Portnoy's Complaint

This review of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint was originally posted to a now defunct blog. The idea I wished (and still do) to get across was the impact of the experience of reading itself on the content of the book. I don't think I wholly succeeded here and really it all just becomes a bit subjective to constitute calling it a review. But I liked it, so here it is again.

 The front cover of my copy of Philip Roth's 1969 novel claims, quite plainly, that Portnoy's Complaint is: "The Most Talked-About Novel of Our Time." N. mentioned it to me when she saw the book - quoting the line back in a questioning tone. 'Well,' I replied, slightly embarrassed by the unabashed nature of Corgi Books' tag-line, 'I think it was controversial at the time - there's stuff about wanking and it's not very kind to Jewish people. He's Jewish though!' I hastened to add.

At that point I'd started the chapter headed: 'Cunt Crazy'. I'd assumed throughout the first part of the book, which I had read with delighted amusement, that this was what had been so disturbing back in the mid 20th century. This: the anecdotes of tossing off on the bus, of slipping it to a slice of liver, of numerous adolescent frustrations. I squirm as Portnoy describes his errant testicle "bobbing uncertainly just at the rim of the pelvis" and cringe knowingly as Mrs. Portnoy probes into her son's toilet routine. And all the while happily guessing that this is what was shocking - Portnoy's complaint: adolescence.

Sexual fixation is part and parcel of quite a lot of boys' adolescences and Roth dives into this period with clarity, finding those desperate, pathetic instances and pulling them out for us with an adroitly self-deprecating sense of humour. Previously I had only read The Human Stain by Roth and though I had enjoyed that book I found myself surprised by how funny and even thrilling Portnoy's Complaint was.

But if Alex Portnoy's story is more humorous than Coleman Silk's, it is also, from my reading of it, darker, harder to pin down, and far more disturbing. The awkward Corgi tag line spoke to me initially of a different generation - "Our Time" being the 70s - which might genuinely be shocked by grotesque descriptions of a boy's haphazard sexual adventures. And this sense I had of a dated sensibility was no doubt advanced by the state of my copy which, as well as sporting a particularly 70s font on the cover, contained in it a curious advertisement for TIME Magazine, 'delivered each week for twenty five shillings'. But the almost coy sensuality of the example cover - showing an attractive (if again very dated) and highly stylised illustration of a woman's face - did nothing to prepare me for what Roth was about to dredge up.

In fact, this tiny peek into the visual language of the 70s (which of course has only progressed further since then - this, a children's drawing equivalent of our own digital masterpieces) appears in the book like a passing, yet grimly prescient, artefact - an innocently seductive image which almost perfectly counterpoints the coming misogyny of the book's central character. Portnoy, whose adolescence delivers pleasant cringes and giggles, grows into a man whose wanton appetite for masturbation has bloomed into a vilely recognisable and obsessive chauvinism.

It's remains hard for me to admit that I recognise in Portnoy my own thoughts and actions. His turning away from Judaism towards the secular, the apparently rational, is inviting (to a British atheist) and his own account of his sexual aptitude is the stuff of male fantasy. But it is Portnoy's confused, misogynistic, and desperate approach to the book's female characters which is shocking; not least because it was recognisable as those hidden internal dialogues. 

I'm personally not sure how best to approach Roth's handling of Portnoy. It is, perhaps - or it was for me, momentarily at least - refreshing or even liberating to read such excavations of the male psyche. To understand that some deposit of animalism occurs in us all and that, through psychiatry or counselling, we may discover ourselves only to be miserably selfish sex addicts - despite the pretence of whatever career or label of success. It's a humorous revelation in a way.

But it's also pretty bleak. And it's this understanding which becomes systemic to Portnoy's misanthropic treatment of women. Though it is women who are represented negatively throughout Portnoy's dialogue - and while I would be very much more likely to recommend this book to my male friends - which I did, enthusiastically, mostly when drunk (there's something about Portnoy's Complaint which entirely suits it being enthusiastically recommended to other men when drunk) - Roth gives them the last bitter laugh at Portnoy's expense. (His last flailing encounter with a woman is hilariously shocking, narratively satisfying and miserably pertinent to his character: "A dose of the clap will do them all good!")

And of course religion is the book's other subject - ["This is what it's like in the Diaspora, you saintly kiddies"], but I have no time in this 'review' nor education in Jewish culture to make any sort of meaningful comment.

My experience of the book's content was no doubt linked to its structural trajectory (i.e. down a very steep hill) and the speed at which I read it accelerated the narrative further more towards its final, abrupt, shrugging punchline. I mostly read at home but a couple of times in public places where I believe I felt even more uncomfortable about Portnoy's behaviour. So, Portnoy was shocking back then, and perhaps it isn't now to those who understand it better than I - no doubt I will appear a little naive to those that know American literature - but to my inherently emotionally conservative British genes I found it striking. Amazingly so! And perhaps I am shocked that the modern psyche which Roth dredges up should remain clearly important to our culture - if not more so. I still can't get the woman from the TIME advert out of my head.