Word: lying
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Lie-Down Comic. Although sex, psychoanalysis and Jewishness form the content of the novel, they are not its subject. The book is about absurdity-the absurdity of a man who knows all about the ethnic, sociological and Freudian hang-ups, yet is still racked by guilt because his ethical impulses conflict with the surge of his animal desires. In Alexander Portnoy's own words, he is "torn by desires that are repugnant to my conscience, and a conscience repugnant to my desires...
Strung out on Dr. Spielvogel's couch, Portnoy becomes the first of the lie-down comics. Raised in Newark and now holding the post of Assistant Human Opportunities Commissioner in New York City, he renders his past absurd in an attempt to lessen its painful grip on him. He keens the familiar tale of the strongwilled, overattentive mother and the castrated father. He tells how his mother fondled him during toilet training, how she eroticized the insides of his ears while removing the wax, and how she forced him to eat at knife point. Portnoy is continuingly being floored...
MOST OF THE responsibility for this unhappy flaw must lie with screenwriter Peter Stone. While the problem existed just as clearly in Neil Simon's Broadway script, Stone evidently had little desire to correct it. Bold action does not seem to be Stone's forté anyway, since most of the picture's jokes are holdovers from the Simon version and most of its charms traces back to Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (Sweet Charity's original source...
Sweaty Palms. Beyond sociological reasons lie the personal fears, guilt and shame of the victim himself. Police rarely hear from the businessman who has been robbed by a prostitute. They are even less likely to get a complaint from the hoodlum who has been threatened by the Mafia or the teen-ager who has paid for pot and got oregano instead. In instances of child molesting, some parents are either too ashamed themselves to go to the police or want to spare their youngsters further embarrassment...
...condition of total body-mind cut off has been aptly labeled "mind-fuck." The boy had felt this before going to Esalen. There were nights when he would lie awake in bed, unable to sleep, his whole body shaking, because the thoughts flew through his mind in a frenzy. He could not stop them. Harvard had started his mind going, and he could not stop it. It was like HAL the computer, and it threatened to destroy...