I somewhow came across this review in my feed and I enjoyed reading your take, so I decided to add mine.
I love Roth´s searing intelligence and superior craft (The Human Stain is my favorite critique of late 20th century America in all its hypocracy, inanity, and tragedy) and I love the energy and audacity and humor of Portnoy´s Complaint.
To me, aside from the sexual obsession – it is a farce, after all, although most honest sexually ambitious immigrant strivers I know could at least partially identify – the book is mainly about the pain and confusion of crossing class and cultural lines. The most poignant scene, also hilarious, was when his father asked for ¨a nice piece of fish¨at the upper-class restaurant. I´ve had my own moments of guilty, uncomfortable judgement of my family as I made my way from the South Bronx to South Kensington, and Roth artfully captures its complexity and heartbreak.
The novel resonated with me when I first read it as a teenager in the South Bronx, and each time I´ve re-read it since. After I settled for good in Europe, I had two serious relationships with clever, well-read and open-minded women with backgrounds wildly different from mine, neither of whom had any real idea of what an immigrant could be, and forget about a Nuyorican ghetto nerd.. I gave them copies of Portnoy and The Brief Marvelous Life of Oscar Wao to give them a baseline understanding of what they were getting into.
Thanks for a review which made me think a little bit. I´ll be reading your work.
I’m glad the algorithm brought you here! Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree that the most interesting parts of this book (and also Goodbye, Columbus, which I read not long ago) are about the cultural clashes between the different generations of immigrant Jews. I’m sort of obsessed with the different waves of migration that resulted in uneven levels of assimilation and class mobility in Jewish America in the 20th century— but the same can be said of many immigrant groups.
Class mobility and assimilation are huge themes for me. Reading Roth, Bellow, and Richler made for unexpected identification with wildly different people though I felt much more kinship with Bronx and Queens Jews than with the JAP class from Long Island and New Jersey that I met at college. It´s a complicated business. These three landesmen (Yiddish for homeboy) writers inspired me to write a novel about class and conflict.
Hello Lillian,
I somewhow came across this review in my feed and I enjoyed reading your take, so I decided to add mine.
I love Roth´s searing intelligence and superior craft (The Human Stain is my favorite critique of late 20th century America in all its hypocracy, inanity, and tragedy) and I love the energy and audacity and humor of Portnoy´s Complaint.
To me, aside from the sexual obsession – it is a farce, after all, although most honest sexually ambitious immigrant strivers I know could at least partially identify – the book is mainly about the pain and confusion of crossing class and cultural lines. The most poignant scene, also hilarious, was when his father asked for ¨a nice piece of fish¨at the upper-class restaurant. I´ve had my own moments of guilty, uncomfortable judgement of my family as I made my way from the South Bronx to South Kensington, and Roth artfully captures its complexity and heartbreak.
The novel resonated with me when I first read it as a teenager in the South Bronx, and each time I´ve re-read it since. After I settled for good in Europe, I had two serious relationships with clever, well-read and open-minded women with backgrounds wildly different from mine, neither of whom had any real idea of what an immigrant could be, and forget about a Nuyorican ghetto nerd.. I gave them copies of Portnoy and The Brief Marvelous Life of Oscar Wao to give them a baseline understanding of what they were getting into.
Thanks for a review which made me think a little bit. I´ll be reading your work.
I’m glad the algorithm brought you here! Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree that the most interesting parts of this book (and also Goodbye, Columbus, which I read not long ago) are about the cultural clashes between the different generations of immigrant Jews. I’m sort of obsessed with the different waves of migration that resulted in uneven levels of assimilation and class mobility in Jewish America in the 20th century— but the same can be said of many immigrant groups.
Class mobility and assimilation are huge themes for me. Reading Roth, Bellow, and Richler made for unexpected identification with wildly different people though I felt much more kinship with Bronx and Queens Jews than with the JAP class from Long Island and New Jersey that I met at college. It´s a complicated business. These three landesmen (Yiddish for homeboy) writers inspired me to write a novel about class and conflict.