Portnoy's Complaint Quotes

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.

Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid

Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere!

Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder- and nothing more

American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.

A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!

It’s a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, "Momma, do we believe in winter?

So. Now you know the worst thing I have ever done. I fucked my own family's dinner.

Kugelmass, unaware of this catastrophe, had his own problems. He had not been thrust into Portnoy's Complaint, or into any other novel, for that matter. He had been projected into an old textbook, Remedial Spanish, and was running for his life over a barren, rocky terrain as the word tener ("to have") - a large and hairy irregular verb - raced after him on its spindly legs.

Religion is the opiate of the people!

What use to skip those two grades in grammar school and get such a jump on everybody else, when the result is to wind up so far behind?

The legend engraved on the face of the Jewish nickel– on the body of every Jewish child!– not IN GOD WE TRUST, but SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE A PARENT AND YOU'LL KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE.

Spring me from this role I play of the smothered son in the Jewish joke! Because it's beginning to pall a little at thirty-three!

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.

In school we chanted, along with our teacher, I am the Captain of my fate, I am the Master of my soul, and meanwhile, within my own body, an anarchic insurrection had been launched by one of my privates- which I was helpless to put down!

Doctor, I had never had anybody like her in my life, she was the fulfillment of my most lascivious adolescent dreams– but marry her, can she be serious? You see, for all her preening and perfumes, she has a very low opinion of herself, and simultaneously– and here is the source of much of our trouble-a ridiculously high opinion of me. And simultaneously, a very low opinion of me! She is one confused Monkey, and, I'm afraid, not too very bright.

I can lie about my name, I can lie about my school, but how am I going to lie about this fucking nose? "You seem like a very nice person Mr. Porte-Noir, but why do you go around covering the middle of your face like that?" Because suddenly it has taken off, the middle of my face! Because gone is the button of my childhood years, that pretty little thing that people used to look at in my carriage, and lo and behold, the middle of my face has begun to reach out towards God. Porte-Noir and Parsons my ass, kid, you have got J-E-W written right across the middle of your face...

Were we just two more rootless jungle-dwelling erotomaniacs creamining in their pre-faded jeans over Historical New England, dreaming the old agrarian dream in their rent-a-car convertible

Well, good Christ, how was I supposed to know all that, Hannah? Who looks into the fine points when he's hungry? I'm eight years old and chocolate pudding happens to get me hot. All I have to do is see that deep chocolatey surface gleaming out at me from the refrigerator, and my life isn't my own.

Do me a favor, my people, and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering ass_ I happen also to be a human being!

torn by desires that are repugnant to my conscience, and a conscience repugnant to my desires.

If only I could have nourished myself upon the depths of his vulgarity, instead of that too becoming a source of shame. Shame and shame and shame and shame—every place I turn something else to be ashamed of.

Doctor Spielvogel, it alleviates nothing fixing the blame - blaming is still ailing, of course, of course - but nonetheless, what was it with these Jewish parents, what, that they were able to make us little Jewish boys believe ourselves to be princes on the one hand, unique as unicorns on the one hand, geniuses and brilliant like nobody has ever been brilliant and beautiful before in the history of childhood - saviors and sheer perfection on the one hand, and such bumbling, incompetent, thoughtless, helpless, selfish, evil little shits, little ingrates, on the other!

Jesus Christ, who they go around telling everyone was God, was actually a Jew! and this fact, that absolutely kills me when I have to think about it, nobody else pays attention to. That he was a Jew, and they took a Jew and turned him into some kind of God after he is already dead, and then- this is what can make you absolutely crazy- then the dirty bastards turn around afterwards and who is the first one on their list to persecute? who haven't they left their hands off of to murder and to hate for two thousand years: The Jews!

Tits and cunts and legs and lips and mouths and tongues and assholes! How can I give up what I have never even had, for a girl, who delicious and provocative as once she may have been, will inevitably grow as familiar to me as a loaf of bread?

Forse è tutto ciò che sono realmente: un leccatore di figa, una bocca schiava del buco femminile. Lecca! E così sia! Forse la soluzione più saggia per me è vivere a quattro zampe! Strisciare attraverso la vita ingozzandomi di passera, lasciando che a raddrizzare i torti e a fare i padri di famiglia siano le creature erette!

Inhibition doesn’t grow on trees, you know—takes patience, takes concentration, takes a dedicated and self-sacrificing parent and a hard-working attentive little child to create in only a few years’ time a really constrained and tight-ass human being.

Meneer Portnoy,' zei ze terwijl ze haar knapzak optilde, 'u bent alleen maar een jood die een hekel heeft aan zichzelf.' 'Ah, maar Naomi, dat zijn misschien juist de beste.

Waarom zou ik behoefte hebben aan een monument in mijn naam terwijl er op straat zo'n feestbanket rondloopt?

I’m the only one who gives her a whole can of tuna for lunch, and I’m not talking dreck, either. I’m talking Chicken of the Sea, Alex.

The legend engraved on the face of the Jewish nickel—on the body of every Jewish child!—not IN GOD WE TRUST, but SOMEDAY YOU’LL BE A PARENT AND YOU’LL KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE.

What I'm saying, Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds - as though through fucking I will discover America.

Also, she had been secretary to the soccer coach, an office pretty much without laurels in our own time, but apparently the post for a young girl to hold in Jersey City during the First World War.

Dottor Spielvogel, questa è la mia vita, la mia unica vita, e la sto vivendo da protagonista di una barzelletta ebraica! Io sono il figlio in una barzelletta ebraica… solo che non è affatto una barzelletta!

They worship a Jew, do you know that, Alex? Their whole big-deal religion is based on worshiping someone who was an established Jew at that time. Now how do you like that for stupidity? How do you like that for pulling the wool over the eyes of the public? Jesus Christ, who they go around telling everybody was God, was actually a Jew! And this fact, that absolutely kills me when I have to think about it, nobody else pays any attention to. That he was a Jew, like you and me, and that they took a Jew and turned him into some kind of God after he is already dead, and then - and this is what can make you absolutely crazy - then the dirty bastards turn around afterwards, and who is the first one on their list to persecute? Who haven't they left their hands off of to murder and to hate for two thousand years? The Jews! Who gave them their beloved Jesus to begin with! I assure you, Alex, you are never going to hear such a mishegoss of mixed-up crap and disgusting nonsense as the Christian religion in your entire life. And that's what these big shots, so-called, believe!

È mai possibile che questi individui siano attrezzati di tutto il macchinario necessario, un cervello, una spina dorsale, e le quattro aperture per le orecchie e gli occhi - attrezzatura, Signora Nimkin, che può sbalordire quasi quanto la Tv a colori - eppure viversi tutta l’esistenza senza la minima idea di quelli che sono i sentimenti e i desideri di una persona qualsiasi al di fuori di loro stessi?

Refusing! And she is after me with a broom, trying to sweep my rotten carcass into the open. Why, shades of Gregor Samsa! Hello Alex, goodbye Franz! "You better tell me you're sorry, you, or else! And I don't mean maybe either!" I am five, maybe six, and she is or-elsing me and not-meaning-maybe as though the firing squad is already outside, lining the street with newspaper preparatory to my execution.

Why is the smallest thing I do for pleasure immediately illicit—while the rest of the world rolls laughing in the mud! Pig? She ought to see the charges and complaints that are filed in my office in a single morning: what people do to one another, out of greed and hatred! For dough! For power! For spite! For nothing!

For love? What love? Is that what binds all these couples we know together—the ones who even bother to let themselves be bound? Isn’t it something more like weakness? Isn’t it rather convenience and apathy and guilt? Isn’t it rather fear and exhaustion and inertia, gutlessness plain and simple, far far more than that “love” that the marriage counselors and the songwriters and the psychotherapists are forever dreaming about? Please, let us not bullshit one another about “love” and its duration.

Think of it, half the race is over, and I still stand here at the starting line—me, the first one out of his swaddling clothes and into his track suit! a hundred and fifty-eight points of I.Q., and still arguing with the authorities about the rules and regulations! disputing the course to be run! calling into question the legitimacy of the track commission!

Really, can they be this blind? Can people be so abysmally stupid and live?

Nulla, nulla viene mai detto una volta sola - nulla!

pas la peine de creuser bien loin avec ces gens là, ils portent leur vieil inconscient en bandoulière

What after all does it consist of? You put your dick some place and moved it back and forth and stuff came out the front.

The perfect couple: she puts the id back in Yid, I put the oy back in goy.

Where are you getting your material—Portnoy’s Complaint?” “What does an Irish lass named Monaghan know from Portnoy and afikomens? I imagine you reading James Joyce and drinking

Será que considero esta inquietação, este desvario, como uma doença - ou como um talento? Como ambos? Pode ser. Ou será que é apenas um meio de fuga? Olhe, pelo menos não me encontro casado, aos trinta e poucos, com uma criatura decente, cujo corpo deixou de ter para mim qualquer interesse genuíno - pelo menos não tenho de ir para cama todas as noites com alguém que vez por outra marreto por obrigação, ao invés de desejo. Quero referir-me à horrenda depressão que algumas pessoas experimentam na hora de ir para a cama...Por outro lado, mesmo eu devo admitir que talvez exista, de uma certa perspectiva, algo um tanto deprimente quanto à minha situação, também. É claro que não posso ter tudo; é o que me parece. A questão, porém, que desejo enfrentar é: tenho eu alguma coisa?

Why doesn’t she call the cops and get me shipped off to children’s prison, if this is how incorrigible I really am? “Alexander Portnoy, aged five, you are hereby sentenced to hang by your neck until you are dead for refusing to say you are sorry to your mother.” You’d think the child lapping up their milk and taking baths with his duck and his boats in their tub was the most wanted criminal in America.

In September, you son of a bitch, I am going to be thirty years old!" Correct, Monkey, correct! Which is precisely why it is you and not me who is responsible for your expectations and your dreams! Is that clear? you!

O my America of the plains and the mountains and the valleys and the rivers and the canyons... It is with j’ust such patriotic incantations as these that I have begun to put myself to sleep at night, after jerking off into my sock.

Her ubiquity and his constipation, my mother flying in through the bedroom window, my father reading the evening paper with a suppository up his ass . . . these, Doctor, are the earliest impressions I have of my parents, of their attributes and secrets.

Hämningar växer inte på träd förstår ni - det behövs tålamod, det behövs koncentration, det behövs en hängiven och självuppoffrande förälder och ett hårt arbetande, uppmärksamt litet barn för att på bara några år skapa en riktigt hämmad och knuten och förstoppad människa.

Ed è vero, no? – incredibile ma vero – che c’è gente che prova nella vita la disinvoltura, la fiducia in sé, la semplice ed essenziale sintonia con gli avvenimenti che io ero solito provare come esterno centro dei Seabees? Perché, vede, non si trattava di essere il miglior esterno centro, bensì solo di sapere con precisione, fino al più piccolo particolare, come dovesse comportarsi un esterno centro. E c’è gente simile che cammina per le strade degli USA? Le chiedo: perché non posso essere uno di loro? Perché non posso esistere adesso come esistevo per i Seabees là all’esterno centro?

When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror, to somehow console them in their grief, was, “At least he didn’t leave you with a shikse wife. At least he didn’t leave you with goyische children.” End of Heshie and his story.

Tacked above the Girardi sink is a picture of Jesus Christ floating up to Heaven in a pink nightgown. How disgusting can human beings be! The Jews I despise for their narrow-mindedness, their self-righteousness, the incredibly bizarre sense that these cave men who are my parents and relatives have somehow gotten of their superiority – but when it comes to tawdriness and cheapness, to beliefs that would shame even a gorilla, you simply cannot top the goyim. What kind of base and brainless schmucks are these people to worship somebody who, number one, never existed, and number two, if he did, looking as he does in that picture, was without a doubt The Pansy of Palestine.

The outrage, the disgust inspired in my parents by the gentiles, was beginning to make some sense: the goyim pretended to be something special, while we were actually their moral superiors. And what made us superior was precisely the hatred and the disrespect they lavished so willingly upon us! Only what about the hatred we lavished upon them?

Нима може да са толкова страхотно тъпи и да са живи? Представяте ли си? Може ли да са конструирани толкова добре, да си имат мозък, гръбначен стълб и всичките там четири отвора за уши и очи - оборудване, почти толкова сложно, колкото цветен телевизор - и при това да си живуркат, без изобщо да подозират, че на света има някакви други копнежи и чувства освен техните собствени.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick The Secret Meaning of Things, Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fantastic Four #89, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin The Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth City of the Chasch, Jack Vance Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe

Quando sou realmente mau, tão perverso que não lhe resta senão erguer as mãos para o céu e perguntar a Deus o que fez para merecer um filho assim, nessas ocasiões o meu pai é convocado para fazer justiça; descobre-se então que a minha mãe é demasiado sensível, um ser demasiadamente delicado, para administrar castigos corporais. «Dói-me mais a mim», ouço-a a explicar à tia Clara, «do que lhe dói a ele. Eu sou assim feita. Não sou capaz, pronto.» Oh, pobre mãe.

You want to talk pigs, come down to the office, take a look through my In basket any morning of the week, I’ll show you pigs! The things that other men do—and get away with! And with never a second thought! To inflict a wound upon a defenseless person makes them smile, for Christ’s sake, gives a little lift to their day! The lying, the scheming, the bribing, the thieving—the larceny, Doctor, conducted without batting an eye. The indifference! The total moral indifference! They don’t come down from the crimes they commit with so much as a case of indigestion!

Ela nem sequer está autorizada a comer pudim de chocolate. Azar o teu, Hannah, quem mandou não fui eu, foi o médico. Não tenho culpa de seres gorda e lenta e de eu ser magro e brilhante. Não tenho culpa de ser tão lindo que obrigam a mãe a parar na rua quando ela me vai passear no carrinho para poderem ver melhor o meu belo «punim» - tu bem a ouves a contar esta história, é uma coisa em que eu não tive a menor responsabilidade, um simples facto da natureza, eu ter nascido lindo e tu teres nascido, se não feia, pelo menos uma criança para quem ninguém tem especial vontade de olhar.

«Bom dia», diz ele, e ocorre-me então que a palavra «dia», no sentido em que ele a emprega, se refere especificamente às horas entre as oito da manhã e o meio-dia. Nunca tinha pensado nisso antes. Ele quer que as horas entre as oito e o meio-dia sejam boas, isto é, agradáveis, divertidas, proveitosas! Quatro horas de prazer e trabalho frutuoso! Caramba, é estupendo!Que coisa mais simpática! Bom dia! E o mesmo se aplica a «boa tarde» e «boa noite»! Meu Deus! A língua inglesa é uma forma de comunicação! O acto de conversar não é apenas um fogo cruzado em que se dispara e se é atingido!

Even the best of the confessional writers walk a fine line between self-analysis and self-indulgence. Their books —Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself, Norman Podhoretz’s Making It, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, Paul Zweig’s Three Journeys, Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes. They try to charm the reader instead of claiming significance for their narrative. The writer thus attempts to charm the reader instead of trying to convince him, counting on the titillation provided by pseudo-revelation to hold the reader’s interest. Undertaken in this evasive mood, confessional writing degenerates into anticonfession.

Ma io non voglio il cibo dalla sua bocca. Non voglio nemmeno il cibo dal mio piatto, ecco il punto. Ma fammi il favore! Un bambino con il mio potenziale! Le mie doti! Le mie prospettive!... con tutti i doni che Dio mi ha elargito in bellezza cervello, mi si lascerà morire di inedia senza un motivo al mondo? Voglio che la gente disprezzi un ragazzino rachitico per tutta la vita, o ammiri un uomo? Voglio essere emarginato e preso in giro, voglio essere un mingherlino che la gente spazza via con uno starnuto, voglio incutere rispetto? Cosa voglio diventare da grande, debole o forte, un successo o un fallimento, un uomo o un topo?

Indeed, during that extended period of rage that goes by the name of my adolescence, what terrified me most about my father was not the violence I expected him momentarily to unleash upon me, but the violence I wished every night at the dinner table to commit upon his ignorant, barbaric carcass. How I wanted to send him howling from the land of the living when he ate from the serving bowl with his own fork, or sucked the soup from his spoon instead of politely waiting for it to cool, or attempted, God forbid, to express an opinion on any subject whatsoever … And what was especially terrifying about the murderous wish was this: if I tried, chances were I’d succeed!

I swear to you, this is not bullshit or a screen memory, these are the very words these women use. The great dark operatic themes of human suffering and passion come rolling out of those mouths like the prices of Oxydol and Del Monte canned corn! My own mother, let me remind you, when I returned this past summer from my adventure in Europe, greets me over the phone with the following salutation: “Well, how’s my lover?” Her lover she calls me, while her husband is listening on the other extension! And it never occurs to her, if I’m her lover, who is he, the schmegeggy she lives with? No, you don’t have to go digging where these people are concerned—they wear the old unconscious on their sleeves!

Whew! Have I got grievances! Do I harbor hatreds I didn’t even know were there! Is it the process, Doctor, or is it what we call “the material”? All I do is complain, the repugnance seems bottomless, and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe enough isn’t enough. I hear myself indulging in the kind of ritualized bellyaching that is just what gives psychoanalytic patients such a bad name with the general public. Could I really have detested this childhood and resented these poor parents of mine to the same degree then as I seem to now, looking backward upon what I was from the vantage point of what I am—and am not? Is this truth I’m delivering up, or is it just plain kvetching? Or is kvetching for people like me a form of truth?

Ponto final dos paneleiros de sobretudo inglês que a levavam a almoçar ao Serendipity, e nos velhos industriais de cosméticos devassos com a baba a escorrer pelo queixo à mesa do jantar de cem dólares no Le Pavillon. Não, chegara enfim a figura que durante tantos anos povoara os seus sonhos, um homem capaz de ser bom para a mulher e os filhos... um judeu. E que judeu! Primeiro come-a, e depois, logo a seguir, desliza pelo corpo dela acima e começa a falar e a explicar coisas, a fazer juízos a torto e a direito, a indicar-lhe que livros há-de ler e em quem há de votar, a dizer-lhe como deve e não deve viver-se a vida. «Como é que sabes?», costumava ela perguntar, desconfiada. «Quer dizer, isso é só a tua opinião, mais nada.» «Qual opinião qual quê - não é a minha opinião, menina, é a verdade.»

I met [Martin] Amis once, after arriving too early for a party at a bar in Manhattan. He was smaller than I expected, with a tall, handsome head... He glanced at the Roth novel I had on me, When She Was Good. ‘He stumbled there’, he said. And then he proceeded to do what’s not really done anymore at literary parties, if it ever was, and intoned verbatim: She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself. Invariably she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out my milk and cookies. Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers. And then it was always a relief not to have caught her between incarnations anyway – even if I never stopped trying; I knew that my father and sister were innocent of my mother’s real nature, and the burden of betrayal that I imagined would fall to me if I ever came upon her unawares was more than I wanted to bear at the age of five. I think I even feared that I might have to be done away with were I to catch sight of her flying in from school through the bedroom window, or making herself emerge, limb by limb, out of an invisible state and into her apron. And it went on. He had the first few pages of Portnoy’s Complaint to hand like a hip flask.

Couples (1968) van John Updike bijvoorbeeld, vanwege de beschrijving van door verveling en onvrede ingegeven overspel en partnerruil in het op het oog zo brave Amerikaanse suburbia. Philip Roth werd in de jaren zestig in één klap beroemd met Portnoy’s Complaint, vooral vanwege de luidkeelse passages over de neuroses en seksuele obsessies van een ogenschijnlijk evenwichtige New Yorkse dertiger uit de gegoede burgerij. En dan verscheen in 1968 Norman Mailers non-fictieboek Armies of the Night, het ooggetuigenverslag van de massale en legendarisch geworden anti-Vietnamdemonstratie in Washington. Al met al waren er in de jaren zestig wel meer ‘beroemdste schrijvers’ in de vs.

...people consistently misunderstand the logic of these feminine narratives, wherein what looks like self-abasement is very often an inverse form of self-display and self-assertion. That it should be so often mistaken is not surprising: every effort is made to make the self-abasement as persuasive as possible. Think of medieval mystics offering to rip holes in their chests so that Jesus might enter, or present-day comediennes and columnists tearing strips off themselves--death by a thousand self-deprecations. And yet don't they all, as Orwell put it--describing the "sheer egoism" of writers--"live their own lives to the end"? Doesn't Carrie always do, in the end, exactly what she pleases? So why write it otherwise? Perhaps because there is no clear feminine language for triumph, no "bragging rights," no external symbols that bespeak luck and power. We can't, as the saying goes, pull it out and slap it on the table. The male narrative ego has never lacked avatars--from the labors of Hercules to the complaints of Portnoy--but female egos, for so long without access to mainstream narrative avenues, seem to have compensated by charting strange and indirect side roads. Heroic tales that don't sound heroic. Self-performance that looks like self-obliteration. But egos we do have. We want, and we get. It's simply a devious sort of wanting, always changing, adapting to circumstance--or, better put--always apparently reacting. --pp.292-293

Books on display in Al-Asmari’s 24-Hour Bookstore in September 1969, on the table labeled MO’S PICKS: The High King, Lloyd Alexander I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou Naked Came the Stranger, Penelope Ashe The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood The Drowned World, J. G. Ballard In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick The Secret Meaning of Things, Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fantastic Four #89, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin The Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth City of the Chasch, Jack Vance Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe