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Operation Shylock. Ein Bekenntnis.
In Israel trifft der Schriftsteller Philip Roth auf einen Mann, der unter seinem Namen den Auszug der Juden aus Israel propagiert. Ist dieser Doppelgänger nur ein Irrer, oder ist er ein gefährlicher Hochstapler? Die Ereignisse überschlagen sich, und der echte Philip Roth gerät in ein politisch brisantes Spionagenetz. Er beginnt an seiner Identität zu zweifeln und vermag bald nicht mehr, zwischen Wahn und Wirklichkeit sicher zu unterscheiden. Und dem Leser geht es ähnlich ... »Operation Shylock ist sein bestes Buch seit Jahren. Spionagegeschichte, Thriller, politischer Roman: so aberwitzig, absurd und klug wie die Geschichten, die er noch erfand, dem Gegenleben ebenbürtig.« DIE WOCHE
Für Operation Shylock wurde Philip Roth mit dem Pen/Faulkner-Preis ausgezeichnet.
Für Operation Shylock wurde Philip Roth mit dem Pen/Faulkner-Preis ausgezeichnet.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Philip Roth
257 books6,767 followersPhilip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 381 reviews
November 20, 2023
Old review below -
new review after rereading is here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I've said so many rude things about Philip Roth here, you know, what a sexist fucker he is, just the standard stuff, nothing surprising. He had been pretty expert in getting my goat. I waded through Americal pastoral and Sabbath's Theatre, great god almighty what crap. Oh yes, he can turn a rare sentence & make the English language dance like a five ball juggler, he's annoyingly brilliant at that. Pity he can't think of a half-decent story with some humanity about it. But here is the book that reveals the diamond geezer beneath the penis. If you haven't read Operation Shylock, then let me say this is the rothophobe's Roth. It's a complete hoot. The definition of a hoot is : a good time to be had by all. The general idea of this bonkers novel is that Philip Roth is reading the New York Times one day and is disturbed to find out that he's been on a speaking tour of Israel all that very month. Of course he's been in New York the whole time. It turns out there's someone impersonating him running around Israel preaching a crazy idea called Diasporism. This idea goes something like : "Jews! Get out of Israel now! Are you crazy, coming here to Israel? Now you're all in one handy small country, surrounded by your enemies, what do you think's gonna happen? Get back to Germany and Poland! They're the safest places for Jews now! Go on, skedaddle! Now!" So Philip Roth gets on a plane to track down the other Philip Roth and much hilarity ensues. Yes, it's a black comedy. What other types are worth reading? Are there any white comedies? Five big stars.
new review after rereading is here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I've said so many rude things about Philip Roth here, you know, what a sexist fucker he is, just the standard stuff, nothing surprising. He had been pretty expert in getting my goat. I waded through Americal pastoral and Sabbath's Theatre, great god almighty what crap. Oh yes, he can turn a rare sentence & make the English language dance like a five ball juggler, he's annoyingly brilliant at that. Pity he can't think of a half-decent story with some humanity about it. But here is the book that reveals the diamond geezer beneath the penis. If you haven't read Operation Shylock, then let me say this is the rothophobe's Roth. It's a complete hoot. The definition of a hoot is : a good time to be had by all. The general idea of this bonkers novel is that Philip Roth is reading the New York Times one day and is disturbed to find out that he's been on a speaking tour of Israel all that very month. Of course he's been in New York the whole time. It turns out there's someone impersonating him running around Israel preaching a crazy idea called Diasporism. This idea goes something like : "Jews! Get out of Israel now! Are you crazy, coming here to Israel? Now you're all in one handy small country, surrounded by your enemies, what do you think's gonna happen? Get back to Germany and Poland! They're the safest places for Jews now! Go on, skedaddle! Now!" So Philip Roth gets on a plane to track down the other Philip Roth and much hilarity ensues. Yes, it's a black comedy. What other types are worth reading? Are there any white comedies? Five big stars.
October 21, 2016
“Look, I've got more personalities than I can use already. All you are is one too many.”
― Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession
This is where the late, great Roth run began. Operation Shylock started what might just be the greatest series of great books by one author I can think of:
Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993)
Sabbath's Theater (1995)
American Pastoral (1997)
I Married a Communist (1998)
The Human Stain (2000)
Like I tend to do with great writers, I back into their early greats. I read backwards, crosswise, and reverse into the first.
So, 2014 (21 years after it was first published), I find myself reading and loving Operation Shylock. I am amazed by Roth's ability to bend an idea back and forth without having it break. He is able to flex and bend (sinister?) an idea until every detail has been bled out. The ink of the effort is all on the page. He is able to construct a book filled with doppelgängers, liars, Jews, Palestinian rock throwers, and professors and wreck havoc on any simplicity of plot. Every mirror in Roth's novel reverses the part in your hair and eventually shows you that your belief about who you are and what you believe is constructed out of fiction. There is no fact only deception and transgression.
This novel isn't built from one narrative. It is built out of several narratives. The narrative of Roth writing about a Roth (a fictionalized version of Roth) being stalked by a Roth (Moshe Pipkin). Everyone is gaming everyone. Interjected into the narrative are several true narratives (Aharon Apelfeld, Leon Klinghoffer, John Demjanjuk (who may be also be Ivan the Terrible Demjanjuk). These "true" narratives serve to also deepen the idea of a fluid identity, our mutual responsibility, our ultimate nature to lie, to deceive, to hustle. Then there is the other true narrative. The narrative of the Jew, the Goy, Israel, and the Diaspora. Roth is somehow able to weave this all together in a way that fits and works. Roth is able to reflect on his place within the Jewish community and as a writer in a way that he couldn't without being confronted with a transgressive doppelgänger. Anyway, I'm still trying to get my brain and my stomach comfortably around the whole of it. Perhaps, I'll write more tomorrow about the missing Chapter 11, or perhaps I'll just say screw it and return to my own goy problems.
― Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession
This is where the late, great Roth run began. Operation Shylock started what might just be the greatest series of great books by one author I can think of:
Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993)
Sabbath's Theater (1995)
American Pastoral (1997)
I Married a Communist (1998)
The Human Stain (2000)
Like I tend to do with great writers, I back into their early greats. I read backwards, crosswise, and reverse into the first.
So, 2014 (21 years after it was first published), I find myself reading and loving Operation Shylock. I am amazed by Roth's ability to bend an idea back and forth without having it break. He is able to flex and bend (sinister?) an idea until every detail has been bled out. The ink of the effort is all on the page. He is able to construct a book filled with doppelgängers, liars, Jews, Palestinian rock throwers, and professors and wreck havoc on any simplicity of plot. Every mirror in Roth's novel reverses the part in your hair and eventually shows you that your belief about who you are and what you believe is constructed out of fiction. There is no fact only deception and transgression.
This novel isn't built from one narrative. It is built out of several narratives. The narrative of Roth writing about a Roth (a fictionalized version of Roth) being stalked by a Roth (Moshe Pipkin). Everyone is gaming everyone. Interjected into the narrative are several true narratives (Aharon Apelfeld, Leon Klinghoffer, John Demjanjuk (who may be also be Ivan the Terrible Demjanjuk). These "true" narratives serve to also deepen the idea of a fluid identity, our mutual responsibility, our ultimate nature to lie, to deceive, to hustle. Then there is the other true narrative. The narrative of the Jew, the Goy, Israel, and the Diaspora. Roth is somehow able to weave this all together in a way that fits and works. Roth is able to reflect on his place within the Jewish community and as a writer in a way that he couldn't without being confronted with a transgressive doppelgänger. Anyway, I'm still trying to get my brain and my stomach comfortably around the whole of it. Perhaps, I'll write more tomorrow about the missing Chapter 11, or perhaps I'll just say screw it and return to my own goy problems.
May 25, 2018
Highly inventive, Operation Shylock is a long questioning of identity and legitimacy. It has a rather complex web of characters and you never are quite sure who is real and who isn't. I enjoyed reading it, but it felt a bit unfinished (although the Epilogue attempts to explain why) and so I will probably have to revisit the book again in the future to sound its depths further. I found American Pastoral and The Human Stain more entertaining books to be honest and since GR doesn't offer 1/2 stars, I am giving this one 4 of them.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
December 16, 2016
Despite having read Operation Shylock: A Confession many years ago, I can easily remember having thoroughly enjoyed this brilliant novel with its autobiographical or confessional touches. Philip Roth gifts the reader a supreme narrative with satirical humor and provocation, and a plot that plays with the idea of the author and his double inside it all. Although it's certainly not an easy read, probably controversial, it makes you think and for me it was more than worth the effort.
Let Phillip Roth speak for himself, if only briefly:
And,
Just one more:
Let Phillip Roth speak for himself, if only briefly:
“Look, I've got more personalities than I can use already. All you are is one too many.”
And,
“Better for real things to be uncontrollable, better for one's life to be undecipherable and intellectually impenetrable than to attempt to make casual sense of what is unknown with a fantasy that is mad. Better, I thought, that the events of these past three days should remain incomprehensible to me forever than to posit, as I had just been doing, a conspiracy of foreign intelligence agents who are determined to control my mind. We've all heard that one before.”
Just one more:
“Where everything is words, you'd think I'd have some mastery and know my way around, but all this churning hatred, each man a verbal firing squad, immeasurable suspicions, a flood of mocking, angry talk, all of life a vicious debate, conversations in which there is nothing that cannot be said...no, I'd be better off in the jungle, I thought, where a roar's a roar and no one is hard put to miss its meaning.”
July 9, 2017
Superb. Reminds me of Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift in the way it illuminates a specific cultural milieu. In this case, Jerusalem in 1988. I seek to place this worthy book in like company only. As to its prose style, tone, diction etc. it's inimitable. Activities taking place in Israel that year include the First Palestinian Intifada, the Israeli suppression of same, and the trial of alleged S.S. guard John Demjanjuk, known at death camp Treblinka as 'Ivan the Terrible, who was ultimately acquitted. Amid this tense setting, Roth encounters a double using his name to promote a wacky scheme called Diasporism that would return Jews to the Polish countryside from which Hitler had all but eradicated them. The double's justification for this anti-Zionist operation being that current Israeli operations against the Intifada virtually guarantee one of two outcomes: Either the PLO eradicates all Jews in their homeland (another Holocaust) or the Jews themselves nuke the Arabs to smithereens and thus lose their souls. The real PR has terrible trouble with the fake PR, who's a dead ringer, and mayhem ensues. My favorite character is Smilesburger, first introduced to us as a retired American jeweler. Of the dozen or so Roth books I've read, this is the most post-modern. The narrative elegantly questions its own devices and it may be the final word on the doppelgänger concept, which Vladimir Nabokov rightly found such a bore. Well, that was before Philip Roth, the real one, got his hands on it. Operation Shylock is one of the most intellectually thrilling novels I've ever read. For me its excellence comes very close to that other Roth paragon, American Pastoral, which keeps one thinking long after the text has been laid aside.
August 30, 2019
Avendo già letto molto di Philip Roth, ho la sensazione che questo "Operazione Shylock" sia il libro della sua maturità, quello dove la sua parabola si compie. Lo stile che lo ha reso celebre è ormai uscito, sono ancora presenti tutte le tematiche dei primi romanzi (l'ossessione per il possesso, per il vivere tutto ad ogni costo), ma già si intravedono i temi della vera grandezza come la sofferenza del tempo che passa, della fine della vita sessuale e molti altri.
La spassosissima vicenda vissuta in prima persona dello scrittore è una dissacrante parodia dell'opprimente presenza dei servizi segreti ai tempi della guerra fredda, ma è soprattutto una pirandellianissima commedia degli errori e dei doppioni, 1una travolgente e magistrale confusione di personalità tra il protagonista ed il suo alter ego che conosceremo col nome di Pipik.
Ma, esattamente come accade per le brillantissime commedie del grande genio di Agrigento, al di sotto della comicità c'è l'umorismo, sotto la risate c'è quel sentimento del contrario, quell'afrore della sofferenza che sempre fa da contrasto a quello che a prima vista appare buono del mondo.
Lo si vedrà presto in "Pastorale americana", ma Philip Roth sembra averlo capito fin da qui. Sui prenda pure la persona più di successo, più ricca, meglio avviata nel pianeta. persino questa persona non potrà dirsi libera, schiacciata come sarà dalle persone che gli stanno intorno che tentano di piegare le sue vittorie al loro tornaconto, il suo talento ad i loro secondi fini. In un mondo fatto di specchi negli specchi, e di specchi negli specchi negli specchi, è un privilegio assurdo ed inarrivabile quello costruirsi una vita sicura e tranquilla sulle proprie forze, un inarrivabile incubo il sogno americano. Come ebbe a dire qualcuno, se abbiamo il talento necessario, qualcuno lo utilizzerà al posto nostro; se abbiamo una buona idea qualcuno la avrà già avuta (tradotto in termini produttivi: se arrivi a fare tutto senza spezzarti la schiena, allora puoi fare di più).
Pure, Philip Roth in "Operazione Shylock" semplicemente non sembra essere abbastanza vecchio per ammettere che sia percorribile la soluzione ovvia, ovvero tirarsi indietro quando è necessario. Nessun americano, nessun giovane americano, ha la saggezza necessaria per saper scegliere, per non vivere ogni singola rinuncia come un'occasione persa: il protagonista del libro accetterà di smarrirsi nel tornado degli eventi e di diventare pedina fi un gioco più grande di lui, a causa della feroce smania di impossessarsi anche della vita del suo alter-ego, quella che gli era stata cucita addosso suo malgrado. Perchè non posso avere tutto? Perchè non posso essere Dio? E' la domanda che permea tutti i romanzi del Roth giovanile.
E' uno dei pochi romanzi del genio di Newark che non sia spiccatamente, incisivamente, soffocantemente americano. Perchè qui si parla di Israele e della diaspora. Gli anni a cavallo tra gli Ottanta ed i Novanta erano quelli dell' Intifada, di Arafat, ma anche della scoperta degli spaventosi crimini commessi dai sionisti nei territori occupati. Come ebreo americano Roth non può non prendere posizione. Ed è una posizione dilaniata, forse giustamente esposta in un romanzo fatto di personalità vaporizzate come questo. Per gli ebrei della diaspora lo stato di Israele rappresenterà sempre un invito ma anche un peso, una lode ma anche un insulto. Ogni ebreo che non si dichiara sionista e scelga di vivere nella propria nazione, sarà suo malgrado sempre costretto a fare i conti con Israele e con le scelte di una nazione della quale ha scelto di non fare parte. Il più grande cantore dell'americanità sarà sempre un americano a metà.
C'è tanta Italia nei romanzi di Philip Roth, anche se forse solo un italiano può farci caso. Lo si vede dal disprezzo con cui vengono citati e trattati gli immigrati italiani nelle periferie delle città industriali (il disprezzo feroce possibile solo nell'animo di chi sa di condividerne la bassezza); ma anche nell'esplicito riconoscimento del debiti letterari che sono stati contratti con la letteratura italiana. Questo è un libro marcatamente pirandelliano fin dalla prima pagina, ma che Philip Roth arrivasse a citare esplicitamente Luigi Pirandello non me lo aspettavo. E poi Roma, e poi Primo Levi. Forse il grande scrittore di Newark, in questo grandissimo romanzo ma non solo, mostra di disprezzarci solo perchè vorrebbe smettere di amarci, e non ci riesce.
Qualità della scrittura eccelsa come al solito, i temi della giovinezza che si fondono con quelli della vecchiaia, lo stato di Israele, Pirandello rivisitato. I motivi per cui "Operazione Shylock" dovrebbe apparire anche nelle librerie di coloro che hanno comunque scelto di non leggere tutto Roth non sono certo pochi.
La spassosissima vicenda vissuta in prima persona dello scrittore è una dissacrante parodia dell'opprimente presenza dei servizi segreti ai tempi della guerra fredda, ma è soprattutto una pirandellianissima commedia degli errori e dei doppioni, 1una travolgente e magistrale confusione di personalità tra il protagonista ed il suo alter ego che conosceremo col nome di Pipik.
Ma, esattamente come accade per le brillantissime commedie del grande genio di Agrigento, al di sotto della comicità c'è l'umorismo, sotto la risate c'è quel sentimento del contrario, quell'afrore della sofferenza che sempre fa da contrasto a quello che a prima vista appare buono del mondo.
Lo si vedrà presto in "Pastorale americana", ma Philip Roth sembra averlo capito fin da qui. Sui prenda pure la persona più di successo, più ricca, meglio avviata nel pianeta. persino questa persona non potrà dirsi libera, schiacciata come sarà dalle persone che gli stanno intorno che tentano di piegare le sue vittorie al loro tornaconto, il suo talento ad i loro secondi fini. In un mondo fatto di specchi negli specchi, e di specchi negli specchi negli specchi, è un privilegio assurdo ed inarrivabile quello costruirsi una vita sicura e tranquilla sulle proprie forze, un inarrivabile incubo il sogno americano. Come ebbe a dire qualcuno, se abbiamo il talento necessario, qualcuno lo utilizzerà al posto nostro; se abbiamo una buona idea qualcuno la avrà già avuta (tradotto in termini produttivi: se arrivi a fare tutto senza spezzarti la schiena, allora puoi fare di più).
Pure, Philip Roth in "Operazione Shylock" semplicemente non sembra essere abbastanza vecchio per ammettere che sia percorribile la soluzione ovvia, ovvero tirarsi indietro quando è necessario. Nessun americano, nessun giovane americano, ha la saggezza necessaria per saper scegliere, per non vivere ogni singola rinuncia come un'occasione persa: il protagonista del libro accetterà di smarrirsi nel tornado degli eventi e di diventare pedina fi un gioco più grande di lui, a causa della feroce smania di impossessarsi anche della vita del suo alter-ego, quella che gli era stata cucita addosso suo malgrado. Perchè non posso avere tutto? Perchè non posso essere Dio? E' la domanda che permea tutti i romanzi del Roth giovanile.
E' uno dei pochi romanzi del genio di Newark che non sia spiccatamente, incisivamente, soffocantemente americano. Perchè qui si parla di Israele e della diaspora. Gli anni a cavallo tra gli Ottanta ed i Novanta erano quelli dell' Intifada, di Arafat, ma anche della scoperta degli spaventosi crimini commessi dai sionisti nei territori occupati. Come ebreo americano Roth non può non prendere posizione. Ed è una posizione dilaniata, forse giustamente esposta in un romanzo fatto di personalità vaporizzate come questo. Per gli ebrei della diaspora lo stato di Israele rappresenterà sempre un invito ma anche un peso, una lode ma anche un insulto. Ogni ebreo che non si dichiara sionista e scelga di vivere nella propria nazione, sarà suo malgrado sempre costretto a fare i conti con Israele e con le scelte di una nazione della quale ha scelto di non fare parte. Il più grande cantore dell'americanità sarà sempre un americano a metà.
C'è tanta Italia nei romanzi di Philip Roth, anche se forse solo un italiano può farci caso. Lo si vede dal disprezzo con cui vengono citati e trattati gli immigrati italiani nelle periferie delle città industriali (il disprezzo feroce possibile solo nell'animo di chi sa di condividerne la bassezza); ma anche nell'esplicito riconoscimento del debiti letterari che sono stati contratti con la letteratura italiana. Questo è un libro marcatamente pirandelliano fin dalla prima pagina, ma che Philip Roth arrivasse a citare esplicitamente Luigi Pirandello non me lo aspettavo. E poi Roma, e poi Primo Levi. Forse il grande scrittore di Newark, in questo grandissimo romanzo ma non solo, mostra di disprezzarci solo perchè vorrebbe smettere di amarci, e non ci riesce.
Qualità della scrittura eccelsa come al solito, i temi della giovinezza che si fondono con quelli della vecchiaia, lo stato di Israele, Pirandello rivisitato. I motivi per cui "Operazione Shylock" dovrebbe apparire anche nelle librerie di coloro che hanno comunque scelto di non leggere tutto Roth non sono certo pochi.
November 30, 2020
Ricorrendo all'impianto narrativo di una vera e propria spy-story e addirittura alla figura di un sosia perfetto, che spacciandosi per lui lo rende portavoce di istanze diasporiste, Roth sembra più che mai trovarsi ad affrontare il suo eterno dilemma e cruccio nei confronti dell'ebraismo. Gli eventi della storia, pur riconfermandolo sostanzialmente nelle sue consuete posizioni, sembrano, però, per un momento, incrinare la sua sicurezza e indurlo a chiedersi non solo se possa esser stato giusto scagliarsi con così tanto astio verso l'ortodossia mentale ebraica, ma anche se, in qualche caso, non avrebbe potuto (o dovuto) impegnarsi a far qualcosa di concreto per il bene del popolo dal quale anche lui, in fin dei conti proviene. Lettura straordinaria, scorrevole e avvincente. Un Doth in forma straordinaria. Non c'è che dire.
April 29, 2013
Remember the movie "Being John Malkovich?" Some characters discover a portal into John Malkovich's head, through which they can see the world as he does. Then John Malkovich enters into John Malkovich's head, and things really get weird. John Malkovich multiplied and turned back upon himself! That gives an inkling of this book, only with Philip Roth instead.
When I was a child I thought I would be an artist but I had zero self-confidence. When I hit high school and saw that others could draw as well or better I gave it up. But during college and graduate school all the papers I had to write became my art projects. Later, during young mother and family years, I thought it was my life that was my art project. Now here comes Philip Roth to say there is no "I" and it is me. He is writing for his life, staying one step ahead of chaos.
I wanted to learn something from this mishmash of a book, and that is the kernel of it, and the gift of this book, for me. We are put here, and plot contrivances come at us from out of left field; no matter what comes at us, ridiculous, bizarre, devastating, unfair, anticipated or not, lucky or not, we have to (get to) field it! (Some of us will prefer Philip Roth's writerly metaphor.) This also ties in with other thinking and ongoing discussions about the reality--or not--of our "I," our sense of personal identity, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
So, does this book speak in generally applicable terms? No. It speaks in Philip Rothian terms, a major aspect of which is captured by the following quote.
I think an aspect of being a writer is that one either must speak or feel depressed and ill, or, an even worse alternative, get into trouble. Philip Roth says everything, everything, that is on his mind, much of which is politically incorrect or that one simply cannot say, on all sides of every issue; he channels himself and gets it said.
As synopses will tell you, the mischief begins with Philip Roth, a character in his own book, learning that while he's at home in the USA, an imposter posing as him is over in Israel advocating "Diasporism"--the opposite of Zionism; an exodus in reverse--to bring all the Jews in Israel back to Europe. The rest of the book unfolds from the premises of Diasporism and Philip Roth's double. I'd say the setting and much of the talk involves history and politics concerning Jews and, of course, antisemitism and what Jews think and what other people think about Jews--all via Philip Roth, of course. Most of the action is set back in 1988. Some names have changed (and technology has changed) but I was surprised how much remains the same. I used to be relatively apolitical and had my head stuck in the sand so I had thought some of it was of more recent vintage.
The book's sometimes hilarious, sometimes eye-opening, sometimes runs on and on. It's convoluted and not always easy. It's Roth; it took me 60 pages to get into. I liked it. I hit pay dirt with that big Eureka moment. I laughed. I said enough already! My reaction is tempered by being a Jew. There's a lot I don't know about how you will react to all the Jewishness in this book if you are not, although I can conceive of a multiplicity of whys and wherefores. I have not taken a course in American Jewish literature, or, for that matter, any Jewish literature (although I was once an English major for six months).
What I did to give the prospective reader a flavor was put up a lot of quotes from Operation Shylock. There were none before; I've got 13 of them up so far. Go to the book here on Goodreads; quotes down at the bottom right of the book page and click to see more. (It's even easier than that! They are all lined up under this review.)
Paul Bryant's review led to my reading this book. I'd never heard of it and thought it had just been written.
One more thought. Although Philip Roth talks a lot at the cost of beaucoups of words, there are still some left! Where there's life, there's words.
When I was a child I thought I would be an artist but I had zero self-confidence. When I hit high school and saw that others could draw as well or better I gave it up. But during college and graduate school all the papers I had to write became my art projects. Later, during young mother and family years, I thought it was my life that was my art project. Now here comes Philip Roth to say there is no "I" and it is me. He is writing for his life, staying one step ahead of chaos.
...I finally went back to my seat in the second row and sat there doing what I've done throughout my professional life: I tried to think, first, how to make credible a somewhat extreme, if not outright ridiculous story, and, next, how, after telling it, to fortify and defend myself from the affronted who read into the story an intention having perhaps to do less with the author's perversity than with their own.
I wanted to learn something from this mishmash of a book, and that is the kernel of it, and the gift of this book, for me. We are put here, and plot contrivances come at us from out of left field; no matter what comes at us, ridiculous, bizarre, devastating, unfair, anticipated or not, lucky or not, we have to (get to) field it! (Some of us will prefer Philip Roth's writerly metaphor.) This also ties in with other thinking and ongoing discussions about the reality--or not--of our "I," our sense of personal identity, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
So, does this book speak in generally applicable terms? No. It speaks in Philip Rothian terms, a major aspect of which is captured by the following quote.
Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
I think an aspect of being a writer is that one either must speak or feel depressed and ill, or, an even worse alternative, get into trouble. Philip Roth says everything, everything, that is on his mind, much of which is politically incorrect or that one simply cannot say, on all sides of every issue; he channels himself and gets it said.
As synopses will tell you, the mischief begins with Philip Roth, a character in his own book, learning that while he's at home in the USA, an imposter posing as him is over in Israel advocating "Diasporism"--the opposite of Zionism; an exodus in reverse--to bring all the Jews in Israel back to Europe. The rest of the book unfolds from the premises of Diasporism and Philip Roth's double. I'd say the setting and much of the talk involves history and politics concerning Jews and, of course, antisemitism and what Jews think and what other people think about Jews--all via Philip Roth, of course. Most of the action is set back in 1988. Some names have changed (and technology has changed) but I was surprised how much remains the same. I used to be relatively apolitical and had my head stuck in the sand so I had thought some of it was of more recent vintage.
The book's sometimes hilarious, sometimes eye-opening, sometimes runs on and on. It's convoluted and not always easy. It's Roth; it took me 60 pages to get into. I liked it. I hit pay dirt with that big Eureka moment. I laughed. I said enough already! My reaction is tempered by being a Jew. There's a lot I don't know about how you will react to all the Jewishness in this book if you are not, although I can conceive of a multiplicity of whys and wherefores. I have not taken a course in American Jewish literature, or, for that matter, any Jewish literature (although I was once an English major for six months).
What I did to give the prospective reader a flavor was put up a lot of quotes from Operation Shylock. There were none before; I've got 13 of them up so far. Go to the book here on Goodreads; quotes down at the bottom right of the book page and click to see more. (It's even easier than that! They are all lined up under this review.)
Paul Bryant's review led to my reading this book. I'd never heard of it and thought it had just been written.
One more thought. Although Philip Roth talks a lot at the cost of beaucoups of words, there are still some left! Where there's life, there's words.
May 13, 2022
En parte por el Shylock de Shakespeare en su "Mercader de Venecia", y en parte porque había dejado la novela a una amiga y no le había gustado, decidí volver a leer la que en mi recuerdo estaba como una de las obras que más había disfrutado de Philip Roth, y eso ya es decir que la había disfrutado mucho. ¿Tenía miedo a que ese recuerdo se emponzoñara con una relectura poco satisfactoria? Sí ¿Ha ocurrido tal cosa? No.
“Operación Shylock” me parece una jodida maravilla por muchos motivos; por llevar la autoficción a límites insuperables, por tratar el conflicto judeo-palestino desde tantos puntos y contradicciones que se profundiza mucho más que en la mayoría de los ensayos, por fragmentos y frases que se clavan con una luz que te acompañarán por el resto de tus pasos, por los juegos con el lector, por las risas hacia él mismo y hacia todo, y, en definitiva, por estar increíblemente bien escrito.
Puedo entender que este libro no sea tan satisfactorio para todo el mundo como me lo resulta a mí, pero desde luego ruego encarecidamente que se le dé una oportunidad, porque si gracias a mi recomendación, alguien lo lee y lo disfruta solo la mitad de lo que lo he disfrutado yo, esa lectora o lector, sospecho, me estará eternamente agradecido.
Y aquí dejo otra idea: léanlo antes o después de haber leído "El Mercader": la gran literatura llama a la gran literatura.
“Operación Shylock” me parece una jodida maravilla por muchos motivos; por llevar la autoficción a límites insuperables, por tratar el conflicto judeo-palestino desde tantos puntos y contradicciones que se profundiza mucho más que en la mayoría de los ensayos, por fragmentos y frases que se clavan con una luz que te acompañarán por el resto de tus pasos, por los juegos con el lector, por las risas hacia él mismo y hacia todo, y, en definitiva, por estar increíblemente bien escrito.
Puedo entender que este libro no sea tan satisfactorio para todo el mundo como me lo resulta a mí, pero desde luego ruego encarecidamente que se le dé una oportunidad, porque si gracias a mi recomendación, alguien lo lee y lo disfruta solo la mitad de lo que lo he disfrutado yo, esa lectora o lector, sospecho, me estará eternamente agradecido.
Y aquí dejo otra idea: léanlo antes o después de haber leído "El Mercader": la gran literatura llama a la gran literatura.
May 12, 2020
It is not uncommon for a writer to refer to the other person inside that does the job, a double who sits still at the desk, and is capable of producing what later will be called a work of fiction. It is not rare to read confessions about that certain other that is capable of doing unimaginable wonders with words, devising a plot so intricate that non other than this clone could conceive. Novelists that respond to the common question of how inspiration happens with bizarre answers such as “I don’t know how I was able to write that”, or “I’m not sure where that came from”, or even “you’re talking to the common man now, you should ask that to the writer”. Because at the end, the reader will surely think: who is the writer behind a novel as complex as this one?
When that other appears in a work of fiction intentionally it’s called the alter ego. A duplicate who, as it turns, and in the case in question, happens to be a writer as well, and holds as many similarities with his creator as an apple with another apple. But as we well know, two apples can look exactly the same but taste differently. The first time that Philip Roth introduced Nathan Zuckerman in his work was as an alter ego of another fictional character, the writer Peter Tarnopol in My Life as a man in 1974. The move, as it turned out, had all the wit and sharpness we now associate with the American novelist. It’s a clever idea, is it not? The double of his double, the clone of a clone. Brilliant. But it took a little bit of work and time (Roth is unique when dealing with literary challenges: his career could be seen as an ascending path, from the first to the last book) for Zuckerman to become Roth’s double, and that was in Ghost Writer a few years later. Today, the so-called Zuckerman Novels are part of the curricula of university programs all over the world and have been discussed, analyzed and examined in dissertations, literary journals and study books for years. Considered by some as the backbone of his oeuvre, the Zuckerman Novels include what in my opinion are two of Philip Roth’s masterpieces: American Pastoral and The Human Stain (both novels part of what has been called the American Trilogy).
Operation Shylock was published in 1993, four years before American Pastoral and only two before Sabbath’s Theater (in my opinion, Roth’s first masterpiece). The structure and plot of Shylock is quite complex. The intricacy of the story and the writing seem to constantly challenge the reader, who at times feels (trapped?) inside a complicated maze of words. Nevertheless, the reading experience, although at times exhausting, is for the most part nothing less than enjoyable. The ten chapters that make the book constitute ten pieces of the final puzzle. But as an experience player knows, to have the pieces does not mean that the battle has been won. Each piece defines a unique path and together, they represent the impenetrability of a sophisticated plan that will reveal itself only when other pieces arrive. As the player struggles to find their place in the overall design, new possibilities are in view. Strangely, the final Epilogue somehow seems anticlimactic and weak.
What impresses from the very beginning is the quality and rhythmic drive of the prose. A protean writer, Roth has the ability to build and later destroy without remorse. What once was erected with full confidence, meticulously arranged to the smallest detail, will be knocked out afterwards. And by the same logic, and following a well-planned design, what seems totally absurd and incoherent will later become certain and real; what once was doubtful fantasy will turn into incontestable fact. And so, the reader has to be careful of the demands set up by the creator, since they are similar to those asked of the main character, the writer Philip Roth.
Ubiquity belongs to the realm of fantasy, as we learn that the doppelgänger, the other Philip Roth, appears in the Israeli news as he attends a famous trial in Jerusalem. Roth first hears about him while he receives a phone call in his New York apartment from his cousin Apter in Israel. Duplicity as a seminal concept constitutes, as we shall see, the plan on which the whole novel is based. All the important ideas are dual: RELIGION, embodied in the author’s Jewish ancestry and centered in Zionism and the Diaspora, conceived as a dichotomy that creates a dividing line between the two Philip Roths and extends no less cleverly, into the obvious Palestine-Israel conflict, as seen by two opposing characters George Zaid and Louis B. Smilesburger; TRUTH AND LIES, in the case of mistaken identity encircling once more the idea of dualism, represented in the trial of the auto factory worker from Cleveland (believed to have been 'Ivan the Terrible' in Treblinka) John Demjanjuk in Jerusalem from 1986 to 88, and the contradictory testimony of a key witness, Eliahu Rosenberg; and last but not least, the place of FICTION in a clashing world, the idea of the real versus the unreal, as elaborated in the meetings with the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld.
The title encircles, no less, the antagonistic conception of the novel itself, since it refers to Roth’s mission in Athens, for the Mossad, which would have been narrated in the absent eleventh chapter, that would have had Operation Shylock as its title. Roth explains in the Epilogue:
I have elected to delete my final chapter, twelve thousand words describing the people I convened with in Athens, the circumstances that brought us together, and the subsequent expedition, to a second European capital.
Smilesburger, a crippled Israeli who coordinated the mission and asked Roth to show him the manuscript of the novel before its publication, concludes, after examining the mentioned chapter, that "it contains information too seriously detrimental to his agency’s interests and to the Israeli government to be published in English, let alone in some fifteen other languages."
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice holds, as it turns, a crucial importance in the plot, since he represents everything that is considered at the core of the Jewish people, as Roth explains:
To the audiences of the world Shylock is the embodiment of the Jew in the way that Uncle Sam embodies for them the spirit of the United States. Only, in Shylock’s case, there is an overwhelming Shakespearean reality, a terrifying Shakespearean aliveness that your pasteboard Uncle Sam cannot begin to possess.
And about the opening line of the Jewish Venetian moneylender:
I studied those three words by which the savage, repellent, and villainous Jew, deformed by hatred and revenge, entered as our doppelgänger into the consciousness of the enlightened West. Three words encompassing all that is hateful in the Jew, three words that have stigmatized the Jew through two Christian millennia and that determine the Jewish fate until this very day, and that only the greatest English writer of them all could have had the prescience to isolate and dramatize as he did. You remember Shylock’s opening line? You remember the three words? What Jew can forget them? What Christian can forgive them? ‘Three thousand ducats.’ Five blunt, unbeautiful English syllables and the stage Jew is elevated to its apogee by a genius, catapulted into eternal notoriety by ‘Three thousand ducats.’
Brilliant writing, no doubt.
And as it turns, the identifying code words for Operation Schylock are exactly those three. The story ends in Manhattan, in a small restaurant in the Upper West Side, where Smilesburger and Roth meet for the last time, and the author’s real intentions are questioned by the old man, who demands that the last chapter be omitted:
“Why do you persist in maintaining that you undertook this operation as a writer only, when in your heart you know as well as I now do, having only recently enjoyed all your books, that you undertook and carried it out as a loyal Jew? Why are you so determined to deny the Jewish patriotism, you in whom I realize, from your writings, the Jew is lodged like nothing else except, perhaps, for the male libido? Why camouflage your Jewish motives like this, when you are in fact no less ideologically committed than your fellow patriot Jonathan Pollard was? I, like you, prefer never to do the obvious thing if I can help it, but continuing to pretend that you went to Athens only for the sake of your calling—is this really less compromising to your independence than admitting that you did it because you happen to be Jewish to the core? Being as Jewish as you are is your most secret vice. Any reader of your work knows that. As a Jew you went to Athens and as a Jew you will suppress this chapter. The Jews have suppressed plenty for you. Even you’ll admit that.”
Operation Shylock, holds an important place in Philip Roth’s body of work, since it came just after he had developed strange symptoms, that ended up in a nervous breakdown “caused by the sleeping pill that I was taking every night, the benzodiazepine triazolam marketed as Halcion, the pill that has lately begun to be charged with driving people crazy all over the globe.”
In the first chapter he explains, with his usual eloquence, what he went through in more detail:
My mind began to disintegrate. The word DISINTEGRATION seemed itself to be the matter out of which my brain was constituted, and it began spontaneously coming apart. The fourteen letters, big, chunky, irregularly sized components of my brain, elaborately intertwined, tore jaggedly loose from one another, sometimes a fragment of a letter at a time, but usually in painfully unpronounceable nonsyllabic segments of two or three, their edges roughly serrated. This mental coming apart was as distinctly physical a reality as a tooth being pulled, and the agony of it was excruciating. Hallucinations like these and worse stampeded through me day and night, a herd of wild animals I could do nothing to stop. I couldn’t stop anything, my will blotted out by the magnitude of the tiniest, most idiotic thought. Two, three, four times a day, without provocation or warning, I’d begin to cry. It didn’t matter if I was alone in my studio, turning the page of yet another book that I couldn’t read, or at dinner with Claire, looking hopelessly at the food she’d prepared that I couldn’t find any reason to eat—I cried. I cried before friends, before strangers; even sitting alone on the toilet I would dissolve, wring myself dry with tears, an outpouring of tears that left me feeling absolutely raw—shorn by tears of five decades of living, my inmost being lay revealed to everyone in all its sickly puniness.
In 1993, Operation Shylock: a Confession won the PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel. In my opinion, in its aim to cover so many things at once, the plot seems too ambitious and at times the writing lacks direction and turns repetitive. Had the last chapter not been omitted, perhaps the novel would have attained the roundness originally intended (and maybe, just MAYBE, the chapter never existed after all, and Roth just added an element of expectation for the reader. A game, I am sure, that would have amused the writer. I can only picture him, wherever he is right now, devilishly smiling. Who knows.). I am a fervent admirer of his work.
When that other appears in a work of fiction intentionally it’s called the alter ego. A duplicate who, as it turns, and in the case in question, happens to be a writer as well, and holds as many similarities with his creator as an apple with another apple. But as we well know, two apples can look exactly the same but taste differently. The first time that Philip Roth introduced Nathan Zuckerman in his work was as an alter ego of another fictional character, the writer Peter Tarnopol in My Life as a man in 1974. The move, as it turned out, had all the wit and sharpness we now associate with the American novelist. It’s a clever idea, is it not? The double of his double, the clone of a clone. Brilliant. But it took a little bit of work and time (Roth is unique when dealing with literary challenges: his career could be seen as an ascending path, from the first to the last book) for Zuckerman to become Roth’s double, and that was in Ghost Writer a few years later. Today, the so-called Zuckerman Novels are part of the curricula of university programs all over the world and have been discussed, analyzed and examined in dissertations, literary journals and study books for years. Considered by some as the backbone of his oeuvre, the Zuckerman Novels include what in my opinion are two of Philip Roth’s masterpieces: American Pastoral and The Human Stain (both novels part of what has been called the American Trilogy).
Operation Shylock was published in 1993, four years before American Pastoral and only two before Sabbath’s Theater (in my opinion, Roth’s first masterpiece). The structure and plot of Shylock is quite complex. The intricacy of the story and the writing seem to constantly challenge the reader, who at times feels (trapped?) inside a complicated maze of words. Nevertheless, the reading experience, although at times exhausting, is for the most part nothing less than enjoyable. The ten chapters that make the book constitute ten pieces of the final puzzle. But as an experience player knows, to have the pieces does not mean that the battle has been won. Each piece defines a unique path and together, they represent the impenetrability of a sophisticated plan that will reveal itself only when other pieces arrive. As the player struggles to find their place in the overall design, new possibilities are in view. Strangely, the final Epilogue somehow seems anticlimactic and weak.
What impresses from the very beginning is the quality and rhythmic drive of the prose. A protean writer, Roth has the ability to build and later destroy without remorse. What once was erected with full confidence, meticulously arranged to the smallest detail, will be knocked out afterwards. And by the same logic, and following a well-planned design, what seems totally absurd and incoherent will later become certain and real; what once was doubtful fantasy will turn into incontestable fact. And so, the reader has to be careful of the demands set up by the creator, since they are similar to those asked of the main character, the writer Philip Roth.
Ubiquity belongs to the realm of fantasy, as we learn that the doppelgänger, the other Philip Roth, appears in the Israeli news as he attends a famous trial in Jerusalem. Roth first hears about him while he receives a phone call in his New York apartment from his cousin Apter in Israel. Duplicity as a seminal concept constitutes, as we shall see, the plan on which the whole novel is based. All the important ideas are dual: RELIGION, embodied in the author’s Jewish ancestry and centered in Zionism and the Diaspora, conceived as a dichotomy that creates a dividing line between the two Philip Roths and extends no less cleverly, into the obvious Palestine-Israel conflict, as seen by two opposing characters George Zaid and Louis B. Smilesburger; TRUTH AND LIES, in the case of mistaken identity encircling once more the idea of dualism, represented in the trial of the auto factory worker from Cleveland (believed to have been 'Ivan the Terrible' in Treblinka) John Demjanjuk in Jerusalem from 1986 to 88, and the contradictory testimony of a key witness, Eliahu Rosenberg; and last but not least, the place of FICTION in a clashing world, the idea of the real versus the unreal, as elaborated in the meetings with the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld.
The title encircles, no less, the antagonistic conception of the novel itself, since it refers to Roth’s mission in Athens, for the Mossad, which would have been narrated in the absent eleventh chapter, that would have had Operation Shylock as its title. Roth explains in the Epilogue:
I have elected to delete my final chapter, twelve thousand words describing the people I convened with in Athens, the circumstances that brought us together, and the subsequent expedition, to a second European capital.
Smilesburger, a crippled Israeli who coordinated the mission and asked Roth to show him the manuscript of the novel before its publication, concludes, after examining the mentioned chapter, that "it contains information too seriously detrimental to his agency’s interests and to the Israeli government to be published in English, let alone in some fifteen other languages."
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice holds, as it turns, a crucial importance in the plot, since he represents everything that is considered at the core of the Jewish people, as Roth explains:
To the audiences of the world Shylock is the embodiment of the Jew in the way that Uncle Sam embodies for them the spirit of the United States. Only, in Shylock’s case, there is an overwhelming Shakespearean reality, a terrifying Shakespearean aliveness that your pasteboard Uncle Sam cannot begin to possess.
And about the opening line of the Jewish Venetian moneylender:
I studied those three words by which the savage, repellent, and villainous Jew, deformed by hatred and revenge, entered as our doppelgänger into the consciousness of the enlightened West. Three words encompassing all that is hateful in the Jew, three words that have stigmatized the Jew through two Christian millennia and that determine the Jewish fate until this very day, and that only the greatest English writer of them all could have had the prescience to isolate and dramatize as he did. You remember Shylock’s opening line? You remember the three words? What Jew can forget them? What Christian can forgive them? ‘Three thousand ducats.’ Five blunt, unbeautiful English syllables and the stage Jew is elevated to its apogee by a genius, catapulted into eternal notoriety by ‘Three thousand ducats.’
Brilliant writing, no doubt.
And as it turns, the identifying code words for Operation Schylock are exactly those three. The story ends in Manhattan, in a small restaurant in the Upper West Side, where Smilesburger and Roth meet for the last time, and the author’s real intentions are questioned by the old man, who demands that the last chapter be omitted:
“Why do you persist in maintaining that you undertook this operation as a writer only, when in your heart you know as well as I now do, having only recently enjoyed all your books, that you undertook and carried it out as a loyal Jew? Why are you so determined to deny the Jewish patriotism, you in whom I realize, from your writings, the Jew is lodged like nothing else except, perhaps, for the male libido? Why camouflage your Jewish motives like this, when you are in fact no less ideologically committed than your fellow patriot Jonathan Pollard was? I, like you, prefer never to do the obvious thing if I can help it, but continuing to pretend that you went to Athens only for the sake of your calling—is this really less compromising to your independence than admitting that you did it because you happen to be Jewish to the core? Being as Jewish as you are is your most secret vice. Any reader of your work knows that. As a Jew you went to Athens and as a Jew you will suppress this chapter. The Jews have suppressed plenty for you. Even you’ll admit that.”
Operation Shylock, holds an important place in Philip Roth’s body of work, since it came just after he had developed strange symptoms, that ended up in a nervous breakdown “caused by the sleeping pill that I was taking every night, the benzodiazepine triazolam marketed as Halcion, the pill that has lately begun to be charged with driving people crazy all over the globe.”
In the first chapter he explains, with his usual eloquence, what he went through in more detail:
My mind began to disintegrate. The word DISINTEGRATION seemed itself to be the matter out of which my brain was constituted, and it began spontaneously coming apart. The fourteen letters, big, chunky, irregularly sized components of my brain, elaborately intertwined, tore jaggedly loose from one another, sometimes a fragment of a letter at a time, but usually in painfully unpronounceable nonsyllabic segments of two or three, their edges roughly serrated. This mental coming apart was as distinctly physical a reality as a tooth being pulled, and the agony of it was excruciating. Hallucinations like these and worse stampeded through me day and night, a herd of wild animals I could do nothing to stop. I couldn’t stop anything, my will blotted out by the magnitude of the tiniest, most idiotic thought. Two, three, four times a day, without provocation or warning, I’d begin to cry. It didn’t matter if I was alone in my studio, turning the page of yet another book that I couldn’t read, or at dinner with Claire, looking hopelessly at the food she’d prepared that I couldn’t find any reason to eat—I cried. I cried before friends, before strangers; even sitting alone on the toilet I would dissolve, wring myself dry with tears, an outpouring of tears that left me feeling absolutely raw—shorn by tears of five decades of living, my inmost being lay revealed to everyone in all its sickly puniness.
In 1993, Operation Shylock: a Confession won the PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel. In my opinion, in its aim to cover so many things at once, the plot seems too ambitious and at times the writing lacks direction and turns repetitive. Had the last chapter not been omitted, perhaps the novel would have attained the roundness originally intended (and maybe, just MAYBE, the chapter never existed after all, and Roth just added an element of expectation for the reader. A game, I am sure, that would have amused the writer. I can only picture him, wherever he is right now, devilishly smiling. Who knows.). I am a fervent admirer of his work.
October 17, 2023
3.5 overall.
A rather exhausting read, not recommended as an introduction to Roth's work. ~ but you get extra points if you get through it. I agree with one reviewer at this site who says that the novel's last chapter is the book at its best. It has a clarity and force that are only in evidence occasionally in earlier sections.
Personally, the biggest difficulty I ran into was at about the 2/3-point, when I was starting to want the book to just end. I'm not sure what kept me going but, again, that last chapter is a significant salvation.
Actually... I do know what kept me going: by coincidence, I started reading this just before the recent outbreak of war in the Middle East. Keep in mind that 'OS' was published in 1993. 30 years ago! It's immeasurably horrible that, in that regard, the book remains relevant.
I'm nowhere near an expert on Israeli-Palestinian matters, though I believe I understand the basic history of the conflict. I'm sure many of us have thought that that situation may continue to know downtimes but will never actually end... even though, with negotiation, it could.
Since a large part of this 'confession' also deals with the trial of John Demjanjuk - or 'Ivan the Terrible'; accused of untold heinous crimes at Sobibor after escaping to the US and assuming a new identity - I was finding myself taken with the book more for its historical merit. There is a lot in it of worth regarding Jewish history, culture, identity and the various factions (in and surrounding) which can seem to defy understanding, esp. when the result is unanticipated duplicitous action and behavior (what's referred to as the politically fueled activity of "subselves... constructed of subselves").
Being a work drenched (to say the least) in paranoia, it's dense stuff and at times hard to follow. But then, as narrator of 'his own story' (much of which, in the main, he stated is true but disguised), Roth seemed to be as consistently in the dark as his readers.
In the last chapter, Roth is told by a major character who has read the manuscript of what we are also reading:
A major takeaway from this read is that I feel it's often overwritten. Those who love lengthy, complex sentence-prose may not sigh each time they get halfway through a wildly overstuffed sentence. This is one of those times when Roth seems to prefer being a writer's writer rather than a reader's writer. I sighed almost each time a point seemed to be made, only to read it being bludgeoned home.
And, again, that 2/3-mark is the start of overkill, dealing with sidebars that don't seem to hinge on what gives the work its power.
I was surprised to learn that, to some, this book comes off largely as comedy. Hmm... It's mildly amusing briefly in passing but, otherwise, I'm not even sure 'black comedy' applies at any given moment.
Although I applaud the experimental quality that Roth has allowed through here, I prefer when he's more straightforward in his storytelling - as he is with 'The Plot Against America' and 'Nemesis'. But I suppose those two quagmire tales pale compared to this 'fiction' territory.
A rather exhausting read, not recommended as an introduction to Roth's work. ~ but you get extra points if you get through it. I agree with one reviewer at this site who says that the novel's last chapter is the book at its best. It has a clarity and force that are only in evidence occasionally in earlier sections.
Personally, the biggest difficulty I ran into was at about the 2/3-point, when I was starting to want the book to just end. I'm not sure what kept me going but, again, that last chapter is a significant salvation.
Actually... I do know what kept me going: by coincidence, I started reading this just before the recent outbreak of war in the Middle East. Keep in mind that 'OS' was published in 1993. 30 years ago! It's immeasurably horrible that, in that regard, the book remains relevant.
I'm nowhere near an expert on Israeli-Palestinian matters, though I believe I understand the basic history of the conflict. I'm sure many of us have thought that that situation may continue to know downtimes but will never actually end... even though, with negotiation, it could.
Since a large part of this 'confession' also deals with the trial of John Demjanjuk - or 'Ivan the Terrible'; accused of untold heinous crimes at Sobibor after escaping to the US and assuming a new identity - I was finding myself taken with the book more for its historical merit. There is a lot in it of worth regarding Jewish history, culture, identity and the various factions (in and surrounding) which can seem to defy understanding, esp. when the result is unanticipated duplicitous action and behavior (what's referred to as the politically fueled activity of "subselves... constructed of subselves").
Being a work drenched (to say the least) in paranoia, it's dense stuff and at times hard to follow. But then, as narrator of 'his own story' (much of which, in the main, he stated is true but disguised), Roth seemed to be as consistently in the dark as his readers.
In the last chapter, Roth is told by a major character who has read the manuscript of what we are also reading:
This is not a report of what happened, because, very simply, you haven't the slightest idea of what happened. You grasp almost nothing of the objective reality. Its meaning evades you completely. I cannot imagine a more innocent version of what was going on and what it signified. I won't go so far as to say that this is the reality as a ten-year-old might understand it. I prefer to think of it as subjectivism at its most extreme...This character (Smilesburger) is quite often wise and eloquent in expressing his observations. He also strikes with scalpel precision in his final warning to Roth.
A major takeaway from this read is that I feel it's often overwritten. Those who love lengthy, complex sentence-prose may not sigh each time they get halfway through a wildly overstuffed sentence. This is one of those times when Roth seems to prefer being a writer's writer rather than a reader's writer. I sighed almost each time a point seemed to be made, only to read it being bludgeoned home.
And, again, that 2/3-mark is the start of overkill, dealing with sidebars that don't seem to hinge on what gives the work its power.
I was surprised to learn that, to some, this book comes off largely as comedy. Hmm... It's mildly amusing briefly in passing but, otherwise, I'm not even sure 'black comedy' applies at any given moment.
Although I applaud the experimental quality that Roth has allowed through here, I prefer when he's more straightforward in his storytelling - as he is with 'The Plot Against America' and 'Nemesis'. But I suppose those two quagmire tales pale compared to this 'fiction' territory.
August 30, 2022
The way I see it, this is the book Philip Roth was put on this Earth to write. Oh, people will talk about how insightful Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories or The Plot Against America* or the 9,647 Zuckerman books are, but I think this book has more to say than any of those, or at least the admittedly piecemeal selection (see: Columbus and the American trilogy) I’ve read of them. It’s also funnier, much funnier, than the rather one-joke Portnoy’s Complaint. And hey, why wouldn’t it be? Roth’s back to alter-ego play, except this time his alter ego, which allows him to be funnier and more introspective than he was as either Portnoy or Kepesh or Zuckerman, is… Philip Roth! Or rather, an unrelated Philip Roth impersonating him, which of course means the version of him crafted and curated specially for this novel. So it’s Philip Roth, writing about Philip Roth, processing Philip Roth.
The backstory goes that Roth, after some serious surgery, had a bit of a breakdown while taking a sleeping pill that wasn’t quite ready for public consumption. This, as far as I can tell, happened to the real Roth. The whole bit about the other Philip Roth (henceforth Moishe Pipkin, his nickname in the book) going down to Jerusalem and telling all the Jewish people of European descent to return to their home countries (“diasporism,” he calls it, and he ostensibly wants to save the Jewish people from the hostilities of the Middle East) is probably fictional, a little swipe at the broader Jewish community’s complex relationship with Roth, as far as I can tell.
So ok, here’s where things get fun. We learn early on that, for all his political ambitions, Pipkin is a fundamentally ridiculous figure. He’s got an exaggerated love for Roth, and he expresses his emotions in downright cartoonish extremes. Roth’s nickname for him, “Moses Bellybutton” in Yiddish, is apparently a sort of Jewish leprechaun. So then, combining the fact that Roth here faces off with his alter ego with Roth’s propensity to pile alter egos up, I have to take this as Roth kinda making fun of himself a little. That’s not to say stuff isn’t serious in this book, that there’s nothing at stake and it’s all a big farce. Buuuut it’s fun to see Roth write a book with so much awareness of his own reputation, fun to see this complex play of dismissal and fear that he implicitly runs Portnoy, Kepesh, Zuckerman, and yeah even Roth-as-character himself through.
It’s always fun to see a smart person in the public eye create a Thing about how the public perceives them anyway, and that this smart person is a writer is double the fun for me, because the general notion of fiction gets turned on its ass here. As is, I suppose, the metafictional way. It’s not new to point out that an author might write a protagonist, even a number of protagonists, that are basically shadow versions of themselves, but the whole notion of the shadow getting out of control is so much goddamn fun for me. And Roth pulls off this premise with remarkable completeness and alacrity, firing off joke after joke, gag after gag, getting progressively more and more meta, and even interrogating his famous misogyny a little bit. As much as I’d like? Ok, maybe not, and I’m not sure Roth ever truly faced it down the way the matter merited, but every little bit helps.
So it’s manic, but it’s also contemplative. As I mentioned, there’s a sense of seriousness here, a weight that cuts through the jokes and gives them a sense of context. Because it’s all about identity and false accusations and doubles, like the trial of “Ivan the Terrible,” a real-life concentration camp guard who is also allowed to double, who is granted just as many shadow selves and yet, despite taking on the role of the average dude from Cleveland, was still capable of carrying out true and unbelievable horror. Roth can be a really artful writer when he sets aside the stuff that gets on my nerves about him, and I appreciate how he doesn’t make any explicit parallels between his situation and Ivan’s. It’s there to deepen the theme of identity, and I for one think it does so terrifically.
And it drives me crazy how I waver on this guy, how badly I wish I could just dismiss him the way I’ve safely dismissed Updike and the way he’s always got that one book that tells me, no, he’s got it after all. The cycle played out first when I, let down by Portnoy’s Complaint, gave him one last shot with American Pastoral and lo and behold I was hooked. I burned through that one quickly, with Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories and The Human Stain diminishing in their returns until I eventually hit the not quite bloodless but certainly anemic – a phrase I can’t in good conscience use to describe this book – I Married a Communist. At which point I decided I was done with Roth. Except he wasn’t done with me, and he still isn’t. I’ll probably be split on the late Mr. Roth until the day I die, and I definitely have to take this guy one book at a time. This? This is the best one I’ve read so far.
*And can we talk about how much I hate that title? "The Plot Against America." It's so artless and bland and blunt, so bereft of poetry and ambiguity, so Fox News-y, so beneath Roth's astonishing verbal facility, I kinda don't want to read that book and I certainly don't want anyone to see me reading it.
The backstory goes that Roth, after some serious surgery, had a bit of a breakdown while taking a sleeping pill that wasn’t quite ready for public consumption. This, as far as I can tell, happened to the real Roth. The whole bit about the other Philip Roth (henceforth Moishe Pipkin, his nickname in the book) going down to Jerusalem and telling all the Jewish people of European descent to return to their home countries (“diasporism,” he calls it, and he ostensibly wants to save the Jewish people from the hostilities of the Middle East) is probably fictional, a little swipe at the broader Jewish community’s complex relationship with Roth, as far as I can tell.
So ok, here’s where things get fun. We learn early on that, for all his political ambitions, Pipkin is a fundamentally ridiculous figure. He’s got an exaggerated love for Roth, and he expresses his emotions in downright cartoonish extremes. Roth’s nickname for him, “Moses Bellybutton” in Yiddish, is apparently a sort of Jewish leprechaun. So then, combining the fact that Roth here faces off with his alter ego with Roth’s propensity to pile alter egos up, I have to take this as Roth kinda making fun of himself a little. That’s not to say stuff isn’t serious in this book, that there’s nothing at stake and it’s all a big farce. Buuuut it’s fun to see Roth write a book with so much awareness of his own reputation, fun to see this complex play of dismissal and fear that he implicitly runs Portnoy, Kepesh, Zuckerman, and yeah even Roth-as-character himself through.
It’s always fun to see a smart person in the public eye create a Thing about how the public perceives them anyway, and that this smart person is a writer is double the fun for me, because the general notion of fiction gets turned on its ass here. As is, I suppose, the metafictional way. It’s not new to point out that an author might write a protagonist, even a number of protagonists, that are basically shadow versions of themselves, but the whole notion of the shadow getting out of control is so much goddamn fun for me. And Roth pulls off this premise with remarkable completeness and alacrity, firing off joke after joke, gag after gag, getting progressively more and more meta, and even interrogating his famous misogyny a little bit. As much as I’d like? Ok, maybe not, and I’m not sure Roth ever truly faced it down the way the matter merited, but every little bit helps.
So it’s manic, but it’s also contemplative. As I mentioned, there’s a sense of seriousness here, a weight that cuts through the jokes and gives them a sense of context. Because it’s all about identity and false accusations and doubles, like the trial of “Ivan the Terrible,” a real-life concentration camp guard who is also allowed to double, who is granted just as many shadow selves and yet, despite taking on the role of the average dude from Cleveland, was still capable of carrying out true and unbelievable horror. Roth can be a really artful writer when he sets aside the stuff that gets on my nerves about him, and I appreciate how he doesn’t make any explicit parallels between his situation and Ivan’s. It’s there to deepen the theme of identity, and I for one think it does so terrifically.
And it drives me crazy how I waver on this guy, how badly I wish I could just dismiss him the way I’ve safely dismissed Updike and the way he’s always got that one book that tells me, no, he’s got it after all. The cycle played out first when I, let down by Portnoy’s Complaint, gave him one last shot with American Pastoral and lo and behold I was hooked. I burned through that one quickly, with Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories and The Human Stain diminishing in their returns until I eventually hit the not quite bloodless but certainly anemic – a phrase I can’t in good conscience use to describe this book – I Married a Communist. At which point I decided I was done with Roth. Except he wasn’t done with me, and he still isn’t. I’ll probably be split on the late Mr. Roth until the day I die, and I definitely have to take this guy one book at a time. This? This is the best one I’ve read so far.
*And can we talk about how much I hate that title? "The Plot Against America." It's so artless and bland and blunt, so bereft of poetry and ambiguity, so Fox News-y, so beneath Roth's astonishing verbal facility, I kinda don't want to read that book and I certainly don't want anyone to see me reading it.
April 3, 2019
A Rothologist's Collector's Item
Just when I thought I had read the most bizarre of books from Philip Roth, I stumble upon another. This is one of those, written at the time when Roth was recovering from a nervous breakdown after taking the drug Halcion for pain management that reduced him to paranoia, a deadly state for a novelist who already skirts that area of the mind.
Fact merges with fiction in this book. The facts are that Roth uses his own name for the protagonist and relates his visit to Israel to interview author Aron Apelfeld, a holocaust survivor. While in Isreal, Roth also visits the trial of John Demjanjuk who is being tried for potentially having been Ivan the Terrible during WWII. The fiction is that there is a doppelganger in Israel claiming to be Philip Roth and stirring up support for another Jewish diaspora, this time a migration out of Israel and back to Europe where the memory of the Holocaust is quite not extinguished; the rationale is that the Israelis face certain extermination by their Arab neighbours but that Europe will never let Holocaust II happen.
Everyone is not who they claim to be: the two Roths who keep switching roles; Damjanjuk is not Ivan the Terrible, or is he?; is Smilesburger a seller of antiquarian books or a Mossad agent? The book is seeded with long swaths of dialogue where the pros and cons of Diaspora vs. Settlement are discussed ad nauseum. Roth and his doppelganger emerge as representatives of the diaspora and Apelfeld as a supporter of settlement. In between, Roth is gifted the diaries of Leon Klinghoffer, the victim of the Achile Lauro hijacking, and we are entertained to a travelogue on Israel. The Palestinian viewpoint is presented by Roth’s old university friend, George, who is eternally spewing anti-Israeli comments and dubs himself a “word-throwing Arab, not a stone-throwing one”. And sex? There is no Roth book that is complete without the urging of the loins. The sex bit is provided by Jinx Posseski, the fake Roth’s nurse, who sleeps with the original and the double, and physically makes love to the latter even after death does them part.
The twist in the book is the last chapter, which is purposefully omitted, and which ostensibly describes a “task” Roth performs for the Mossad that he wants to put in the book but which they want to keep out. Roth, the career novelist, is committed to his art and abhors censure. In his words: “The writer redefined the permissible. That was the responsibility. Nothing need hide itself in fiction.” And yet the penalty of crossing the Mossad is not death on a dark road for Roth but the worse sentence of loshon hora—evil speak—that which can destroy his literary career. And so we get another twist that leaves the plot, in Roth’s words, “the story is frivolously plotted, over-plotted, too freakishly plotted, with outlandish events so wildly careening around every corner that there is nowhere for intelligence to establish a foothold and develop a perspective.”
Plot inconsistencies apart, the fluency of prose with this author is at its height in this book, and so is his manic expression, which is understandable given his addled mental state caused by Halcion. I wondered why Roth wrote this book, other than to keep up his regular output that must have been demanded by his publisher, sickness notwithstanding. And I toyed with the idea that perhaps it may have been his attempt to atone for his Jew-bashing by showing himself undertaking work for the Mossad. But since the missing final chapter holds the key, we really wonder whether that assignment, which is the title of this book, is also a work of fiction.
Given the platitudes to Roth as an imminent novelist and political influencer that dot the book, I wondered whether this novel was Roth’s own pat on the back to himself; in George’s words, “Philip, you are a Jewish prophet and you always have been. You are a Jewish seer.” Smilesburger has a less than complimentary view and describes Roth as “one who has made his fortune as a leading Jewologist of international literature.”
Overall, a good addition to the library of an ardent Roth-o-logist, which I am.
Just when I thought I had read the most bizarre of books from Philip Roth, I stumble upon another. This is one of those, written at the time when Roth was recovering from a nervous breakdown after taking the drug Halcion for pain management that reduced him to paranoia, a deadly state for a novelist who already skirts that area of the mind.
Fact merges with fiction in this book. The facts are that Roth uses his own name for the protagonist and relates his visit to Israel to interview author Aron Apelfeld, a holocaust survivor. While in Isreal, Roth also visits the trial of John Demjanjuk who is being tried for potentially having been Ivan the Terrible during WWII. The fiction is that there is a doppelganger in Israel claiming to be Philip Roth and stirring up support for another Jewish diaspora, this time a migration out of Israel and back to Europe where the memory of the Holocaust is quite not extinguished; the rationale is that the Israelis face certain extermination by their Arab neighbours but that Europe will never let Holocaust II happen.
Everyone is not who they claim to be: the two Roths who keep switching roles; Damjanjuk is not Ivan the Terrible, or is he?; is Smilesburger a seller of antiquarian books or a Mossad agent? The book is seeded with long swaths of dialogue where the pros and cons of Diaspora vs. Settlement are discussed ad nauseum. Roth and his doppelganger emerge as representatives of the diaspora and Apelfeld as a supporter of settlement. In between, Roth is gifted the diaries of Leon Klinghoffer, the victim of the Achile Lauro hijacking, and we are entertained to a travelogue on Israel. The Palestinian viewpoint is presented by Roth’s old university friend, George, who is eternally spewing anti-Israeli comments and dubs himself a “word-throwing Arab, not a stone-throwing one”. And sex? There is no Roth book that is complete without the urging of the loins. The sex bit is provided by Jinx Posseski, the fake Roth’s nurse, who sleeps with the original and the double, and physically makes love to the latter even after death does them part.
The twist in the book is the last chapter, which is purposefully omitted, and which ostensibly describes a “task” Roth performs for the Mossad that he wants to put in the book but which they want to keep out. Roth, the career novelist, is committed to his art and abhors censure. In his words: “The writer redefined the permissible. That was the responsibility. Nothing need hide itself in fiction.” And yet the penalty of crossing the Mossad is not death on a dark road for Roth but the worse sentence of loshon hora—evil speak—that which can destroy his literary career. And so we get another twist that leaves the plot, in Roth’s words, “the story is frivolously plotted, over-plotted, too freakishly plotted, with outlandish events so wildly careening around every corner that there is nowhere for intelligence to establish a foothold and develop a perspective.”
Plot inconsistencies apart, the fluency of prose with this author is at its height in this book, and so is his manic expression, which is understandable given his addled mental state caused by Halcion. I wondered why Roth wrote this book, other than to keep up his regular output that must have been demanded by his publisher, sickness notwithstanding. And I toyed with the idea that perhaps it may have been his attempt to atone for his Jew-bashing by showing himself undertaking work for the Mossad. But since the missing final chapter holds the key, we really wonder whether that assignment, which is the title of this book, is also a work of fiction.
Given the platitudes to Roth as an imminent novelist and political influencer that dot the book, I wondered whether this novel was Roth’s own pat on the back to himself; in George’s words, “Philip, you are a Jewish prophet and you always have been. You are a Jewish seer.” Smilesburger has a less than complimentary view and describes Roth as “one who has made his fortune as a leading Jewologist of international literature.”
Overall, a good addition to the library of an ardent Roth-o-logist, which I am.
October 30, 2023
Putin probabil ca as fi citit cele 540 de pagini daca era orice alt scriitor in locul lui Roth, care imi e atat de apropiat. Ca un alter ego :)
Dar jocurile lui de fictiune / alter ego / paranoia sunt obositoare si iritante aici, parca fortate. Parca se vede prea tare cusatura, se simt chinurile facerii literare. Fiind vorba despre Roth, e posibil ca asta sa ii fi si fost intentia.
In orice caz, pentru mine a fost cea mai putin sclipitoare, cea mai fada dintre scrierile lui. Singurul pasaj care mi-a placut - in modul patimas in care imi place de obicei Roth - este cel al rapirii lui, in care gaseste scris pe tabla, in ebraica, versetul despre Iaacov singur in pustiu si barbatul (ingerul sau chiar Dumnezeu) care "se ridica" inainte de zori. M-a facut sa ma gandesc la singuratatea omului, atat de coplesitoare incat trebuie sa isi inventeze un Dumnezeu cu care sa se certe, sa se razboiasca, care sa il judece si sa il iubeasca. Sau un alter ego, asa cum face Philip Roth cu Moishe Pipik.
Dar jocurile lui de fictiune / alter ego / paranoia sunt obositoare si iritante aici, parca fortate. Parca se vede prea tare cusatura, se simt chinurile facerii literare. Fiind vorba despre Roth, e posibil ca asta sa ii fi si fost intentia.
In orice caz, pentru mine a fost cea mai putin sclipitoare, cea mai fada dintre scrierile lui. Singurul pasaj care mi-a placut - in modul patimas in care imi place de obicei Roth - este cel al rapirii lui, in care gaseste scris pe tabla, in ebraica, versetul despre Iaacov singur in pustiu si barbatul (ingerul sau chiar Dumnezeu) care "se ridica" inainte de zori. M-a facut sa ma gandesc la singuratatea omului, atat de coplesitoare incat trebuie sa isi inventeze un Dumnezeu cu care sa se certe, sa se razboiasca, care sa il judece si sa il iubeasca. Sau un alter ego, asa cum face Philip Roth cu Moishe Pipik.
August 16, 2020
Damn! Philip Roth is one of the best writers ever. This novel is the culmination of a string of novels that play around with fact/fiction’s bounderies, progressively amping the meta aspects to arrive at a novel in which Philip Roth is being impersonated by another Philip Roth in Israel, a novel all about duality and double meanings. Experimental, erudite, humorous, and unapologetically rambling, this is another excellent work from a legendary author.
March 2, 2016
Ενώ ξεκίνησε με πολύ καλές προοπτικές, τελικά κατάφερε να με κουράσει! Εξαιρετική η γραφή του συγγραφέα, αλλά σαν υπόθεση για μένα έκανε κοιλία σε αρκετά σημεία.
March 20, 2021
Atât de incitantă, solicitanta, ironică, autoironica, cu discursuri, interpretări și reinterpretari covârșitoare, sclipitor de inteligent scrisă, cu greu am renunțat la ea, după inevitabilul sfârșit.
![Profile Image for [P].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1486240560i/40516522._UY200_CR13,0,200,200_.jpg)
March 5, 2015
When I was twenty-one I left home, I left the north, and moved in with a Scottish woman, a friend of the mother of my then-girlfriend. I’d got a job in Leamington Spa and needed a place to stay. The morning after moving in I woke up and still in my underwear went to the bathroom to brush my teeth etc. As I made to leave, however, the door handle came off in my hand. I was stuck. The house was empty. I was in there two hours, contemplating jumping, until I managed to convince [with difficulty] a passing child to fetch his mother. While I was at University, during my first week in fact, I drank a pint of tequila and nearly died. I woke up midday the following day, covered in bruises and laying on a vomit covered bed in a room I did not recognise. Once, after breaking up with a girlfriend I agreed to travel to London to see her. She turned up but had a funny turn on the tube and ran off. I tried to follow her but I couldn’t keep up. I never saw her again. I called a friend of mine and we agreed to go for a drink. I got so drunk, however, that I passed out on the train home, which happened to be the last train that day, missing my stop and ending up in the arsehole of nowhere. Pissed and lost, I had to hitchhike home. Another time, I managed to convince a girl that I was in a very famous band, my act being so convincing that when I next bumped into her, weeks later, she told me she had actually bought tickets to see the band expecting me to be on stage. I wasn’t, of course. These short anecdotes are merely the tip of the iceberg, the tip of the tip.
Life is messier than fiction. If I wanted to write a story would I consider any of the things that have actually happened to me? No, I would dismiss them as unbelievable, stupid, too full of silly coincidences and unrealistic choices or unsound psychology. Life is messier than fiction, unless, of course, you’re talking about Operation Shylock by Philip Roth. This is a novel that purports to be a true story, actually does feature genuine, verifiable, events, and yet all of it feels categorically, almost gallingly, unreal. Take the basic plot, which is that Philip Roth, the writer, finds out that there is another Philip Roth, an impostor, in Jerusalem espousing controversial views on his [the real Roth’s] behalf. Roth travels to Jerusalem and becomes embroiled in a madcap game of cat and mouse and espionage, which involves crippled agents, a million dollar cheque, arab freedom fighters, a dying man with a prosthetic penis, and so on. Like, huh? Then there is the trial of John Demjanjuk, which features prominently in the text. John Demjanjuk was arrested on suspicion of being Ivan the Terrible, a brutal Nazi guard responsible for almost mind-boggling cruelty at the Treblinka concentration camp. He is, believe it or not, being defended by a Jew, whose own mother was a holocaust survivor! This lawyer, by the way, was actually attacked by a holocaust survivor [not his own mother], who threw acid in his face. Sounds like bullshit, don’t it? Who is going to buy this crap? An acid-throwing holocaust survivor? Yet, it’s all true. Go look it up.
I guess the most pertinent question is how does Roth manage to manipulate this material, how does he mould it into a coherent novel? The answer is that he doesn’t. Operation Shylock is something of a clusterfuck [much like this review so far], but it’s a pretty fucking engrossing one. Part of Roth’s focus is the tension between truth and fiction, the tenuous grasp that we have on reality, on who we are and what is happening to us, and around us. For example, who is the real Ivan the Terrible? This is a genuine question, because there were, and still are, doubts, differences of opinion. Some say Demjanjuk, some say that the evidence against him was falsified, that Ivan the Terrible was another man, Ivan Marchenko. Yet the novel asks another question, one given even greater prominence, which is who is the real Philip Roth? Indeed, one cannot take anyone or anything in the book on face value. What’s real is unbelievable, what is fiction is, well, unbelievable also.
On Roth and his double: one could argue that Pipik, which is what Roth calls his impostor, does not exist. At the beginning of the novel Roth describes a mental breakdown that he suffered as a result of taking a drug called Halcion. This drug leaves him feeling suicidal and categorically not himself. It is not difficult, then, to see Piipik as a consequence of this breakdown, of this feeling of not being oneself. Indeed, at one point Roth looks in the mirror and does not recognise himself. Is this Pipik staring back at him? Is Pipik the crazy Roth, the broken down Roth? The irrational Roth? The whole novel is suffused with doubles: the Arab that he knew thirty years previously as a mild, moderate man turns up in Jerusalem as an extremist, the cripple Smilesburger is encountered initially as a holocaust survivor only to turn out to be an agent, Demjanjuk is both an old man from Ohio and, possibly, a sadistic war criminal etc. Perhaps the biggest indication that Pipik is not real is when towards the end of the novel Roth admits to mentally composing, to imagining, a letter from Pipik’s girlfriend describing his death. An imaginary death for an imaginary character, perhaps.
Throughout Operation Shylock there is a very weird tension between high seriousness and farce, which is something that I have only previously encountered in the work of the renowned modernist Witold Gombrowicz. Roth deals, in detail, with some very important issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Diasporism, Palestinian displacement, Jewish culpability, the Holocaust and whether it is used as a propaganda tool, terrorism, extremism, anti-semitism, etc. Simultaneously, there runs throughout the novel the double-double agent caper I have previously mentioned, which is obviously ridiculous. In this way, Operation Shylock is like two books in one. Yet there must be a reason for this duality. What was Roth trying to achieve? I think on one hand he wanted to treat these issues with the gravity they deserve, while also making the point that a lot of the beliefs and behaviour and arguments around them are insane. So, we have the crazy Arab friend who wants to enlist Roth [a Jew] to fight for his cause, we have the imposter Roth who wants the Jews to leave Israel and return to Europe en masse, etc. Indeed, all wars, all conflicts, all ideologies contain some element of insanity, otherwise people would not be willing to die for them.
Maybe all of this sounds like trash to you. I dunno. I enjoyed it. I think there is a lot of Roth’s best writing in the book, although it is very centred on Jewish issues and Jewish history [which some may find alienating]. The biggest issue for me was the Roth-as-character stuff. I have always maintained that authors absolutely should not, under any circumstances, appear in their own work. Had Roth not been Roth, so to speak, but, say, Nathan Zuckerman, who is himself a thinly disguised Roth [this is getting so meta it’s hard to keep it all straight], I would not have questioned the book. So, why do I dislike authors-as-characters? I find it egotistical, unnecessarily self-obsessive; yes, Zuckerman might be Roth, or a kind of Roth, but Roth as Roth? This is just taking it too far. There are points in the novel when characters speak to Roth about his work, praising it and praising him as the author. Even when someone in the book criticises Roth they do so with back-handed compliments, for example, they will say something like oh, you, the important writer, who everyone knows, with all those fans, who wrote those wonderful books, why are you such a dick! Like, jeez. Was Roth getting off on all that? At times I contemplated giving up, but then there were other times when I thought that Roth was being ironic, that it was a joke. Maybe he made it so that everyone he meets in the book is convinced of his importance and status because in reality that kind of thing never happened to him. I don’t know. Is this aspect of the novel a satire on authors and their fans or authors and the people who want to use them? Again, I don’t know. I do, however, believe that some of the stuff in the book, some of the jokes, can only be enjoyed or appreciated by Roth himself, and that isn’t good writing. Having said that, I did not give up on the book, despite these misgivings, so it must have a certain kind of power. Operation Shylock is a strange, hysterical, almost nightmarish novel, which may not be Roth’s best but is certainly one of his most entertaining and thought-provoking.
Life is messier than fiction. If I wanted to write a story would I consider any of the things that have actually happened to me? No, I would dismiss them as unbelievable, stupid, too full of silly coincidences and unrealistic choices or unsound psychology. Life is messier than fiction, unless, of course, you’re talking about Operation Shylock by Philip Roth. This is a novel that purports to be a true story, actually does feature genuine, verifiable, events, and yet all of it feels categorically, almost gallingly, unreal. Take the basic plot, which is that Philip Roth, the writer, finds out that there is another Philip Roth, an impostor, in Jerusalem espousing controversial views on his [the real Roth’s] behalf. Roth travels to Jerusalem and becomes embroiled in a madcap game of cat and mouse and espionage, which involves crippled agents, a million dollar cheque, arab freedom fighters, a dying man with a prosthetic penis, and so on. Like, huh? Then there is the trial of John Demjanjuk, which features prominently in the text. John Demjanjuk was arrested on suspicion of being Ivan the Terrible, a brutal Nazi guard responsible for almost mind-boggling cruelty at the Treblinka concentration camp. He is, believe it or not, being defended by a Jew, whose own mother was a holocaust survivor! This lawyer, by the way, was actually attacked by a holocaust survivor [not his own mother], who threw acid in his face. Sounds like bullshit, don’t it? Who is going to buy this crap? An acid-throwing holocaust survivor? Yet, it’s all true. Go look it up.
I guess the most pertinent question is how does Roth manage to manipulate this material, how does he mould it into a coherent novel? The answer is that he doesn’t. Operation Shylock is something of a clusterfuck [much like this review so far], but it’s a pretty fucking engrossing one. Part of Roth’s focus is the tension between truth and fiction, the tenuous grasp that we have on reality, on who we are and what is happening to us, and around us. For example, who is the real Ivan the Terrible? This is a genuine question, because there were, and still are, doubts, differences of opinion. Some say Demjanjuk, some say that the evidence against him was falsified, that Ivan the Terrible was another man, Ivan Marchenko. Yet the novel asks another question, one given even greater prominence, which is who is the real Philip Roth? Indeed, one cannot take anyone or anything in the book on face value. What’s real is unbelievable, what is fiction is, well, unbelievable also.
On Roth and his double: one could argue that Pipik, which is what Roth calls his impostor, does not exist. At the beginning of the novel Roth describes a mental breakdown that he suffered as a result of taking a drug called Halcion. This drug leaves him feeling suicidal and categorically not himself. It is not difficult, then, to see Piipik as a consequence of this breakdown, of this feeling of not being oneself. Indeed, at one point Roth looks in the mirror and does not recognise himself. Is this Pipik staring back at him? Is Pipik the crazy Roth, the broken down Roth? The irrational Roth? The whole novel is suffused with doubles: the Arab that he knew thirty years previously as a mild, moderate man turns up in Jerusalem as an extremist, the cripple Smilesburger is encountered initially as a holocaust survivor only to turn out to be an agent, Demjanjuk is both an old man from Ohio and, possibly, a sadistic war criminal etc. Perhaps the biggest indication that Pipik is not real is when towards the end of the novel Roth admits to mentally composing, to imagining, a letter from Pipik’s girlfriend describing his death. An imaginary death for an imaginary character, perhaps.
Throughout Operation Shylock there is a very weird tension between high seriousness and farce, which is something that I have only previously encountered in the work of the renowned modernist Witold Gombrowicz. Roth deals, in detail, with some very important issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Diasporism, Palestinian displacement, Jewish culpability, the Holocaust and whether it is used as a propaganda tool, terrorism, extremism, anti-semitism, etc. Simultaneously, there runs throughout the novel the double-double agent caper I have previously mentioned, which is obviously ridiculous. In this way, Operation Shylock is like two books in one. Yet there must be a reason for this duality. What was Roth trying to achieve? I think on one hand he wanted to treat these issues with the gravity they deserve, while also making the point that a lot of the beliefs and behaviour and arguments around them are insane. So, we have the crazy Arab friend who wants to enlist Roth [a Jew] to fight for his cause, we have the imposter Roth who wants the Jews to leave Israel and return to Europe en masse, etc. Indeed, all wars, all conflicts, all ideologies contain some element of insanity, otherwise people would not be willing to die for them.
Maybe all of this sounds like trash to you. I dunno. I enjoyed it. I think there is a lot of Roth’s best writing in the book, although it is very centred on Jewish issues and Jewish history [which some may find alienating]. The biggest issue for me was the Roth-as-character stuff. I have always maintained that authors absolutely should not, under any circumstances, appear in their own work. Had Roth not been Roth, so to speak, but, say, Nathan Zuckerman, who is himself a thinly disguised Roth [this is getting so meta it’s hard to keep it all straight], I would not have questioned the book. So, why do I dislike authors-as-characters? I find it egotistical, unnecessarily self-obsessive; yes, Zuckerman might be Roth, or a kind of Roth, but Roth as Roth? This is just taking it too far. There are points in the novel when characters speak to Roth about his work, praising it and praising him as the author. Even when someone in the book criticises Roth they do so with back-handed compliments, for example, they will say something like oh, you, the important writer, who everyone knows, with all those fans, who wrote those wonderful books, why are you such a dick! Like, jeez. Was Roth getting off on all that? At times I contemplated giving up, but then there were other times when I thought that Roth was being ironic, that it was a joke. Maybe he made it so that everyone he meets in the book is convinced of his importance and status because in reality that kind of thing never happened to him. I don’t know. Is this aspect of the novel a satire on authors and their fans or authors and the people who want to use them? Again, I don’t know. I do, however, believe that some of the stuff in the book, some of the jokes, can only be enjoyed or appreciated by Roth himself, and that isn’t good writing. Having said that, I did not give up on the book, despite these misgivings, so it must have a certain kind of power. Operation Shylock is a strange, hysterical, almost nightmarish novel, which may not be Roth’s best but is certainly one of his most entertaining and thought-provoking.
April 8, 2020
Certo che chi ha un po' di insofferenza per l'ego invadente di Roth deve evitare questo libro dove di Philip Roth ce ne sono ben due.
Questo libro è tutto incentrato sull'essere - Roth: reduce da magagne fisiche e psichiatriche si guarda allo specchio, senonché l'immagine riflessa si fa autonoma ed inafferrabile, si prende gioco dell'originale e gli si sostituisce fino a fargli dubitare della propria vera identità e delle propria consapevolezza dell'essere ebreo.
Sullo sfondo varie sottotrame, l'amico palestinese ritrovato ma ostile, il processo a Demijaniuk, il Mossad, l'improbabile ma possibile complotto ebraico/antiisraeliano sotto l'insegna del "diasporismo".
Tanta materia ma non tutta padroneggiata come nelle sue opere che mi hanno convinto di più.
Questo libro è tutto incentrato sull'essere - Roth: reduce da magagne fisiche e psichiatriche si guarda allo specchio, senonché l'immagine riflessa si fa autonoma ed inafferrabile, si prende gioco dell'originale e gli si sostituisce fino a fargli dubitare della propria vera identità e delle propria consapevolezza dell'essere ebreo.
Sullo sfondo varie sottotrame, l'amico palestinese ritrovato ma ostile, il processo a Demijaniuk, il Mossad, l'improbabile ma possibile complotto ebraico/antiisraeliano sotto l'insegna del "diasporismo".
Tanta materia ma non tutta padroneggiata come nelle sue opere che mi hanno convinto di più.
May 20, 2023
Philip Roth sevgim ve hayranlığım kademeli olarak büyümeye devam ediyor. Amerika'ya Tuzak'da olduğu gibi baş döndürücü bir alternatif tarihi ve siyasi romanla okuru gerçek ve kurgu arasındaki sıkı ilişkiyi çözmeye bırakıyor.
Konu:
Öncelikle, "Shylock Operasyonu: Bir İtiraf" , gerçekten çok katmanlı bir kitap. Bu çok katmanlılığı bir çerçeve içine sokacak olursam sanırım en basit olarak şu şekilde olabilir:
a.Alt katmanda 1986'da İsrail'de yürütülen Korkunç İvan lakaplı İvan Demjanjuk, davası,
b.Ana katmanda ise kitabın ana kahramanı ile hem fiziksel hem de isim benzerliği gösteren diğer kahramanın ana kahramanın yazar kimliğini kullanarak Yahudi sorunun nihai çözüme oluşturmak için harekete geçen ve ortalığı birbirine katan iki Philip Roth'un öyküsü yer alıyor.
Roman, burdan iki tema üstünden üst üste binerek inanılmaz bir edebi şölene dönüşüyor.
Yukarıdaki çerçeveye göre toparlayacak olursam : Shylock Operasyonu, Philip Roth adında Yahudi kökenli bir yazarın, Halcion isminde bir uyku hapının yan etkilerine dayalı olarak geçirdiği sinir kriziyle başlıyor. İyileşmeye başladığında kendi adını kullanan bir sahtekarın, İsrail'de Treblinka'da Korkunç İvan lakaplı gardiyanın gerçekten o mu değil mi olduğu üzerine İsrail'de sürdürülen duruşmaya giderek yeni bir diasporacalık oluşumunu yaymaya başladığının kulağına gelmesiyle başlıyor. Bu yeni diasporacılığa göre, eğer yahudilerin İsrail'i terk edip gerçek vatanları olan Avrupa topraklarına geri yerleşmezler ise , Filistinli Araplar tarafından ikinci bir Holokost'un çok yakında olduğunu ve bu sefer yahudilerin bu soykırımdan kurtulamayacağını iddia ediyor. İlk başlarda bu durumu umursamayan yazar, en sonunda dayanamayıp İsrail'e giderek bu soytarıyla yüzleşmesini ve kademeli olarak bu karmaşanın içinde kendisiyle sahtekarın birbirine karışan çılgınlığını, o dönemki İsrail ve Filistini ve siyonist oluşumun objektif olarak dünya üzerinden eleştirisini okuyoruz.
Sonuç:
Philip Roth, Shylock Operasyonu'nda okuru kitabın en başından başlayarak sonuna kadar bu kitap gerçekten bir kurgu mu yoksa gerçek mi çelişkisi içinde bırakıyor. Bunu yazar ile kahraman arasında mesafeyi tamamen azaltıp bu kavramlara inanılmaz farklı açıdan yaklaşıyor. Roth'un diğer romanlarında karşımıza çıkan alter egosu Zuckerman'ı, Philip Roth Shylock'da tamamen kendisi haline dönüştüyor. Bunun yanında romanda var olan ikinci Philip Roth olan ve kendisine Moishe Pipik adını verdiği sahtekarıyla Dostoyevski'nin Öteki romanına bir referans ve selam çaktığını düşünüyorum.( Moishe Pipik ölmekte olan bir kanser hastası- Philip Roth ilaç yüzünden delirme noktasına gelerek bir kriz atlatması).
Ayrıca kitabın ismi Sheakspear'in Venedik Taciri'ndeki Shylock'a atıfta bulunuyor. Bu atıf, girişte belirtmiş olduğum romanın çok katmanlılığına ve Philip Roth'un Amerikalı bir yahudi olarak kendisine ve sosyo-kültürel tabanına son derece objektif ve oldukça sert bir eleştiri oluşturmasına destek oluyor.
Açıkcası, "Shylock Operasyonu: Bir İtiraf" , her açıdan çok beğendiğim bir kitap oldu. Kitabı 11 gün önce bitirmeme rağmen aklıma sıklıkla düşmekte olduğunu belirtmeliyim. Philip Roth'un edebiyatçı olarak zekasına duyduğum saygı bu kitapla birlikte bambaşka bir yere doğru evrildi.
Özetle, baştan sona bir edebiyat şöleni ve dahice yazılmış bir kitap. Philip Roth'a aşinaysanız ve hala okumadıysanız veya yazara karşı bir önyargı içindeyseniz, alternatif tarih ilginizi çekiyorsa okumanızı öneririm.
İyi okumalar!
10/10
Konu:
Öncelikle, "Shylock Operasyonu: Bir İtiraf" , gerçekten çok katmanlı bir kitap. Bu çok katmanlılığı bir çerçeve içine sokacak olursam sanırım en basit olarak şu şekilde olabilir:
a.Alt katmanda 1986'da İsrail'de yürütülen Korkunç İvan lakaplı İvan Demjanjuk, davası,
b.Ana katmanda ise kitabın ana kahramanı ile hem fiziksel hem de isim benzerliği gösteren diğer kahramanın ana kahramanın yazar kimliğini kullanarak Yahudi sorunun nihai çözüme oluşturmak için harekete geçen ve ortalığı birbirine katan iki Philip Roth'un öyküsü yer alıyor.
Roman, burdan iki tema üstünden üst üste binerek inanılmaz bir edebi şölene dönüşüyor.
Yukarıdaki çerçeveye göre toparlayacak olursam : Shylock Operasyonu, Philip Roth adında Yahudi kökenli bir yazarın, Halcion isminde bir uyku hapının yan etkilerine dayalı olarak geçirdiği sinir kriziyle başlıyor. İyileşmeye başladığında kendi adını kullanan bir sahtekarın, İsrail'de Treblinka'da Korkunç İvan lakaplı gardiyanın gerçekten o mu değil mi olduğu üzerine İsrail'de sürdürülen duruşmaya giderek yeni bir diasporacalık oluşumunu yaymaya başladığının kulağına gelmesiyle başlıyor. Bu yeni diasporacılığa göre, eğer yahudilerin İsrail'i terk edip gerçek vatanları olan Avrupa topraklarına geri yerleşmezler ise , Filistinli Araplar tarafından ikinci bir Holokost'un çok yakında olduğunu ve bu sefer yahudilerin bu soykırımdan kurtulamayacağını iddia ediyor. İlk başlarda bu durumu umursamayan yazar, en sonunda dayanamayıp İsrail'e giderek bu soytarıyla yüzleşmesini ve kademeli olarak bu karmaşanın içinde kendisiyle sahtekarın birbirine karışan çılgınlığını, o dönemki İsrail ve Filistini ve siyonist oluşumun objektif olarak dünya üzerinden eleştirisini okuyoruz.
Sonuç:
Philip Roth, Shylock Operasyonu'nda okuru kitabın en başından başlayarak sonuna kadar bu kitap gerçekten bir kurgu mu yoksa gerçek mi çelişkisi içinde bırakıyor. Bunu yazar ile kahraman arasında mesafeyi tamamen azaltıp bu kavramlara inanılmaz farklı açıdan yaklaşıyor. Roth'un diğer romanlarında karşımıza çıkan alter egosu Zuckerman'ı, Philip Roth Shylock'da tamamen kendisi haline dönüştüyor. Bunun yanında romanda var olan ikinci Philip Roth olan ve kendisine Moishe Pipik adını verdiği sahtekarıyla Dostoyevski'nin Öteki romanına bir referans ve selam çaktığını düşünüyorum.( Moishe Pipik ölmekte olan bir kanser hastası- Philip Roth ilaç yüzünden delirme noktasına gelerek bir kriz atlatması).
Ayrıca kitabın ismi Sheakspear'in Venedik Taciri'ndeki Shylock'a atıfta bulunuyor. Bu atıf, girişte belirtmiş olduğum romanın çok katmanlılığına ve Philip Roth'un Amerikalı bir yahudi olarak kendisine ve sosyo-kültürel tabanına son derece objektif ve oldukça sert bir eleştiri oluşturmasına destek oluyor.
Açıkcası, "Shylock Operasyonu: Bir İtiraf" , her açıdan çok beğendiğim bir kitap oldu. Kitabı 11 gün önce bitirmeme rağmen aklıma sıklıkla düşmekte olduğunu belirtmeliyim. Philip Roth'un edebiyatçı olarak zekasına duyduğum saygı bu kitapla birlikte bambaşka bir yere doğru evrildi.
Özetle, baştan sona bir edebiyat şöleni ve dahice yazılmış bir kitap. Philip Roth'a aşinaysanız ve hala okumadıysanız veya yazara karşı bir önyargı içindeyseniz, alternatif tarih ilginizi çekiyorsa okumanızı öneririm.
İyi okumalar!
10/10
October 8, 2012
Come sempre nei libri di Philip Roth, le tematiche affrontate sono molteplici, si sovrappongono e si intrecciano. In questo romanzo ancor più del solito v’è confusione, anche se il tema centrale è sempre lo stesso: cosa significa essere ebreo, ebreo americano nato da una generazione che non ha vissuto l’Olocausto, come Roth, o ebreo nato nello Stato di Israele.
Ci si chiede: gli ebrei sono un popolo che vive in un territorio con un proprio ordinamento giuridico, esistono dunque tutti gli elementi costitutivi perché sussista uno Stato israeliano? Certamente … ma in che modo hanno ottenuto quel territorio sul quale hanno edificato il loro Stato? Strappandolo con violenza dalle mani dei palestinesi, combattendo ogni giorno con le unghie e con i denti, con una forza sbalorditiva che deriva loro quale eredità dal passato contro chiunque minacci Israele: si tratta di una violenza “giustificata”? E' giusto -e soprattutto è sicuro per la sopravvivenza dello Stato israeliano- rinchiudere i palestinesi in un ghetto, quello stesso in cui gli ebrei hanno vissuto rinchiusi nel passato?
Ovvero gli ebrei sono comunità disperse di persone accomunate esclusivamente da una cultura e una religione che li marchia a fuoco come diversi, destinati a non avere una patria, ad essere cacciati da qualsiasi luogo in cui vivano, eternamente invisi alle altre razze, come Shylock, l’odioso usuraio ebreo de “il mercante di Venezia”, che si presenta sulla scena pronunciando due parole che segneranno nel futuro tutto il disprezzo che l’Occidente cristiano nutrirà per il suo popolo: “Tremila ducati”?
Philip e Pipik, lo scrittore e il suo “doppio”, rappresentano l’espediente utilizzato da Roth per sviluppare questo tema, la cui soluzione non è univoca, anzi la soluzione è proprio nell’esistenza di una compenetrazione tra le due anime ebraiche in tutti coloro che , come Philip Roth, sono “ebrei fino al midollo”.
Ci si chiede: gli ebrei sono un popolo che vive in un territorio con un proprio ordinamento giuridico, esistono dunque tutti gli elementi costitutivi perché sussista uno Stato israeliano? Certamente … ma in che modo hanno ottenuto quel territorio sul quale hanno edificato il loro Stato? Strappandolo con violenza dalle mani dei palestinesi, combattendo ogni giorno con le unghie e con i denti, con una forza sbalorditiva che deriva loro quale eredità dal passato contro chiunque minacci Israele: si tratta di una violenza “giustificata”? E' giusto -e soprattutto è sicuro per la sopravvivenza dello Stato israeliano- rinchiudere i palestinesi in un ghetto, quello stesso in cui gli ebrei hanno vissuto rinchiusi nel passato?
Ovvero gli ebrei sono comunità disperse di persone accomunate esclusivamente da una cultura e una religione che li marchia a fuoco come diversi, destinati a non avere una patria, ad essere cacciati da qualsiasi luogo in cui vivano, eternamente invisi alle altre razze, come Shylock, l’odioso usuraio ebreo de “il mercante di Venezia”, che si presenta sulla scena pronunciando due parole che segneranno nel futuro tutto il disprezzo che l’Occidente cristiano nutrirà per il suo popolo: “Tremila ducati”?
Philip e Pipik, lo scrittore e il suo “doppio”, rappresentano l’espediente utilizzato da Roth per sviluppare questo tema, la cui soluzione non è univoca, anzi la soluzione è proprio nell’esistenza di una compenetrazione tra le due anime ebraiche in tutti coloro che , come Philip Roth, sono “ebrei fino al midollo”.
January 31, 2021
Finalista al Pulitzer 1994, Faccio una piccola premessa su Philip Roth: classe 1933 ci lascia nel 2018, Roth è uno degli scrittori Ebrei più premiati e più noti d'America, è stato proposto più volte per il Nobel ma mai ottenuto. Parliamo adesso di questo libro stupendo che viene presentato come la cronaca più veritiera possibile di avvenimenti di cui l'autore è stato protagonista nel 1988. Infatti Roth fa parte di una missione di controspionaggio del Mossad. La parte più straordinaria è che grazie alla bravura di Roth durante la lettura fatichiamo a capire quali parti siano vere e quali siano romanzate...GENIALE!!!
La lettura non è facilissima, ma ne vale assolutamente la pena.
La lettura non è facilissima, ma ne vale assolutamente la pena.
July 8, 2016
Roth's two great themes are masturbation and his own fabulous success at having written a book about masturbation.
I don't mean that entirely as a knock. The first of these, at least, is obviously a very important subject. I'm of the opinion Portnoy's Complaint is one of the funniest books ever written. Still I feel like I pretty quickly reach a point of diminishing returns when I read Roth. His focus is just so narrow. In Operation Shylock he tries to branch out a little by bringing in the legacy of the Holocaust and Israeli politics, but history must always pass through the sieve of his ego. Philip Roth the universally beloved yet widely misunderstood novelist. The sexual hijinks here are pretty minimal. A few good rants, otherwise not much to liven things up.
I don't mean that entirely as a knock. The first of these, at least, is obviously a very important subject. I'm of the opinion Portnoy's Complaint is one of the funniest books ever written. Still I feel like I pretty quickly reach a point of diminishing returns when I read Roth. His focus is just so narrow. In Operation Shylock he tries to branch out a little by bringing in the legacy of the Holocaust and Israeli politics, but history must always pass through the sieve of his ego. Philip Roth the universally beloved yet widely misunderstood novelist. The sexual hijinks here are pretty minimal. A few good rants, otherwise not much to liven things up.
April 29, 2023
Philip Roth 90s Read Book 3: Operation Shylock: A Confession
Philip Roth is my favorite author. I’ve read all of his great stuff at this point, there are about 5 books I haven’t read and I’m not very motivated to read them because they are supposed to be comparatively minor. Therefore, since I have no more new Roth that I’m willing to read right now, I decided to do a reread of what I consider to be his greatest decade–and the greatest decade of any author ever–the 1990’s.
"'Where is Philip Roth?' I asked aloud. 'Where did he go?' I was not speaking histrionically. I asked because I wanted to know.'" - Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession
Philip Roth was called one of the "great male narcissists" by David Foster Wallace. I think that's unfair. Does a narcissist write a novel and choose to make himself the protagonist instead of an invented character? What if it's the third book in a row where he does that? What if he encounters several characters, every one of whom makes sure to comment on what an important author he is, says that he should have won the National Book Award for Portnoy's Complaint, says that he should probably have won the Nobel by now, says he's virtually the most important Jew on the planet? What if that author, who has chosen to make himself the protagonist of his novel, is singled out as uniquely special to carry out a spy mission for Israel, that no one else can do? How about if there is not one Philip Roth, but two Philip Roths, the second of which is inferior to the first Philip Roth in every conceivable way (except looks, we'll give him that) and has a huge inferiority complex toward the first Philip Roth? And then the first Philip Roth has sex with the other Philip Roth's wife because he is so irresistible? Is that author a great male narcissist? No, I think David Foster Wallace is being unfair.
Philip Roth is not a great male narcissist, he is the great male narcissist.
And what's great about all of that is that in Operation Shylock: A Confession Roth gleefully gives fully into all of his worst narcissistic instincts as an author and makes one of the most roaring, out and out insane books of his career, a comic masterpiece rife with ambiguous meaning and import.
Shylock begins with Roth discovering in the paper one day that he is apparently in Israel watching the trial of John Demjanjuk for being the infamous Treblinka concentration camp guard Ivan the Terrible, and extolling the virtues of "Diasporism": a mass exodus of Jews away from Israel back to Europe. Complicating this discovery is that Roth has recently recovered from a mental breakdown brought on by a psychiatric sleep medication that almost drove him to suicide. Philip is already slated to go to Israel to interview the author Aharon Appelfeld; his wife Claire Bloom strongly advises him to avoid anything having to do with the other Philip Roth. Of course, being the adherent of the absurd that he is-and a diligent disciple of Kafka and Dostoevsky--Roth cannot resist entwining himself with the other Roth. In Israel, he becomes wrapped up in a series of insane encounters with the other Roth, friends in Israel, authors, and spies.
My main reason for adoring this book is its pure insanity. With every turn, Roth is confronted with an encounter crazier than the last. He starts off with talking to himself, his double, and trying to figure out if he's lost his mind or if his double has lost his mind and what he could possibly want. After encountering an Arab friend he hasn't seen in 25 years, he ends up posing as his double, arguing why Diasporism is essential. On the way back from this visit he thinks he's being kidnapped when it turns out his taxi driver is just about to shit his pants. Then he's actually kidnapped by government agents and they turn out to be huge fans of his. Later, when he believes he's being followed by a government agent, the agent leans into his ear and quietly whispers, "want me to blow you?" to which Philip politely replies, "Oh, oh, no, thank you." After that it's your classic prosthetic penis sexual assault, invitation to participate in international espionage, and then writing a book out of the whole thing.
Phew.
Born out of this pure insanity, Roth explores themes of the line between both fiction and nonfiction and reality vs unreality. He's spent his whole career towing the line between autobiography and fiction to this point and with Shylock he just blows the whole thing wide open. There's a greater exploration of the absurdity of everyday life and how we're all confronted with stuff that just doesn't make sense and have to somehow integrate it into our autobiography. Speaking of insanity, there's also an exploration of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Roth has conversations with characters ranging in their views of who is right and who is wrong in this conflict, but the overall message seems to be the intractability and untenability of both the current situation and any semblance of a solution to what is happening. Roth paints a stirringly sympathetic portrait of Palestinians in his book; if doing that in America was as bold in 1991 as it is now, Roth must have been pretty brave. Roth's portrayal leads to one of those depressing realizations that the way things were in this 30-year-old book are more or less the way things are now, or potentially even worse. Overall, he does a fantastic job of exposing the madness at the heart of this conflict.
I think of Operation Shylock as a bit of a Roth deep cut. Even though it's a well-known book that won the Penn-Faulkner, it's not a great starting point for Roth. If you don't like Philip Roth, you are going to hate this book, because it lays all his excesses bare in their worst form. Another great male narcissist, John Updike, said the only person who would enjoy this book is Philip Roth. I'm glad he was wrong, because I read the whole thing smiling ear to ear. This is kind of a "for fans of Roth only" book, but for those fans, it is an absolute joy.
Philip Roth is my favorite author. I’ve read all of his great stuff at this point, there are about 5 books I haven’t read and I’m not very motivated to read them because they are supposed to be comparatively minor. Therefore, since I have no more new Roth that I’m willing to read right now, I decided to do a reread of what I consider to be his greatest decade–and the greatest decade of any author ever–the 1990’s.
"'Where is Philip Roth?' I asked aloud. 'Where did he go?' I was not speaking histrionically. I asked because I wanted to know.'" - Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession
Philip Roth was called one of the "great male narcissists" by David Foster Wallace. I think that's unfair. Does a narcissist write a novel and choose to make himself the protagonist instead of an invented character? What if it's the third book in a row where he does that? What if he encounters several characters, every one of whom makes sure to comment on what an important author he is, says that he should have won the National Book Award for Portnoy's Complaint, says that he should probably have won the Nobel by now, says he's virtually the most important Jew on the planet? What if that author, who has chosen to make himself the protagonist of his novel, is singled out as uniquely special to carry out a spy mission for Israel, that no one else can do? How about if there is not one Philip Roth, but two Philip Roths, the second of which is inferior to the first Philip Roth in every conceivable way (except looks, we'll give him that) and has a huge inferiority complex toward the first Philip Roth? And then the first Philip Roth has sex with the other Philip Roth's wife because he is so irresistible? Is that author a great male narcissist? No, I think David Foster Wallace is being unfair.
Philip Roth is not a great male narcissist, he is the great male narcissist.
And what's great about all of that is that in Operation Shylock: A Confession Roth gleefully gives fully into all of his worst narcissistic instincts as an author and makes one of the most roaring, out and out insane books of his career, a comic masterpiece rife with ambiguous meaning and import.
Shylock begins with Roth discovering in the paper one day that he is apparently in Israel watching the trial of John Demjanjuk for being the infamous Treblinka concentration camp guard Ivan the Terrible, and extolling the virtues of "Diasporism": a mass exodus of Jews away from Israel back to Europe. Complicating this discovery is that Roth has recently recovered from a mental breakdown brought on by a psychiatric sleep medication that almost drove him to suicide. Philip is already slated to go to Israel to interview the author Aharon Appelfeld; his wife Claire Bloom strongly advises him to avoid anything having to do with the other Philip Roth. Of course, being the adherent of the absurd that he is-and a diligent disciple of Kafka and Dostoevsky--Roth cannot resist entwining himself with the other Roth. In Israel, he becomes wrapped up in a series of insane encounters with the other Roth, friends in Israel, authors, and spies.
My main reason for adoring this book is its pure insanity. With every turn, Roth is confronted with an encounter crazier than the last. He starts off with talking to himself, his double, and trying to figure out if he's lost his mind or if his double has lost his mind and what he could possibly want. After encountering an Arab friend he hasn't seen in 25 years, he ends up posing as his double, arguing why Diasporism is essential. On the way back from this visit he thinks he's being kidnapped when it turns out his taxi driver is just about to shit his pants. Then he's actually kidnapped by government agents and they turn out to be huge fans of his. Later, when he believes he's being followed by a government agent, the agent leans into his ear and quietly whispers, "want me to blow you?" to which Philip politely replies, "Oh, oh, no, thank you." After that it's your classic prosthetic penis sexual assault, invitation to participate in international espionage, and then writing a book out of the whole thing.
Phew.
Born out of this pure insanity, Roth explores themes of the line between both fiction and nonfiction and reality vs unreality. He's spent his whole career towing the line between autobiography and fiction to this point and with Shylock he just blows the whole thing wide open. There's a greater exploration of the absurdity of everyday life and how we're all confronted with stuff that just doesn't make sense and have to somehow integrate it into our autobiography. Speaking of insanity, there's also an exploration of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Roth has conversations with characters ranging in their views of who is right and who is wrong in this conflict, but the overall message seems to be the intractability and untenability of both the current situation and any semblance of a solution to what is happening. Roth paints a stirringly sympathetic portrait of Palestinians in his book; if doing that in America was as bold in 1991 as it is now, Roth must have been pretty brave. Roth's portrayal leads to one of those depressing realizations that the way things were in this 30-year-old book are more or less the way things are now, or potentially even worse. Overall, he does a fantastic job of exposing the madness at the heart of this conflict.
I think of Operation Shylock as a bit of a Roth deep cut. Even though it's a well-known book that won the Penn-Faulkner, it's not a great starting point for Roth. If you don't like Philip Roth, you are going to hate this book, because it lays all his excesses bare in their worst form. Another great male narcissist, John Updike, said the only person who would enjoy this book is Philip Roth. I'm glad he was wrong, because I read the whole thing smiling ear to ear. This is kind of a "for fans of Roth only" book, but for those fans, it is an absolute joy.
August 4, 2021
«Non ha occhi un ebreo? Non ha mani, organi, statura, sensi, affetti, passioni? Non si nutre anche lui di cibo? Non sente anche lui le ferite? Non è soggetto anche lui ai malanni e sanato dalle medicine, scaldato e gelato anche lui dall'estate e dall'inverno come un cristiano? Se ci pungete non diamo sangue, noi? Se ci fate il solletico, non ridiamo? Se ci avvelenate non moriamo?»
Inevitabilmente, lungo tutto questo viaggio che salta dalla fiction alla non fiction con una facilità disarmante, ho ripensato alle parole del Mercante di Venezia. Oltre al titolo, infatti, ciò che riporta alla mente questa invettiva è anche il modo in cui Roth analizza - come e più che in altri romanzi - cosa significa essere Ebrei. L’eredità dell’Olocausto, la creazione di Israele e la conseguente lotta senza quartiere con i Palestinesi, le situazioni di spionaggio e controspionaggio con il Mossad, il processo al presunto boia di Treblinka. E fin qui, il vero. Ma altrettanto interessante è quella che il nostro scrittore, protagonista in prima persona della vicenda, fa passare per finzione. Moishe Pipik (che geniale soprannome), suo sosia sempre al limite dell’irrealtà, della pura creazione letteraria, della farsa da commedia teatrale; Wanda Jinx, femme fatale, antisemita militante e poi membro fondatore della A.A, Anonima Antisemiti al fine di redimersi; Smilesburger, enigmatico agente del Mossad che vuole reclutare Philip - l’originale - per una assurda missione; e ancora George Ziad, Ahaaron, Shmuel e tanti altri.
Una galleria di personaggi grotteschi, a tratti caricaturali ma che confermano la potenza affabulatoria di Roth, il quale dà il meglio di sé quando parla di se stesso - vere o false che siano le notizie -, della sua condizione di scrittore, del rapporto con la creazione artistica. Operazione Shylock è sì, insomma, una confessione, ma una confessione relativa non a una mera spy story, bensì alla condizione di un uomo, di un popolo, di uno Stato - Israele - verso il quale l’autore non nasconde innumerevoli note di biasimo (vedi il discorso relativo all’Ebreo israeliano che non vale quelli della diaspora, soprattutto Americani).
Chi è, dunque, Shylock? Una vittima disprezzata e vituperata dai goyim (gentili) o un approfittatore che incarna il peggio dell’Ebraismo? Tutto pare condurre a una metriotes che, a quanto pare, si ritrova in pochissimi esponenti del Giudaismo, divisi tra odio e vittimismo e poco capaci di adottare una posizione che si trovi nel mezzo. Roth, però, pare riuscirci, e attraverso questa specie di romanzo picaresco, ci svela tutte le contraddizioni - insolute chissà ancora per quanto - di un Paese e di una religione, dei suoi rapporti con l’Altro e con il Simile, della difficile relazione con un passato terribile e ingombrante (e Demjanjuk, reale esecutore o capro espiatorio degli orrori di Treblinka, lo testimonia).
Per concludere, Roth ancora promosso a pieni voti, e romanzo che va ad occupare un posto essenziale, a mio avviso, nella sua produzione.
Inevitabilmente, lungo tutto questo viaggio che salta dalla fiction alla non fiction con una facilità disarmante, ho ripensato alle parole del Mercante di Venezia. Oltre al titolo, infatti, ciò che riporta alla mente questa invettiva è anche il modo in cui Roth analizza - come e più che in altri romanzi - cosa significa essere Ebrei. L’eredità dell’Olocausto, la creazione di Israele e la conseguente lotta senza quartiere con i Palestinesi, le situazioni di spionaggio e controspionaggio con il Mossad, il processo al presunto boia di Treblinka. E fin qui, il vero. Ma altrettanto interessante è quella che il nostro scrittore, protagonista in prima persona della vicenda, fa passare per finzione. Moishe Pipik (che geniale soprannome), suo sosia sempre al limite dell’irrealtà, della pura creazione letteraria, della farsa da commedia teatrale; Wanda Jinx, femme fatale, antisemita militante e poi membro fondatore della A.A, Anonima Antisemiti al fine di redimersi; Smilesburger, enigmatico agente del Mossad che vuole reclutare Philip - l’originale - per una assurda missione; e ancora George Ziad, Ahaaron, Shmuel e tanti altri.
Una galleria di personaggi grotteschi, a tratti caricaturali ma che confermano la potenza affabulatoria di Roth, il quale dà il meglio di sé quando parla di se stesso - vere o false che siano le notizie -, della sua condizione di scrittore, del rapporto con la creazione artistica. Operazione Shylock è sì, insomma, una confessione, ma una confessione relativa non a una mera spy story, bensì alla condizione di un uomo, di un popolo, di uno Stato - Israele - verso il quale l’autore non nasconde innumerevoli note di biasimo (vedi il discorso relativo all’Ebreo israeliano che non vale quelli della diaspora, soprattutto Americani).
Chi è, dunque, Shylock? Una vittima disprezzata e vituperata dai goyim (gentili) o un approfittatore che incarna il peggio dell’Ebraismo? Tutto pare condurre a una metriotes che, a quanto pare, si ritrova in pochissimi esponenti del Giudaismo, divisi tra odio e vittimismo e poco capaci di adottare una posizione che si trovi nel mezzo. Roth, però, pare riuscirci, e attraverso questa specie di romanzo picaresco, ci svela tutte le contraddizioni - insolute chissà ancora per quanto - di un Paese e di una religione, dei suoi rapporti con l’Altro e con il Simile, della difficile relazione con un passato terribile e ingombrante (e Demjanjuk, reale esecutore o capro espiatorio degli orrori di Treblinka, lo testimonia).
Per concludere, Roth ancora promosso a pieni voti, e romanzo che va ad occupare un posto essenziale, a mio avviso, nella sua produzione.
January 1, 2017
Philip Roth reads in the NYTimes that Philip Roth is leading a movement to create a new Diaspora to repatriate Israel’s Ashkenazi Jews to their counties of origin. Roth was headed to Israel for an interview so planned to see what was up with this. Roth found that the Diaspora advocate not only has his name, he looks like him.
The plot is mad cap. It has the clever twists and the apt phrasings Roth is famous for but delivers no out loud laughs or fully comic scenes.
The setting is the late 1980’s with backdrops of the first Intifada and the trial of John Demjanjuk. Roth’s Israel is a cauldron of intrigue, soldiers (some willing and some not so willing) spies (and double agents) and duplicitous "friends".
Characters, such as the Roth imposter, his girlfriend Jinx, George Ziad and Mr. Smilesburger have feasible back-stories that explain why they are in Israel doing what they are doing. Without spoiling the ending, suffice it to say, their actions towards the end don’t fully fit the personalities.
Most irritating about the characters is their long-winded (going on for pages) speeches. Most have a very narrow focus: i.e. Irving Berlin secularized Christmas and Easter with his iconic songs. Jews should only speak well of other Jews (losbon bora). Jews are great achievers, except for Jews living in Israel so they need their home culture to thrive, which is the heart of the (imposter Roth’s) Diaspora proposal.
There is the Roth view of women, which leads to sex (it just happens); the irrelevance of which is seen in that there are no ramifications for the characters or implications for the plot. There is a dark portrait of Israel and the Israeli people. The ending was - I’ll leave it at - unsatisfying.
In the hands of most other writers this would be a total wreck. The plot is clever but the ending is - shall we say - nothing. The book has some redeeming prose, but the soliloquies are even wordier than an already wordy book. I did keep reading which is very unusual for a book that I rate a 2.
The plot is mad cap. It has the clever twists and the apt phrasings Roth is famous for but delivers no out loud laughs or fully comic scenes.
The setting is the late 1980’s with backdrops of the first Intifada and the trial of John Demjanjuk. Roth’s Israel is a cauldron of intrigue, soldiers (some willing and some not so willing) spies (and double agents) and duplicitous "friends".
Characters, such as the Roth imposter, his girlfriend Jinx, George Ziad and Mr. Smilesburger have feasible back-stories that explain why they are in Israel doing what they are doing. Without spoiling the ending, suffice it to say, their actions towards the end don’t fully fit the personalities.
Most irritating about the characters is their long-winded (going on for pages) speeches. Most have a very narrow focus: i.e. Irving Berlin secularized Christmas and Easter with his iconic songs. Jews should only speak well of other Jews (losbon bora). Jews are great achievers, except for Jews living in Israel so they need their home culture to thrive, which is the heart of the (imposter Roth’s) Diaspora proposal.
There is the Roth view of women, which leads to sex (it just happens); the irrelevance of which is seen in that there are no ramifications for the characters or implications for the plot. There is a dark portrait of Israel and the Israeli people. The ending was - I’ll leave it at - unsatisfying.
In the hands of most other writers this would be a total wreck. The plot is clever but the ending is - shall we say - nothing. The book has some redeeming prose, but the soliloquies are even wordier than an already wordy book. I did keep reading which is very unusual for a book that I rate a 2.
December 6, 2008
It says something about American political culture that “Operation Shylock” is Roth’s most controversial work. The sexual transgressions no longer warrant mention in major reviews (even the veiled necrophilia of “Sabbath’s Theater” goes without a rebuke) and anti-NY intellectual jeremiads have long since migrated to legacy admission neo-conservatives. Yet, a satire of American Jews’ relationship to Israel still can bring the gears of the New York Review of Books grinding to a halt. Roth’s books are sometimes best thought of as a thematic, rather than character, set. “Operation Shylock” fits into a “Diaspora writers” series that includes the Israeli incidents in “Portnoy’s Complaint,” “The Counterlife,” and many of the interviews in “Shop Talk.” The satire of “Shylock” only works, because Roth captures the basic crescendos and rhythms of the unwilling spy story; there is no winking or nodding in this book, just Special Agent Roth, doppelganger hunter.
November 18, 2015
Perhaps Roth's best book, and definitely the best novel about modern Israel to date. Frustrating, dense and unapologetically complicated, Roth rewards patient readers with a multilayered satire about identity, embodiment and rhetoric.
It's a sprawling epic, a tour de force in the best possible tradition. I've read it half a dozen times, got a quote from it tattooed on my arm, spent thousands of dissertation words getting to grips with it - and I still love it beyond reason.
For those new to Roth, 'The Counterlife' is probably a better introduction to the kind of ideas that Roth is playing around with here, but this novel/autobiography/confession stands up brilliantly on its own regardless. Just don't expect an easy ride!
Set aside a weekend and give it a shot. Even if you hate it (and many do), you won't finish it without having spent a lot of time thinking about it.
It's a sprawling epic, a tour de force in the best possible tradition. I've read it half a dozen times, got a quote from it tattooed on my arm, spent thousands of dissertation words getting to grips with it - and I still love it beyond reason.
For those new to Roth, 'The Counterlife' is probably a better introduction to the kind of ideas that Roth is playing around with here, but this novel/autobiography/confession stands up brilliantly on its own regardless. Just don't expect an easy ride!
Set aside a weekend and give it a shot. Even if you hate it (and many do), you won't finish it without having spent a lot of time thinking about it.
November 23, 2008
Everything about this book proves why I love Philip Roth's writing, i.e. humor, use of the English language, provocation to thinking, relevance to the modern world.
February 17, 2023
Un'architettura straordinaria
sottoscrivo il suo Nobel sono i suoi lettori
sottoscrivo il suo Nobel sono i suoi lettori
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