WRITER’S LIFEGUARD

Happy birthday, Alexander Portnoy!

It’s hard to believe, but Portnoy’s Complaint is now 40 years old. That makes its protagonist a ripe old 77. How old’s that make you, mamelah?

Here's something else hard to believe. The book that changed the way an entire generation thought of liver is virtually unknown to today’s 30-somethings. (That’s Alex’s age in the book.)

I first read Portnoy when it came out, when Philip Roth was a young and rising star. That was, uh, some 40 years ago. I next read it just last month. Checked it out of my local library for airplane reading. Lite, whimsical, Mem’ry Lane, airplane reading.

Nononono. On the plane, by the bottom of page 2, I was ready to stand and salute. It is brilliant. Bold. Ballsy. Astonishing. Around page 70, Roth does a three-page riff on what it’s like to be a center fielder. How you walk. How you call for the ball. How you casually pound your mitt. How you make the tough look easy. Halfway through it, I realized that this was exactly what he was doing with writing. Making the impossible look easy and somehow sustaining it for 274 pages. As a writer, I worship at his temple.

Portnoy is, to me, one of the big four: hugely important novels with a huge sexy component. The other three? What’s your pick?

OK, here's mine.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lolita and Fear of Flying. Great stuff. Changed culture. Advanced literature. I wanna re-read them all. If you're tempted, I suggest you, too, start with Portnoy. Roth holds nothing back, goes for the jugular, makes the strings behind what purports to be a stream-of-consciousness rant to a shrink as invisible as a moonless night.

If you were civilians, not writers, I'd add that it’s not for the easily offended. He’s hard on Jews. Christians don’t come off too well either. Blacks and whites don’t exactly shine. There's a lot of sex. And there is that liver…

Enjoy, mamelah. God knows, I did. I worship at his temple.

— jules