I don't particularly believe in writing reviews- A lot depends on the writer's personal taste and his capacity to appreciate or scorn literature and it could be very misleading to a reader of entirely different views. However, this is a book that made me want to write about it. Ladies and Gentlemen(or the Very Few Fellas That Read This Blog), I give you
Portnoy's Complaint.
This book is funny as it is wild. It's popularly touted as the most outrageously funny book about sex ever written, and while I strongly suspect there might be several others, this book is outrageous in the amount of introspection it generates. I thus boldly propose that there is a bit of Portnoy in all of us, and whether you choose to acknowledge it or not is upto you. I hasten to clarify that this is
not a book about Mike Portnoy, bless him.
It is a monologous narrative, from Alexander Portnoy,
Male with Penis, Jew (because those are the only entities he chooses to acknowledge) to his psychiatrist Dr. Spielvogel. Acknowledged by many to be semi-autobiographical of the author, Philip Roth, this book is a dark, funny one.
The book begins with a definition of the symptom, lending the reader his first taste of what's to come:
portnoy's complaint: A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic implulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.This book could be described as Mind versus Penis, but there are so many more overtones and undercurrents to this that to do so would be grossly innacurate at best. This book is a struggle of a widely read, scholarly man in the highest circles of responsibility, between attachment to his strongly Jewish roots and his desire to be of the more refined class, of his natural parental gratitude and love and his supreme hate of his surroundings and upbrinding, of his intellectual bent of mind and its forever grappling with incurable sexual longing (He hates being with The Monkey because of her lack of intellectual assets, but cannot tear himself away either)
It is tragic and funny simultaneously- tragic because of the events that occur and funny because of Portnoy's reaction or the lack of it. The protagonist lives in a Jewish home with a severely Jewish mother, who cuddles and cossets young (and old) Portnoy, leading to some of his earliest and most embarrassing memories, along with a perpetually constipated father whose stories of attempted bowel movement are hilarious and yet most touching, and a rather unattractive sister only made bearable by marriage. His Jewishness and his relationship to his parents has inexorably influenced the way he has grown up, with them tempering almost every action he takes, much to his disgust.
His outlook is described clearly in
'..how much longer do I go on conducting these experiments with women? How much longer do i go sticking this thing into the holes that come available to it-- first this hole, then when I tire of this hole, that hole over there... and so on. When will it end? Only why should it end! To please a father and mother? To conform to the norm? Why on earth should I be so defensive about being what was honorably called some years ago, a bachelor? So what's the crime? Sexual freedom? In this day and age? Why should I bend to the bourgeosie? Do I ask them to bend to me?..."
and
'Good Christ, a Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!'
This book moves seamlessly from the present to the past and back, loses track in the middle, reaches conclusions to parts started earlier in the book in later sections, etc. The narrative disintegrates in parts of the book, but it is a monologue, and a highly confused, intelligent and irritated man's monologue at that, and it's bound to jump like crazy.
Personally, I found it relaxing. :)
I would recommend this as a read to anyone who's not of a very conservative bent of mind. The masturbation scenes in themselves are likely to give you a stitch in the side.
I'm currently reading American Pastoral, also by Roth, and am looking forward to reading more of his Zuckerman novels.
Two Thumbs up!!
