Philip Roth: Operation Shylock: A Confession

[Darren]

April 2007 Book of the Month

Synopsis
What if a look-alike stranger stole your name, usurped your biography, and went about the world pretending to be you? In his extraordinary new book, his most ingenious and original work since "The Counterlife", Phillip Roth confronts his double, an imposter whose self-appointed task is to lead the jews out of Israel and back to Europe, a moses in reverse and a monstrous nemesis to the 'real' Philip Roth. Suspenseful, hilarious hugely impassioned, pulsing with intelligence and narrative energy, "Operation Shylock" is at once a spy story, a political thriller, a meditation on identity, and a confession.

 

[cmbroom]

well, it's lively in here. If you're like me, you are finishing up with the school semester. I am part of the way through this book, and it is interesting. I do have one question: how many Aahron Appelfeld books have you read? I have read one, but not ones covered so far.

I am interested to see how this story develops, but again I'm not quite halfway through.

The "new organization" on the top of page 90 was pretty priceless though.

 

[Heteronym]

Anti-Semites Anonymous... Phil, please make a novel just out of this crazy idea; I'll buy it, and I'll buy it again for all my friends. I'll do anything you want, but please just give me more of the Ten Tenets of Anti-Semites Anonymous! And if you can, get your Jew friends in Hollywood to make a movie out of this brilliant novel

By an amazing coincidence, because I haven't been on this board in ages, I actually read this in mid April. At last I understood why Philip Roth is considered a great comedian. After reading three very grim novels - American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, and I Married A Communist - I finally read one of his funny novels. And afterwards I read one almost funnier, The Anatomy Lesson.

Roth is quickly becoming one of my favourite contemporary writers: beautiful prose in the European fashion (long sentences, lots of commas and semicolons); a sense of rhythm; careful choice of words ( unlike most of his American counterparts, who seem to send their manuscripts to the publisher without a single revision); and for a writer he's not naive about politics.

I'm sure Roth is probably more interested in the matter of the Double, because this is the stuff of high literature (and he's even humble enough to reference two writers who dealt admirably with this topic, Dostoevsky and Robert Louis Stevenson), than in politics; but it's exactly the political diatribes of the characters that make this book so interesting for me. What I wish to know is whether Roth really believes in some of the things he puts other characters saying (I was really impressed by one character who suggests that the Israeli explot the memory of the Holocaust, for without a Holocaust Israel would have no moral justification for what it does to Palestinians). However almost all characters are such caricatures that you can't really take seriously anything they say (the fact that George Ziad is based on Edward Said only makes his rantings funnier).

A good novel: whatever Roth's purpose is, he almost manages to put enough insightful observations about human nature to make the experience interesting. I think after this one I'll really have to read Portnoy's Complaint.

 

[unKeMPt]

The character Jynx from this novel makes an appearance in Sabbath's Theater. A character, Matthew Balich, from Sabbath's Theater makes an appearance in The Human Stain. The narrator of that book, of course, is Nathan Zuckerman. So, ostensibly, in the world that Roth has created is one which both he and Zuckerman, his alter ego, occupy.

This book particularly is filled with memorable characters. Jynx, the other Roth, Ziad, Smilesburger... the list goes on.

I like to consider this book a clever response to those who have tried to make assessments of Roth's personal life on the basis of his works, especially in the wake of Portnoy. After writing fictional novels that people attempt to attribute to his life, Roth finally creates an allegedly true tale -- and yet absolutely nobody tries to do so.

 

[Heteronym]

I like to consider this book a clever response to those who have tried to make assessments of Roth's personal life on the basis of his works, especially in the wake of Portnoy. After writing fictional novels that people attempt to attribute to his life, Roth finally creates an allegedly true tale -- and yet absolutely nobody tries to do so.

That's an interesting observation. I read people keep coming to him in the street asking whether Portnoy is really based on his life. Haven't people ever heard of imagination

What I also like about this novel is how Roth writes himself in the most self-deprecating way, eventually selling out, accepting the money and censoring his own novel just to please Smilesburger and the Mossad. The 'this is a work of fiction...' warning at the end becomes so funny because you can't tell whether it's the real Philip Roth acknowledging that this novel is fiction, or the fictional Philip Roth putting that warning because he's been told to by the Israeli secret services.

Sometimes post-modernism is fun.

 

[unKeMPt]

I consider Operation Shylock to be the culmination of the ideas displayed in The Counterlife and The Facts. If you like the postmodern aspect of this book, I would give those two a try. Though Shylock may be my pick for the funniest of his novels, Counterlife may be his most complex. I usually cite it as my favorite. Plus, it shares with Shylock (though in lesser amounts) Roth's penchant for talking politics.