Portnoy’s Complaint was published in 1969 to controversy and acclaim alike. The book was fought against due to censorship of the language and sexual portrayals. While the swinging’ sixties were in full effect upon release, the publishing world wasn’t swinging to the same tune, nor was everyone onboard with the quite irreverent Jewish image.
I had no real clue what I was getting into when I cracked the pages of the book for the first time. I personally had one of those convergences, where the book was mentioned offhandedly on a podcast and then mentioned in a book I was also reading. When different mediums all seem to point towards the same work, be they books, movies, or albums, I usually add it to the reading list.
I believe this book is more about questions than about sex and Jewish identity. But then again, I’m just a middle-aged Jewish man who can read a book and see more than the words on the page.
For me and my life experience, Alex Portnoy is just your average teenage boy questioning authority. He turns into a young man and then a middle-aged man who continues to question the existing structures, all while searching for answers that are harder to find than the Holy Grail. I understand that critics focused on the sex in the book, but I simply found that to be some of his searching.
Perhaps Alex Portnoy is trying to find out who he is within his own Jewish tribe by getting to know those outside that tribe? Perhaps he’s just looking for proof that “the way things are” isn’t the end-all, be-all of it.
I questioned my own religious beliefs shortly after my bar mitzvah, and subsequently have continued to question those beliefs, and I have returned to the idea that I am Jewish because it’s what fits. But I was given the space and opportunity to seek out the other things. Alex Portnoy isn’t given that space, so he has to make it for himself.
So, what is the book’s description? That’s pretty hard to come by, to be honest. I bought a Franklin Library hardcover edition of the book that has no back cover or inside dust jacket synopsis. The Amazon listings don’t have official descriptions until you look at the back of the mass-market paperback, where you find the following:
“Philip Roth’s unmatched genius for creating the laughing-out-loud hilarity of sexual desire soars to a new high in PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT. Alex Portnoy is an unsurpassed portrait of a lovable hero who cannot–will not–control the fires and fevers of lust. There is the case of Alex and the piece of liver…Alex and Alice Faye, the movie star, nestling under his arm whispering love love love love! Finally, there is the real thing, the beautiful sex-crazed Monkey emerging from the bathroom in her short, cream-colored chemise.”
Maybe in 1969, it made sense to focus on all the sex, but there is a lot more here than just sex and masturbation. This book is about questioning what it is to discover who you are. How you go about that is a quest you have control over, and Alex Portnoy chooses sex, but that’s not all there is to it. This feels like author Philip Roth rolled up an existential crisis in sex and sold it as a joke.
This is like wrapping medicine in candy. At least that’s how I read it.
Perhaps I’m a man out of time. My Jewishness tells me that it’s ok to question the powers that be. Not all of my brothers and sisters in the faith feel the same way. But this book was enjoyable, thought-provoking, laughable, and cynical. It was something that I may just be old enough to fully appreciate.