Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969). “I am the son in the Jewish joke,” Alexander Portnoy quips, “only it ain’t no joke.” Narrated as a confession to a doctor, the novel portrays Portnoy’s life as a long and tentative escape from the world of his hard-working, constipated father and his overbearing mother. Outrageous and frank in its treatment of sex, family, and Jewishness, this controversial novel is also a tale of generational shift, a rare ode to masturbation, and a stage for Roth’s usual nostalgia: “so piercing is my gratitude—yes, my gratitude!—so sweeping and unqualified is my love.”
Total Points: 1 (WK 1)