Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy’s Complaint is a 1969 novel by American author Philip Roth. The novel is presented as a continuous monologue in which the protagonist Alex Portnoy speaks to his therapist about his difficult relationship with his family, his country, and sex. The novel’s explicit and comedic depiction of sex caused controversy on release though Portnoy’s Complaint was later heralded as one of the greatest English language novels of the 20th century. The novel was adapted into a film in 1972.

Roth was an established author before Portnoy’s Complaint was published; his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, won the 1960 National Book Award. Portnoy’s Complaint was his fourth novel, and the controversy surrounding it caused his fame to skyrocket. Roth had a prolific writing career and won dozens of awards for his books, including the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in 2001 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Roth passed away in 2018 at the age of 85.

This guide was written using an eBook version of the 1994 First Vintage International Edition of Portnoy’s Complaint.

Content Warning: Portnoy’s Complaint depicts antisemitism and an attempted rape.

Plot Summary

Alexander Portnoy is a deeply neurotic, young, Jewish man. In Portnoy’s Complaint, he describes his neuroses to his therapist, Dr. Spielvogel. Alex tells his therapist how he blames his overbearing and authoritarian mother for his sexual digressions, misgivings, and obsessions. At the same time, he criticizes his soft-spoken, perpetually constipated father for failing to help him. Alex’s descriptions to his therapist are divided into chapters. Within these chapters, he leaps in a non-linear fashion from one memory to the next. These memories are often vaguely connected by some sexual desire or misdeed.

Alex’s main focus is sex; he is obsessed with sex but conflicted about his obsession at the same time. Alex reflects on his childhood, explaining how his father spent many hours in the bathroom and his mother monitored his every movement. He feels this overbearing childhood resulted in him having no healthy outlet for his voracious teenage sexual appetite. While Alex would like to lead a normal, healthy life, he worries that his sexual urges prevent him from doing so. Furthermore, Alex worries that his Jewish ethnicity makes him stand out in American society. He focuses on his nose as an illustration of his Jewishness and how it marks him out as different.

Growing up in New Jersey in the 1930s, Alex was required to tread carefully around his family home. He hid his constant, compulsive masturbation from his parents to the point that his mother suspected that he suffered from diarrhea. He remembers his mother’s strange punishments, including locking him outside the apartment and threatening him with a bread knife. Despite feeling as though he was constantly being watched, Alex could not stop masturbating. As a teenager, his first experiences with sex were equally confusing. He has a disastrous encounter with a local girl named Bubbles in which he ejaculates in his eye and she calls him an antisemitic slur. He worries that he blinded himself and is terrified of how his parents would react to his impaired vision.

Alex’s monologues are interspersed with his parents’ beliefs and advice. They told him never to drive in a convertible and gossiped incessantly with their friends about his good grades. During his college years, he spent Thanksgiving at a Christian girl’s home in the Midwest. While there, he was astounded by how different her family was from the members of the Jewish community where he grew up. Like his parents, he fretted constantly about adhering to strict, Jewish dietary laws and eventually broke up with the girl. This was the first of his many failed relationships with young, Christian girls. Despite his upbringing, he lusts after non-Jewish women, and he is constantly disappointed.

The defining relationship of his life is with a woman named The Monkey. While working in New York City as the Assistant Commissioner of Human Opportunity, he meets a young woman who recently divorced an aging French industrialist. During their relationship, Alex and The Monkey take a trip to Europe. While in Italy, The Monkey suggests that they hire a local prostitute to satisfy one of Alex’s sexual fantasies. He agrees, and they hire the same woman two nights in a row. The experience devastates The Monkey, and she accuses Alex of trying to make her as depraved as he is. When they travel to Greece, she threatens to hurl herself from the hotel balcony, and Alex abandons her there.

After Greece, Alex travels to Israel. He is shocked to be in a country where the majority of the population is Jewish. He meets a woman named Naomi, an Israeli who travels with him around the country. Despite his attraction to her, he finds that he is impotent while in Israel. During a confrontation in a hotel room, he tries to sexually assault Naomi but she defends herself. She berates him and leaves him alone in his hotel room.

As Alex’s extended monologue comes to a close, Dr. Spielvogel intervenes for the first time. He asks—as though delivering the punchline of a joke—whether Alex would like to begin.