Portnoy’s Complaint
Nov 27th, 2007 by nick
For a change of pace, here’s a non-political book review.
I didn’t quite know what I was getting into when I picked up Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth, at the library recently. Now that I’ve finished the book, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it.
The protagonist, Alexander Portnoy, is an intelligent and superficially successful Jewish man in his 30s with serious sexual obsessions and perversions. The book takes the form of a vaguely chronological first-person narration of Portnoy’s life, as if he is speaking to a psychiatrist. Most of the monologue consists of Portnoy admitting his many sexual misdeeds, ranging from the embarrassing (masturbating on a public bus as a teenager) to the perverse (hiring a prostitute for a threesome with his girlfriend and himself) to the horrendous (attempting to rape a woman in Israel, who luckily had been in the army and so was able to defend herself).
Interspersed with the admissions are Portnoy’s attempts at analyzing himself and the origins of his proclivities. The cause, according to Portnoy, seems to be his parents and their stifling parenting of high expectations and over-involvement in his life. This analysis is explicitly Freudian at times.
More interestingly, the book also contains a running theme of Portnoy’s status, as a Jew, as an “outsider” in American life. This is symbolized by his obsession with shiksas (gentile women). However, although he renounces his religion and dates only goyim, he is conflicted. Two examples from his experiences with his college girlfriend reveal this conflict. The first occurs when he meets her parents:
Then at the railroad station her father says, “How to you do, young man?” and I of course answer, “Thank you.” Why is he acting so nice? Because he has been forewarned (which I don’t know whether to take as an insult or a blessing), or because he doesn’t know yet? Shall I say it then, before we even get into the car? Yes, I must! I can’t go on living a lie! “Well, it sure is nice being here in Davenport, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, what with my being Jewish and all.” Not quite ringing enough perhaps. “Well, as a friend of Kay’s, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, and a Jew, I do want to thank you for inviting me –“ Stop pussyfooting! What then? Talk Yiddish? How? I’ve got twenty-five words to my name – half of them dirty, and the rest mispronounced! Shit, just shut up and get in the car. “Thank you, thank you,” I say, picking up my own bag, and we all head for the station wagon.
The second example occurs when he thinks his girlfriend is pregnant, and they discuss getting married:
I said, “And you’ll convert, right?”
I intended the question to be received as ironic, or thought I had. But Kay took it seriously. Not solemnly, mind you, just seriously.
Kay Campbell, Davenport, Iowa: “Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
Great girl! Marvelous, ingenuous, candid girl! Content you see, as she was! …
Only it put our Portnoy into a rage, incensed The Temper Tantrum Kid. What do you mean why would you want to do a thing like that? Why do you think, you simpleton-goy! … Just what the fuck makes you so self-satisfied, anyway?….
I was, fortunately, so astonished by my indignation that I couldn’t begin to voice it. How could I be feeling a wound in a place where I was not even vulnerable? What did Kay and I care less about than one, money, and two, religion?… Our children would be atheists. I had only been making a joke!
Nonetheless, it would seem that I never forgave her…
I must admit that after reading the book, I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to think about Portnoy and his “complaint.” Here are a few possibilities:
- There’s nothing really wrong with Portnoy except for his poor impulse control and tendency toward self-analysis and self-pity. The whole book’s a commentary on our propensity for over-analysis, and is really poking fun at psychiatry, specifically Freudian, analysts.
- We’re supposed to take Portnoy and his Freudian self-analysis seriously, and the book’s a commentary on the problems that even well-meaning parents can cause their children.
- The book’s a more general commentary on the experience of growing up Jewish in the United States, and the sexual misdeeds and Portnoy’s self-analysis are a metaphor for the feeling of being an outsider and attempting to fit in to a society, but constantly feeling different. That is, at the same time that Portnoy is breaking out of the confines of strict Jewish mores, he is breaking out of the confines of standard sexual mores. For example, his bus masturbation session immediately follows his first experience eating lobster (which is forbidden by Jewish dietary law). However, he simultaneously feels guilty both for rejecting his Jewishness and integrating into mainstream society and for violating sexual standards.
As an aside, the book is peppered with Yiddish words and phrases. A useful resource, in case your Yiddish isn’t up to par, is Andrew Gordon’s, Glossary of Yiddish for Portnoy’s Complaint.