It was a bit surprising that the doctor is a woman, and (only) presumably a Jew, but her name, Spielvogel, means pet bird in German.

His “rant,” his “complaint” is funny, a bit shocking, but convincing as to why he would, indeed, be spilling this all out to the doctor. What is further very clear is the dramatic conflict his obsessive sex life (with shikses and self) brings into his life. What is very clear is that he is a Jew and both loves his family, but feels oppressed by them and their Jewish way of life, which is his way of life as well. and the “rest” is the majority of the book, just isn’t so clear. At times it is obvious that he wildly exaggerates, but the rest. The reader can never quite know to what extent does he tell the truth and how much of his life is exaggerated. He at least claims to be a wild and incurable sex addict, and as he tells it, at least, he would certainly well qualify. On the one hand he simply IS his Jewishness on the other he hates it. While he has had sex with a huge list of women since his late teen days, virtually all of them have been “shikses,” non-Jews. He details his childhood, his adolescence and even his adult life, especially his fairly long-term relationship with a very beautiful non-Jewish American woman. Alex is the sole speaker in the work and it is a first person narrative, Alex is speaking to a woman psychiatrist. Structurally the novel is creative and unusual. He also once calls this “kvetching” as “his confessions.”

“Is this truth I’m delivering up, or is it just plain kvetching? Or is kvetching? for people like me a form of truth? Regardless, my conscience wishes to make it known, before the beefing begins anew, that at the time my boyhood was not this thing I feel so estranged from and resentful of now.” On the other hand he admits to being unnaturally addicted to every imaginable form of sex with women and self, and that he sees his life as hugely “in trouble.” His “complaint” of the title is this contradiction in himself.Īlex is anger filled, and much of time that anger is aimed toward his family: “ I will not treat any human being (outside my family), as inferior.” At the same time he realizes that sex has simply dominated his life to this point in time. He seems so bound to what had been expected of him by his Jewish parents and their culture as middle-class Jews in New Jersey that he feels crippled. New York: Random House, A Bantam Book, 1969Īlexander (Alex) Portnoy is ranting to Dr.

Book review - By Roth, Philip – PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT Reviews of Nobel Prize winner

Book portnoy's complaint