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Portnoy's Complaint
$14.95
Philip Roth really gets inside the skin of Alex Portnoy, the thirty-three-year-old Commissioner of Human Rights (or something) in John Lindsay's New York of the 1960s. We see his development from an emic point of view from the age of about four until his current maturity. First his domineering and demanding family, then his adolescent relationships with his schoolmates and girls of varying degrees of accessibility and virture, then his adventures with three grown-up women. It ends with the ululation of a psychologicall fragile and mortally wounded antelope.

We'll never know exactly how much of this character study is autobiographical. Certainly its more accidental features -- growing up in Newark, swimming in Olympic Park, masturbation. (I take masturbation among adolescents to be pretty much universal; at least I hope it is.) But certainly not ALL of it.

The three shikses, or Gentile women, that Portnoy involves himself with are surely chosen for their emblematic qualities. "The Monkey" is a sexually voracious redneck model from Appalachia who, at 29, wants to settle down and get married. She represents the uneducated, the gorgeous, the bourgois. "The Pumpkin" is plump and comes from a Wasp Middle West family in a clean house with shutters and an elm tree, where everyone asks, "How are you?" and says, "Slept like a LOG." She's educated, though, a student at Antioch, just too bland for the sophisticated Portnoy. "The Pilgrim" is a member of the New England elite, an ex-preppy who knows how to ride horses on the vast acres of her family's Connecticut estate. The three are humanized stereotypes and Roth must have developed the characters to give us Portnoy's view of the way in which the world of the Goyim is divided -- one dumb hillbilly, one fat farmer's daughter, and one snobbish aristocrat.

Well, I used the word "stereotypes" but they're recognizable stereotypes. Or at least so it seems to me. In high school I attended the high-school Homecoming games on Thanksgiving that Roth describes, except I was on the other side, Hillside High School. The local color is -- let's call it evocative, as well as hilarious.

But the book is really about Portnoy's savage digging into his own psyche. From time to time he erupts into capital letters. LET'S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID! LET'S PUT THE OY BACK IN GOY! LET MY PENIS GO! He's pretty rough on the Goys. As usually depicted in his pink nightgown Christ looks like a fairy to Portnoy. He's rough on the Israelis too. He finds himself symbolically impotent when he tries to make love to a big, tough, contemptuous red-headed Israeli Lieutenant, although he's down on the floor begging her for nothing more than an opportunity to assault her with his drooping tongue.

He's roughest of all on the Jews her grew up with. He weeps for the sacrifices of his father and, especially, his balabusta mother -- but it's that GUILT that's keeping him in chains. He's like Buridan's ass, starving to death mid-way between two stacks of hay: his allegiance to the values his family have beaten into him, along with their conviction that he'll never make it, and his desperation to break free of those values and find a life of his own, an independent life.

It's an adult story with a great deal of vulgarity in it, sometimes side splitting.

A Jewish doctor once told me, "No offense, but I think you really have to be Jewish to understand this." Well, I suppose it depends on your ability to get inside Portnoy's skin. You don't need to do half the job that Roth did.

Complaints and Grievances
$7.98
This recording of George Carlins' 12th HBO special begins with growled reference to "pu$$y f@rts." Not a cute or enlightening discussion of the phenomeneon or the way it is euphemized or avoided, but a simply crass and vulgar reference that was, sadly emblematic of the level of vile trangressive humor on this album. Carlin not only seeks to violate middle-class tastes. He also seems bent on insulting his 20-something audience by making fun of male names like Dylan, Brad, Todd and many others. Surely, this highly intelligent comic must know that there are more than a few a paying members of his audience with these now-common names.

Carlin's pose of innocence and wonder is a thing of the past. His delivery is highly-scripted and lacks the playfulness of his 1970s material. Carlin here is a curmudgeon and bore, whose violent, hostile and appalling observations are never-ending. His material, including one long, dull sketch about running away from a fatal traffic accident, caused me to cringe in disgust. He malevolently jokes about seeing a postcard of a 12-year-old girl's chest. His take on the Ten Commandments had some promise, but simply turned into a name-calling rant about religion. But Carlin's audience of nitwits laughs dutifully and stupidly at his every joke and putdown, prompting me to wonder whether Carlin has sold his comic soul to get a few laughs (and a few $$$) from these drunken jacka$$es.

Save your money and save your time. This George Carlin is a pathetic inversion of his former, hilarious and mind-expanding self.

Portnoy's Complaint [VHS]
$14.98
but I thought it captured the book quite well. Poor Richard Benjamin, he was soooooo good at playing the slimey characters, wasnt he? This and Diary of a Mad Housewife....This is not as funny as the book, to me, the scene in the book of Portnoy in the family bathroom was hysterical and a stand out, it was humorous in the movie but not laugh out loud. However, it is a captivating movie and if you, like I do, LOVE Karen Black, then this is the movie to see. She is so talented and gorgeous, at first I thought, is she playing her role from Five Easy Pieces, but no, she is not. This is a raunchy, sexist, angry movie and sadly ( like the book ) so disparaging of Jewish women, but yet I really enjoyed it.
Funny, Karen Black playing a so called shiksa in the movie when actually her heritage is Jewish. She was busting the stereotype right there! Good girl!