Does it retain its power? I'd argue that it does — for two reasons. First, the book shows Roth striking the wellspring that has flowed through his writing ever since: the connection between sex and mortality. As Portnoy explains in a rare moment of non-obscenity, his flaming libido represents "the desire continually burning within for the new, the wild, the unthought-of and, if you can imagine such a thing, the undreamt-of". As with Roth's recent novels, in which elderly protagonists rage against their dwindling virility David Kepesh in The Dying Animal; Nathan Zuckerman in Exit Ghost , Portnoy's Complaint asserts that to be sexual is to be fully alive — while to have that denied is a form of living death.
Second, the novel transcends its own vulgarity — placing it beyond easy dismissals as mere literary porn — by using sex to explore pretty much everything else: history, culture, identity, religion, politics.
High on the euphoria of confession, Portnoy divulges not simply his fondness for "whacking off" — considerable though that is — but also his desire to escape his Jewish history by heading to the sexual frontier in search of a new identity — "As though my manifest destiny is to seduce a girl from each of the forty-eight states", as he puts it.
And this works both ways for characters in the novel. The filthy antics Portnoy gets up to with his all-American girlfriend from West Virginia are their mutual doomed attempts to escape everything they find loathsome about their cultural inheritance. Glenn Sumi. Updated May 22, R. 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 Everyone's read it!
Even Don Draper! The young Roth sure was funny. We're talking laugh out loud, text-your-best-friends-favourite-lines, nearly pee your pants funny. The guy was also rude and crude and…. Then again… 4. Incidentally, Roth was born the same year and in the same city Newark, NJ as his protagonist.
But they're not the same guy, got it? Also: 5. Two words, folks: Leopold Bloom. Oy gevalt! Fictional guilt-inducing Jewish mothers seem a lot like guilt-inducing Asian mothers. Back then, it must have been a really big deal to be in your 30s and unmarried. Woody Allen, who was doing stand-up at the time, must have been influenced by this book, not just in the artist-talking-to-therapist scenes but in the Jew-goes-to-WASP-girlfriend's-home-for-Thanksgiving scene in Annie Hall.
The infamous liver scene makes the pastry-shtupping in American Pie surely an homage seem tame. How funny is it that the book was published in ? In it was way more acceptable to be misogynistic and homophobic in print. Not so funny today. And his portrait of middle-aged Jewish husband-dom is as sensitive and moving as his depiction of that era's discreet anti-Semitism is disturbing. Not everything works a trip to Israel, for instance , but damn this is still a fine book.
It was adapted into a movie starring Richard Benjamin who also starred in his Goodbye, Columbus , and I recall seeing scenes from it late at night on TV, but it looked overdone and checking the internet it got really mixed reviews.
So: thanks, but no thanks. But mostly… I want to read more Philip Roth. 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 And, yet.
I aim to please so here is my sincere attempt to tell you something about this book. It the book goes something like this: sex sex sex sex guilt guilt guilt guilt sex sex sex guilt guilt moms fault guilt moms fault moms fault guilt sex sex guilt kinda dads fault too mostly moms fault guilt sex sex sex self loathing Jewish loathing protestant loathing protestant awe more jewish loathing again with the Protestant loathing sex sex guilt guilt guilt guilt partial reconciliation with perceptions of all things Jewish attempt at sex failure at sex guilt guilt guilt mom's fault Now that I've, no doubt drawn you into the plot line and compelled you to pick up the book for yourself, let me share with you some of my personal thoughts on the book.
Christian, I am no stranger to guilt. As a matter of fact some times I feel that Catholics and Jewish people think they have the market cornered on guilt, well, you know what? I got some pretty messed up voices going on in my head too, ya know. And maybe I can't articulate my guilt trips into clever phrases or pinpoint experiences but I can tell you that guilt taught me a thing or two. If I don't pick up that clutter someone else is going to have to.
When I was younger this meant my mom, whom after setting aside her career as an artist to raise 5 kids and nearly had maybe did have at one point a nervous breakdown from the lack of money, the accumulation of clutter and my argumentative nature.
In my adult life this means the custodian, whom after leaving Vietnam as an educated person has to toil with 2 and sometimes 3 jobs to send his son and seemingly only hope at respectability in this career driven society of ours to college.
Flour is not cheap and ingredients are not to be wasted! Offering yourself as anything less than a virgin to your someday husband is tantamount to giving someone a big bag of steaming compost with worms crawling through it for their birthday.
The only thing worse than pre-marital sex is being gay. Which you gotta hand it to them wa-ha-ha is that not the purest form of masturbation? Paper is meant to be used and re-used and re-used and re-used and re-used. Buying new paper is an intolerable opulence reserved for gluttonous pigs and ONLY gluttonous pigs.
Have you ever had real Jewish chopped liver before? Well, my wife makes the real thing, you can bet your life on that. Here, you eat it with a piece of bread. This is real Jewish rye bread, with seeds. And again, he strengthens the connection between food and sex and family and Jewishness—he thinks his father must be sleeping with Anne, after all, why else would she be there?
But then it comes back. Common sense, you think? Common decency? My right mind, as they say, coming to the fore? Well, where is this right mind on that afternoon I came home from school to find my mother out of the house, and our refrigerator stocked with a big purplish piece of raw liver?
I believe that I have already confessed to the piece of liver that I bought in a butcher shop and banged behind a billboard on the way to a bar mitzvah lesson. Well, I wish to make a clean breast of it, Your Holiness.
My first piece I had in the privacy of my own home, rolled round my cock in the bathroom at three-thirty—and then had again on the end of a fork, at five-thirty, along with the other members of that poor innocent family of mine. Now you know the worst thing I have ever done.
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