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.
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