My Complaint about Portnoy

I've been reading an anthology of American Catholic stories, and I'm just getting to the modern section in which the living authors reside. Some of these are writers I've heard of, but never read: Richard Russo, Ron Hansen, Andre Dubus. This is a chance to expand my literary horizons, and I look forward to plunging in.

However, there are modern American authors who do not turn me on, and chief among these is Philip Roth. Steven Riddle has been wading through Roth lately, and concludes that though he is capable of crafting some excellent prose, he has a rather juvenile fetish:

his insistence that the worth of a man is judged primarily, if not solely, by the correct and frequent functioning of those anatomical parts that define his maleness.

This about sums up my one reading of Roth, which I described in Steven's combox.

Several years ago, a co-worker who knew I was unacquainted with Roth's oeuvre insisted that I read the first few pages of Portnoy's Complaint. What a masterpiece of hilarity! he insisted. So funny!

So I did. And the first few pages left me absolutely cold on an intellectual level, as well as exacerbating my morning sickness on a physical level. I don't really find masturbation as fascinating as Roth, and so I've avoided his company ever since. Perhaps this is a mistake, but I do hate digging through pages of penis-worship to mine the occasional literary gem.