Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy's Complaint was shocking and revelatory in 1969 for its frankness about masturbation (a subject “so difficult to talk about and yet so near at hand”), as well as its stylistic inventiveness (a book-length psychiatric session narrated in a mischievous tone by 13-year-old Alexander Portnoy). But read it now and the flaws are more apparent; the story is thinly-developed and repetitive, and the subject makes for an at times unpleasant reading experience. Nonetheless, a handful of scenes are minor masterpieces; the moments of familial oppressiveness are especially perceptive, as when Alex's father falsely tells his son's gentile girlfriend that Alex has a venereal disease in order to break up their relationship.