electric relaxation

I finished Portnoy’s Complaint (by Philip Roth) on the plane ride home from Philadelphia last night. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but after finishing it I discovered a disturbing trend in the review comments on the back (emphasis mine):

absurd and exuberant
- The New York Times

as marvelous a mimic and fantasist as has been produced
- The New York Review of Books

Here’s the thing: I didn’t find it to be that fantastical at all. In fact, I thought it pretty much just hit close to home (here’s hoping my parents never read it).

Simply one of the two or three funniest works in American fiction.
- Chicago Sun-Times

Ok, it is funny, but I’m not sure about the tone of this review comment - it’s funny because (to me anyway) it’s sad and largely believable. Indeed, this was the passage that brought it home for me (from one of the last episodes of the book, in which Portnoy’s latest attempted conquest berates him):

“The way you disapprove of your life! Why do you do that? It is of no value for a man to disapprove of his lie the way that you do. You seem to take some special pleasure, some pride, in making yourself the butt of your own peculiar sense of humor. I don’t believe you actually want to improve your life. Everything you say is somehow always twisted, some way or another, to come out ‘funny’. All day long the same thing. In some little way or other, everything is ironical, or self-deprecating. Self-deprecating?”

“Self-deprecating, self-mocking.”

“Exactly! And you are a highly intelligent man - that is what makes it even more disagreeable. The contribution you could make! Such stupid self-deprecation! How disagreeable!”
…
When she had finished, I said, “Wonderful. Now let’s fuck.”

Well anyway, this is the quote on the front cover:

Roth is the bravest writer in the United States. He’s morally brave, he’s politically brave. And Portnoy is part of that bravery.
- Newsweek

I think I can live with this last one, so long as the reason that the reviewer thinks he’s brave is because the story is at least partly autobiographical (rather than the less interesting bravery required merely to publish something this lewd in 1967).