Portnoy's Complaint or Sex: The Sexing started off as a series of dinner party monologues by Philip Roth which dipped into autobiographical territory and it shows.
It's the story of one Alexander Portnoy and his life history as relayed in a series of couch sessions to a psychiatrist. It is at turns, vulgar, hilarious, depressing, disgusting, uplifting and educational. Basically, it's life as a man. Though I must confess I don't quite possess the same libidinous strength that the book's main character seemingly does.
It's entertainingly told and so far reads very quickly, but my main issue is with the structure of the book. It's done as a series of Psychiatric monologues but the length of these "sessions" varies wildly. I wish that it had kept to a specific rhythm with call backs to previous session rather than expanded stories.
Beyond the sex, the book also goes into life as a Jew in prewar New Jersey, or at least as it relates to this small section of Newark. His mother is essentially the mother from hell. Excessively doting and well intentioned but quite overbearing (with specific reference to Freud on Leonardo) and the painting of this as an issue for all Jewish mothers of a certain social strata in that time period within this community (driving one's child to suicide).
My own exposure with Jewish mothers is limited. I think I know exactly one and her children are too young to psychoanalyze for sexual misconduct, though hilariously one of her children, still of nursing age, did spend an inordinate amount of time staring at my girlfriend's breasts while we were at dinner with them.
That's ok, because I tend to do the same thing.
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