Fancy a quickie?
How often has it happened to you that you have read a novel and then can’t remember a single thing about? It happens to me all to time and as old age kicks in is bound to happen more.
In the days before blogs existed (remember those?) I resolved to write down some thoughts about books as soon as I finished or abandoned them.
I wasn’t able to keep this up for every single book but there are quite a few and these will prove useful to copy and paste on this blog to meet my commitment to meet the WordPress daily post challenge this year.
When reading a recent interview with Jonathan Franzen there was a reference to the controversy that Philip Roth‘s autobiographical novel ‘Portney’s Complaint’ has met since it was first published back in 1969.
Have I read that ?, I asked myself.
Delving into my archives, sure enough I came across a short review – the savagery of which explains why I blocked this particular literary experience from my memory.
This is what I wrote:
“Holes, dug by little moles, angry jealous spies, got telephones for eyes…..” – Mercury Rev.
“….first this hole, then when I tire of this hole, that hole over there….and so on” – Phillip Roth
Roth sees women are holes; a series of cunts to be filled. This is a book not so much about love and sex as about sex and misogynistic rage. “Whew! Have I got grievances!” he writes or rather he has Alexander Portney say in the midst of his definitive rant against repression, against the mental tap his parents and the world tries to pin on him.
As an adolescent he just wants to jerk off, to “beat his meat”, “to pull his putz”. The sexual urge knows no boundaries and in adulthood his regular search for ‘holes’ could be seen as sexual freedom if he gained pleasure from the act. Instead it seems only marginally better than a desperate fist fuck directed at the control and conservatism that his constipated father and mithering mom, would impose.
His dad (“an ignorant, barbaric carcass”) has a cock like a hosepipe which Alex envies and imagines filling up a secretary. Love represents binds that stunt the relentless desire for “fresh new pussy”. This sex as curse and parents as cursers is dished up with an acerbic humour which does give the book some heart, though by no means sufficient for this reader.
The miserable existence of the Jewish infant is well constructed so we feel Alex’s frustration and desperation. “A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant” . By remaining single he brings grief to his parents and mocks the Jewish legend “someday you’ll be a parent and you’ll know what it’s like”. It’s also an attempt to shape some meaning from a godless universe.
You imagine this blistering monologue taking place on the confessional couch of some Freudian shrink although the punch line that closes the novel [“So (said the doctor). Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?” ] send the reader floundering for a new angle. In one sense the whole piece is one prolonged jerk off, a vacuous string of holes that one cock alone cannot hope to fill.
I think it would be fair to say I didn’t enjoy this novel!!
Related post:
WordPress daily post challenge – CNN article
