Operation Shylock, by Philip Roth
Simon & Shuster, 1993
If Woody Allen made a movie about himself in Israel in 1988, poking at the Jewish post-WWII existence, it might go something like this.
Operation Shylock, by Philip Roth
Dear Philip,
I enraged you/you blitzed me. Every word I spoke--stupid/wrong/unnatural. Had to be. Been dreading/dreaming this meeting since 1959. Saw your photo on Goodbye, Columbus/knew that my life would never be the same. Explained to everyone we were two different people/had no desire to be anyone but myself/wanted MY fate/hoped your first book would be your last/wanted you to fail and disappear/thought constantly about your dying. IT WAS NOT WITHOUT RESISTANCE THAT I ACCEPTED MY ROLE: THE NAKED YOU/THE MESSIANIC YOU/THE SACRIFICIAL YOU. MY JEWISH PASSIONS SHIELDED BY NOTHING. MY JEWISH LOVING UNRESTRAINED.
LET ME EXIST. Do not destroy me to preserve your good name. I AM YOUR GOOD NAME. I am only spending the renown you hoard. You hide yourself in lonely rooms/country recluse.anonymous expatriate/garreted monk. Never spent it as you should/might/wouldn't/couldn't: IN BEHALF OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. Please! Allow me to be the public instrument through which you express the love for the Jews/the hatred for their enemies/that is in every word you ever wrote. WITHOUT LEGAL INTERVENTION.
Judge me not by words but by the woman who bears this letter. To you I say everything stupidly. Judge me not by awkward words which falsify everything I feel/know. Around you I will never be a smith with words. See beyond words. I am not the writer/I am something else. I AM THE YOU THAT IS NOT WORDS.
Yours,
Philip Roth
This was my introduction to Philip Roth, and I'm not sure whether Operation Shylock is typical of his work, but the man has boxes in his closet you don't want to see opened. The book is a novel pretending to be an autobiography pretending to be a novel. I found it in the fiction section, with the usual disclaimer stating that it is fiction and not to be considered as a true story, and so I'll take him at his word...but the rest of the book is a first person tale in which the narrator, the writer Philip Roth encounters a stalker pretending to be Philip Roth, in Israel, and then the real Roth writes about it but says that, for reasons of Israeili security he's writing the true story as a novel and pretending it is fiction. Of course, in reality, for all we know, you are a butterfly dreaming about reading my blog concerning a Philip Roth novel. It's that kind of book.
The stalker, whose real name Roth never learns, has been making public statements urging Jewish holocaust survivors in Israel to go back to Europe to save the Jewish people from being wiped out when, inevitably, the Arab countries nuke Israel. This is not the real Roth's view, and he wants it stopped. Rather than talk to the media or the lawyers or the cops about it, Roth goes to Israel to take care of it himself, all the while wondering why he didn't just call the lawyers/press/police. It would make so much sense, but it wouldn't advance the plot of the story, or allow Roth to confront "Roth" and listen to the first of many long, long monologues that various characters give him. There are long rants from Zionist Jews, rants from anti-Zionist Jews, rants from reformed anti semites, rants from anti semites, rants from sympathizers of the Palestinians and rants from the Israeli police. Poor Roth is lucky he gets to put his thoughts on the printed page afterwards, 'cause he never seems to get a word in edgewise.
As Roth interacts with his impersonator, his impersonator's girlfriend, and people who mistake him for the Roth that the other guy is pretending to be, he begins to doubt his own identity. This part may be intended as a philosophical commentary on identity; the effect it had on me was to make me figure Roth had gone crazy. In the midst of Roth's identity crisis are episodes from the ongoing Palestinian Intifada of the late 1980s and the war crimes trial of John Demjanjuk, alleged to be "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, and whose defense that they have the wrong man on trial allows Roth to say more things about identity--what it means to be accountable for a crime 40 years in the past, what it means to be a conquering people after centuries of oppression, what it means to be Jewish in the first place. The self-conscious use of deadpan "Jewish schmuck from New York" humor alongside such topics as holocaust atrocities and allegations of Israeli Apartheid treatment of Palestinians is jarring, not the least because Roth keeps interjecting with words to the effect that he feels jarred too, just thinking these thoughts.
Bottom line: I recommend it, though it's not for everybody. Roth has plenty to say, and asks the right questions without offering answers. Definitely an original, one-of-a-kind work.
If Woody Allen made a movie about himself in Israel in 1988, poking at the Jewish post-WWII existence, it might go something like this.
Operation Shylock, by Philip Roth
Dear Philip,
I enraged you/you blitzed me. Every word I spoke--stupid/wrong/unnatural. Had to be. Been dreading/dreaming this meeting since 1959. Saw your photo on Goodbye, Columbus/knew that my life would never be the same. Explained to everyone we were two different people/had no desire to be anyone but myself/wanted MY fate/hoped your first book would be your last/wanted you to fail and disappear/thought constantly about your dying. IT WAS NOT WITHOUT RESISTANCE THAT I ACCEPTED MY ROLE: THE NAKED YOU/THE MESSIANIC YOU/THE SACRIFICIAL YOU. MY JEWISH PASSIONS SHIELDED BY NOTHING. MY JEWISH LOVING UNRESTRAINED.
LET ME EXIST. Do not destroy me to preserve your good name. I AM YOUR GOOD NAME. I am only spending the renown you hoard. You hide yourself in lonely rooms/country recluse.anonymous expatriate/garreted monk. Never spent it as you should/might/wouldn't/couldn't: IN BEHALF OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. Please! Allow me to be the public instrument through which you express the love for the Jews/the hatred for their enemies/that is in every word you ever wrote. WITHOUT LEGAL INTERVENTION.
Judge me not by words but by the woman who bears this letter. To you I say everything stupidly. Judge me not by awkward words which falsify everything I feel/know. Around you I will never be a smith with words. See beyond words. I am not the writer/I am something else. I AM THE YOU THAT IS NOT WORDS.
Yours,
Philip Roth
This was my introduction to Philip Roth, and I'm not sure whether Operation Shylock is typical of his work, but the man has boxes in his closet you don't want to see opened. The book is a novel pretending to be an autobiography pretending to be a novel. I found it in the fiction section, with the usual disclaimer stating that it is fiction and not to be considered as a true story, and so I'll take him at his word...but the rest of the book is a first person tale in which the narrator, the writer Philip Roth encounters a stalker pretending to be Philip Roth, in Israel, and then the real Roth writes about it but says that, for reasons of Israeili security he's writing the true story as a novel and pretending it is fiction. Of course, in reality, for all we know, you are a butterfly dreaming about reading my blog concerning a Philip Roth novel. It's that kind of book.
The stalker, whose real name Roth never learns, has been making public statements urging Jewish holocaust survivors in Israel to go back to Europe to save the Jewish people from being wiped out when, inevitably, the Arab countries nuke Israel. This is not the real Roth's view, and he wants it stopped. Rather than talk to the media or the lawyers or the cops about it, Roth goes to Israel to take care of it himself, all the while wondering why he didn't just call the lawyers/press/police. It would make so much sense, but it wouldn't advance the plot of the story, or allow Roth to confront "Roth" and listen to the first of many long, long monologues that various characters give him. There are long rants from Zionist Jews, rants from anti-Zionist Jews, rants from reformed anti semites, rants from anti semites, rants from sympathizers of the Palestinians and rants from the Israeli police. Poor Roth is lucky he gets to put his thoughts on the printed page afterwards, 'cause he never seems to get a word in edgewise.
As Roth interacts with his impersonator, his impersonator's girlfriend, and people who mistake him for the Roth that the other guy is pretending to be, he begins to doubt his own identity. This part may be intended as a philosophical commentary on identity; the effect it had on me was to make me figure Roth had gone crazy. In the midst of Roth's identity crisis are episodes from the ongoing Palestinian Intifada of the late 1980s and the war crimes trial of John Demjanjuk, alleged to be "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, and whose defense that they have the wrong man on trial allows Roth to say more things about identity--what it means to be accountable for a crime 40 years in the past, what it means to be a conquering people after centuries of oppression, what it means to be Jewish in the first place. The self-conscious use of deadpan "Jewish schmuck from New York" humor alongside such topics as holocaust atrocities and allegations of Israeli Apartheid treatment of Palestinians is jarring, not the least because Roth keeps interjecting with words to the effect that he feels jarred too, just thinking these thoughts.
Bottom line: I recommend it, though it's not for everybody. Roth has plenty to say, and asks the right questions without offering answers. Definitely an original, one-of-a-kind work.