A Sex Novel of the ludicrous

Alonso Mcintosh

25 July 2008

Portnoys Complaint, a novel in the shape of a psychoanalytic speech carried on by a guilt-ridden bachelor, is too funny not to be taken seriously.

It could be a work of farce that exaggerates and then destroys its content, leaving a gaping emptiness. The explosion of puritan valuesbe they Christian or Jewishhas made an armed forces of walking hurt who worry not only about if they deserve to be enjoying the pleasures of debt and sex, but also about if or not they are hypocrites if they do. In life, this sense has made its victims reluctant, if not not able, to take part in a standard society ; they are the sideshow of mass culture, offering freakish realizations of hidden fears and fantasies. In art, ambiguity has modified form by radically changing the relationship among person, his pride and his gods. The dramatic structure that made the liberating pity and fear of the Oedipus plays, as an example, just makes sense if one really believes that there are gods who would destroy a person who grows too conceited. Even the Freudian metaphors that were used to give modern meaning to the traditional dramas are losing their force. The final expression of ambiguity would be to draft a play or a novel about a person who kills his pop, marries his mummy and lives happily ever after. Though sex, therapy and Jewishness form the content of the novel, they're not its subject. The book is about absurditythe enigma of a person who knows all about the ethnic, sociological and Freudian hang-ups, yet is still racked by guilt because his moral impulses conflict with the surge of his animal wants. In Alexander Portnoys own words, he's torn by wishes that are repugnant to my conscience, and a conscience repugnant to my needs. Raised in Newark and now holding the title of helper Human Opportunities Commissioner in NY town, he renders his past ludicrous in an attempt to lessen its distressing grip on him. He tells how his ma fondled him during toilet coaching, how she eroticized the guts of his ears whilst removing the wax, and how she compelled him to eat at knife point.

Portnoy is continuingly being floored by the undeniable fact that she might be so comatose of the comatose.

With love and hate, he recalls his pa, a shambling insurance salesman who proselytizes for the faith of security, yet suffers from chronic constipation because his abdominal tract is in the possession of the firm of Worry, Fear disappointment. In a life devoted to attempting to please his folks, Portnoy confesses that his penis was all he could call his very own.