"Portnoy's Complaint at 50": A Podcast About Roth's Most Infamous Book

Abstract

"Portnoy's Complaint at 50"A Podcast About Roth's Most Infamous Book Brett Ashley Kaplan (bio) and Samuel J. Kessler (bio) Readers of this special issue might be interested in "portnoy's complaint at 50," an episode in the podcast series Adventures in Jewish Studies, produced by the Association of Jewish Studies. In this episode, Jeremy Shere interviews literary scholars Warren Hoffman, Josh Lambert, and Brett Ashley Kaplan to discuss the hilarity and the controversy surrounding Philip Roth's most famous novel as it turns 50 years old. When published in early 1969, Portnoy's Complaint was an immediate sensation, selling thousands of copies and rocketing to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, turning Roth into an overnight celebrity. Critics loved the book. Reviewing Portnoy's Complaint for the Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt judged the novel "Roth's best work […] and a brilliantly vivid reading experience." But not everyone was so enthralled. Many Jewish readers, including rabbis and other leaders of the Jewish community, were scandalized by the novel's unsparing, satirical depictions of overbearing Jewish mothers and their sex-obsessed sons. And feminist critics, too, took Roth to task for what they saw as his misogynistic portrayal of female characters, not only in this novel but throughout his writings. The guests discuss all these historical reactions and more. As Kaplan explores, we might alternately consider how Portnoy's central love interest, the sexually liberated and nearly illiterate Mary Jane Reed (whom Portnoy calls "the monkey"), embodies what feminist critics call "consent culture." Hoffman describes the book's portrayal of Jewish masculinity as queer, meaning that Portnoy's sexual neuroses and behavior are outside the norm. Hoffman reads Portnoy as reacting against the stereotype of the hysterical Jewish male to assert his identity as a red-blooded, sexually normative American man. And Josh Lambert notes that, going back to Yiddish literature of the nineteenth century, writers have thought about what it means to be Jewish through the lens of who a particular character is going to sleep with. In this way, diasporism becomes a kind of masturbation, and Israel induces impotence, so issues of continuity and Jewish identity come in through the sexuality of the book. [End Page 131] Finally, as the guests describe, 1969 was a cauldron of everything exciting happening at once. The world was undergoing a major transformation, and right at that moment appears a book that basically puts intimate details that are normally not seen on the printed page outside of pornography into the public realm. And people start talking about it. People start feeling that it represents some part of their own experience. Portnoy's Complaint taps into a vein of sexual repression and longing in mid-century America. Adventures in Jewish Studies takes listeners on exciting journeys that explore a wide range of topics featuring the expertise and learning of scholars of Jewish Studies. The Association of Jewish Studies is the largest learned society and professional organization representing Jewish Studies across the globe, with over 1,800 members from more than 30 countries. Find this episode wherever you get your podcasts. [End Page 132] Brett Ashley Kaplan Brett Ashley Kaplan directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies at the University of Illinois where she is a professor of Comparative and World Literature and Director of Graduate Studies. She publishes in Haaretz, The Conversation, Salon.com (picked up from Conversation), Asitoughttobemagazine, AJS Perspectives, Contemporary Literature, Edge Effects, and The Jewish Review of Books. She has been interviewed on NPR, the AJS Podcast, and The 21st, and is the author of Unwanted Beauty, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory, and Jewish Anxiety and the Novels of Philip Roth. She is the editor of the forthcoming Handbook to New Approaches in Cultural Memory Studies, and co-editor of the collection in process: Blewish: Contemporary Black-Jewish Voices. Her first novel, Rare Stuff, is due out in June 2022. Samuel J. Kessler Samuel J. Kessler is Assistant Professor of Religion and Åke and Kristina Bonnier Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. His work focuses on the interaction of religion and modernity in European history and literature...