I read "Portnoy's Complaint" at an entirely inappropriate age, because some chewed-up second-hand copy of it was lying around in my parents’ place and nobody told me not to. It was one of the first adult books that I read, as far as I remember, and it screwed up my understanding of man-woman relationships, hell, man-mother relationships.
Portnoy's Complaint wasn't my sexual awakening- that was another book about which I'll entertain you at another time. Rather, it was like a "shit, this what relationships are gonna be like in my adult life" awakening. I knew upon reading that the narrator was absolutely a terrible person, and yet I found it hard not to take his side, because everything else I was seeing validated the sexist crap he was spouting so passionately. He was right, mothers did use food to emotionally blackmail their offspring and impress on them how superior they are- my mother did that all the time! And yes, mothers also want to micromanage their children’s bodies, I have also seen that action! He wrote about that in such a funny and bitter way, how could I possibly not relate? And then, of course, men do cheat and want to find newer, younger relationships constantly, because, also, that is another thing that keeps happening! Everybody can see it!
Oh his poor girlfriend. When he described the note she wrote him, she couldn’t spell because she was uneducated and spelled “Dear” “Dir”- “D! i! r!” his horror at her lack of education, his inability to introduce her to his parents, oh yes, I could see that. And his caustic phrase about her hooking her *unt on the nose of cashier. Their threesome with an Italian prostitute. Yes, it all stayed with me. This is how actually men, nice men, educated men, men from good families, men with good jobs and careers feel about their partners -and mothers. Always be aware of that, fourteen or fifteen-year-old me.
I don’t know enough to know if Philip Roth is still read or not – I kind of hope not, but then he was funny and made me laugh, so probably still is. So to all the teenagers who stumble on his books lying around here and there- read it, but with caution. I guess?
by 1000andonenites
1 Comment
Still read? you could say that. Dude just died a few years back and was widely regarded as the greatest living American novelist up until that point. His personal life was a shambles and I don’t consider his sexual hang up’s as “normal” in any way, but dude could write like few others.