Rating: 
Summary: The funniest dirty book you'll ever read
Review: For everyone who thinks the epitome of gross-out humor is "There's Something About Mary", Philip Roth went farther almost thirty years earlier. What's more outrageous? The hair gel, or the piece of meat in "Portnoy's Complaint"? Besides crossing the line of decency for hilarious results, "Portnoy's Complaint" is a fascinating stream-of-consciousness novel that reveals the true thoughts, fears, and neuroses of a young man. The book is so audacious, it has inevitably identified Philip Roth in the eyes of many readers. This effect has led Roth to examine the results of fame on a writer in many of his following books, under the guise of Nathan Zuckerman. Read this first, and then read the rest. Just one thing: DON'T SKIP TO THE LAST PAGE! Trust me, you won't want to ruin the effect the last paragraph will have on everything else in the book (it's the only novel i can think of with a punchline). That said, read the book!
Rating:
Summary: Biting and lewd, yet unquestionably brilliant.
Review: I had heard that Roth's prose often reminds readers of JD Salinger, and that Portnoy is merely a Jewish version of Catcher in the Rye. Well...yes and no. In Portnoy, Roth explores the similar themes of adolescenct alienation, self-doubt and loathing, and social displacement which Salinger also regards. Yet Roth does so much more in this ranting and irrefutably hysterical portrait of the American Jew as a young man. Lewd, crude, and achingly funny, this book demonstrates what Jewishness, and the Jewish experience, is like for so many boomer generation males in this country. Portnoy's struggles with his demanding family ("Why can't you stop being so selfish and give us some grandchildren" - remarks his mother), his self-loathing resulting from being unable to derive satisfaction from anything other than emotionless sex, and his overpowering anger at being helpless to change any aspect of his life as it barrels forward, are what makes this novel a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THE COMEDIC WIT OF PHILIP ROTH. .
Review: This book threw me for a loop right from the get go. I had no idea this wasn't a novel in the conventional sense with chapters and multiple dialogues.
It turned out to be the tribes and tribulations of Alexander Portnoy. A thirtysomething academic sprawled out on his Shrink's couch ranting about his reason for his excessive kinky sexual exploits and inclinations. We are also shown his growing up (in a Jewish Household,) with an overly doting mother and a stern insecure father; and how they were responsible for his neurosis. His parents are similar to the parents of Seinfeld if you ever watched that show.
It doesn't matter if you're Jewish to read this novel, because if you have ever heard your grandfathers or fathers talk about the "old days" you will relate one way of another.
Philip Roth was very candid in his sexual adventures, throwing just about every taboo out there into the mix. I do admit he speaks harshly about his girlfriends or sex friends being more like it. Also I found it amusing, since growing up in New Jersey, to read about places in Jersey City and Newark that I go to all the time.
Just an aside, the best way to read this book is to imagine you are Portnoy and you are ranting to a Psychiatrist (who never speaks, amusingly until the end)
The Book is the mental ramblings of our main character and after a while the book does have a rough structure and it reads like a comedic Show, I enjoyed it, but it is not an easy read because of it's unorthodox structure, it's somewhat sexist treatment of people and it's harsh opinions of religion. One thing is for certain, no one is safe from the comedic whit of Philip Roth.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Dirty Book and More!
Review: It has been several years since I read this hilariously filthy book, but it still remains in my extensive personal library. I've read it a few times, and always found it highly amusing................Alexander Portnoy is a nice Jewish boy, who somewhere between barmitzvah instruction, and young adulthood, becomes mentally and sexually warped. The book unfolds as Portnoy confesses all to his psychiatrist. The accounts of childhood experiences locked in the bathroom with his "Dumb as a pudding" sister Hannah's brassiere as a sex toy, to his adult sexual obsession with "Shikses" (yiddish word for non-jewish female) are fall off your reading chair hilarious. Portnoy raves on about sex, his parents, and anything else he can blame for his perversity. Roth gives you a very good handle on just who Alex Portnoy is, and as with any great story, whether it be film or written, fact or fiction...you care about the characters. ................Although I've read "Goodbye Columbus" and "When She Was Good" among other Roth titles, this one remains my favorite by this famous author. I was always curious to see the movie version of "Portnoys Complaint", I understand Karen Black is one of the stars, and have read negative feedback about the film in general. Unfortunately, I've yet to see it for myself, as I never go by other opinions if I am curious enough to check something out. ............."Goodbye Columbus" I liked in it's film version. That was a hit in it's time, while the Portnoy film is an obscurity. Frankly, I can't imagine a movie of this book. Then again, the absurdly humorous Jewish mother/sex farce "Where's Poppa" by Robert Klane, was pretty good as a George Segal/Ruth Gordon outing. ............If you want to read a funny, entertaining book with some off-beat bedroom humor thrown into the mix, here's a classic novel by a classic author that will delight and possibly disgust you at times, but Roth surely won't bore you for a second.
Rating:
Summary: I Can't Believe No One Ever Told Me About This Book
Review: After reading PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, I find myself scrambling to recall whether I have ever read another American novel anywhere near as hysterically funny. Maybe Tom Robbins's SKINNY LEGS AND ALL is in the same ballpark (and I've yet to read CATCH-22) but Roth simply had my head spinning while I read this book. My jaw is still on the floor, in fact.Esoterically, this book is one long rant about the joys and (more heavily) the anguishes of growing up Jewish in America in the forties and fifties. It's 1966 and successful civil servant Alexander Portnoy is on the psychiatrist's couch trying to get out all his Oedipal, inferiority, and sexual fetish complexes. That infamous masturbation scene in the movie AMERICAN PIE? A direct descendent of Mrs. Portnoy's piece of liver! More deeply, if you can stand it, this book seriously examines the struggle of growing up with smothering parents: Alex's both put him on a pedestal and criticize everything he does. He's unmarried at thirty-three in part because of all the neuroses his parents have bestowed in him--so why doesn't he get married and have children already? Alex lets us know in pornographic detail why. Speaking of pornographic detail, Alex spends plenty of time on his ultimately doomed affairs with (mostly Protestant) women. Most of his anger at growing up Jewish in a Christian-dominated society he takes out on these "shikses"--variously called Pumpkin, the Pilgrim and the Monkey--this is not a politically correct book from the feminist perspective. It does, however, raise serious questions about what it means to be a human being, as opposed to just a hyphenated-American. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT is brash, profane and wonderful. It is certainly not for the faint-hearted or those with what were once considered "polite sensibilities." But it is a very moral book in it's own way. Portnoy knows he's no hero, and Roth doesn't portray him as such--in some ways the book is one big joke. Every effective joke has its kernel of truth; Roth's have the whole can of corn. I never expected a novel that is one long rant to inspire a review that is one long rave, but there it is.
Rating: 
Summary: I HAVE A COMPLAINT!
Review: When I finally decided to read Portnoy's Complaint, I was excited by the reviews I'd read. I thought I'd love it. For a while, I did love it - I was on the verge of recommending it to friends. Then, about a hundred pages in, it got tedious. I realized that this is a one-note novel. Alexander Portnoy keeps saying different versions of the same thing over and over again. His rant (this book is simply one long rant) ceases to be insightful or illuminating or even funny - he just becomes ANNOYING. Hundreds of pages of kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Not for nothing, ALL parents mess their children up. To have this guy in his thirties still blaming his poor parents for everything that is wrong in his life - and with such gravity - simply makes him a loser. That is the book's critical flaw - Alex Portnoy is not a likeable character. I hated spending time with him - he's obnoxious. He goes on and on about how noble he is, how liberal, how enlightened, how smart, how educated, how moral, yadda, yadda, yadda. This does not stop him from spouting countless racial, anti-religious, and homophobic stereotypes. I can't understand why this book is as well-respected as it is. Maybe it was original at the time it was published; now it just comes across as DATED. And I consider myself its target audience too! Similar material has been mined with better results in film by Woody Allen - and even on television by George Costanza! I know this review is not going to be popular - this book is a bit of a sacred cow. I just couldn't finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Not Too Many Complaints Here
Review: Like Charles Dickens, I had great expectations for this book. Well let me clarify that, Charles Dickens was fairly dead before this book was written and had he been alive, he may or may not had the desire to pick Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint", so let me qualify. Hearing the glowing reviews and seeing the listmania lists placing Roth's "Complaint" as a must read had me fairly in a frenzy to read this one. Does it stand out as a truly unique must-read from all the more than mediocre literature out there? I don't think so. That's not to say it has achieved mediocrity, it is somewhat above that. What a reader gets from "Portnoy's Complaint," is a window inside the psyche of a Jewish American boy come boy-man smothered by a truly overbearing mother and plagues throughout life by a sexual obsession that keeps him from being committed to a human relationship. His commitments seem to be centered around desires emanating somewhere about his mid-region and early on seem to be mostly of the self-satisfactory kind. This translates into adulthood to a dogged pursuit of shallow relationships with WASP-ish women. So, there is plenty of Freud infused throughout. And interestingly enough it transmogrifies into Jung, with Alexander Portnoy grasping the collective unconscious of his Jewish ethnicity getting back at the established American gentility through sex. If any of this makes you squeamish, you may want to steer clear. It was a book that definitely pushed the boundaries of the time in the 1960's but then again there was a whole cultural movement all about pushing the boundaries back then. However, like most boundary pushers of the times, we seemed to have lowered our tolerance for the racy and compared to literature today of the same ilk, Portnoy is fairly tame. Do you have to be Jewish to really "get" this book? Well, I'm not and there was probably 10% of the book that went right over or around my head. Yiddish references were completely lost on me, but through repeat word usage most readers can probably get the gist. Portnoy's is kind of like a mix of Woody Allen and Henry Miller. It's short and written with an inner voice of a psychotherapy recipient spewing forth from the coach of self-analysis. It's a good piece of literature, but I'm not so sure about a great one. Read this is you are interested in what it may be like to be a Jewish-American man growing up in an oppressive family atmosphere. Read this if you want a good chuckle at sometimes raunchy but talented writing. If these things don't appeal to you at this time, move on to other reads on your list of literary desires.
--MMW
Rating:
Summary: Bamboozled by positive reviews
Review: I read Portnoy's Complaint and was surprised by how bad it was. It's a long, reflective monolog, which is a difficult endeavor for any writer, especially when they're bad like Philip Roth. The narrative is being told to a doctor, so I will no fill the role of the doctor with a critique of the book.
"Right...Talk faster, get to the point...Why would you do that... Yes, I understand: you're a Jew stereotype and a pervert.... Yes, got it, Jew. Shut up with that already, I don't care...you already told me that...Talk faster...Talk faster.... You are taking too long with your story and I'm losing interest....Okay, I've had enough. Are you almost done? No! You're not? How can that be? You've been talking for so long....Shut up....Shut up already....That's it, I'm either leaving or killing you....Well, you've asked for it...That's it, you're done....That wasn't funny at all. Why did you think that that would keep me here....Good, you're done. Excellent, not your story but you being finished." People kept calling this book funny. Where's the funny? I didn't see any funny. Some of the phrases were amusing, and I chuckled because of some anecdotes, but then he kept going with them. Just going and going. If you want a funny book, get one by Woody Allen. If you want a coaster, this will suffice.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Writing
Review: One reviewer here complains that "Roth's style remindes me of occasions where people speak out loud to themselves when they are angry with a situation" umm... DUH ... the main character is doing exactly that! He is speaking from the couch in his doctor's (shrink's) office. Even if some do not like the content there is no mistaking that Roth is a writer of great caliber and as far as I'm concerned this book is funny, interesting and extremely well written. I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: i too have a jewish mother, but do i whine?
Review: I can't get over Philip Roth; he rants and he whines and he obsesses...and instead of being annoying it is hilarious! Between the sarcasm and the self deprication, you may find the sad little voice of a confused child reaching out to you for help. But in the great words of Tennesse Williams (or Paul Newman, the reason I've memorized some of Williams' words) "How can one drowning man save another drowning man?". Exactly. Reading this book frustrated me; yes i have these problems, yes i recognize them, now what? All of the history, the digressions, the humor boils down to nothing and that is the biggest flaw of the book. Go forth, read, be entertained! But don't expect and you will not be disappointed. (Always a good philosophy on life by the way.)
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