That a passion for freedom–chiefly from the bondage of a heartbreaking past–plunges Lucy Nelson into a bondage more gruesome and ultimately insupportable is the pathetic and ugly irony on which the novel turns. I wonder if that might not also describe what befalls the protagonist of Portnoy’s Complaint.
–Philip Roth, “Document Dated July 27, 1969,” in Reading Myself and Others. I don’t think this is the only or best possible reading of either novel (and I suspect Roth would agree), but it’s really interesting. My super short post about When She Was Good.