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Loading... Portnoy's Complaint (1969)by Philip Roth
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I was sifting through a box of old books from my shed and found this edition without a cover and missing page 37 (where one of Portnoy's testicles retreats into his body). Nevertheless, I began to read and Phillip Roth rapidly sucked (yes, sucked) me in to this damnable, relentlessly pejorative, monologue of Jewishness. There were many times I felt almost contaminated by the endless guilt, insecurity and Yiddish hatred of non- Jewish goyim, girls or shikses and just wanted it to end or go somewhere else.
Is this why an essentially Jewish Hollywood movie industry fetishized and then spat out the blonde temptress? Is it Jewishness that is responsible for what is seen today as the objectification of women? Portnoy in name (Port Noir) is the black gate to, depravity, guilt, insecurity or what? By culminating in Portnoy's failed attempt to rape a red-headed Jewish/Israeli girl (his monstrous mother) due to lack of an erection, it is as though nothing is resolved. It's an extraordinary diatribe of a book that eventually just peters out (literally in a series of dots) with a weak punchline - exhausted. The blurb says it is a funny book and I did laugh out- loud a few times:
not hard to understand the popularity of this book. there really is 'something for everyone' (male readers only). ostensibly, we have the humorous aspect of the work. there are some nice 'tongue in cheek' (so to speak) riffs. however, the real achievement here is the sleek embodiment of the modern reactionary (and curiously freudian) notion that all so-called 'do gooders' are motivated, at least in part, by psychosis. no reviews | add a review
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Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:The groundbreaking novel that propelled its author to literary stardom: told in a continuous monologue from patient to psychoanalyst, Philip Roth's masterpiece draws us into the turbulent mind of one lust-ridden young Jewish bachelor named Alexander Portnoy. Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift fr Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship. No library descriptions found. |
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Portnoy’s Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: ‘Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient’s “morality,” however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.’ (Spielvogel, O. “The Puzzled Penis,“Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.
Really, this definition does describe the entirety of the book pretty clearly. The amount of sex, racism, and misogynism in this book is not to be undersold. However, one can easily see how at the time it was written that this book would have caught the attention of so many readers. Alexander Portnoy is absolutely obsessed with sex and seems to always be trying to find ways to find gratification. He seems pretty self-aware that his thoughts and actions are inappropriate but he either lacks true conscience or empathy. Throughout the book Alexander addresses comments to Spielvogel who is very clearly his psychoanalyst. I was equally offended by, angry at, and sympathetic to Portnoy. But when I reached the end of the book and realized that the entire story was a preparatory inner monologue prior to an appointment with Spielvogel, I actually laughed out loud. After all, some people do tend to have these internal conversations in the same way some people clean their houses before the cleaning crew arrives. ( )