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Portnoy's Complaint
by Philip Roth - 1969
At thirty-six years old, PR wrote this third novel, I have never picked up the first two nor the subsequent ones, although I have several downloaded on my Kindle. Due to the recent passing of the author, I decided to break the ice and read at least one of them. My impressions were more than one. Aside from the articles that came out when he died on "la Repubblica", "il manifesto", and "il Fatto Quotidiano", which also described this book of his, I knew little about it. Now, I do not intend to delve into the plot since it can be read everywhere (just search for it).
In short, my first impression was seeing myself in many fantasies and manual activities linked to the eroticism that the young protagonist develops while growing up in this world. The second is that I expected something serious between sociological and political, about living as a Jew in America, and I was partly disappointed but pleasantly surprised to find humor of a "Yiddish" style akin to Woody Allen or Groucho Marx (so to speak). The last impression is that this whole story narrated by the protagonist during his sessions with his psychoanalyst is that in the sexual sphere (I don’t know how it is for the gentle ladies) one does not live only on wanks but among various questionable performances there are also the shags…,
No, speaking ehm, "seriously" the impression that remains with me is that life is not easy for anyone, especially if you have overprotective parents who raise you by unloading frustrations that then lead to guilt feelings difficult to overcome when you are an adult, but one can almost make it, look at me…
p.s. from this novel came the film of the same name "Portnoy's Complaint", in Italian "Se non faccio quello non mi diverto" by the director/screenwriter Ernest Lehman from '72 (I haven't seen it yet but if someone knows it, they could tell us what it's like and that's it...)
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