Rating: 
Summary: Don't read this on the bus!
Review: If laughing on the Public Transport is a crime in your country, for Heaven's sake don't read this on the bus!
This is a hilarious account of a boy growing up into adulthood in a highly strung Jewish household. When male hormone pressure besets him...
Parallel to the main story runs a satire on the attitude of the American-Jewish community concerning the other communities, mainly the goyim (wasps). There is a lot of paranoia about feeling inferior to these blond small-nosed beings who run the whole place and a lot of rationalising and mental juggling is engaged in in order to transmogrify the inferiority complex into one of superiority. Roth manages to really hit the nail on the head in a few places here.
Overall this book is quite explicit and therefore might not be everybody's cup of tea.
Rating:
Summary: Outrageous, irreverent, and relevant
Review: Alex Portnoy complains to his analyst about the consequences of his Jewishness and his Jewish upbringing. But the book can be seen as more about obsessiveness than it is about Jewish culture, per se. Moreover, time and again comfortable cultural conventions are laid open to expose their essential fradulence including but hardly limited to religious tenets.Alex's mother is obsessed with maintaining a perfect Jewish househould not only for herself but for the world to see and that includes Alex. Of course perpetual anxiety and oftentimes hysteria pervade the Portnoy household as any shortcomings must be eradicated. But, if anything, possible inferiorities are internalized only to seep out later. The Alex that emerges leads what amounts to a double life. On the one hand he is a "do-gooder" ( a perfect person) publicly acknowledged for his service to mankind, but on the other hand a compulsive Alex is fixated on sex as the only aspect of his life that is significant to him. Ultimately the conflicts are too much for Alex, hence an analyst. There is a lot to digest in this book. It is humorous, outrageous, and would be offensive to the tender-hearted, but it is far more a study on personal and social dysfunction. The question is has Roth captured a reality in a manner that informs or captivates. The answer here is an unqualified, yes.
Rating:
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: If you are the type of person who enjoys the kind of humor to be found in the "Porky's" series, "American Pie," and "Something About Mary" then you will love "Portnoy's Complaint." If that kind of vulgar humor disgusts you, then you will probably hate it. No, there isn't a single, isolated chapter that discusses masturbation and the burgeoning sexuality of a young Alexander Portnoy to the well-developed perverted sexuality of the grown-up Alexander Portnoy. These things are discussed in pretty much every chapter. Therefore, if you find that kind of thing repulsive, do not read the book (and spare yourself the obligatory one-star rating and rant amazon.com review). However, that being said, I believe there is much more to this book than sex jokes. In fact, I think it is quite a literary accomplishment. I think Roth has carried on the tradition of the Dostoevskian anti-hero character quite nicely into the late twentieth century. I feel he nicely describes the experience of growing up in the city with an overbearing mother. You gotta love the way he incorporates yiddish terms into the text! I think it adds so much flavor to the story. I don't know if this is Roth's best or not, but I certainly found it a worthy read.
Rating: 
Summary: Portnoy Needs an Imodium
Review: Enjoying caustic, in-your-face satire every now and again, I really gave this book a girlscout's try, but the thought of wading through yet one more chapter of this muck gave me severe indigestion. I have never suffered through such streaming diarreha of one's consciousness, and unlike most, I found the story (oh, was there a story?) to hold little to no humor or literary, spiritual, psychological or any other worthiness. What's the appeal here? My life is too short to have to scoop poop for 289 pages before finally being enlightened by Roth's take on the real meaning of bowel movements and other such bodily secretions. Somebody, give Portnoy a sock!
Rating: 
Summary: A Nice Jewish Boy
Review: So now we know where Jerry Seinfield get his material. Alex Portnoy rages to his analyst about the angst of his childhood and wondering why he enjoys such a preverted sexual appetite. His conclusion of course is that his preversions are the result of his parents. Alex is brow-beaten by his well meaning but overbearing mother and ever suffering and forever constipated father. Roth subjects his anti-hero to every example of stereotypical Jewish behaviour.
Portnoy's sexual perversions begin with his round the clock masturbations and culminates in a menage-a-trois with his gentile girlfriend and a Spanish prostitute. Roth's biting satire is laugh out loud funny.
Rating:
Summary: recommended
Review: I can not believe that no one has yet to rate this book. Although I read it a little while ago I remember it to be a very engaging novel. It was highly recommended by my english teacher, but he would not make it required reading because of some lewd context. So I decided to read it for just that reason. It was a little shocking to me when I read it but it was highly enjoyable. It is about a man reflecting on his life growing up in a jewish family, by describing it as you would when speaking to a psychiatrist. It is just hilarious both in its context and the way that it is written in the tone of worrisome and frantic person. It gives a very vivid picture of his childhood. It was wonderful. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely NC-17 and quite perverse.
Review: I was going to write that in some ways this book was most riveting, however, it is mostly just troubling. Definitely NC-17 and quite perverse. At any rate, I thought it read a lot like a New Jersey Jew version of Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's brilliant story about the futility of trying to elude Jesus. Alex Portnoy does everything he can in a vain attempt to corrupt and reject his Jewish heritage. Like Hazel Motes rejecting his Christianity in O'Conner's Wise Blood, he fails miserably.
Rating:
Summary: Roth teaches Gentiles alot about what it means to be a Jew
Review: I saw on the "60 minutes" television show that some Jews are upset that Roth has revealed so many Jewish secrets to the Gentile world in his many books. Having just read "Portnoy's Complaint" I understand that sentiment. Roth teaches us Gentiles a lot of what it means to be Jewish. He teaches us some Jiddish. He points out the priority that the Jews place on marrying only other Jews. He laments the Jews preoccupation with their 2,000 year old "wandering Jew" status. And he marvels at the completely Jewish state of the state of Israel. Before I read this novel I knew a little about Jewish culture. I had heard the word "goyim" (meaning gentiles) before, but "shiske" I did not know. Evidently it means a female gentile or perhaps a blonde female gentile. Shiskes are important to this novel. Portnoy spends all his energy is pursuit of shiske females must to the consternation of his Jewish parents. In so doing Portnoy attempts to cast of the mantle of his Judaism. Portnoy complains to his Dad that he is tired of "being a suffering jew". Roth is saying that the Jews cling to their suffering status in order to maintain cohesion in their ranks. And woe to the Jew who tries to marry outside his tribe lest he dilute the race. In the case of Alexander Portnoy's, his family members try to derail his relations with Gentile girls. Philip Roth might have been one of the first "great" writers I have read to address headlong the theme of men and their compulsion to have sex--either by themselves, as the young Alexander Portnoys compulsion to masturbate, or sex with a female. This topic is the main focus of the book. We've always know that it is true that men think about sex pretty much all day long. But Roth is the first writer I have seen write about this at length. The humour in this novel--yes it is laugh-at-loud funny--left me unprepared for the extreme sadness of Roth's latest novel "The Human Stain".
Rating:
Summary: Great, if a bit overrated
Review: This book contains some of the funniest moments in literature (that I have read, anyhow). Roth's characters are well drawn, and Portnoy's annecdotes are quite amusing. Still, like most Roth I've read, this book gets a bit repetitive. Ok Alex, we get it, your parents were nuts, you hate yourself as a jew, you can't have healthy relationships with women, and you're self-obsessed. The repetition doesn't get too much in the way though, since the book is such a quick read, so it's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Odyssey
Review: While reading "Portnoy's Complaint", I was suprised to learn that this novel was more about two Jewish Parents confusing and distorting one man's life, than about a disorder that "can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship". Alexander Portnoy begins the novel by describing in detail the pain and psychological trauma his parents, specifically his mother, imposed upon him when he was forming his first thoughts and understandings of the world, and how these traumas have affected his life up to age thirty-three (an ironic twist that he should portray himself as a suffering Christ figure). But there is such an emphasis on his parents being Jewish that I came away with the feeling that his complaint needed only be written BECAUSE his parents were Jewish. He contrasts Jewish parents to Gentile parents so frequently and making the differences so glarringly good vs. bad that Portnoy's complaint becomes not so much a disscussion of "Portnoy's Complaint" (a real-life disorder) but how screwed up one can get by being concieved by Jewish parents...It is Portnoy's sexual odyssey that, even with the psychological baggage, inspired awe in this reader. Thirty-four years after this book was published and it can still sting and disgust and arouse the reader, all in the wrong places.
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