Looked up Sexuality in Ancient Rome (which article makes the sex of that time seem notably unfraught.) Surprised to see feature in local online publication of rug shop near where I work — “woe, I actually know those people.” Now I’m searching obituaries — I was told today a special customer had passed away — which was a shock and is still a shock, though he’d been sick — and find no evidence of this online. ( To consider — what is the special quality, if any, of local content appearing on a global forum? Could it be claimed the internet has a distorting effect upon local content?)
Portnoy’s complaint, if I recall, was why couldn’t he, Portnoy, who had been such a good and dutiful and civic person, experience pleasure without guilt, why couldn’t he be bad? (Are you recalling this correctly?) Not only were bad people bad, the narrator (Portnoy) laments, but they enjoyed the fruits of their badness without feeling bad about it. So why couldn’t he, who was good, be free of conscientiousness once and a while, and be, without misgiving, a little bad? (I think Kierkegaard, Socrates, would say to Portnoy’s Complaint doing good is its own reward, doing bad its own punishment.) What would the Book of Job say to Portnoy (I’m not sure yet — yet one would feel like one of Job’s friends to say his complaint was entirely invalid. One would first need to be as good as Portnoy himself was before passing judgment.) To consider: Is Portnoy’s complaint comparable to Job’s? (Job, who doesn’t deserve suffering, suffers; Portnoy, who deserves enjoyment, isn’t permitted to enjoy.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 