Rating: 
Summary: Raging Id
Review: This is one of my favorite books and for many reasons. Roth's writing, while seemingly over-the-top is actually a tightly controlled, rippingly savage attack on all sorts of sacred cows: post-WWII America, polite society, Jewish traditions in America, family relations, the psychiatric trends of the 1960s, and so much more. Sure, Alexander Portnoy is one of the most repugnant anti-heroes in American literature but that doesn't distract from Roth's intelligent word play. The set-up, with a self-absorbed and self-obsessed patient venting wildly to an unseen psychiatrist, gives Roth plenty of opportunity to play around while ploughing through the "story" of Alexander Portnoy's life. The riffs allow for plenty of flashbacks and flash forwards, exotic wordplay, and larger-than-life characterizations. The highly personal nature of Portnoy's complaining obviously gets ribald, but that doesn't make this a "..." piece of literature. Portnoy emerges as a ... jerk--though a thoroughly entertaining jerk. This is a book to read, re-read, and re-read again. There's lots of gold to be found here.
Rating: 
Summary: Still perversely funny, but...
Review: This "classic" is more than a little bit dated, but it does feature some of the best stream-of-consciousness prose I've ever encountered. Alexander Portnoy is brilliant, driven, troubled, conflicted about his faith, shamelessly chauvinistic (sometimes downright misogynistic), and self-indulgent. His nearly 300 pages of narrative from a psychiatrist's couch brings us from his youth in the Jewish working-class of Newark to his "present" as a Great Society reformer and back again innumerable times. It ultimately doesn't lead anywhere that I was able to discern, but the vignettes of growing up in the 1940s and experiencing the changes of the following decades are wonderfully vivid, and the looks inside his own psyche through the years are often all too believable. (Much as I hate to admit it, teenage Portnoy's struggle to reconcile his left-wing politics with his longing for a wife who looks like she stepped out of a Laura Ashley catalog in her angora sweater and tartan skirt is painfully familiar to me!) On the other hand, his memories of his parents' obsessive concern with bodily functions (or the lack thereof) and his recollections down to the most absurd details of his stormy sex life (sometimes with women who were just as neurotic as him, more often with various inanimate objects) often left me hoping the good doctor would just tell him to grow up already. I can see why Roth's frank sex and masturbation scenes were considered so innovative in 1967, but in a more liberated age they often come across as overwrought, sexist and, well, bad. Still, for all that, his retrospective look into adolescent sexuality and familial relationships from an adult perspective is second to none. So is his evocation of the paradox of a successful young adult still torn between craving parents' approval and bristling against their rules and expectations, something you don't have to be Jewish or male to appreciate. If Roth's most famous book hasn't aged as well as I'd hoped, it's still worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: Over the Top
Review: Admittedly, I came to Roth a little late. But after coming across commentary on him in a couple different sources, I decided to try him myself. I am quite glad I did. Structurally, this novel is a marvel. It is the story of Alexander Portnoy as told by himself to his psychiatrist. Written basically as an extended stream-of-consciousness rant, this story never lets up on its intensity. I was constantly amazed at how Roth was able to maintain what I would call a "shrieking tone" throughout the novel. As I think back on it, all I seen to remember is people screaming. And yet, it works. Granted, things seem a bit over the top in the novel. Portnoy's obsession with his Jewish roots in New Jersey and, particularly, his obsession with sex go beyond hysteria. But, as a reader, you're willing to go along because the structure of the novel labels Portnoy as a mental case. Besides, Portnoy/Roth tells it all so well. Of course, it is easy to see why this book would have caused so much controversy when it was published. The Jewish community would be outraged at their depiction and many would find all the sex talk disgusting. Fortunately, I am not easily disgusted. Despite the hysteria of the novel, there is a lot of truth here. I don't feel as extremely about my youth as Portnoy does and I'm not Jewish but I found myself identifying with Portnoy many times. His feelings reflect universal ones. People willing to take the risk will find a book filled with insight and amazing prose.
Rating:
Summary: Still Kvetching, and Fabulous, After All These Years
Review: Roth has developed into a writer capable, in Hemingway's parlance, of scoring a TKO on the Master himself. The late-Roth triple-header of Human Stain, American Pastoral, I Married A Communist or(even better than Communist, Sabbath's Theater) has assured him a place in history untainted by the sensationalism that accompanied Portnoy's Complaint, the book that got the public to take notice, the rabbis to denounce, and the media to enshrine Roth in fame/notoriety. Portnoy's Complaint, however, is a book with perfect pitch. The humor and volcanic energy of an Elkin is combined with sheer readibility, accessibility, and the stench of a psyche spraying the page with candor. This is a great book. Unlabored, unforgettable, and true.
Rating: 
Summary: American Pie of the 1960's
Review: I read this book during a trip to Los Angeles. While reading it on the plane I could feel my face flushing with blood and it almost felt like I was doing something "wrong". At times you'll feel like you're reading an erotic story and at other times you'll think you have picked up the comic strips.
This book was extremely funny, and I (as well as any male that can remember being 14-16 yrs old) could relate to some of the adolescent issues that Portnoy experiences. It is also slightly crude and pulls no punches. If you're easily offended by raucous sexually exploits don't even think of picking this book up.
It explores the problems of growing up with overbearing parents, and the unnecessary strains that they place on normal development. The fear of commitment syndrome is also probed, along with unsatisfiable sexual desires.
Read this book if you're looking for a good laugh, and can handle the aforementioned content w/o blushing too deeply on an airplane!
Rating:
Summary: Lewd and hilarious, yet shockingly insightful
Review: Although dealing specifically with the tribulations of growing up as a Jewish male in the baby boom, the constant self-deprecating humor in this book is something that any western man should be able to appreciate. From cover to cover, this book offers the glorious schadenfreude of knowing that no matter how confused you may be about your own sexuality, Alexander Portnoy has it even worse. The book's subject matter should be and occasionally succeeds in being disturbing. Portnoy's upbringing by doting, yet critical and controlling parents leaves him transfixed between conscience and desire. In rebellion against both his parents and the Christian society around him, he seeks out destructive sexual relationships with gentile women. At the same time, he cannot enjoy these relationships, and so even when he wants only meaningless, emotionless sex and the degradation of his partner, he succeeds only in degrading himself. The protagonist narrates these events with continual self-criticism and outrageous humor, however, so rather than being disturbed by his actions, the reader (the male reader, anyway) finds himself laughing and even identifying with Portnoy. Only at the very end do Portnoy's neuroses become so degrading, and his humor so thin, that one can no longer laugh. This is the point of the book's brilliance: the reader experiences an epiphany that the book should have been disturbing, and the fact that Portnoy was able to cloak the nature of his life experiences as a sick, albeit hilarious, joke is doubly disturbing. As long as the world contains sexually repressed men, this book will be a classic.
Rating:
Summary: very funny and touching
Review: this book is famous for its sexual content, but it is a funny and enjoyable book all around. There is an especially touching chapter about baseball.
Rating:
Summary: I howled, but you might not
Review: The protagonist is equal parts lust and guilt. Be prepared to learn quite a bit about his sexual exploits as they spurt in unexpected and usually comic directions. I laughed out loud several times while reading, usually at one of Portnoy's masterbatory misadventures, yet, be warned - Portnoy's Complaint is not for everyone.
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.
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