He can’t help compare the women he dates to the superhuman standard set by his own mother. Many Americans started enjoying regret-free sex but not this Jewish boy. The book was written in 1969, at the height of the sexual revolution. Instead he helplessly bounces from one failed relationship to another, trying to satisfy his libido. Despite being a successful New York civil rights lawyer, he’s tormented by the guilt heaped on him by his “very Jewish” mother who would’ve preferred that he’d become a doctor and settle down with a wife and children. The entire book is a monologue, actually a long rant, by Alexander Portnoy to his psychotherapist through which he goes back and forth between his childhood and adulthood. Roth, would you write the same stories if you lived in Nazi Germany?” Gershom Scholem, an Israeli-Jewish philosopher, summed up that sentiment: “This is the book for which all anti-Semites have been praying.” He challenged him: “Mr. The author was accused in his own community of Jewish self-hatred. The book was briefly banned in Australia and some public American libraries for its obscene language and depiction of masturbation.

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Voltaire’s radical views on race and slavery.

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