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It's recently been brought to my attention that my book reviews frequently are not actually about the book. And I'm wondering why would you want to know about the book when all you have to do is click on the little blurb about the book and then get on with the fascinating reading about...oh, say where I bought my milk last Tuesday or my fondest/most traumatic childhood memory, etc, etc.
And, yet. I aim to please so here is my sincere attempt to tell you something about this book. It (the book) goes something like this:
sex
sex
sex
sex
guilt
guilt
guilt
guilt
sex
sex
sex
guilt
guilt
moms fault
guilt
moms fault
moms fault
guilt
sex
sex
guilt
kinda dads fault too
mostly moms fault
guilt
sex
sex
sex
self loathing
Jewish loathing
protestant loathing
protestant awe
more jewish loathing
again with the Protestant loathing
sex
sex
guilt
guilt
guilt
guilt
partial reconciliation with perceptions of all things Jewish
attempt at sex
failure at sex
guilt
guilt
guilt
mom's fault

Now that I've, no doubt drawn you into the plot line and compelled you to pick up the book for yourself, let me share with you some of my personal thoughts on the book.
Growing up conservative/fundamentalist(?) Christian, I am no stranger to guilt. As a matter of fact some times I feel that Catholics and Jewish people think they have the market cornered on guilt, well, you know what? taint so. I got some pretty messed up voices going on in my head too, ya know. And maybe I can't articulate my guilt trips into clever phrases or pinpoint experiences but I can tell you that guilt taught me a thing or two.

1. If I don't pick up that clutter someone else is going to have to. When I was younger this meant my mom, whom after setting aside her career as an artist to raise 5 kids and nearly had (maybe did have at one point) a nervous breakdown from the lack of money, the accumulation of clutter and my argumentative nature. In my adult life this means the custodian, whom after leaving Vietnam as an educated person has to toil with 2 and sometimes 3 jobs to send his son (and seemingly only hope at respectability in this career driven society of ours) to college.

2. Flour is not cheap and ingredients are not to be wasted! oh, the shame, the shame of ruining yet ANOTHER batch of gingerbread men.

3. pre-marital sex is BAD. BAD! BAD! BAD! Offering yourself as anything less than a virgin to your someday husband is tantamount to giving someone a big bag of steaming compost with worms crawling through it for their birthday. The only thing worse than pre-marital sex is being gay.
*it might be worth noting here that there was some guilt reprieve and gargantuan amounts of titillating conversation regarding what exactly you COULD do, short of having sex but even that was fraught with the anxiety of "accidentally" having sex. and I"m still a little hazy on whether or not I can participate in oral sex. I'm assuming it's a no go, while (okay Catholics and Jewish people, I have to admit I've got it easier here) masturbating is okay AS LONG AS one doesn't start fantasizing about others while masturbating. Which you gotta hand it to them (wa-ha-ha) is that not the purest form of masturbation?

4. Paper is meant to be used and re-used and re-used and re-used and re-used. Buying new paper is an intolerable opulence reserved for gluttonous pigs and ONLY gluttonous pigs.
etc, etc, etc,

so, did I find Portnoy's excessive guilt to be unreasonable or unreadable, not at all. I found it to be hilarious in it's familiarity. Matter of fact I found most of the book to be hilarious, which I hadn't anticipated. Some passages that I found particularly amusing are as follows:

-when he ate pudding he shouldn't have, "Well, good Christ, how was I supposed to know all that, Hanna? Who looks into the fine points when he's hungry? I'm eight years old and chocolate pudding happens to get me hot.

-Talking to his "doctor", "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"

-a child hood sexual fantasy, "Her favorite line of prose is a masterpiece, 'Fuck my pussy, Fuckface, till I faint.' when I fart in the bathtub, she kneels naked on the tile floor, leans all the way over, and kisses the bubbles."

-While observing "goys" at the skating rink, "Jesus, look how guiltlessly they eat between meals! what girls!"

-about a non Jewish girlfriend, ".....played polo (yes, a games form on top of a horse!)

But humor aside, I also appreciated some other aspects of the story. I loved the line, "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". I remember standing alone in NYC (coming from a small town in Oregon) at age 17 and seeing the enormous variety of people and thinking how great it would be to be with the deaf man, the black man, the man in a wheel chair, the businessman, etc,etc,etc. Thinking how much I would KNOW if I could be with all of them (not simultaneously - gross! and not to worry, mom-should you come across this- I wasn't thinking sleep with them, just dates ya know, just some museums trips and a dinner here or there. okay maybe some light petting too, but really that's as far as that fantasy went). In the end I didn't broaden my horizons that way, I ended up dating one guy. One very nice Jewish boy. But still, I like the idea.

And finally I'd like to say that I think I damn near cried at one point near the end and yes, I did also nearly cry this week when I saw a mud flap of that silhouetted naked lady because I so hate the "ideal" that society feels so comfortable imposing on us less than "perfect" females, and I was a little chocked up when my son said, "I like having you for a mom", and all of this near teary-ness might indicate a certain hormonal fluctuation orrrrrrrrr it might indicate that I'm a sensitive genius? consider. Regardless, I felt sorry for the pathetic schlep at one point.

And thus concludes my thorough look at Portnoy's complaints plot points as well as the ubiquitous ME, ME, ME portion of my review.