Boards
DiS Bookclub 9 (Nov): Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
"Framed as a couch side confessional by 33-year-old Jewish-American Alexander Portnoy to his psychiatrist, Portnoy's Complaint recounts the war raging within Portnoy. Portnoy is a guilt-ridden man whose seemingly blameless public persona - first as a loving and devoted child, then as a gifted scholar and finally as New York's Assistant Commissioner of Human opportunity - is mirrored by a private life dominated by his obsession with sex and driven by his need to indulge, frequently and obsessively, in everything from masturbation to oral and group sex. Ranging back and forth in time between Portnoy's past and the immediate events that led him to the psychoanalyst's couch, the book explores the root cause of his 'affliction' - the suffocating attentions of his parents, especially his mother, the pressures imposed by his Jewish heritage, and his crippling inability t relate to women in any way except through sex.
Portnoy's Complaint is a sexually explicit, scaborously funny and splenetically angry exploration of Jewish identity that caused a storm of controversy when it was published in 1969."
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Yeah? It'll be splenetic. Sexy and splenetic. Yeah.
Here's last months, still lots to yap about, don't be shy: http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4200014
By the way, if you've got any book suggestions, just post below or PM me. I'm still looking for a copy of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl but when I do, that'll be one. Plus, a couple of upcoming ones are Rabbit, Run (Updike) and The Last Tycoon (Fitzgerald).