626
JACK LUDWIG
have been exhausted long ago." A similar process of reduction
Time's
reviewer described - without disapproval- as the transformation of
Roth's "characters into super-stereotypes."
Portnoy's Complaint,
in
his
view, "is a work of farce that exaggerates and then destroys its content
leaving a gaping emptiness," and though "sex, psychoanalysis and Jew–
ishness form the content of the novel, they are not its subject. The book
is about absurdity."
2
One difficulty in
Portnoy's Complaint
was the anticipation set up
by the episodes published earlier
in
PR, Esquire, New American Review.
These were, on the whole, so outrageously funny, so wild, so explosive,
that their enclosure in an agony came as something of a shock, if not
a sell-out. The novel forced on the reader a doubletake; everything
that seemed terribly funny was still funny, but Alexander Portnoy him–
self was something else. The episodes were a howl the way Harpo Marx
was a howl, but the book was the howl of Alexander Portnoy, a "pure
howl" that culminates in the death shriek of a kid playing "they got me."
The psychoanalytical form was itself tricky. A patient goes to his
analyst not just to howl. He dreams of changing ,his life, doing some–
thing different - a
fsho ovoh,
a turning, is called for. But Portnoy's
analyst, Spielvogel, is something very special. The transaction between
patient and doctor is minimal, and quite irrelevant. What's important
is Portnoy's complaint, which is his real complaint - not his mother or
father or the Jews: he is an Ancient Mariner
of
patients, and would
as soon light on Spielvogel as on anyone else. "I hear myself indulging
in ... ritualized bellyaching," he says, but doesn't, of course, stop.
Portnoy is the kind of guy who can go to his analyst nine to five six days
a week for years, reach the end of his tale -like the Jews with their
Torah - and, without a break, start all over again; which, in short,
describes the form of the novel. It is a continuous tape, all one voice
till Roth's punch line sets the tape back to counter 1.
Roth has brilliantly
made
something out of the psychoanalytic trans–
action: his patient is full of American metaphors, the secret languages
of baseball, radio, even insurance; his analyst is a German Jew totally
uncomprehending of his patient's pastoral reverberations. Who is this
Duke Snider whose ease and mastery sum up what Portnoy wants and
can't have? What was that great thing Al Gionfriddo did? What thn11
is locked up in a single name, Eddie Waitkus? The psychoanalytical
exchange becomes the sum of hopelessneS!!. But this, of course, is how
it began: "That's what I need most," Portnoy explains, "to howl," but
