Roth, Philip. Novels, 1967-1972. New York: The Library of America, 2005.
I always garnered eyebrow raises and smirking lips whenever I mentioned reading Philip Roth. What I didn’t realize at the time was whenever I mentioned Philip Roth everyone’s minds immediately went to “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Having never read this particular novel I didn’t get the joke. Okay. I get it now.
To put it quite simply, Portnoy’s Complaint is the monologue of Alex Portnoy, a psychoanalyst’s patient, as he recounts his childhood, coming of age years and his insatiable appetite for sex (starting with masturbation) that has dominated all his life. The setting of a therapist’s office is brilliant. Where else are you allowed to be candid to the point of shocking? Where else are you encouraged to reveal your deepest and darkest, most vile desires without judgement or arrest? Roth couldn’t have his character admit these activities in any other setting without the admissions becoming pornographic and the one doing the admitting, ridiculously perverted. Alex doesn’t just admit sexual desires, though. He rants about religion, culture, World War II, education, parenting, relationships – all with comic and sarcastic ability.
There were probably over a dozen different sentences that were evocative and startling, but here are two of my favorites involving eating:
“You could even eat off her bathroom floor, if that should ever become necessary” (p 285), “But I don’t want the food from her mouth. I don’t even want the food from my plate – that is the point” (p 287).
BookLust Twist: First, from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 132), and again in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jersey Guys and Dolls” (p 130).
~*LunaSea*~ 