PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth

This gentleman just won the International Booker, so despite this blog’s last painful experience with that award (the dire Finkler Question) I decided it was time for some Roth. I am not sure I will ever be the same again.

The entire book is a monologue, delivered from one Alexander Portnoy to his psychiatrist. It is 300 pages of one man’s self-centred whining, and, incredibly, it works.

As he explains early on “Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and I’m living it in the middle of a Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke – only it ain’t no joke” His family is full of neurotics: his mother is controlling, his father is constipated, and he himself his obsessed with masturbation. It all goes down hill from there, as he finds people to have sex with and thus becomes obsessed with sex. Essentially, it’s Adrian Mole, but dirty.

This is such an odd novel, that I think the best way to give you an idea of how it works is to quote. Now, skip this if you have a delicate constitution, as I regret to inform you that it is all about masturbation:

I once cored an apple, saw to my astonishment (and with the aid of my obsession) what it looked like, and ran off into the woods to fall upon the orifice of the fruit, pretending that the cool and mealy hole was actually between the legs of that mythical being who always called me Big Boy when she pleaded for what no girl in all recorded history had ever had. Oh shove it in me, Big Boy, cried the cored apple that I banged silly on that picnic. Big Boy, Big Boy, oh give me all you’ve got, begged the empty milk bottle that I kept hidden in our storage bin in the basement, to drive wild after school with my vaselined upright. Come, Big Boy, come, screamed the maddened piece of liver that, in my own insanity, I bought one afternoon at a butcher shop and believe it or not, violated behind the billboard on the way to a bar mitzvah lesson.

And it’s pretty much all like this. Sex, sex sex. Literary though it is, I bet it’s hidden under lots of teenage boys matresses.

I found it a hilarious and technically accomplished work, the greatest feat being the narrative voice: always whining but somehow also always interesting. He did lose me a little at the end, when he goes to Israel – perhaps I dont understand enough about Jewish life in the 1960, or something – but it struck me as a something of a damp squib.

As a side point, much though I admire Philip Roth, I have to let you know I won’t be seeking to date him. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t see much of a women beyond her bits.