"The Porn Critic"

By Jonathan Lethem
~3800 words

The brainy manager of an adult gift shop in Manhattan is misunderstood by his friends as a sex expert.

The third-person limited perspective cleaves to the main character, Kromer, whose reputation among his friends comes partly from his association with the worldly Greta, "a raven-haired, baggy-eyed heiress." The narrative follows Kromer's secret longings for a graduate student in history named Renee, whom he succeeds in inviting back to his apartment, along with her friend Luna, by triangulating his desire through Greta. After a joint is passed around, discussion turns to Kromer's vast porn collection, which he reviews for his job. Disgusted by several of the VHS titles (the story takes place in the 90s) and by Kromer's matter-of-fact commentary, Renee vomits and rushes out of the apartment. Left to themselves, Greta, Luna (who, it turns out, is secretly in love with Renee), and Kromer engage in an awkward and desultory series of sexual encounters.

I love the concept behind the main character of this story: a sex-shop manager who is something of a sexual innocent. Unfortunately, neither he nor any of the secondary characters turns out to be very compelling, and the relationship among all of them is underdeveloped, resulting in little more than a formulaic love triangle: X and Y both love Z. The distance of the narrative voice does not help matters but rather prevents adequate sympathy from emerging for the characters. A subtle but important example of this flaw is the narrator's consistent reference to the main character by what is presumably his last name (Kromer). A more glaring example is found in passages such as the following, which ironize the characters in an unproductive way (and also depend too heavily on telling rather than showing):

From Greta's many aspiring transsexual acquaintances Kromer remained terrified of accepting even a blow job. None of them could have guessed what aura they'd transferred to Kromer. The process was mysterious. A book nerd, a clerk, Kromer sat failing even to drink very much among young blacks in stuffed brassieres who the following day would be late for beauty school or, in some cases, Intro Soc or Psych at Queens College. Their special language—"shemale," "pre-op"—made them a nerd species, too, Kromer understood.

"The Porn Critic" is an intriguing but ultimately unsuccessful story. The characters are underdeveloped, the plot a bit overwrought, and Lethem's language, though generally fresh and bold, occasionally crosses the line into verbosity.

Weak.