A story that tells about the confession of Alexander Portnoy who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood.
Seymour Levov, a devoted family man and inheritor of his father's factory, comes of age in thriving post-war America. His daughter Merry is the apple of his eye until America begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s, and Merry grows up to be a terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise.
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president. It is also the last year of professor Coleman Silk's life, whose own tragic exposure is played out against the background of the Clinton revelations.
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist. He is one of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent and his assurance. Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire.