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. Continue reading →
