Literature Musings: Portnoy's Complaint & Indignation

Recently, I read Philip Roth's new book, Indignation, and was disappointed. It was a fun read, but not nearly as memorable as his other works. Or, maybe it was too much like his other books to be memorable on it's own. I decided to reread Portnoy's Complaint, written in the 60's, and realized that some of the passages were blatantly plagiarized. Well, maybe "plagiarized" is a bit strong; he took small (but meaningful) ideas of his old works and expanded them to mean much more in Indignation. But once you've heard the idea, it isn't so interesting when it's repackaged into a shiny new profitable novel, am I right?

Both books are about a smart Jewish guy who's life gets screwed over due to his over-protective Jewish parents. Yes, there are extremely strong Semitic overtones in Roth's novels, and a good amount of sexual deviance. And yes, putting those two themes together makes for some extremely entertaining reading. Take this passage from Portnoy's Complaint:

"The bus, the bus, what intervened on the bus to prevent me from coming all over that sleeping shikse's arm--I don't know. common sense, you think? Common decency? My right mind, as they say, coming to the fore? Well, where is this right mind on that afternoon I came home from school to find my mother out of the house and our refrigerator stocked with a big purplish piece of raw liver? I believe that i already confessed to the piece of liver that I bought in a butcher shop and banged behind a billboard on the way to a bar mitzvah lesson. Well, I wish to make a clean breast of it, Your Holiness. That--she--it--wasn't my first piece. My first piece I had in the privacy of my own home, rolled round my cock in the bathroom at three-thirty--and then had again on the end of a fork, at five-thirty, along with the other members of that poor innocent family of mine.
So, Now you know the worst thing I have ever done. I fucked my own family's dinner."

I won't give away the plot because figuring out where the story will lead is half the fun of reading this book. If you're thinking about reading Indignation, you're probably better off reading Portnoy's Complaint. All I'll say is that there are some Communist Chinese songs and mention of Bertrand Russell that are strong undertones to both books (much less subtle in Indignation).

I know what you're thinking: how can a book that mentions sex with a piece of liver have any philosophical undertones? Well, that's why Roth is my favorite author - see what you think of his work.