Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth with Liam Williams

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

This week's book guest is Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.Sara and Cariad are joined by award-winning comedian, writer and 1/3 of sketch group Sheeps - Liam Williams.In this episode they discuss Kafka, addiction, wanking, wanking, wanking and Geoffrey Archer.Trigger warning: In this episode we discuss racism, racist language and antisemitism.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth is available to buy here.Tickets to see Liam in Sheeps: A Very Sheeps Christmas – Live in Concert! In the Summer! are available to buy here.Tickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukCariad’s children's book Where Did She Go? is available to buy now.Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. And I'm Carriead Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we created the Weirdo's Book Club. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. Each week we're joined by amazing comedian guests and writer guests to discuss some wonderfully and crucially weird books, writing, reading and just generally being a weirdo. You don't even need to have read the books to join in. It will be a really interesting, wide-ranging conversation and maybe you'll want to read the book afterwards. We will share all the upcoming. books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram, Sarah and Carriads, Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is Port Noise Complaint by Philip Roth. What's it about? Wanking. Mostly. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, the main character masturbates more than all the other characters in literature put together. In this episode, we discuss Kafka, addiction, wanking, wanking, and Jeffrey Archer. And joining us this week is Liam William Williams.

He is an award-winning stand-up comedian. He's a TV writer of the series Ladd Hood and his debut novel, Homes and Experiences, is brilliant and available now. He's also one third of the sketch group Sheeps and you can see them up at the Edinburgh Festival. Trigger warning. In this episode, we do discuss racism, racist language and anti-Semitism. Welcome to the studio, Liam Williams.

Hello. Hello. Hello. We're very excited to have you here. We accosted you at a literary event. Do you remember? Acosted is a strong. I'd say,

greeted warmly. Yes, Robert Popper's book launch. Oh, yeah. He's like, we did a costume. And we love chatting to you and we went home and going, you know, he's really intelligent, Liam Williams. Intelligent and funny. Let's get him on the podcast.

And then the book. You were the only person we mentioned for the party. Oh, yeah. And there were some big. There's some big hitters there. Big hitters. Yeah, Sam and Rushdie. No, thanks.

Chris Morris? No, thanks. So, the book we chose. I chose, actually. I'm going to take responsibility for this. Take responsibility, yeah. Without even hearing Carrie's opinion, is Philip Roth's port noise complaint.

Why? Because you wrote Laddard, this show about coming of age, the comedy that comes out of really sort of excruciating moments in a male life. And I thought, oh, what a great mash-up this will be. And then I started reading it again. And you'd read it at a university, haven't you?

A long time ago. We're talking 20 years ago. I had never read it. Had you read it before? No. Right, yeah. Have you read any... Had you read any Philip Roth?

Read the human stain. Yeah. Quite a long time ago. Which is a slightly different vibe. Yes. But did you think Philip Roth is a great writer? Yeah, I remember admiring that. I think it went...

I was not a particularly good reader at the time. And so it went largely over my head. I was young and distracted, I think. But yeah, it was obviously a good book. Yes. He's a literary giant. And had you ever thought, I'll read Portnoy's complaint? I'd ever thought that.

Yeah, I've heard of it. You never heard of it? Maybe, maybe vaguely, but no. No, okay. Never thought about it. No. Yeah, I'd heard of it. And Carrie, you heard of it.

And so what did you know before you were forced to read it? I had deliberately not read it. Yeah, that's what I thought, yeah. Because I grew up in North London. So I'm from a very predominantly Jewish area. I have a lot of Jewish friends. and they would always say it was their dad's favorite book

and I thought it was like a dad book like a kind of you know you might buy him a book about Napoleon or Philip Roth I sort of in my head

and I don't know if I'm being unfair but I just remember a lot like quite a few of my female Jewish friends being like oh God my dad's obsessed with Philip Roth is so and a lot God I don't care it's just like Jeffrey Archer

yeah for Gentile but funny I mean, I read all of Jeffrey Archer's work at 10. Genuinely. Because you're a gentile. Yeah, I genuinely read all of Jeffrey Archer's work when I was 10. And then, because I loved it so much. It was such strong stories.

Is this serious? No, this is serious. I read everything. I really loved Stephen Fry's books. I read all Stephen Fry's. Yeah, but that's not the same is Jeff. He's like, that's Stephen Fry. At 10, Sarah.

Sorry, he's a dragging again, aren't you? I'm bragging about Jeffrey Archer. No, I'm ashamed. I feel like we can unpack that for an hour if you want. We could, can we? I read it all. We'll definitely write in their down for our future. Maybe for the Patreon.

Should we talk about your Jeffrey Archer Obsession? No, because can I tell you what's straight? I read it all. I read everything. They're page turners, right? They're really good page turners, but this is, I feel rude saying this, but at 10, after like the sixth book,

I was like, gosh, he's got a real format here, hasn't it? At 10. I was like, come on. Talk you six, though, in fairness. Yeah, anyway, I hadn't read Philip Roth. I'm the big Jeffrey Archibon. So yeah, I hadn't read it. But I knew of it.

I knew of this book. And did you know about the wanking? No, because... Did you know about the wanking, Liam? Great. Why didn't you tell me? You told Liam? Because I assumed when you said...

No, Sarah, I'm a Geoffrey-Otrapan. Don't know about the wanking. I assumed that's why you would be shirking it. No, because it's a dad book. It's all about wanking. No. No. But you knew about the wanking. Only from Sarah.

And the wanking isn't even half of it. No. That's the thin end of the wage. But that's all I could remember. That's the tip. There's a lot of it. I remember what I was... I remember my response.

I've read that. A few Philip Roth books. Yes, you've read it much more than I have. I think he's a masterful writer. I think this book is very, very funny. But what I remember from reading it 20 years ago is, I knew it about men, men's minds, what they think about, what they do.

I'm like, I knew it. I knew all these things were going on in their brains. No one has dared to admit it to me properly. I feel bad because I don't think he's a typical man. No. I feel like it's quite extreme version. Yes. I feel bad for you at 20 big. I'm more measured. This is what they're all like.

Yes, a couple of boyfriends really did get the rough end of the wedge. Don't pretend you didn't wank while you were in there. Oh, God. Yeah, there's so much wanking in there, isn't there? Yes, there is. There is also, and I'm interested because I think you two would have had newer versions than mine. Well, can we just compare covers? Sarah's got like the, what was this to be, like early 2000s, they put lace on it. Mine, I just get a big pee. They don't even hint at anything anymore. Mine's got the mother's groin on it.

This is the mother's tight. tights. So you know this whole thing with the one putting her stockings on, they're fishnet stockings. So that's the mother's groin. Oh, great. Okay. I'm glad that they've changed it to a big giant feet. But I wonder if they've changed some of the racist language. No, mine was pretty racist. I got the same one as you. It was pretty racist. Yeah, I was going to say, we have to say. Well, yes. So it's published in 1969 and the language is of the time. And shall we say? Of the time, but also several of the characters are racist. So it's not, so Alexander Portnoy, him of the complaint,

both of his parents express, not only use racist words, they express racist views. Yeah, and other people, there's a huge amount of anti-Semitism in it as well from other people. He experiences anti-Semitism. Yes.

And he is also racist. And his job is sort of looking after the poor and working class of New York City. And he also uses what would be considered racist language, even though he is arguing with his parents about the way they are viewing black people in America. So it's a complicated language type. He thinks he's a communist because he eats his dinner

a couple of times with their cleaner who's a black woman. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, the language is definitely saying to be aware of. But yeah, they haven't changed it for them. No, and there's no... Sort of like warnings on the front. No, we've discussed that before. Like, it wouldn't hurt, would it sometimes?

Just to be like... Just like an introductory essay to go, the reason we haven't changed the language? I feel like you couldn't do that. You know, television now, it has to, her thing comes up. Like, even on, I have Disney Plus, my kids watch Disney films. Like, some of the films are not available on the kids' channels, even though it's like they don't have swearing.

You have to go to and switch to like your adult setting and it says this has language that was inappropriate at the time, especially like the 60s and 50s ones. And I feel like, so, you know, you're approaching something being like, oh, okay. So it's weird that a book is like, yeah, you don't need to mention that. Because it's confronting, isn't it? Yes, it's really confronting.

Some of the languages, yeah, deeply, deeply racist. It sure was confronting. You're right about that. And as I say, yeah, the wanking was the comic relief, actually. I did laugh out loud at some of the wanking quite a lot. Yeah, there's some funny wanking. Yeah, there's some funny. What was your favorite wank?

Well, the famous bit is that he wanks into a piece of liver. Right, but that happens on like page five. I think you would warn me of that or I found it when I was reading on. No, but he mentions there's another bit that... And then the liver comes back. Yeah, his mum serves it to the family. That's right. There's some line that he says, like, that just about wanking

that really made me laugh out loud. Now you know the worst thing I've ever done? I fucked my own family's dinner. That made me... I was like, well, you've got me. That's absolutely hilarious. So funny. What was your favourite wanking?

Did you ever... It was hard to pick. It is incredibly hard to pick. I don't think any of them were... particularly enjoyable to read. I found it. One of the

episodes of masturbation that really struck me as interesting was he was in the toilet pretending to be... Have diarrhea? Yeah, pretending to have diarrhea. And his mother

could hear him. And I couldn't quite tell how much he was... It was the noises he was making as he was wanking or whether he was pretending to make noises appropriate to diarrhea as a kind of ruse

and she wanted to come in and he has a bra so the visuals of it is Oh my god his sister's bra His sister's bra and it's connected to the doorknob and the wall so that when his mum is shaking the door

the bra is moving and that is making it more realistic to him that a woman a girl he likes from school it's her boobs in it Yeah Yes there's a lot going on Yeah

and I just thought that was a very psychologically interesting bit because it's sort of like this sense, you get this sense from quite early that a factor in maybe why he is this way is because he feels he has no privacy and he's being invaded and so on. She's demanding to see his poopie. And he is saying, stop calling it poopie. I'm a grown mat. And she's saying you've been eating fries and hamburger after school.

And she wants to examine his feces. His father, meanwhile, this is why it's so masterful in its comedy. his father has extreme constipation. So his dad wants to get into the toilet. So he got both parents want to get in. His mum wants to look at what he's done in the toilet bowl. His dad wants his turn to try and move his bowels, which is the phrase he uses over and over again.

So afterwards, and his mum is sending him, he mustn't flush the toilet. Now he doesn't have diarrhea. So he has to flush the toilet to hide the fact that he's been doing something. Jizzing in the family toilet. While his whole family are shouting at him and he's using his sister's underwear. So already by this age, he's got such serious issues.

Yeah, I would, yeah. And what you think as a reader is, oh my God, this must put him off. Oh, no, he's still going. Oh, it's actually helping him off. Yeah, it's his mom's insistence. His coping mechanism. That she looks at his feces in the toilet. Did it make you laugh, Liam, that bit?

Or was it like kind of, what the hell? It made me frown. No, it made you frown. Frown, found. With a mixture of emotions. Yeah. Yeah. What was, I thought it was so funny, because especially when the dad, so he flushes

the toilet. The mum's like, why did you flush it? I know you've been eating French fries. I wanted to look. Next time you must let me look and his dad's just like, jealous of him. I know. You don't know how lucky you are. I can't believe they've got diarrhea. Some of those kind of descriptions, there's a description of his father's penis. Oh my God. If you don't mind me. Please. I was hoping you would say, actually. The meatishness that I admire so, the sheer mindless, weighty and unselfconscious dangle of that

living piece of hose through which he passes streams of water as thick and strong as rope. Now that is beautiful writing. It's beautiful writing about Dad's penis and pissing. But the very, very carefully selected words, I don't want to think about his dad's penis or anyone's dad's penis. It has put me off penises because the writing is so good. Yeah, it's a brilliant writing. So to be able to, in I guess, very crude scenario, I felt like, of course, a child is fucked up

if they're seeing their parents' genitals and dealing with all these really huge... These are the people that are in charge of them. Yeah. And I'm supposed to love them, but are constantly telling them that they're wrong and they feel inferior. So to go back to the dad's working life,

the first thing we... Not the dad's penis. Not the dad's penis. He takes it to work with him. The first thing we learn is that he's not very intelligent, but he has lots of curiosity. Yeah, he kind of, he didn't get educated, didn't get the sense.

He left school very early and they're quite, they're working class, aren't they? They're definitely not rich. They live in, well, they move to a very specific Jewish area and they're living in a flat above and his uncle ill and aunt are living above them. And his dad sells insurance, essentially door to door, which means that on a weekly basis he has to chase up people for a small amount of money which continues their insurance. And it feels like it's something that he does really believe in. He has this metaphor about an umbrella in the rain. Yeah. That he says over and over again, to his small child son,

like what kind of father would leave his wife and his children without an umbrella when it's raining? But there's also this sense, right? This is part of where the racism comes in, right? Because a lot of his customers are black people and he has this very demeaning attitude towards them. And at the same time as there is this conviction that he's doing something to help them. There's also this kind of slightly cruel and sadistic, like pleasure in chasing them around. Hiding? And on a Sunday waiting for them to go to.

church do you like pop out of valleys and get them when they least expect it and I feel yes yeah yeah like yeah it's it's um predatory kind of and I suppose there's that's like um a thematic that's there in the whole book this like conflict between you know gestures supposedly of care and and and respect and and trying to help another person that's like in equal measure to to just disdain and trying to exploit them. Yeah. Yeah, there's a definitely sense of hierarchy as well, of like where you are in the pecking order.

And this sense of an ego coming from, well, he's only an insurance salesman, but he takes advantage of the black community. So it's like they see themselves as above the black community, but then they know the white Americans see them as below. And it's like, where do you put yourself on in America? There's a lot of stuff about being an immigrant in America, what that means to come with all that, you know, generational trauma,

I guess is the phrase you'd use now, which you can tell is absolutely not present in this book. There's no acknowledgement of like... You don't think... Well, no, he is straight away if the reason he wanks all the time is because of the Holocaust. Yeah, but there's like, there's less, do you know what I mean, there's less like, oh, my parents, like his parents, that's what I mean of like, oh, gosh, what they've been through. He doesn't have empathy towards his parents, but... And that's why I think the description of his dad's job, right?

beginning is so it's so insightful because what it is showing is how a child goes from a very very infantile perspective on a parent which is he works really hard you know he's tall he wears a hat he's a good man and then you only have to learn a tiny bit more of information about that person to see through them think they're a fraud despise them be disgusted by them and that's what happens with his parents he goes from a four-year-old who thinks they're the bees knees well he also is in love with his mother should we talk about yes like he absolutely sort of fancies his mom as a child

there's kind of a lot of weird stuff like yeah watching her paying the stockings and then her also showing him pictures of how beautiful she was

in her like yearbook she calls him her lover yeah she says my lover even as an adult child which he is also like my God why is she doing that and there's all these layers

of self-awareness and irony and like there's this sense that they're all they all like he says multiple times you know either I know I'm just the Freudian cliche

or I'm not the Freudian You know, there's this conflict between being completely aware of the sort of Oedipal inevitability and desperate to resist it. But there's, you know, and there's some stuff, there's a lot of stuff about, it's particular to the Jewish identity in the book about comic detachment being a sort of necessary way of coping with reality. And it's like they kind of, it's like they all know their place in this Edipal arrangement and it's kind of a joke. Yeah, he says I'm in the middle of a... This is, I'm living in the middle of a Jewish show. Yeah. And he does, it is knowingly,

that he believes it's going on because there's one scene where he imagines what his father would do if he did start having sex with his mother on the carpet. Just imagining him leaving the room to read his paper while they finished. It's great, I can go to the Lou while this is happening.

Yeah, as in like his father wouldn't fight him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would just sort of shrug his shoulders and go, oh yeah. I mean, I found that, last thing, I found he's funny. Like, Alexander Portnoy, is funny, the way he talks about his parents, the way he will go off on like, and we should say he's sort of talking to a psychoanalyst. He's talking to a therapist, yeah, it's a therapy session.

I think, did you find out? He's a psychiatrist, but it basically plays up like a psychoanalytical. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I read something that he said that this was quite invented for the time, but he wanted it. That's why he felt like the character could get away with saying these things, because it's that liminal space where you say a lot more than your meaning to. But that's obviously quite unusual for this book was, you know, they tried to ban it in several countries.

They did ban it. Lots of libraries banned it in America. I think in Australia, apparently, that seemed to be the most banned. I don't know if America banned it. No, they did lots of libraries or libraries. Oh, libraries, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It definitely caused a stock because it is graphic. I wonder why Australia's didn't like it. I think there was a quite long chunk about that in its Wikipedia page.

I can't remember. Basically, they ruled that you were allowed to ask for it. but they weren't allowed to have it on, like, out and about. Like, mine camp. Which are you like, Portnoy's Complaint or MindCamp? Which one were you after from Arche? You only get one. I said the opposite.

It's a two for one deal. But yeah, he's very funny. They only make sense until you've read the two. Yeah, yeah. Some balance. Compliment each other. Yeah, he's very fun. His take, like, his kind of comic monologue.

Did you feel that, Liam? Like, it was like someone just like sort of ranting for an hour. Well, it felt like Lenny Bruce. Yeah. set or something like that. It had those digressions and those little interjections and, you know, slang and all the, all the sort of absolutely relishing offensive language at the time. Yeah, it would have been genuinely shocking.

You know the one you read? Was this, do you know if you wrote that before this? I think human stain was later. I think this is his first book, is it? No, because they were saying that this was a huge change. So before he'd written quite sort of more florid language. And then this after seeing Lenny Bruce. Oh, really?

Yeah, okay. He sort of changed his style. Yeah, because this was written like a year after Lenny Bruce died. Right, yeah, yeah. And Lenny Bruce was working until the end of his life. And his later material was a lot about his, you know, his legal troubles and his censorship and everything he'd been through, kind of dissecting it almost psychoanalytically. And there's a lot of that in this.

And a lot of, have you read Lenny Bruce's? Biograph or autobiography? No, I haven't actually. I'm sure it's not a lot of fucking women. A lot of descriptions of women and, you know, he likes fucking them. But I remember reading it, again, way too young and thinking like, oh. You were like, I finished all of Jeffrey Archer. I finished Jeffery Archer.

That's next. The natural next step. It says on the back of this Jeffrey Archie book, if you like. But yeah, there's a lot like that just remind me. The way Alexander talks about women is very similar to, like, Lenny's like, oh, this redhead with these, like, she's so. I remember I said you see so pale, you could seal the veins across her chest, like a map. And that's what made her and like bring her back to the, you know, his flat.

And yeah, I mean, hey, I'm sure there's a lot of great groundbreaking comedy. But as a woman, I was like, it's fucking a young women as well. Yeah. So yeah, it's very... And we're talking about them in a dehumanising life. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. So, but yeah, it's funny. I didn't realize this was a year after Lenny died.

But the stream of consciousness of it is like a stand-up routine. Yeah, it is, isn't it? stand-up routine because it's a I do this thing, this is what I did, and here's another memory, and it does feel in that way where stand-up is brilliant, where it feels like that's what the mind then conjures up next, and then at the same time as saying it, you're going, oh, that must mean something. Yeah. If that leads to that, or maybe that is because of that, or because of this then, jump

forward 20 years, and I still feel all this sexual guilt, which is what it's a book about, isn't it? There was definitely times I felt like I was listening to an Edinburgh show. Yeah. And you're like in the middle of an Edinburgh, you know that bit where you sort of tune out. like, I think he's been going half an hour because he's really ranting now and not quite sure what his point is. How dare you do that in an Edinburgh show? Oh, the half hour guy. You know, when someone they're getting to the rant and you're like, it was funny, but now they're ranting.

Oh, they'd come back to funny. Okay, great, great, great. But you have that moment of like, oh, the show's about this. I thought it's going to be a bit funnier. Well, I think that the rant is always. You saw my stuff. The rant is. I'd finish Jeffrey Archer.

The rant is why you're there. Yes. around about that other 55 minutes is the trick. Yes, exactly. And I'm like, when's there a trick coming back? When's that rabbit coming out of the hat? Or is the trick like a magician? I'm not a magician.

But they do sort of things to distract you, right? They sort of wave a bit of cloth around and then they do something. Yeah, that's right. That's right. They swing with a card or your watch. Oh, God, the cloth. What's happening? Yeah. And that's the joke. Yeah.

And the like horrible resentment that you really need to get off your chest is the trick. Is that fair? It's up fair to comedy. Yeah. I think that's a really important political point that everyone agrees with, but, you know, you think you should. You should be the one. I should say, murder's wrong.

Okay. Fed up his murder. Sorry, guys. Stop murdering each other. My dad died and I got some things to say that I also think people dying is bad. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it definitely had that vibe, didn't it?

It felt very, for a book that's so old, it felt very alive still. Yeah. Well, it's still very contentious, I would imagine. So the Guardian day, the Guardian wrote an article about how it stands up after 40 years. Yes, I read that, yeah. I didn't. I just looked at the title. Well, yeah, of course.

It basically said, can I say, it literally said that. You didn't miss it. That's what it said. That's why I don't read whole articles. It's like they've summarised it. Don't need to. They don't need to, do you? Don't need to.

Actually, and you don't need the other 55 minutes of shows. I think, how much quicker would the Edinburgh Festival be? Get it over in three days. Everyone just goes up and does they rant. Here's my resentment. Here's my resentment. Here's my resentment. Not the Edinburgh Fringe.

Here's my resentment. People don't have to get a drink anymore. Do you know what? I would appreciate the honesty of that as a festival. I'd be more into that. Because sometimes you think, oh, I'm here for jokes. And then the resentment comes up. But if I was just sold, 10 pounds, here's my resentment.

I think we've just invented the hating from 1984. What is that? What's that? In 1984 on George Orwell, they just all go and shout at a screen. Oh, the five minutes hate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Five minutes hate. No, but not just, it's not imagined hate as it is in 1984.

you have to like drag it up. This is genuine resentment. Yeah. Perhaps you could, you could just be in a booth and you could just open the door and just like a stand-up just shouting their resentment. You go, oh, okay, bye. Yeah. Or maybe that would be really great for the stand-ups because otherwise they have to wait all day

and then do half an hour before they get to do it. If it was more like a kissing booth where you just give, they all just give 50p and then you get to say your rant. Your resentment. Yeah. Yeah. Here's my resentment. You get to say over and over again.

I bet you'd feel better by the word. the end of August. What could this do for the mental health of comedians? Everyone's always like, oh, they're so depressed. This might really cheer everyone up. Yeah, because they're like, this is what I want to say, but no one fucking listened. So I've had to develop humour to say my opinions. And charge them.

Yeah, you're like, don't worry. You don't have to develop humour. Just say your resentment. Okay, we'll speak to the people who run their reference. And then that might be it. They might go, that's the last Edinburgh Festival. The comedians were really cheered up. Much like Philip Roth.

We have our digressions. Liam. And what did you feel about Alexander's relationship with his mother? In your therapy session this week. Well, as I say, I felt like he knew all that you as a reader could say about it already, right? Like he kind of preempted. That's true. Not that he necessarily knows he's a literary character, although I think the book does verge on almost that level of postmodernism, that it knows it's a book.

the amount to which he talks about the importance of comic detachment in the way he and his community interact with each other, the amount that he invokes those Freudian ideas and tropes, that he sort of is like constantly kind of trying to negotiate with the way his story is going. he's incredibly self-aware, including, you know, most of all about his relationship with his mother. In a way, Roth is like testing the Edipal complex as a concept on this canvas of contemporary society, saying a lot about his contemporary society in so doing.

But all that said, he's a very, he is a very, as Carriad says, he's all too alive as a character. He feels incredibly real and incredibly uncomfortable as a result because he's very unpleasant. And I think there's definitely this aspect to it, this dimension where it's like, okay, let's, like you say, like, you know,

is this the typical male psyche? Is this what's really going on in men's heads? Probably some, to a large degree. Other men, you know, not all men. But there is an answer to interrupt you Because that's what's going to ask you about whether he felt real. So while there's so much in this story, which is idiosyncratic, and I think it's about this character and his parents,

what I believe to be true on a much wider spectrum is that young men have sexual urges at the same time as being told that the things that are arousing them, it is bad to be aroused by, or that arousal itself. They're basically given indoctrinated in so much shame, and they then have to balance that out through their intelligence, in some form for the rest of their life. Because, you know, we evolved from being apes who just did what we wanted,

and then there's this whole layer on top. And I feel like there isn't a huge amount of fascination in a society where we discuss it. We actually, what we go is, they're disgusting, they need to stop it, I don't want to hear about it. And I think it's so important and so refreshing to have a man exploring that. I think, yeah, and that's, yeah,

I think there's a reading of the book, which is like it's a realizing of a part of the male psyche that is real, that is there, which is like sexual preoccupation that can be very dominant. And we know it's dominant. It's still in society. It's like, render that as the totality of a person. And what does that look like? And that is like a very present and significant element in human relationships in human society. And I think it's, that's, I mean, it was hard work at times this book as well as being very funny. But in the end, I was left with this sense of like it's a very worthwhile literary undertaking.

It really lays something bare. And there's this sense at the end. I don't know if it's kind of jumping the gun to get to the ending and the implications of the ending. but amidst this sort of avalanche of shame and regret that's overwhelmed him, there's just a few suggestions of redemption of the possibility of things being different. And I think that that's got some quite major societal implications as well. And also the fact that this is a man who is talking to his psychiatrist about it actually has hoped at its very core, isn't it?

Right. It's someone knowing, when I was a child, all of these things happened, what was I supposed to do about it then I was a child but now I am an adult man Yeah and I think that I think that's crucial I think and and one thing that struck me is how much Kafka comes up in the book and he compares him so again

like he's incredibly He's well read That's what I mean about him being a self-aware literary character Is he compares himself to Gregor Gregor Samza from metamorphosis He compares himself to Joseph Kaye from the trial Portnoy is positioning himself

Roth is positioning Portnoy to position himself as a character in a kind of self-knowing lineage of Kafka's characters. And there's something about the characters in Kafka are generally men, generally very lonely men. They're incredibly powerless. Yeah. Like Gregor Samsa wakes up one day he's a beetle. I'm reading Good Girl at the moment by Aria Abba. And she, her character really aligns herself with Gregor as well.

and it seems to be so much about an immigrant experience that it makes absolute sense to why he makes him a beetle because that's how it feels to be like wrong in the wrong world and you to have no control, no choice over it. Right. I think there's like a lot of frameworks that you can apply the Greg or Sam's a metamorphosis thing too and the same with the trial in Joseph K. And the sort of fundamental experience both characters have

and like other Kafka characters is that they're suddenly, they kind of wake up into what feels like a completely unfair situation. They're completely disempowered and there's almost nothing that they can do about it. And yeah, there's a whole reading of Kafka that like he comes from like Slavorgijek. I don't need to get into all that now. Oh, you're on the right podcast. Please continue. Yes.

That, you know, his work in the depiction of bureaucracy in this kind of dystopian way is not, it's not strictly about exaggeration, you know, saying here are some elements in our society as we know them. Let's blow them up to 200 times the size and see how that feels. It's like actually about digging out a kind of psychic, you know, unconscious reality, a kind of fantasy that underlies social experience that makes it what it is, digging it out and exposing it. And Kafka is very good at showing how that bureaucracy is developing in the early 20th century to say, you know, we're all these disempowered, atomized individuals. at the mercy of these big, you know, borderline computerized systems that we don't understand, that we don't really feel empowered in our own lives. And the Kafka characters, there's virtually nothing they can do about it. But here, 50 more more years later, there's a guy.

He is in many ways disempowered. He's his family and his community of being through trauma. He's oppressed. He's making bad decisions, that's for sure. He has a lack of empathy, that's for sure. But as you say, the very fact that this is his act of sharing, his experience with a side. psychoanalyst, there's a hint of empowerment. And that shows something has changed in society in 50 years the way people can respond to their own experience. Because I would argue that's the

importance of the childhood in this, is that childhood is a time where you are completely disempowered, you are a beetle, you just got born, your consciousness is growing at a time where you have very little autonomy. Alexander doesn't have a choice about what he eats. His mother threatens him with a knife when he doesn't want to eat his dinner. So whenever he tries to take a tiny, The modicum of power. I found it not unusual for the time. It's definitely not like I've read it a lot. She whales and both of her parents threaten their own death to him.

They're all crying hysterically. No, it's written about in a funny way, but that's the importance of childhood in this. There is this huge portion of your life, which is incredibly frustrating where you have your own ideas, your own wants. That might be you want to eat fries and hamburger after school. It might be that you want to play baseball. There are these things that he is told he is a bad person for. wanting and then it's masturbation is this one tiny little private moment and then it becomes excessive because that is his only freedom.

That's one thing that I found interesting is that this book is very much of a time where, you know, the birth of, well, the height of psychoanalyst and like the fact that he can put that in a book was very like, oh, this is the time for this kind of becoming part of the ethos. And I think at that time we go, oh, his childhood, his childhood, his childhood, his childhood, his childhood. I read this book 2025 and I was like, yeah, Alexander Portnoy is a sex addict.

Like that's the other thing that's not discussed here. He's so focused. I think it is, he does describe himself as an addict. But it's so focused on like, oh my childhood, my parents, this. And I was thinking that I was a very modern take of like yeah, he's an addict. That's what's happening here.

But wouldn't that, aren't those two perspectives quite related? Yes. Looking back to what, where the addict's trauma came from. But I sort of felt like this book places a lot of emphasis on... You thought it was too causal. Well, it was very... Where's his accountability?

But I think that's what I was thinking. Because I didn't necessarily think that he was often... I know a couple of times he does throw it to the doctor, but I don't think he was always going, mother did this, so that's why I'm like this. It was like, I was like this then. I was doing this at six, this at four. By eight, I was doing this.

By 11, it was... I guess I mean, like, we can point all the reasons that he does this and, like, being disempowered as a child and all this, but there is also he's an adult. He treats women really horribly. He's disgraceful to the women. He masturbates on a... Oh, on a bus.

On a bus. Next to a schiska girl. I mean, so he does things that are illegal. But I found, again, that's interesting because it's, again, the way this comedy works, that's a funny... It's told in the same vein as like, my crazy mother, my mad father who can't shit,

I'm on the bus next to a goy and I'm masturbating. Because I've eaten lobster. Because I've eaten lobster. And I shouldn't have done that. My mother, that's going to kill me. And it's interesting now to be like, oh, from a woman's perspective, like that is fucking

like abhorrent to what you're doing. But it's told in the same vein as funny stories of like, I wanked next to a woman. Don't worry, did it. My baseball mitts she didn't see. And there were bits I guess jarring modern moments. We're like, oh, it's less funny. There's that woman who's doing the ironing and the three friends

bubble and they want her to give them sexual favours and she agrees that she will wank one of them off. And then it's Alexander. and it is a very funny scene because she's too rough on his penis. And he has to imagine himself, because he's the only one. Yes, and then he finishes himself off because she gives him 50 strokes and it's really hurting him and he doesn't get an erection and it's done.

And then she's like, okay, I've finished. So there are scenes where you can't help but empathise with the woman think that the male characters have been wrong. They have manipulated a woman, if not put pressure on her. Oh, yeah, there's absolutely, like, to do something she does like screaming. Cause her a whore because she won't suck him off. And then she's very, very racist to him afterwards because he masturbates and get what she calls Jism is the exact word,

which is a very, very funny word. Jism all over the doilies. I know it did make me, again, that's the thing. He is, I suppose it also reminded me of like a Woody Allen film, you know, like it had that thing where you're like, there are moments that are really funny, even though I'm looking at this thinking, oh, this is uncomfortable, I'm not sure about this,

but then you can't help but go, that is funny. But it's funny because there's really deep human truth with it. Would we agree? Yeah. And I think, yeah, well, I think what you just said, Carriott is extremely important. Like, it's funny, and then it can be extremely jarring that he's acting so cruelly, particularly to women. And those things come so kind of entangled. But I'd say he does get there in the end.

I mean, the fact that he's saying all this to whoever this practitioner is. And then the ending, he kind of does take responsibility for it, right? He's like, he talks about how he's treated. He does have one, you know, almost partner, somebody that he kind of. The monkey. The monkey. Or he tries to love her, I think, quite sincerely. And he knows he should love her and he knows that there is something wrong with him.

Well, that's for the addiction thing, I think, is he? If right from the very beginning, all of your sexual arousals you felt bad about because you were a little boy masturbating by yourself while your mom was shaking the bathroom door. I feel like you're playing a lot of blame on his mum. No, no, I'm not. I'm not actually. Because we could go back and talk about what happened to the parents. How, as a mother, if you don't know about male sexuality, especially teenage boy sexuality,

how on us do you know that your son's wanking in the bathroom? No, that's what I felt like? You never get. What does she think he's doing? She believes that unhealthy fast food is ruining his bowels. I think also that what is that moment early on that's talking about the Nazis in the community? Is there a bit where they're sort of. chased in their American

neighbourhood or is that a reference to what's going on in in Europe at the time? But there's certainly like a very real... They move, don't they? They move to a predominantly Jewish area because they don't feel safe. They're advised to move by... They're chased by...

I think it literally described as Nazis in America and again, not to load everything onto that but that's a trauma that the mother and the mum and dad have had. And so when she's trying to kind of look into every single corner of his life. And she's always telling about germs and threat. And actually after those early reference, you know, this reference where the members of the community

are literally kind of attacked in the neighbourhood and they have this awareness of what's going on in Europe and he has a very emotive moment with his sister where they talk about the victims of the Holocaust and he can't quite process how to feel about it. That whole thing doesn't really come up again. But this is set in about 1945. Yeah, it's 1940s to the 60s is where it's like, yeah.

But, yeah, so I think that's very presumably present for the parents when they're parenting the way they are. But at the same time, like, as you're saying, there's something quite universal about it. It's not like this is just this mother and just pornoid. There's something more universal. And these questions of, yeah, like for the addicts, as you say, like where personal accountability begins and ends.

It's all a bit of a messy tangle. But I feel like that's part of why it's such a great book. Yes, I was going to say that is part of what is so brilliant about it that you, every time I felt sort of pushed or pulled of like, oh, oh, it's funny. It's like, oh, this is a work of genius. I definitely felt like it was a work of genius. I didn't feel, even though I didn't enjoy it or love it, I definitely felt like, oh, I can see where people are still talking about this book. It was completely masterful.

Yeah, yeah. deeply, psychologically, insightful, and like, I think, yeah, it contains some, like, understanding of social relationships and their effect on the individual that is, like, yeah, genius. I did really enjoy it. Well, I think, you know, it's disgusting. Second read enjoyed as much as first, do you think? I don't remember the first read. Oh, fair. I remember them.

So there's so much of it that I absolutely didn't remember. Right from the beginning, I think I loved so much. this thing, so it starts with a story that when he was a child he thought his mother was in disguise as all of his teachers. So Liam, I went through a phase of thinking

my mum could see me through my cat and that she had invisible cameras because she always knew when I've been shoplifting. Shoplifting is your masturbation, clearly, in this situation. I never twig that she just found the stuff in my bed and knew that I'd been stealing. How does she know?

That's interesting, right, a child leaves evidence. Yes. Doesn't want to be found out. But I thought it was so funny because exactly how a child's mind works. He's rushing home from school thinking one day he will capture either mid-transformation from teacher to mother. God in his life, isn't she? Yeah, she knows absolutely everything. So this isn't me blaming the mum at all.

No, I know. I just feel sorry for a. I think it's so fascinating that love, adoration can move into disgust. Yes, yeah, yeah. In childhood. And then that is its own burden. When he has his story with his dad with the baseball, where he realizes his dad isn't great at baseball. His dad's come from work.

And those things are heartbreaking because that is the nature of being a child. I've got toddlers who think, honestly, they think I'm the tits. They absolutely think I'm brilliant. I'm like a music festival into a fun fair, into a... And I know it's a really finite amount of time

before they then go, they think my breath smells. Or like, what are you doing that for, Mommy? Or like, there's this really little brief window. And I think that's what he explored. so brilliantly. Yeah. And that is what everyone has to process in their life is these huge feelings for your parents

that have a lot of guilt in them because you can't help judging them, seeing through them. And I guess to be fair to... Seeing how the world perceives them. To be fair to his point of view, his parents do nothing to move the needle forward. Like, as in like, he's grown, he develops, he changes and they are very much like that that scene made me laugh so much where they visit him in New York and they're getting in the taxi and then he sort of lets drop he's going to Europe and his dad is like,

what if I dad? And he's like, he's like, bye, like the car's driving on. His mum's still putting her stockings on in front of him. So since four years old, she's been doing this. What does she think it is? Because at the beginning you think, okay, maybe she's just, she doesn't know that it's weird. I first thought it was genuinely like she's just getting dressed.

And he's made it sexual. But he now looks away when he visits once a month and she makes a joke like, oh, look at him at averting his eyes like I'm at some kind of sex siren at 60. And that's what I mean. Why are you putting your underwear on in front of him? The parents haven't done anything to, like, that's why I did feel sorry for him. It's like he, like you said, he is trying in his own way, and he has moved forward in the world,

and they are very much stuck in treating him like a four-year-old. And I also did feel for the sister. Like, he's just like, no one cares. No one cares about his sister. And he's like, yeah, she's pointless and useless and, like, fat and boring and I'm a genius. And I was like, oh, God, that's like. But she's the only one in the book. who talks about the Holocaust, for example.

And she also, as the only one who has deep empathy for everybody. She seems to have this vast empathy for what's got. She can cry. She knows what it's like to ignore by everyone. She also said, he does also say she is the sane one. She's the only one I can talk to. There are slight windows where you go, okay, he's horrible about her weight. Yeah, really.

And very dismissive. But so are her parents. Like everybody, that's the thing. The family dynamic is very, I guess it's that thing of like, it's very funny. And I get the sense in 1969. It was thought of very funny, but it's hard not to read 2025 and be like, well, this is quite a toxic dynamic, guys. Like, everybody needs therapy, not just Alexander. Like, all of you need to work out why you're interacting like this.

Going back to the thing of, you know, it's sort of extracting some kernel of truth that's kind of there for most people. It's a bit of a comedy act, right? It's a bit of a lampoon. It's a bit of a, are we meant to take these people as, oh, my God, they're really like this and they're, I can't believe. Yeah, it's a good question. What do you think? Well, I think the fact that it's resonant beyond just these specific cast of characters with these kind of extremely toxic, you know, kind of volatile qualities,

the fact that we're talking about it still is such a great book and that it's had this impact suggests that there's something in there that most people can relate to perhaps in their family dynamic or in their relationships. The role of addiction is at play here. So it's like it could have been, it could have been alcohol, it could have been drugs, it could have been throwing his food up, but it landed on sex. Well, there's a point quite late on in the, I think it's in the interaction with the woman who lives on the cabots. Oh yes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. She says, you drank too much at dinner. And there's just a little flash there of like, you know, has this guy been drinking the whole time? And that perhaps there's a sort of, he's talking about all this sex stuff, but the alcohol, he hasn't even. allowed into the story so there's a little suggestion but yeah I definitely he calls himself an addict

and in terms of a modern conception of that it definitely feels like a fitting way to look at it in terms of like male friends do you think that there are some people who are just moderating something better or exercising self-control or the urges are just very different

I think there's a lot of factors involved in one sexuality that's not a controversial thing to say and I think that but they're very present in the book I think the book, like, speaks to a lot of them, like, how much is innate, how much is I was, you know, I was born this way. Some people would look at addiction as something that's innate. Others would look at it as something that's etiological. You know, it's kind of coming to being through experience.

And with point, or you get the sense, it has been there from early on. There's trauma involved. There's moral choice involved. There's societal influence involved. He's clearly got attachment issues. like very profound sort of disorganized attachment. He seems to want intimacy. He strains to find it.

And then when he fails, he kind of relapses into this kind of resentful fury. And that. So there is this kind of emotional shape to his. Do you know what I mean? It's not purely just chaotic his sexual activity. It's underpinned by these emotional experiences. and, you know, he's with these

Gentile girlfriends, he's had, he's kind of, he's wanted to really connect with them and get close to them and sort of failed, and then he's responded with his, with his kind of unpleasant sexual activity. There's a whole dimension to it, you know, at one point he says, I wasn't, maybe I wasn't trying to get up them. I was trying to get up their backgrounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a brilliant line. That's what I was fucking, I, it was such a brilliant line. That's what becoming American, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, sees his attempt to find intimacy of sexual closeness with these women as a way to really finally integrate into American identity that ultimately he finds impossible. And then he starts to figure his relationship with the monkey, who is a working class woman.

I think she's been working as a sex worker. For a while he sees, you know, he goes into that feeling it's purely hedonistic and purely about sex. And this sense comes through that actually he's trying to look at. lift her up at the same time as allow her to pull him down in this kind of class hierarchy you were talking about earlier. And it's like he can't really get to his intimate self or what he really wants or, you know, there's a bit where he's reading Freud. He's like, he's trying to make the, to understand what's going on, right? He reads Freud's degradation essay. And there's a bit in there about some people. So this is Freud saying some people are like this,

right? Like there's a pathology potentially in some people's sexual activity, this kind of hypersexual behavior, that they can't seem to combine the emotional sort of shape of affection and genuine love with sensual pleasure. They can't bring those things together. And so he sort of sets himself to, he's like, that's what I've got to do. I simply need to bring those things together. And then he goes on a trip with the monkey and there's this moment where, where he's like, I don't know about you guys, but I felt like, okay, maybe this is,

maybe that's how this ends. He falls genuinely in love with her. This is a way that he does get to, you know, what is his true desire? You know, after Freud, LeChan, the French psychoanalysts would say, your purpose as a human is to find your true desire, which might not have that much to do with sex, but sex might be the way you express it.

He wants to be a socialist, he wants to be a communist, he wants to participate in a genuine process of social emancipation, emancipation. And here he is, you know, with this attachment to this working class woman, and maybe by being in love with her in a real way where they have this exciting, dirty sex together for the rest of their lives. And then he has this fantasy about growing older and, you know, you just wear scruffy clothes and you don't need to doll yourself up and days and weeks go by and you don't think that much about yourself. You know, he has this vision of his final emancipation

that can come through this kind of putting himself in the gut. experience and he and this woman together can kind of rise up. But it just kind of falls apart really quickly. Yeah, literally, it doesn't work. Yeah. So there's no, like, I feel like the book doesn't give any, it poses a lot of questions about that. Where does this behaviour come from?

And it doesn't give any ultimate relief, except at the end he says, I know, you know, the kind of focal point of it is I know I degraded the monkey. She was degraded anyway, but out of choice, exploited her degradation for my own pleasure. I know that was wrong. And that's where I'm finishing this monologue, basically. And then you finally at the end get the doctor saying like,

okay, now we begin. Yeah, that's the last joke. Such a good joke. But that's like his final, you know, if you feel this sense of like he's been wanking and wanking and wanking and wanking and wanking and and just trying to find relief, relief, seeking relief, this tension building up and no relief for the whole text finally in saying, look, all these factors are present.

They all play a part in it, but I acknowledge that I had a moral failing in exploiting her vulnerability and her degradation. As soon as he kind of says that, it feels like the text releases him. Yeah, yeah. Okay, now you can get somewhere. It's doing some positive work. So what you're saying, that Freudian point is really huge. That is a massive human truth that most fictions try to make look easier than it is. putting together intimacy, love with sexual excitement

to have them with the same person or the same people if you've got more, if you're poly. But that's a really integral human journey for most adults, but most love stories and works of fiction make it look like it's much easier for everyone else, which I think that's why a book like this is incredible. Yeah, it's dealing with something deeply complex and it does in a really complex way.

And I think what you just said, Liam, it's amazing because it makes you realize that essentially what we deal with is a character who is flawed and his solution is not simple and he's not happy and that's what drives you as a reader because you're like, yes. But he's very, very honest. And it's so fantastic to have such an honest nevasa.

Yeah, yeah, it's completely honest. Yeah, and I think even though times I thought it was an absolutely fucking asshole, I also enjoyed spending time in his company, bizarrely. You know, I think that's why, yeah, that's why I would say, like, I'm glad I read it, even though I didn't like, It was not like my top 10. I wouldn't be like pressing it on someone's hand. But I'm like, yeah, it was a really a masterful read.

Yeah. Liam, thank you so much. Thank you so much for all of your brilliant. Oh my God. Just one last question. Do you both. Do you think this book might make someone feel better about sexual shame? I did it.

Unless it was given to you by your mother. No. Darling, my lover. Listen. You're in the bathroom for ages. Yes. After I've looked in the bowl. Have you heard of portnoe?

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's. definitely his honesty, I guess it's as refreshing as it was when we were teenagers and you'd read like, Ms. Magazine and someone would write in and you'd be like, oh, other people have these thoughts as well. It's just nice to know other people have thoughts. I've made it sound like I wanted to fuck liver, sorry, I don't want to fuck liver. Well, I think if that's your primary purpose, there are probably better books out there by this point. Better help self-help books, yeah. I think I was part of a journey of understanding and healing sexual shame.

I think it has its place. It's very diplomatic. You'd be a very good psychiatrist, Liam. I know, I'm thinking that. You sound like a doctor sometimes. Yeah. Thank you, Liam. Thank you.

Anything you want to promote? Doing sheep's, my sketch group, Christmas album live shows at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. I think it's on the 8th and 9th, but yeah, it's up now on the fringe website, I think. Where will you be performing? Here's my resentment. Will that be after or before, do you think? I think that'll just be around the courtyard. Around the courtyard. See you on the streets.

Thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club. My new children's book, Where Did She Go? Is Available to Buy Now. And I'm on tour. Tickets for my show. I am a strange gloop are on sale from sarahpasco.com.uk. You can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing this series on our Instagram

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