I was sifting through a box of old books from my shed and found this edition without a cover and missing page 37 (where one of Portnoy's testicles retreats into his body). Nevertheless, I began to read and Phillip Roth rapidly sucked (yes, sucked) me in to this damnable, relentlessly pejorative, monologue of Jewishness. There were many times I felt almost contaminated by the endless guilt, insecurity and Yiddish hatred of non- Jewish goyim, girls or shikses and just wanted it to end or go somewhere else.

But the shikses, ah, the shikses are something else again […] I am so awed that I am in a state of desire beyond a hard-on. My circumcised little dong is simply shriveled up with veneration. Maybe it’s dread. How do they get so gorgeous, so healthy, so blonde? My contempt for what they believe in is more than neutralized by my adoration of the way they look, the way they move and laugh and speak.

Is this why an essentially Jewish Hollywood movie industry fetishized and then spat out the blonde temptress? Is it Jewishness that is responsible for what is seen today as the objectification of women? Portnoy in name (Port Noir) is the black gate to, depravity, guilt, insecurity or what? By culminating in Portnoy's failed attempt to rape a red-headed Jewish/Israeli girl (his monstrous mother) due to lack of an erection, it is as though nothing is resolved. It's an extraordinary diatribe of a book that eventually just peters out (literally in a series of dots) with a weak punchline - exhausted.

The blurb says it is a funny book and I did laugh out- loud a few times:

...my father is a man who has a certain amount of worrying to do each day, and sometimes has to forgo listening to the conversations going on around him in order to fulfill his anxiety requirement. It can well be that he hasn't heard a word that she's been saying.

( )

I am most assuredly female and there were many parts of this book that caused great eye-rolling from me. I sympathized with The Monkey more than Portnoy. I hope I spell a bit better. I recognized a couple of my Jewish boyfriends.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read. ( )

not hard to understand the popularity of this book. there really is 'something for everyone' (male readers only). ostensibly, we have the humorous aspect of the work. there are some nice 'tongue in cheek' (so to speak) riffs. however, the real achievement here is the sleek embodiment of the modern reactionary (and curiously freudian) notion that all so-called 'do gooders' are motivated, at least in part, by psychosis. ( )

Gibberish ( )

Not what I expected - the ego contending with the id for superiority. The central conceit here is the urge for self-gratification, mainly symbolized in sex, masturbatory and otherwise, that stands in for the author's urge to write or the mind's desire for acceptance. Roth's picture of Jewish domestic life, with its neuroses and absurdities, influenced a lot of later comedy from Woody Allen to Jerry Seinfeld, who seem like pale imitations in comparison.

The profanity and sexual abandon might turn off some readers, but this is one of the funniest novels I have ever read. Roth writes with an honesty that, like his hero Alex Portnoy, is part perverted schmuck and part misunderstood genius. ( )

Humourous novel about an American Jewish boy growing up coming to terms with his sexuality and religious beliefs. It is a monologue the protagonist is having with his psychoanalyst, as he tells of his childhood, masturbation, his relationship with his mother, and his many sexual partners. ( )

not hard to understand the popularity of this book. there really is 'something for everyone' (male readers only). ostensibly, we have the humorous aspect of the work. there are some nice 'tongue in cheek' (so to speak) riffs. however, the real achievement here is the sleek embodiment of the modern reactionary (and curiously freudian) notion that all so-called 'do gooders' are motivated, at least in part, by psychosis. ( )

Felt authentic, self-revelatory, probing a fundamental pillar of our being, which is sex of course. A must read for budding adults & then some.

Meh. I finally read this from Boxall's list. The NY Times Book Review called it, "A deliciously funny book, absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious." I found it unfunny and annoying. I can see how it was shocking for it's time, for me now, it is shocking in it's treatment of women. ( )

Interesting book about Alexander Portnoy and his complaint, actually should be, complaints. There are very many, his parents, religion, sex, his sex life all being told to his doctor. I would imagine that when this book was published it was probably very controversial with its free flowing talk of sex.

One problem that I have with this book is the use of Yiddish words with no definition for those who are not familiar with the language. ( )

274 pages that turn out to be a rant to a psychiatrist. I read this book a few pages at a time and really enjoyed it. I can't imagine sitting down and reading it in one fell swoop. Looking forward to seeing the movie now and seeing how they adapted the book to the screen. ( )

"You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you."

First published in 1969, 'Portnoy's Complaint' is a long monologue, apparently to a psychiatrist, by Jewish American bachelor Alex Portnoy, . The psychiatrist says nothing until the closing line and is only purely a device to allow Alex to talk aloud. He recounts his Jewish childhood with his neurotic parents and subsequent relationship history in which he sought refuge in experimental sex from his own neuroses.

There are a few major themes in this novel. Identity is certainly one of them. Much of the book centres around what it means to be Jewish, even if most of it features Alex's attempts to avoid such a label. Guilt is another important theme. Alex is raised in a society which trains you to be obedient through arbitrary rules (often featuring food) so that you will obey them in later life but as he grows older, bruised by the consequences of these restrictions, Alex struggles to differentiate between which rules are valid and which are simply ridiculous.

Just like the therapist the reader isn't meant to engage with Portnoy's complaints and opinions merely to listen. Yiddish terms are scattered throughout the book and maybe these meant that I missed some of the finer points that the author was trying to make but whatever the reason after a while I found this a tedious ramble. I would by no means regard myself as a prude but the endless talk about masturbation in particular left me cold. Alex was so selfish that on one occasion he is amazed when a young woman is upset when he breaks up with her, because as far as he is concerned only his feelings count. I cannot say that I actually laughed out loud but did on occasions smile at the scandalous humour. But after a while I just wanted to shout at Portnoy to think about someone else for a change and was tempted to take a break from him.

I had been really looking forward to reading this book beforehand but found it a little hit and miss, a book in which the author simply tries to show just how clever he is and ultimately disappointing. ( )

I decided to reread this novel, which I first read 30 years ago in high school. It doesn't read quite as well this time in light of 2021 values. For one thing, there's a disturbing sexual assault scene right at the end that would have been read very differently in the late 1960s; and there are many references to African Americans and other racial minorities that would never be written now.

But this book remains amazing. It's scandalously sexual- the whole book is about sex and Jewish neuroses related to sex. The book is one long rant by Alexander Portnoy, a 33 year old lawyer raised in Newark by his overbearing mother and constipated insurance-selling father, telling his therapist about his life up to then. We read all about his masturbation, early experiences with local girls, adult relationships with various gentiles, and life with his emasculating mother. It might be tough to understand without some knowledge about America in mid-Century America and Jewish culture in particular.

What's really amazing to me is that Roth writes about the milieu and the culture and the city in which he grew up, so the book obviously reads as autobiographical. And what a bearing of the soul! Roth's later Zuckerberg novels reference the fictional author Zuckerman's scandalous first book which caused his parents such anguish, and I can't believe this book didn't do the same to the real-life author's family. Roth fully commits to Truth (strange to say in a work of fiction, but it's a sort of Truth), damn the consequences. It's an act of courage.

But the Zuckerman novels are better- not as funny or as manic, but better written and less exhausting. ( )

Portnoy's complaint is a really insightful and funny book. Although for some reason I found it a bit hard to read much of it at once, it was still an enjoyable read. The way Roth talks about Portnoy's childhood is magically embarrassing. Portnoy is really a character to relate to. If you're a cynical pervert. I'd recommend it. ( )

Funny from beginning to end (often laugh-out-loud funny, and then laugh-even-more funny when reading bits of it aloud to your spouse) but with a core of awful lonely sadness. It reads like something between stand-up and eloquent but extemporaneous speech. This is my first Roth but not my last. ( )

It's a hard book. It makes you want to hate it. But, the end is well worth it. ( )

has some of the scatalogical raunch I associate with William Burroughs. ( )

«Das lustigste Buch, das je über Sex geschrieben wurde.» (The Guardian) Der 33-jährige Anwalt Alexander Portnoy ist hin- und hergerissen zwischen Begierden, die mit seinem Gewissen unvereinbar sind, und einem Gewissen, das mit seinen Begierden unvereinbar ist. Auf der Couch eines Psychiaters lässt er sein sozial und sexuell verwirrtes Leben Revue passieren. Mit »Portnoys Beschwerden« hat Philip Roth eine brillante Satire geschrieben und den Prototyp des Sexualneurotikers überhaupt erst erfunden.

I fear how sympathetic Alexander Portnoy can *seem* in *Portnoy's Complaint*. He presents as a liberal, presents as a fighter for equality, for individual freedoms and social progress, for The Left, and so on. But when we look back through history, especially cultural history that is *our own* and is *recent*, we have to interpret it through *contemporary* eyes. He tries to rape someone. He's a blatant racist---even in his defense of black people against others' racism. He sexually assaults basically every woman he's with. He is a monster. And yet when he describes the rest of his humanity I understand. I sympathize.

The book *itself* is a marvel of good writing. The character in it has aged poorly, though. I'm not sure what the headspace would be regarding Alex Portnoy of a reader in 1969. I know it would be very different from now. Never mind what he does in the bedroom---all of it seems tame now---what he says to and about and *does* to people he doesn't know is the problem. So seeing those little rays of sympathy shine through illustrates the beauty of good writing, of humanizing someone who once seemed like just a pervert (probably), but is now a monster, those rays of sympathy make me fear for how *less visible* rays might be eating at me, irradiating my concepts and norms from people who seem so good and jovial.
( )

I wish there was a 3.5 because this is the perfect 3.5
It had its moments, some were fantastic, but not my favourite.

When I first read this, I gave it 3 stars. Because tbh it wasn't the most enjoyable read. But for months afterwards I couldn't take my mind off of it. It really made me think about the value of strictures and religion in general. So I upped it to four. 5 seems too high considering it wasn't the greatest to read (though still solid) ( )

If Freud had set out to illustrate some of his theories about repression (especially sexual repression) and the oedipal complex in a novel and decided to set it in 1940s onwards New Jersey it might have come out like this. That does assume that Freud, along with his other great qualities, was a writer of sharp, wince-inducing humour.

Alexander Portnoy is explaining to his therapist, in a monologue, how his suffocating Jewish upbringing alongside his obsession with sex has created a man unable to reconcile his deep-rooted conformity with his desire to escape from it. A tortured soul if ever there was one, but very funny. ( )

I suppose this was supposed to be ironic or tragic, but neither seems to apply. Portnoy's condescension towards (other) self-absorbed people might considered irony were it not for the relentless, autobiographical sincerity of the text and it tone And tragic? Well, there is an irresolvable conflict, and Roth does make the connection explicitly (i.e., the Oedipal bit). But, I wonder, is a tragedy still a tragedy if that conflict is in no way unique or otherwise unusual? The problem presented is so tediously, mundanely, bourgeois, there is conflict without catharsis, or at least, none that I experienced.

It might have worked better in that sense if the text had been able to manage any insight into its female characters. But the 'irony' of Portnoy's self-absorption is never taken that far. Whether Roth lacked such insight, or had it but just didn't care enough to express it, I couldn't say. That Portnoy is an utterly unsympathetic asshole probably doesn't help in that regard; any empathy left is too well-hidden, if there is any at all. ( )

This book is relentless. It doesn't end - it just goes on and on and on, imagine a small kid telling you are long story on just one breath - this is how this book reads.

And, its brilliantly written book - But, I can't do it. I wanted to throw it across the room after the first few pages. Now this book isn't for everyone, but don't let this review keep you from reading.

Offensive, funny, full of angst, Alexander Portnoy delivers some caustic commentary on growing up Jewish. ( )

Hey, I know! Let's throw in an attempted rape scene right at the end, and then not really address or deal with it properly! It can act as a symbol whilst at the same time trivializing the event.

Four stars for brilliant, quotable writing. ( )