Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

[Gregory Samsa]

I have just started reading Portnoy's Complaint and think it's great.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this book??

[dfloyd]

I do not like most postmodern authors. Have never finished a book by Roth.

[Modest Proposal]

I thought it was hilarious and interesting in many respects. It can also be a fascinating individual and cultural psychological portrait. However...

Like with much of Roth, I have trouble getting past some of his sexual interests. I'm not condemning him or his readers (I've actually read several of his books), I just always wish I could get some of his ideas and themes without others.

Honestly, I think The Human Stain is unquestionably superior in terms of its aims and accomplishments. I find Roth to have gotten better with age, though some of his proclivities I dislike have lingered.

[David Lurie]

Does anyone have any thoughts on this book??

It was my first Philip Roth and while I was reading it I was constantly thinking "is this the greatest living writer?" :rofl: Roth fans are his worst enemies, and though I think that Oxford Professor Josipovici has gone too far defining Roth's style "journalistic writing" maybe he has a point: there is no life in his books, he is unable - or maybe uninterested - to portraying the complexity of the human experience, he is just the chronicler of his forgettable character.
Portnoy's complaint is a boring book with funny episodes and some caustic writing.

[tscherff]

i read the book probably 25 years ago and loved it. thought it was very humorous. it is a period book and the humor is significantly better if you had lived during the time yourself. one example i remember even today was the polio paranoia and the vision of kids in an iron lung. in hindsight it is funny, but at the time it was horrifying. today it is nonexistent. depending on your age, talk to people who lived during that period and expand your understanding.

[callipygias]

Like with much of Roth, I have trouble getting past some of his sexual interests.
Exactly, it seems like it's always there. I can't even really enjoy reading him because I'm always kind of cringing, waiting for the inevitable sexual deviance to show up.
On the other hand it has one of the most memorable exchanges:

Alex: Christ, you are a marvellous girl.
Monkey: Am I?
Alex: Yes!
Monkey: Am I!?
Alex: Yes, yes! Now can I **** you?
Monkey: Oh, sweetheart, darling, pick a hole.

[laymonite]

I thoroughly enjoyed this one, as I was in the midst of a study in psychoanalytic literary theory at the time. The fact that he used (and exploited, destructed, laughed at) psychoanalysis as a platform for the novel was stellar--thanks, Mr. Roth, for giving me some comic relief there! It's been a while since I've read it, but I have Post-it notes tabbed on some of the pages. Here's what they say (however vague they may be):

1. Roth exploits the methods of psychoanalysis to produce art.
2. Third-hand (me) psychoanalytic note: the "Father" keeps things "in" (not by choice?) and the "son" constantly gets things "out."
3. Fitting allusion to Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
4. Roth raises an identity question: "human"/"Jew"

I have another tab in the back, but it contains spoilers, in a sense. You'll see!

Anyway, hopes this adds some value to the thread.

[Heteronym]

This was a great novel. The thing I liked the most was the use of the first person narrator. I often read people claiming that they like the first person narrator because it brings them close to the protagonist. In other words, it's a cheap gimmick to make the book more enjoyable. I hate that. The first person narrator in this novel does the opposite: his merciless self-scrutiny, that plumbs to the lowest depths of his perversions, neuroses, hatreds and insecurities, creates a barrier. Alexander Portnoy isn't afraid of offending or of looking unlikeable; he's brutally honest about himself and the others. I've seldom met a character who revealed himself so fully to the reader, who showed himself so vulnerable.

The psychiatrical confession is a clever method of exposing himself, in a funny, grotesque way. In his diatribe he addresses family, family expectations, the individual versus society, hypocrisy, identity, Judaism and sexual relantionships.

But the best of it was the humor; Roth is above all a great satirist and the book is wonderfully ambiguous. Is Portnoy heroic in his defiance or just an idiot? Is his mother a monster or just devoted to him? Is he a sensual don juan or just a sexual tyrant who treats women like dirt? Like the best literature, Portnoy's Complaint is mysterious and offers multiple interpretations.