*As always,
there are spoilers in this post*
Portnoy’s
Complaint is possibly the funniest and the most vulgar book on this reading
list so far. Well, Henry Miller’s Tropic
of Cancer might be more vulgar, but its vulgarity was infinitely less
enjoyable than Philip Roth’s compelling creation.
Portnoy’s
Complaint is the extended monologue of Alexander Portnoy from the couch of his
psychotherapist, Dr. Spielvogel. Portnoy
details every sexual compulsion, oddity, and desire he has ever felt with all
the passion and enthusiasm of a sinner working through a final confession. But unlike the sinner, there is defiance sewn
in with his shame. But even as the novel
feels like a comedy routine that mines Portnoy’s life for every comic angle and
that considers nothing too base to be a punch line, the novel has a depth and a
power that raises it above a mere collection of humorous vignettes. At some point in the middle of the novel, I doubted
that there was anything in the plot that was going to develop into a huge
revelation, and it became clear to me that the force of the novel lay entirely
in Portnoy’s character.
Portnoy is a
comic everyman, not in the sense that we all have bizarre sexual desires, but
in the sense that we are all incredibly vexed by who we are and what we
desire. Warring in his mind are equal
parts self-loathing and self-love, pride and shame, animal desires and
intellectual analysis—and the war has left a bloody mess on the battlefield of
his soul. He is by turns disgusting and
endearing. It is a testament to Roth’s
ability as a writer that Portnoy can be a hostile sexist pig and yet I found
myself more sympathetic than critical. His
humor and his total forthrightness make him relatable and enjoyable to
follow. He is brutally honest, and in
telling these scenes of humiliation and personal pain, he had me laughing out
loud. Even though the neurotic Jew has become something of a caricature in our times
(and I believe that it was not uncommon in 1969 either), there is nothing stale
or hackneyed in Roth's depiction of Portnoy.
At its root,
the novel is about masculinity and the idea of becoming a “man.” What he is trying to free himself from as far
as his mother is concerned is not his Oedipal desire for her but his status as
a momma’s boy, a good rule-following kid who is an over-achieving
academic. He admires most the “men,” a
word that he himself puts in quotation marks, who play softball on Sunday
afternoons when he was a kid growing up in New Jersey. His obsession with his penis is his obsession
with maleness, for this is a coming of age story (pun intended) in which the
protagonist is unable to come (pun intended) of age. He may have grown to be a 33 year old public
figure in New York, but he has never grown up, and for that, he mostly blames
his mother. He cycles through his past
girlfriends to identify the moments at which he could have grown up and settled
into manhood. And Portnoy is merciless
in his criticisms of himself and his treatment of the women in his life.
For as
humorous as the novel is, it is also incredibly angry. Behind all the jokes and self-deprecation,
there lies a sometimes simmering and sometimes explosive hostility. Whether Alex is jerking off of going at it
with The Monkey, he is violent and unrelenting.
And even though I suspected, as I stated earlier, that the plot would
prove to have no natural or insightful climax, I was wrong. All this hostility erupts at the novel’s
conclusion when Alex attempts to rape Naomi in Israel. In that scene, Naomi takes from Alex his
final and most dependable crutch, his humor.
She says of him, “And you are a highly intelligent man—that is what
makes it even more disagreeable. The
contribution you could make! Such stupid
self-deprecation! How disagreeable!” Alex replies, “Oh I don’t know, . . . self
deprecation is, after all, a classic form of Jewish humor.” “Not Jewish humor!” Naomi erupts. “No! Ghetto humor.” She then proceeds to say that Portnoy is
everything wrong with the disapora of the Jews and that his humor is part of
Jewish character that allowed the Jews to be destroyed by the Nazis. It is only after this criticism that Alex
jumps up and attempts to rape Naomi, proving to her and himself that he is a “man.” But it is also at this moment that he is
ultimately unmanned, since he has become impotent, which is what has led him to
Dr. Spielvogel’s office. His
self-loathing has bested his self-love, and the delicate balance that has
allowed him to continue is upset.
That is our
hero who is not in the least way heroic.
Roth does an amazing job in capturing the complex machinery of anger and
self-loathing that churns about in our brains at every level of consciousness,
and he manages to do that with style, humor, love, and sympathy. I may not want to hang out with Alex Portnoy,
but I respect and understand him, feel his pain, and see myself in him. I cannot imagine it was an easy thing to
balance all the pieces of Portnoy’s soul.
If you are not comfortable with crass humor, extended scenes of masturbation and sex, or swearing
and vulgar expressions, then this is probably not the book for you. But if you enjoy laughing in the face of what
is sad and unchanging about the human condition, and if you love a sharply told
story, beautifully written with laugh-out-loud passages, then I highly
recommend Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
