Rating: 
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: If you are the type of person who enjoys the kind of humor to be found in the "Porky's" series, "American Pie," and "Something About Mary" then you will love "Portnoy's Complaint." If that kind of vulgar humor disgusts you, then you will probably hate it. No, there isn't a single, isolated chapter that discusses masturbation and the burgeoning sexuality of a young Alexander Portnoy to the well-developed perverted sexuality of the grown-up Alexander Portnoy. These things are discussed in pretty much every chapter. Therefore, if you find that kind of thing repulsive, do not read the book (and spare yourself the obligatory one-star rating and rant amazon.com review). However, that being said, I believe there is much more to this book than sex jokes. In fact, I think it is quite a literary accomplishment. I think Roth has carried on the tradition of the Dostoevskian anti-hero character quite nicely into the late twentieth century. I feel he nicely describes the experience of growing up in the city with an overbearing mother. You gotta love the way he incorporates yiddish terms into the text! I think it adds so much flavor to the story. I don't know if this is Roth's best or not, but I certainly found it a worthy read.
Rating: 
Summary: Portnoy Needs an Imodium
Review: Enjoying caustic, in-your-face satire every now and again, I really gave this book a girlscout's try, but the thought of wading through yet one more chapter of this muck gave me severe indigestion. I have never suffered through such streaming diarreha of one's consciousness, and unlike most, I found the story (oh, was there a story?) to hold little to no humor or literary, spiritual, psychological or any other worthiness. What's the appeal here? My life is too short to have to scoop poop for 289 pages before finally being enlightened by Roth's take on the real meaning of bowel movements and other such bodily secretions. Somebody, give Portnoy a sock!
Rating: 
Summary: A Nice Jewish Boy
Review: So now we know where Jerry Seinfield get his material. Alex Portnoy rages to his analyst about the angst of his childhood and wondering why he enjoys such a preverted sexual appetite. His conclusion of course is that his preversions are the result of his parents.Alex is brow-beaten by his well meaning but overbearing mother and ever suffering and forever constipated father. Roth subjects his anti-hero to every example of stereotypical Jewish behaviour.
Portnoy's sexual perversions begin with his round the clock masturbations and culminates in a menage-a-trois with his gentile girlfriend and a Spanish prostitute. Roth's biting satire is laugh out loud funny.
Rating:
Summary: recommended
Review: I can not believe that no one has yet to rate this book. Although I read it a little while ago I remember it to be a very engaging novel. It was highly recommended by my english teacher, but he would not make it required reading because of some lewd context. So I decided to read it for just that reason. It was a little shocking to me when I read it but it was highly enjoyable. It is about a man reflecting on his life growing up in a jewish family, by describing it as you would when speaking to a psychiatrist. It is just hilarious both in its context and the way that it is written in the tone of worrisome and frantic person. It gives a very vivid picture of his childhood. It was wonderful. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely NC-17 and quite perverse.
Review: I was going to write that in some ways this book was most riveting, however, it is mostly just troubling. Definitely NC-17 and quite perverse. At any rate, I thought it read a lot like a New Jersey Jew version of Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's brilliant story about the futility of trying to elude Jesus. Alex Portnoy does everything he can in a vain attempt to corrupt and reject his Jewish heritage. Like Hazel Motes rejecting his Christianity in O'Conner's Wise Blood, he fails miserably.
Rating:
Summary: Roth teaches Gentiles alot about what it means to be a Jew
Review: I saw on the "60 minutes" television show that some Jews are upset that Roth has revealed so many Jewish secrets to the Gentile world in his many books. Having just read "Portnoy's Complaint" I understand that sentiment. Roth teaches us Gentiles a lot of what it means to be Jewish. He teaches us some Jiddish. He points out the priority that the Jews place on marrying only other Jews. He laments the Jews preoccupation with their 2,000 year old "wandering Jew" status. And he marvels at the completely Jewish state of the state of Israel. Before I read this novel I knew a little about Jewish culture. I had heard the word "goyim" (meaning gentiles) before, but "shiske" I did not know. Evidently it means a female gentile or perhaps a blonde female gentile. Shiskes are important to this novel. Portnoy spends all his energy is pursuit of shiske females must to the consternation of his Jewish parents. In so doing Portnoy attempts to cast of the mantle of his Judaism. Portnoy complains to his Dad that he is tired of "being a suffering jew". Roth is saying that the Jews cling to their suffering status in order to maintain cohesion in their ranks. And woe to the Jew who tries to marry outside his tribe lest he dilute the race. In the case of Alexander Portnoy's, his family members try to derail his relations with Gentile girls. Philip Roth might have been one of the first "great" writers I have read to address headlong the theme of men and their compulsion to have sex--either by themselves, as the young Alexander Portnoys compulsion to masturbate, or sex with a female. This topic is the main focus of the book. We've always know that it is true that men think about sex pretty much all day long. But Roth is the first writer I have seen write about this at length. The humour in this novel--yes it is laugh-at-loud funny--left me unprepared for the extreme sadness of Roth's latest novel "The Human Stain".
Rating:
Summary: Great, if a bit overrated
Review: This book contains some of the funniest moments in literature (that I have read, anyhow). Roth's characters are well drawn, and Portnoy's annecdotes are quite amusing. Still, like most Roth I've read, this book gets a bit repetitive. Ok Alex, we get it, your parents were nuts, you hate yourself as a jew, you can't have healthy relationships with women, and you're self-obsessed. The repetition doesn't get too much in the way though, since the book is such a quick read, so it's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Odyssey
Review: While reading "Portnoy's Complaint", I was suprised to learn that this novel was more about two Jewish Parents confusing and distorting one man's life, than about a disorder that "can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship". Alexander Portnoy begins the novel by describing in detail the pain and psychological trauma his parents, specifically his mother, imposed upon him when he was forming his first thoughts and understandings of the world, and how these traumas have affected his life up to age thirty-three (an ironic twist that he should portray himself as a suffering Christ figure). But there is such an emphasis on his parents being Jewish that I came away with the feeling that his complaint needed only be written BECAUSE his parents were Jewish. He contrasts Jewish parents to Gentile parents so frequently and making the differences so glarringly good vs. bad that Portnoy's complaint becomes not so much a disscussion of "Portnoy's Complaint" (a real-life disorder) but how screwed up one can get by being concieved by Jewish parents...It is Portnoy's sexual odyssey that, even with the psychological baggage, inspired awe in this reader. Thirty-four years after this book was published and it can still sting and disgust and arouse the reader, all in the wrong places.
Rating:
Summary: The Jewish son's manifesto
Review: 33-year-old Alexander Portnoy is the voice of an archetype previously underrepresented in literature -- the Jewish son. The novel, his "complaint," is written in the form of an address to his psychiatrist, Dr. Spielvogel. Portnoy is trying desperately to understand how his relationship with his parents has influenced his dysfunctional relationships with women. Portnoy's parents have always been worried about him in ways that seem ridiculous to him. His mother tells him never to eat lobster because it might make him sick like it once did to her. When he feigns diarrhea so he can lock himself in the bathroom to masturbate, his mother chides him for purposely sabotaging his digestion by eating french fries after school. (A large portion of this book is devoted to hilarious tales of his uncontrollable onanistic urges and discharges -- into the toilet bowl, onto the light bulbs, onto the medicine chest mirror, on the bus, into the liver his mother is going to cook for dinner, once even accidentally into his own eye.) When he goes to college, they make him promise them he won't ride in a convertible. When he plans to go on a month-long vacation to Europe, his aged father lays a guilt trip on him about what he would do if he came home to find his father dead. It isn't good enough for Portnoy's parents that their son has become a prominent lawyer and civil libertarian; they want him to get married and have children. Rebelling against his parents, he starts a string of sexually adventurous but loveless affairs with shikses (non-Jewish girls) whom he gives unflattering pet names. In college, there was "The Pumpkin," a bright, wholesome, conscientious girl; then there was "The Pilgrim," a WASPy debutante; and most recently, there was "The Monkey," a beautiful ex-model but a practically illiterate hayseed. Visiting Israel after abandoning The Monkey on vacation in Greece, his sexual problems come full circle when he meets a Jewish girl who reminds him of his mother. This book is not for everybody. It is often very funny, but some may feel its tone is too paranoid, bitter, cynical, and confused. The narration frequently degenerates into empty invective (a lot of personal self-loathing, Jewish self-loathing, mocking of Catholic and WASP stereotypes), but at least it doesn't euphemize or sugarcoat its delivery. For better or worse, "Portnoy's Complaint" is as honest and accurate a piece of Twentieth Century American Jewish folklore as there is.
Rating: 
Summary: The Impotent Mensch
Review: Portnoy's Complaint is one of the most wildly inventive books I have ever read. The book, long considered a classic if for nothing more than its amazingly effective stream-of consciousness technique, is a Roth tour-de-force of macabre emotions, painful truth, and biting sarcasm. The story as such concerns a middle-aged Jewish man, Alex Portnoy ranting to his analyst about the struggles of growing up Jewish in a world populated by goyim. The book is framed as one big monologue in which Alex tells us about everything from his mother's fanatical devotion to the rules of eating kosher to his relationships with women. What's so striking about the book is the sheer strength of will on which it floats. The book plows ahead with its ugly, hilarious, painful, unbearable, engaging, sick narrator with nary a break in between. In attempting to find a cure for why Alex is so sex-obsessed, he at first seems to believe his mother's doting on him is the primary cause. Gradually, however, the reader (as well as Alex) becomes aware that Alex also suffers from a more subtle but affecting problem. The man is a classic text-book narcissist. He masturbates nearly every waking moment as a teenager not as a way of finding sexual gratification from the nature of his relationship with his mother, but because he is so self-absorbed that the act itself is a form of lust (for the self). This haunting narcissism is ultimately what causes him to never be able to commit to a woman seriously, and why he scars The Monkey so terribly (and memorably in a Rome hotel room), demeans the Italian hooker, and nearly rapes a woman in the Holy Land. He feels that by gaining control over these women, he will somehow become more potent himself. Thus, he gets his sexual gratification by inflicting pain on women. Mistakenly, this book is labelled as misogynistic because of alex's terrible crimes. But there's a clear distinction between the narrator's persona and what Roth is really trying to impart to the reader. The characters in the book are all sharply drawn. The memorable moments abound (try not to stand with mouth wide open as Alex describes defiling the family's dinner) or try refraining from expressing disgust at the inhumane way he treats the Monkey. This book is full of emotional honesty and pain. It is about not just Alex's obsession, but about the struggle that everyone experiences to escape the narrowness of our own lives. In that way, despite his reprehensible behavior, Alex represents a kind of hero. An unlikely one, perhaps, but a hero nonetheless. It is this aspect of the book that is most satisfying. Mr. Roth also vividly recreates Alex's childhood in Newark and Jersey City including priceless characterizations of Sophie and Jack, his parents. However, the book skimps on the other characters, especially Alex's sister, Hannah. Also, there are many minor characters mentioned that pop in and out of the book with no real explanation. Aunt Clara, for example, appears early in the book, and then is mentioned in a single sentence more than a hundred pages later. These inconsistencies lower the star rating slightly. The other, more important flaw in the book is the nature of alex's "Complaint". As I mentioned earlier, the reader gradually realizes the real symptom of the illness, but the book seems to keep believing that it is Mrs. Portnoy who causes Alex to be so sexually inept and voracious. It's almost as if Roth wants to convery the more subtle problem and keeps the bits with mom in them for shock value and laughs. This aspect is somewhat disappointing. Roth seems to want to have it both ways. Also, the fact that narcissism is the real disease becomes quite clear, and still Roth never delves into the triger for this behavior. For a book that is so specifically about Portnoy's sexual idiosyncracies and inability to be satisfied, there is never a clear link as to why Portnoy channels his insecurity in this manner. This is Roth's (almost) fatal error. He vividly describes the symptoms, but not the cause. Ultimately, the novel is redeemed on the strength of its characters and emotional pain. Although readers may never know precisely why Alex is the way he is, the hilarious, shocking, and at times unbearably sad portrayal of his life is what remains indelible about this book. It's also, I think, why it's reputation is still so high. Overall, i recommend the book with those reservations. Perhaps a bit overrated by the Modern Library, but a landmark book nonetheless. Grade: B+
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