Portnoy's Complaint
by Philip Roth
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Book Summary Information
Author: Philip RothPerformer: Ron Silver
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 1999-12-01
ISBN: 0694522538
Publisher: Caedmon
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Book Reviews of Portnoy's Complaint
Book Review: Funny, Influential, Modern, Psychological Jewish Novel -- that's well worth your time...
Summary: 5 Stars
Philip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint' offers the reader a fresh take on the Novel while never forgetting the tradition of the great writers that came before him.
Porntoy's complaint is a character study in the form of a monologue made by Alexander Portnoy, a successfull Jew. However, Alex suffers from an inner conflict that is dividing and tormenting him. On one hand he loves his family, and he serves his community dutifully. On the other hand he is tormented by his childhood and his overbearing mother. He's also a bit of a sexual deviant, and feels guilty for indulging in a number of sexual fetishes.
The book is incredibly funny. You'll laugh out loud at the Alex's recollection of his childhood, masterbating in the bathroom while his mom calls into him, "Don't flush Alex! I want to see what's in your stool!"
The book is also highly influential. Philip Roth has invented the "Self Loathing Jew". If you're at all a fan of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, then you simply MUST read this book. It's obvious that David got many of his comic ideas about Jewishness from directly from Roth.
If there's a complaint I have about the book it would be that the novel feels incomplete. I found myself hoping throughout that we'd get to hear Alex engage in some dialoge with his shrink. Instead the whole book is a monologue made by Alex, directed at his shrink. Sometimes this approaches on overwhellming, but the length of the novel and it's pacing and the variety and quality of the antecdotes from his past keep the reader intrueged.
What exactly does Alex tell his Shrink? Well, he spends most of the time talking about his overbearing Mother. He tells about his high school addiction to masterbation. He talks about his on again off again relationship with his girlfriend 'The Monkey'. As well as previous relationships he had durring college. Finally, he talks about his trip to Israel and his sexual exploits there.
Summary of Portnoy's Complaint
" . . . [a] comic masterpiece, a glittering virtuoso performance. It is laughing-out-loud funny . . ." - Wall Street Journal
Unabridged on audio, read by Ron Silver and directed by the author, Philip Roth
Portnoy's Complaint is the famously outrageous confession made to his analyst by Alexander Portnoy, the Huck Finn of Newark, who is trust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Thirty years after it was first published, Portnoy's Complaint remains a classic of American literature, a tour de force of comic and carnal brilliance, and probably the funniest book about sex ever written. It was recently designated one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library judges.
"An American masterpiece." -Life
Along with Saul Bellow's Herzog, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint defined Jewish American literature in the 1960s. Roth's masterpiece takes place on the couch of a psychoanalyst, an appropriate jumping-off place for an insanely comical novel about the Jewish American experience. Roth has written several great books--Goodbye, Columbus and When She Was Good among them, but it is perhaps Portnoy's Complaint for which he is best known.
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