Hundred Book Challenge #21: "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth

“Portnoy’s Complaint” has been called one of the dirtiest books ever written. I don’t know if I buy that. Not just because I’m still smelling the stink of “The Naked Lunch” but because “Portnoy’s Complaint,” while it does reel with explicit scenes, isn’t really about sex or sexuality- and the scenes are far from sexy.

To quote The Beatles, it’s a dirty story of a dirty man. A sad story of a sad man. A repressed story of a repressed man. For all its explicitness it’s a sad and lonely book.

Told as a monologue to a therapist, this book is an attempt to tell the story of a repressed Jew during the sexual revolution of the 60s. Using sex as a story telling tool, it explores the themes of America. What it means to be American and what it means to live in America as an outsider.

Take, for instance, this quote:

“Don’t tell me we’re just as good as anybody else, don’t tell me we’re Americans just like they are. No, no, these blond-haired Christians are the legitimate residents and owners of this place and they can pump any song they want into the streets and no one is going to stop them either.”

Or this:

“Shame and shame and shame and shame- every place I turn something else to be ashamed of.”

It’s a book aching with truth. Much like the graphic novel “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, the book also looks at the generation of Jewish people living in the shadow of their parents post WWII. Because that generation had to deal with the Nazis they have an automatic superiority that doesn’t necessarily match up with their own personalities or lifestyles. It all gels together nicely and humorously into a story about a man who rebels against his parents even while being completely controlled by them. He is desperate to be a “real” American while hating America. He wants to understand Judaism but the only god he worships is Freud.

I say humorously cautiously. It is a funny book but it’s a dark and sad funny.

His inability to come to terms with his own Jewishness crescendos in a section that sums up the tone of the book quite well. Throughout the book, Portnoy says he has sex with women not to get physical pleasure but to try and be a part of their whole lifestyle and history. In other words, to become more American. Near the end of the book he travels to Israel and tries to have sex with an Israeli activist but finds himself impotent.

Get it?  

Moving on. I’ve finished reading “Money” and have started reading “The Man Who Loved Children” and “To the Lighthouse.”

Terry Pratchett.

One of the brightest literary minds died today. I am sad but also I am reminded of the joy he brought into my life. 

I wrote this back in 2013 It obviously still holds true. 

I can't bring myself to write more about it now other than to say: I think the best gift you can give someone is a Terry Pratchett book. If it's their first they are in for a lifetime of joy. If it's not their first they want another. 

Vacation to Terry Pratchett's Literary Discworld

(originally published Sept 8, 2013)

I know times can be tough and funds can get low. I also know many people schlepped through the summer, always with the thought of a theoretical vacation taking place in the future when they had a bit of spare scratch -- plans that never came to fruition.

Well, the cheapest form of a vacation is to read, and boy oh boy, do I have some books for you.

If you don't know who Terry Pratchett is, I honestly feel bad for you. The sheer amount of joy Pratchett has brought into my life, and into the lives of his readers, can't be measured.

Pratchett is a British writer best known for his ponderously huge Discworld series. If you want a good vacation from everyday life, read some Discworld books.

What is the Discworld? It's a world of magic and it's in the shape of a disc. It sits on the back of four elephants that stand on the back of a giant turtle that flies through space. A more accurate definition of Discworld may be that it's a space for Pratchett to riff on the human experience. The Discworld stories are funny, thrilling, interesting, poignant, touching, nostalgic and biting. They're the kind of books that punch you in the stomach and then lay you down on the couch with a bowl of ice cream while telling you how lucky you were that the punch wasn't a few inches lower.

They're hard to explain, other than I am pretty sure anyone who reads them will find something to love.

There are more than 40 Discworld books out there. While some fans, me included, have built complex charts to show how each book interacts with the rest in some sort of coherent time line, you are safe to just pick one up and start reading.

I started to write out some of the basic tenets of these stories before realizing how impossible that would be in the space provided. For example, one book, entitled "Witches Abroad," explores the role of fairy tales in modern life, talks about the power of stories, pokes fun at elderly folk going on vacation, makes fun of the culture of Louisiana and provides an insightful look at the economic effects of colonialism.

Apart from all this though, and what makes Pratchet's Discworld books especially good for taking a vacation with, is the fact that these books transcend what any reasonable person can expect from a story shelved in the humorous fantasy section.

They are funny books, hilarious in fact. Unlike a lot of funny writers though, these books have amazing stories that stick with you. Everything I just wrote about "Witches Abroad" is true, but it wasn't what I was thinking about while I read it. While I was reading it, I was totally sucked into the world and living right along with the characters.

The more I write here the more I realize how hard it is to categorically say why these books are so good. Let me put it to you this way: I read a lot of books. I have close to a literal ton of books sitting in my home that I've read and another ton of books I'm planning on reading. I've read fantasy series and detective stories and westerns and science fiction and literary fiction and classic literature and French literature and British literature and Russian literature and experimental literature and on and on and on.

Never have I gotten so much pure joy and literary elation as I get from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books.

So go find some and start reading.

Hundred Book Challenge #20: “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut

World War II sort of hangs over most modern US history and literature. If it’s not the outright point of the story it hides in the background, visible only to those who like to pick through the tall grass.

Slaughterhouse-Five is the most unusual WWII book I've ever read. It’s funny but not celebratory. It’s touching, even sad, but not romantic. It’s honest but has aliens that look like plungers.

Billy Pilgrim is unstuck from time and as such lives random moments of his life over and over again. The narrator of the story, Kurt Vonnegut one assumes, tells his story as best he can.

Like other WWII writers, Vonnegut’s language is simple. He is very economical with words and as such the entire thing is tiny (especially when compared to some of the other books on this list). This simplicity, when mixed with the horror of the firebombing of Dresden, has a scorching, purifying result.

To be honest, I finished reading this book a couple weeks ago and it’s been on my mind ever since and I’m still not sure what to say about it. For all its simplicity of language it’s pretty saturated.

I think it has something to say about PTSD- living out of time is a pretty good descriptor of that I think. It has something to say about war- a seemingly simple message that war is wrong and soldiers aren’t the heroes we tend to make them. Take this quote:

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.”

It also seems to be about the very nature of stories. The things happening are not happening to the narrator, but he was there at some of them as he points out a few times in moments of unsettling clarity: 

“That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.” 

The fact that Vonnegut was actually a prisoner of war held underground in Dresden during the bombing becomes almost like a ghost in this story.

The bombing of Dresden is interesting in and of itself. The allied bombing of a German city with of no military purpose but with significant cultural value becomes the epitome of mindless war.

Again, from the book:

“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

And that is pretty much it. This makes the whole abducted by aliens who teach Billy the truth about time more of a somber realization than a fantastical story element.

OK! Coming up next. I just finished “Portnoy’s Complaint” and will write about it soon. I’m about halfway through “Money” and just started “To the Lighthouse.” I also decided to give up on the Top Ten concept for these posts. It seemed artificial.

Also, we reached number 20 on the list! 1/5^th of the way through!