and Portnoy’s Complaint emerges after 2-3 fairly tame books from Roth (in comparison, on the explicitness scale) that build his literary reputation, and then this famously “dirty book” explodes (pun intended, sorry) on to the literary scene getting him denounced by Jewish leaders and community, becomeing an instant bestseller and critical smash. The world, or at least America, is going through a sexual revolution: Freedom, man, stop getting hung up on all this religious repression and just Let Go. Love the one you’re with! Alex was a top student, and is, at the time is telling the tale to his therapist, 33, a good liberal, working for Mayor John Lindsay, but is still lost, personally. He struggles, especially in his relationships with women: How can such a (once) good Jewish boy like him get so screwed up?! Maybe it's the endless screwing?

The book tacks back and forth between Alex the masturbator at 14 and Alex the sadly, madly lost sexual libertine at 33, a case of arrested development, one of many many Roth books that would seem to take a look at sex and mortality and cultural identity. To be sexual is for Roth (or is it just many of his main male characters?) to be fully alive—while to have that denied is a form of living death. And yet it sometimes seems to be killing him, even as he obsesses about what it means to be Jewish, and an atheist, in America.

The book begins with a funny look at Alex’s upbringing by a set of neurotic Jewish parents—domineering mother Sophie, nebbish father—where the only thing he seems to have control over is his penis. Fast forward to age 33 where he is alone, childless, serial dating various goyish blond women. He seems to want to rid himself of his Jewish identity! But then, in Davenport, Iowa, he discovers his discomfort with Midwestern Christian America, too, as he visits his girlfriend’s family over the holidays. He doesn't want that life, either. Later in the book he pursues an Israeli Jew; will it be better in Israel, with a “real Jew”? Nope! It’s like a dialectical narrative, going back in forth between being anguished over his cultural background, not wanting to be a traditional Jew, and not wanting to be mistreated as a Jew. But remember, this is—like Salinger’s Catcher—a therapy session, so we are not supposed to see this solely as an affirmation of Alex. Alex is sex crazy, at 33, and all around pretty crazy.

Portnoy’s Complaint I thought was still very funny, in my second reading of it decades later, though it may have been knocked down a peg from my list of Roth’s absolute greats such as the American trilogy (though still I would say it is in the top seven or eight), but it is a manic, often hilarious, sometimes tiring series of rants (interspersed with comic Yiddishisms), a monologue, a confession from a seemingly arrogant, sometimes clearly self-deprecating, lost soul, creating one of the great literary characters of the twentieth century, still a source of shock and outrage and humor; still a “dirty book” and very much a literary accomplishment. ...more

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Jul 14, 2019 Agnieszka rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019, reviewed

One can believe why the novel was shocking, scandalous even at time of release. It's both outrageous and amusing, and quite irreverent when it comes to the widely accepted values. I laughed a lot here, but to tell the truth I was slightly bored at times as well. I've never been to psychoanalytic yet, and I very much hope life would spare me that dubious pleasure in the future too, but the novel reads like you're furtively eavesdropping confessions of an anguished & neuritic, in Woody Allen style ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-20th-c, american-21st-c, novels, fiction, pulitzer-fiction, favorites

This is the book that made Philip Roth both famous and scandalous. Portnoy is a mother-obsessed sexual maniac and actually quite hilarious. Who else would have had his character masturbating with a cow liver other than the author of the equally darkly humorous Sabbath's Theater? This book and the reaction to it drives the Nathan Zuckerman series of books which all refer back to the public reaction with equal measures of awe and dismay. The book itself is a classic and extremely well-written as o ...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Shovelmonkey1 rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: those who are adventurous with offal

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list

Shelves: 1001-books

Earlier today I grossly contradicted myself by stating that I'd enjoyed all the books I'd read which were written by Philip Roth. Then I realised I'd forgotten about Portnoy's Complaint.

There is a school of thought which says to write well you have to write about what you know. On that basis I know I definitely did not like this book, although that unfortunately does not guarantee that I will excel at writing about it. With that in mind Philip Roth is official King of writing about what you know ...more

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Jun 06, 2020 Gabrielle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: used-bookstore-finds, american, read-in-2020, reviewed, own-a-copy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeRMl...

Alex Portnoy is in therapy. And boy, does he need it!! But rarely has therapy been this funny – at least from the outsider’s perspective.

Why this book was controversial when it was published in the 60s is obvious: it’s brutally honest and confessional about things that were (and sometimes still are) best not discussed in polite company (bowel movements and masturbation are just the tip of the iceberg here – I don’t think there’s a single PC page in this no https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeRMl...

Alex Portnoy is in therapy. And boy, does he need it!! But rarely has therapy been this funny – at least from the outsider’s perspective.

Why this book was controversial when it was published in the 60s is obvious: it’s brutally honest and confessional about things that were (and sometimes still are) best not discussed in polite company (bowel movements and masturbation are just the tip of the iceberg here – I don’t think there’s a single PC page in this novel). And Roth had the talent to make these topics hilarious – which I’m sure must have confused and freaked out a few prim and proper readers 40-odd years ago. None of this is really shocking now, but I kept trying to imagine my grandfather’s face if he had read this, and I’m pretty sure he would have blushed, coughed and then discreetly buried the conspicuous yellow book under his tomato plants (I think overbearing Jewish mothers sound a lot like overbearing Italian mothers, so I think it would have hit close to home, too).

But reading it in 2020, I can’t help but feel like Roth was ahead of his time in many ways. There is a fearlessness in Roth’s prose in this book, which one might attribute to the fact that this was his debut novel, but even when he wrote things I strongly disagree with (oh, the 60s casual sexism and homophobia…), I couldn’t help but admire the panache. I feel that panache, like the effective use of symbolism, is something that’s not so easily found in more contemporary literature, and that makes me sad, because it’s a quality that breathes life into a story in a very palpable way.

Portnoy is trying to figure out who he is, how his family background and cultural patrimony fit in America. Cultural identity is such an amazingly complex and layered thing, and this long monologue Alex delivers to his therapist is a sometimes horrifying and endearing but always fascinating glimpse into the mind of an all too human mess of a man. Anyone who had to deal with an over-bearing parent will cringe with the familiarity of the Portnoy family dynamics.

I didn't like it as much as "American Pastoral" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and "The Human Stain" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)- it's clearly not as sophisticated, but it shows Roth cutting his teeth rather brilliantly. Even if you don't like Alex much, getting to know him so intimately was an unforgettable adventure. ...more

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Sep 16, 2009 Daniel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, glendale-library-store, re-read

I have a vague memory that when I first read "Portnoy's Complaint" as a teenager -- I was probably 16 or 17 at the time -- I either carried my paperback copy with me to my grandmother's condo, or perhaps just mentioned to her that I was reading the book. What a mistake. She was displeased with my choice in reading material, and wasn't shy about letting me know. This was many years before Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize, making him somewhat more respectable to the American Jewish community. To I have a vague memory that when I first read "Portnoy's Complaint" as a teenager -- I was probably 16 or 17 at the time -- I either carried my paperback copy with me to my grandmother's condo, or perhaps just mentioned to her that I was reading the book. What a mistake. She was displeased with my choice in reading material, and wasn't shy about letting me know. This was many years before Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize, making him somewhat more respectable to the American Jewish community. To be frank, though, even if he had already won the Pulitzer at that time, Grammy likely still would have seen "Portnoy's Complaint," and probably anything else by Roth, as a shanda fur die goyim and best avoided by her grandson. As an already somewhat lapsed Jew at the time, though, I found the novel hilarious, shocking and frighteningly accurate, if a bit exaggerated.

At more than double the age I was then, I decided to revisit "Portnoy's Complaint" for the first time, partly because I want to see if it's held up for me after all these years, and partly to see how it compares to the handful of other Roth novels I've read in recent years, including "The Anatomy Lesson" and "The Plot Against America." So what did I find? As an older and now completely lapsed Jew, I found "Portnoy's Complaint" hilarious, shocking and frighteningly accurate, if a bit exaggerated. It also stands heads and shoulders above the other Roth novels I've read. As far as I can tell, there's "Portnoy's Complaint," and then there's everything else he's written.

I won't bother saying much about the book's content here because either you've already read it don't need to be told about it, or you should read the book, and I don't want to ruin it for you by recounting the best parts. (Frankly, the whole book's great, and singling out the best parts would be a pretty daunting task.) But I do have one caveat: I'm not sure how well this book would resonate with anyone who didn't grow up as a male in a Jewish family in America. I'm not saying other people shouldn't read this book -- they should -- but I am saying that much of both its comedy and its meaningfulness likely will be lost on all readers who aren't male American Jews. As just one small example, only such a reader could truly appreciate the brilliance of a suicide note, from a son to his mother, mentioned in passing:

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

"Portnoy's Complain" is chock-full of profanity (including judicious use of the dreaded c-word), sexual depravity (and not just the famous meat scene), and ethnic stereotypes (including a hilarious depiction of the home life of WASPs). I've seen some people criticize this book for being too much of a comedy, too prone to Borscht Belt-style humor. Well, yes, but so what? The book is intended as a comedy, and the entire novel even ends with a punchline -- and not just any punchline, but a punchline that wouldn't be out of place on a Catskills stage.

Anyhow, there's no need for me to say much more about "Portnoy's Complaint." Plus, I have an easier time writing lengthy reviews of books I hate than ones I love wholeheartedly. Much like Alexander Portnoy, I'm not very good at being positive and upbeat. I'm just glad that the book held up as well as it did for me after all these years.

Sorry, Grammy. ...more

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Jan 01, 2017 Robin rated it liked it

Shelves: 2016, literary-fiction, american

The title is apt for this book, because the entire thing is a complaint, made by Alexander Portnoy to his shrink. Oh, boy.

Initially I put this on my TBR list because Joe Goldberg, the well-read psychopath in Caroline Kepnes' You and Hidden Bodies lists it as his favourite book. A bit of a twisted road to get to Philip Roth's infamous, sexually explicit work that caused a big splash when published in 1969.

While cleverly written and quite funny in some parts, the rant-like nature of this book got ...more

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Jul 23, 2016 Lubinka Dimitrova rated it really liked it

Shelves: are-you-serious, audio, funny, green-monster-of-jealousy, male-author, me-myself-and-i, pointless, the-narrator-nailed-it, modern-classics, not-my-cup-of-tea

Although I definitely enjoyed it more than Bukowski's Women, I've come to realise that books about middle-aged male Americans who spend their time navel-gazing and contemplating their relationship with their penis is probably not my cup of tea. The book was fun, but I strongly suspect that if it weren't for the narrator, I might have never finished it. Ron Silver is a brilliant reader, I doubt that I would have enjoyed the story more even if Roth himself was whispering it in my ear.

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Dec 29, 2013 Jr Bacdayan rated it liked it

Hey, Roth! What’s with the smug smile on that face of yours? What’s with that satisfied look? You think you’re now a goy or something? Are you thinking of a shikse or something? Are you high? You think just because you wrote a bunch of anti-semitic, auto-erotic stuff you’re some bigshot? What’s the sense with that piece of crap? Don’t you dare turn your back on me you balding Kike! You wanker! You kosher prick! You… oh, where’s the sense in this? Come on, mate. Is this really just to ridicule so Hey, Roth! What’s with the smug smile on that face of yours? What’s with that satisfied look? You think you’re now a goy or something? Are you thinking of a shikse or something? Are you high? You think just because you wrote a bunch of anti-semitic, auto-erotic stuff you’re some bigshot? What’s the sense with that piece of crap? Don’t you dare turn your back on me you balding Kike! You wanker! You kosher prick! You… oh, where’s the sense in this? Come on, mate. Is this really just to ridicule society? What’s the gist, the point, the essence? To say things which nobody has said before? Is it just anger, contempt? Sure, I get the whole defy the boundaries of society thing, to be rid of the cultural standards and stuff. Freedom from the restrictive paradigm! I get it, I do. Fuck society. Fuck culture, marriage, family, democracy, capitalism, sexual-restraint. Fuck them all! But is it just that? Why go through all the girlfriends? I bet that’s boasting there, Philip. Just because you had cunt doesn’t mean we wanna hear about it. All you did was give me a boner in some parts. That wasn’t a very nice thing to do given all the whining coming with it. You’re an asshole, Roth! You’re worse. You’re thinking of doing perverse stuff to your own Mother! That’s going beyond the oedipal tendencies, bud. Are you suggesting that we should practice incest because fuck the society? Incest because fuck the law? You motherfucker! That’s gross, man. Is that the point? What about all that wanking? Is is just to make me wanna wank myself? Well, you succeeded mate. I may have wanked somewhere in between reading your book. Satisfied, Roth? You corrupted a youth. If someone catches me doing the deed, Imma tell them I learned it from the venerated Philip Roth. But I’m telling you, you didn’t succeed with that whole incest thing. You stay out of my family! And really the liver? You thought up that it should be fed to a family? I bet you did that in real life. What is this semi-autobiographical? Because I’m telling ya, some things here were a little too graphic to be made up. Come on, bud. Say it. I did all this when I was younger. There’s a good boy. So you just wanted to share life experiences, eh? No? Then what is it? Ah, I think I’ve got it. Now, Phil. Mind if I call you Phil? So is this really just another Catcher in the Rye, except you know, you have crazy substituting the teenage angst here. Is it really just I’m too good for you stuff? Just another anarchy dude, another all that “my life, my rules” crap. The world’s your oyster kid. Joke’s on you, it’s not. What’s with all the sexual stuff? To prove that sex is a natural instinct and shouldn’t be so shameful? Sure, that’s pretty good. But is that all? Defy life, sex is normal. Is that it? Bullshit, Phil! You may be a chronic-wanker, but you’re not stupid enough to write a book about this stuff. This is all movie crap. This is the bread and butter of scriptwriters, not novelists. You’ve got more pride than that. You’ve won a Pulitzer for cryin out loud! Why write this? What are you trying to tell me? Why all the babble! Are you a Nazi? Are you trying to justify the holocaust? What is with this book? Is it to make me be a better man? Is it supposed to show the inadequacies of my complaints, the shallowness of it all? Are you using reverse psychology?! It won’t work, boyo. We gentiles are a smarter breed than you give us credit for. You cunt! You sexist, racist, homophobic son of a woman. Are you trying to show us the thoughts of the superior Caucasian man? Hehe! Now I’m the racist one. Sorry, Phil. Didn’t mean to hurt ya there. But I’m still stumped here. What’s the big picture? What’s it saying to me? Libido is libertarian? I guess I can work with that. Hahaha! Wait, humor won’t work here, Phil. You wrote and book and I read it. You have to answer me here. No, you don’t have the right to remain silent. No, you can’t invoke your right to self-incrimination. Say it! Open up! Spill the beans! Let the cat out of the bag! Try to see the big picture, you say? Ah! I see! It’s in the punch-line! What, no comment? So it’s about the doctor. I get it now, sonny. You thought that you freed yourself from the chains of society. You broke everything, you howled! You didn’t give a crap about anything. Heck, you even tore the tag off the mattress! But really, you weren’t freed. The fact that you were talking to a shrink proved that you thought something was wrong with you. You say you didn’t give a shit, but you put yourself under observation. You say you lived big, but you confined yourself with a mental-health professional. You were under invisible chains, your freedom was an illusion. Why the silence now, Phil? Say something. What? I’m confusing you with Portnoy? But you wrote it, mate. Doesn’t that sort of identify you with the protagonist? What? I’m an asshole? Alright, whatever. You’re the man. I’m just saying, freedom from societal-norms is an illusion. Sometimes, all we can do is complain. Am I right, Phil? ...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: the-jersey-shore

Thirty years after Roth wrote Portnoy's Complaint he won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. The reason is. . . he knows how to write. He writes with a boldness and bravado I favor. However, this is not a book for just anyone! If my grandmother had cracked open the cover, I assure you, the paramedics would have found her dead from a stroke or heart-attack, the book still open on her chest. Portnoy's Complaint has, within its almost 300 pages, more vulgarity and profanity than any other boo ...more

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Sep 08, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels, merkins

The definitive self-hating Jew novel. A searing literary stand-up performance par excellence. Woody Allen meets Bill Hicks. Explains where the famous inbuilt neurosis in New York Jews comes from. A brutal, universal portrayal of family life. The funniest thing I have read in a long long time. Every young man in his twenties tries at some point to write this novel and fails. Wonderful. Not a work of remarkable human insight and depth, but this is Philip Roth: the psychopathology of sleaze, if you ...more

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Nov 20, 2010 Mariel rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: constipated older Jewish men

Recommended to Mariel by: masterbators

I would have walked away in the conversation at the point of Portnoy proclaiming that he slept with the women that he did (anyone who would have him) as a way of conquering America. Essentially those who would not have him like historically against Jewish peoples (dude, you work for the mayor and are educated! You do what you want!). I am not Jewish and I wasn't alive in the '60s. Somewhere anyone is going to feel like that they don't belong. What I really liked about Portnoy's Complaint is the I would have walked away in the conversation at the point of Portnoy proclaiming that he slept with the women that he did (anyone who would have him) as a way of conquering America. Essentially those who would not have him like historically against Jewish peoples (dude, you work for the mayor and are educated! You do what you want!). I am not Jewish and I wasn't alive in the '60s. Somewhere anyone is going to feel like that they don't belong. What I really liked about Portnoy's Complaint is the not fitting in the anyone should feel that way. You don't have to feel like you owe your family. How someone else feels about you is a lot about them. A lot of talking oneself into it doesn't hurt, I won't regret it later, what is the right thing to do. Sex as sex, not the whole damned future. You can live for the now and then still regret the past when the next now comes up. Or be afraid you are going to regret it. That can be anxiety inducing enough on its own.
(If the book had been written a couple of decades later there would be worse things than disappointing your parents with no grandchildren.)

The good thing about this book is that it is not easy to say for sure and pin Alexander Portnoy to one thing. Oh yeah, he felt sorry for himself, hemmed in and restrained. Unsatisfied always. He succumbed to worrying about what he should feel as much anyone else. He did believe that he was better than the Monkey (I liked the Monkey. If she became "clingy" and hoped for a new life outta Portnoy... Well, he might be her some day. Left alone out of years of pleasing only himself. Monkey chose her sexual freedom and later discovered the tragedy of shame. I wish she didn't have to feel shame! She could have been him before when younger. It's not fair thirty for her was old. He was 33!). The conquering getting back at them bullshit was boring and backtracking on the good stuff. The freedom with a price came to a conversational death by boring and big fat lie. It doesn't mean there wasn't anything else in there. I was just bored when it became about BEING Jewish instead of being any man. Besides, it doesn't feel like the truth! If you are going to be your own person, what does being Jewish have to do with the picture? Especially since you aren't religious, Portnoy?
It was too good before. Me against them instead of Me I wish it didn't have to be against anyone. Sighs That would be soemthing that would mean something to me (wishing) instead of a funny story about a guy who can talk circles around what he really wants. He did talk circles. I liked how he slipped up and was confused about his omnipresent mama, to side with dad or not (were they the same or not?), his sensible and taken for granted sister. The possibility of shame and dirty by what is alone. Aha! Is it not alone to group in with a label? I don't think so...

P.s. I can't find on youtube the scene on The Simpsons when Krusty the Clown pretends to have diarhea to practice his comedy routines in the bathroom. Portnoy homage! I remember the scene but I didn't get the reference when I'd seen it. :( ...more

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Mar 16, 2009 Evan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-reads, tami-tomes, favorites, my-faves, jewish, __in-my-collection, men-behaving-badly, sexuality, modern-library-top-100-list, deliciously-nasty

I'm in the mood for this now and it's reading like a breeze. God, it's probably shameful to admit that I AM PORTNOY, but it would be just like me to say that very thing and mirror the guilt of the guy in the book. You wish your parents could read this, especially my neat freak, worrywart mom. I think a lot of Catholic households and Jewish households are not a lot different. This shit is funny and real and insightful. If the rest of the book is as good as the first 50 pages then we shall be quit I'm in the mood for this now and it's reading like a breeze. God, it's probably shameful to admit that I AM PORTNOY, but it would be just like me to say that very thing and mirror the guilt of the guy in the book. You wish your parents could read this, especially my neat freak, worrywart mom. I think a lot of Catholic households and Jewish households are not a lot different. This shit is funny and real and insightful. If the rest of the book is as good as the first 50 pages then we shall be quite pleased.

(Yes. I'm reading the old yellow paperback edition. $1 from Half Price.)

Getting close to a third of the way in...What is it Dali said: "Stop stealing my dreams?" I say to Roth: "You've stolen my life, the angst in my head." I'm sort of in a mindmeld with this book. The conflicting feelings over one's parents, the tugs of opposing impulses: to respect and abhor, to compromise and rebel. This book is making me appreciate the efforts of my own mother more, whereas lately I've been inclined to overemphasize her faults; the deficiencies passed from her to me. Many lovely ruminations, not just masturbation... Reading transfixed.

I'm officially in awe of Roth, and the achievement of this book. Just surpassed the two-third mark in the evening after beginning this yesterday evening. The conflicts between outward respectability and inner desires; the baggage of youth; the rebellion against morality and tradition; the inner conflict (stated ostensibly as a therapy session); the anxiety and humiliation -- the insecurity of being the outsider, and of fighting against your own minority status; the grotesque beauty and brutality; the longing, the confusion, the pettiness, and the self-awareness thereof; the conflict of living two sets of values... This ALL SPEAKS to me. Roth is so focused, yet so diffuse. Every word of this is wise and sad and raw and real. This is referred to as a comic novel, but while there are laughs there's much more poignancy, for me. I just dig the shit out of this book. I mean, so much so that it might now be my favorite novel ever. But let's not get too hasty. Still going...

OK, well, this had everything for me. EVERYTHING! (and a lot of exclamation points just like that one). This is now, officially, my favorite book. ...more

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May 07, 2008 Yulia rated it it was ok

Shelves: i-thought-i-hated-you

It's a miracle: I've finished this thing, this book. I thought to read the end as a commenter noted it was a shaggy dog story, which made me wonder what the punch-line was, but as I read about this woman he called "the monkey," I became so furious in how he wrote of her with such hatred that I had to know more about their relationship, which took me back another section, and then another, till I'd finally been led to read the entire dang book.

And while I was sure I'd write something hateful abo It's a miracle: I've finished this thing, this book. I thought to read the end as a commenter noted it was a shaggy dog story, which made me wonder what the punch-line was, but as I read about this woman he called "the monkey," I became so furious in how he wrote of her with such hatred that I had to know more about their relationship, which took me back another section, and then another, till I'd finally been led to read the entire dang book.

And while I was sure I'd write something hateful about Roth after first learning of his attitude towards the Monkey, leading me to foam at the mouth in outrage and plan to write up a summation of the evidence proving Portnoy's homosexuality, I've since not changed my mind about Portnoy, but come to see some humor in some of the events he relates, and so I can say it was worth reading this book if only for the passages on the perfect child and pianist Ronald Nimkin (p. 96), for which I give Roth kudos by enabling me to laugh about a suicide of all tragedies, and for the passage in which the Monkey accuses Portnoy of making her a lesbian by their fulfilling their mutual fantasy of sleeping with another woman. And so for these two wonderful moments, I give Portnoy two stars.

But then, I disagree that all this had to offer was a shaggy dog ending. As a shaggy dog story, this was a rather lame one. Really, what I would have loved would be to have it be told from the Monkey's perspective. She is the true star of this tale. She is the one whose adventures and neuroses I want to follow. But I could never expect Roth to pull this off successfully considering his great antipathy for womankind.

****************************************************************

(done at page 64) OK, I'm sick of Portnoy. I don't care about his testicles, I don't care where and how he masturbates, I don't care whom he thinks of to get off, I don't care that he doesn't believe in god, I don't care what will happen to his nagging mother, weak father, and pleading sister. I don't wish them ill: I simply don't care about them. May they rest in peace. Don't worry, I own the book. Maybe one day when I'm absolutely desperate to consider Roth's endless merits, I'll pick up where I left off and annoy myself some more. ...more

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May 15, 2017 david rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philip-roth

A very emotional read as a young man.

Come to think of it, as an old man also.

I would suggest keeping a box of tissues nearby.

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Nov 10, 2013 Mish rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 1001-books-you-must-read, 1960, fiction, humour, drama, classics

Portnoy’s Complaint was on my radar when I watched my first episode of the ABC The Book Club. The book was Marieke Hardy pick of a classic and it received such high praise by the whole panel, describing it as funny, awkward, rude and a work of a genius.

Portnoy’s Complaint is a one sided conversation between Alex Portnoy and his psychoanalyst, of growing up in a Jewish household with loud, workaholic and overprotective parents, his sexual awakening, his career and his failure to commit to a lasti ...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing

Some spend their young years learning and some spend their young years masturbating. Well, maybe it’s some sort of rehearsing as well.
“Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them – because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!”
Libido and psychoanalysis were invented to complement each other and to feed charlatans… On both sides.

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Dec 07, 2016 Julie Ehlers rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, literary-fiction

A round of applause for Portnoy’s Complaint. I can only imagine how daring and groundbreaking this book must have felt when it was first released in the late 1960s. An entire novel written as a rant to the narrator’s psychoanalyst! Imagine! And what’s more, the book manages to keep up its energy and momentum all the way through—it’s entertaining and funny, and insightful in the way only something truly groundbreaking can be. Honestly, despite all the responses and imitations this book no doubt e ...more

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Sep 22, 2018 Ammar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Pure filth and various psychological complexes of a man and his relationship to his mother and the whole Jewish stress and anxiety.

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May 27, 2018 John Hatley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I had to laugh out loud throughout this amazing book. Even if it might possibly be categorized as "X-rated humour", my only regret is that I didn't read it years ago! Many (if not all) of Roth's observations about American society in the late 1960s apply equally well today. Not much has changed.

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Jan 24, 2012 Jason Pettus rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hipster, smart-nerdy, classic, personal-favorite, erotic, postmodernism, funny

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Regular readers will remember that I'm in the middle of a long-term literary project right now, to read all eleven novels making up Philip Roth's autobiographical "Zuckerman cycle" in order to better understand the Postmodernist Era they discuss, from its start (right around Kennedy's assassination) to its (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Regular readers will remember that I'm in the middle of a long-term literary project right now, to read all eleven novels making up Philip Roth's autobiographical "Zuckerman cycle" in order to better understand the Postmodernist Era they discuss, from its start (right around Kennedy's assassination) to its end (9/11); but since so many of at least the early novels in the series concern themselves so directly with Roth's first big mainstream hit, 1969's filthy and funny Portnoy's Complaint, I thought it would be instructive to read that as well, to better understand the way that Roth's life changed because of it. For those who don't know, after an early start as a traditional, academic-style Late Modernist writer who was getting published in The New Yorker in the early '60s, this hilarious look at the sexual dysfunctions inherent in the New York Jewish lifestyle, and its inherent clashes against the prevailing "let it all hang out" countercultural mood, was exactly what mainstream America needed at the exact moment they needed it, just like Woody Allen was providing in cinemas at the same time; and so not only was it a hit with the usual intellectual crowd, but it broke through to become a massive general hit, an eventual Hollywood film, and even a tittering codeword among the culture at large, right at the same time that his fellow young New Yorker author John Updike was doing the same thing with his saucy novel Couples (the very first mainstream book to discuss the topic of suburban wife-swapping, after obscenity laws in the US getting relaxed just a few years earlier).

And to be fair, this is still a dirty, dirty book, with it easy to understand why merely carrying a copy around back then was enough to signal to anyone else that you could "dig it," which much like Woody Allen takes the image of the nebbish, self-deprecatory Jewish city boy and almost accidentally turns it into a new type of nerdy sex symbol, as we follow poor Portnoy's adventures as first an onanistic teen and then a goy-obsessed young man, flailing about in the high-minded hippie atmosphere around him but still managing to have crazy sex on a regular basis anyway. And it's easy to see why so many older Jews got so upset by this book too; because not only does it lay out a lot of the quiet little dysfunctional moments of the Jewish community to a large Christian audience, a direct predecessor to Seinfeld that I've discussed in more depth in my Zuckerman write-ups, but indeed a lot of its humor derives explicitly from all the neurotic hangups that were created among Roth's generation by all their uptight, obsessed-with-appearances, Holocaust-surviving parents, making it not just a funny sex comedy but an astute look at the first generation of Jews to grow up after World War Two, and the clashes that occurred when they first came of age in the countercultural '60s, which I'm sure made it even more of a must-read among the young hipsters of the time. A great, moving, blush-inducing novel that still holds up really well to this day, read it to understand what was getting your parents all squirmy in the years that they were having you. ...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Kat rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: Woody Allen fans

Upon finishing this book, I heard myself say aloud (without warning): "that sucked."

There's a lot to recommend Roth as a writer and I think he's fully in control of what he's doing I just wish he were doing something else blah blah. This book is a 300-page monologue by a character who annoyed the crap out of me. Whatever fabulous edgy points Roth might have been making about the self-aggrandizement and self-congratulatory pseudolessons of psychotherapy, whatever incisive criticisms he may have b ...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Fionnuala added it

Smart, funny, outrageous, and totally irreverent with regard to parents and religion, and sex, of course. For 1969, at least. And even though there has been reams of material written since about these subjects, this book doesn't feel dated. However Roth wasn't the only one tackling such subjects at that time, although he was probably the funniest. In the early sixties, in conservative catholic Ireland, John McGahern braved the wrath of the entire country when he dared to state some nasty truths ...more

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Jun 23, 2018 Leo Robertson rated it liked it · review of another edition

I'm sure this was outrageous and hilarious at the time—now it's infrequently funny and really creepy.

Not sold on this one, neither done with Roth :)

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Aug 08, 2019 James Tingle rated it really liked it

The only Roth novel that I've read so far and I expect his other ones are wildly different and more somber and serious than this, but I certainly remember enjoying it. A long rant of a book, really, where the main character gets a lot of his inner baggage off his chest whilst talking to his psychiatrist. He goes into childhood traumas and disappointments and problems with his parents, but mainly, he rambles on at great length about women, relationships and his hectic sex life. It is a funny nove ...more

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Feb 12, 2008 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: satire, modern-library-100, fictions-of-the-big-it, america-fuck-yeah

My take on Portnoy at 50: http://artsfuse.org/161332/tv-comment...

***

Older review: Funniest book I have ever read. Bar none. I never, NEVER laugh out loud while reading and I was literally howling several times as I read this.

It's so awful and so true.

Teenage sexual obsession/repression (isn't it funny how the two go together) and religious guilt/ political guilt (ditto) have been linked before, but never as desperately, bitterly funny as this.

I always used to wonder why "realistic" novels abo ...more

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About Philip Roth

Philip Roth

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Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist. He gained early literary fame with the 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus (winner of 1960's National Book Award), cemented it with his 1969 bestseller Portnoy's Complaint, and has continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman novels began with The Ghost Writer in 1979, and in ...more

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