Operation Shylock
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''Operation Shylock: A Confession'' is a 1993 novel by American novelist
Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) 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 philosophicall ...
.


Plot

The novel follows narrator "Philip Roth" on a journey to
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, where he attends the trial of accused war criminal
John Demjanjuk John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, M ...
and becomes involved in an intelligence mission—the "Operation Shylock" of the title. While in Israel, the narrator seeks out an impersonator who has appropriated his identity—sharing the same facial features and name as Philip Roth—and used this celebrity to spread " Diasporism," a counter-
Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
ideology advocating the return of Israeli Jews to their European nations of exile. The ensuing struggle between this doppelgänger-like stranger and "Roth," played against the backdrop of the Demjanjuk trial and the
First Intifada The First Intifada, or First Palestinian Intifada (also known simply as the intifada or intifadah),The word ''intifada'' () is an Arabic word meaning "uprising". Its strict Arabic transliteration is '. was a sustained series of Palestinian ...
, constitutes the book's primary storyline.


Connections

A major concern of Roth's fiction since the 1970s has been the relationship between a novelist's life and work. Though this topic is thoroughly explored in Roth's series of
Zuckerman Zuckermann or Zuckerman is a Yiddish or German surname meaning "sugar man". Zuckermann * Ariel Zuckermann (born 1973), Israeli conductor * Benedict Zuckermann (1818–1891), a German scientist born at Breslau * Ghil'ad Zuckermann (born 1971), an I ...
novels, ''Operation Shylock'' even more radically attacks the distinction between art and life by making a fairly
mimetic Mimesis (; grc, μίμησις, ''mīmēsis'') is a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings, including '' imitatio'', imitation, nonsensuous similarity, receptivity, representation, mimicry, the ...
version of the author the protagonist of an obviously invented (though plausible) story. Despite this effort, separating the real from the fictional in ''Operation Shylock'' is not wholly impossible. For example, several minor characters from the novel are actual people including
John Demjanjuk John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, M ...
, Claire Bloom, and Israeli writer and Roth friend
Aharon Appelfeld Aharon Appelfeld ( he, אהרן אפלפלד; born Ervin Appelfeld; February 16, 1932 – January 4, 2018) was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor. Biography Ervin Appelfeld was born in Jadova Commune, Storojineț County, in the Bukovina ...
. The
post-operative Surgery ''cheirourgikē'' (composed of χείρ, "hand", and ἔργον, "work"), via la, chirurgiae, meaning "hand work". is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a person to investigate or treat a pat ...
nervous breakdown mentioned in the prologue and in other books by or about Roth was drawn from Roth's real-life experience of the temporary
side-effect In medicine, a side effect is an effect, whether therapeutic or adverse, that is secondary to the one intended; although the term is predominantly employed to describe adverse effects, it can also apply to beneficial, but unintended, consequence ...
s of a
post-operative Surgery ''cheirourgikē'' (composed of χείρ, "hand", and ἔργον, "work"), via la, chirurgiae, meaning "hand work". is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a person to investigate or treat a pat ...
sedative A sedative or tranquilliser is a substance that induces sedation by reducing irritability or excitement. They are CNS depressants and interact with brain activity causing its deceleration. Various kinds of sedatives can be distinguished, but t ...
( triazolam) which was later banned in several countries after discovery that the
manufacturer Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a ran ...
had not published studies showing a high risk of short term psychiatric disturbance.


Roth's "confession"

In March 1993, Roth maintained the veracity of his novel to ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
Esther B. Fein, who wrote, "''Operation Shylock'', Roth insists with a post-modern straight face, is a 'confession,' not a novel, and he means for us to take this every bit as seriously as the contents labels demanded by the strictures of the Food and Drug Administration. 'The book is true,' Roth said the other day. 'As you know, at the end of the book a
Mossad Mossad ( , ), ; ar, الموساد, al-Mōsād, ; , short for ( he, המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, links=no), meaning 'Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations'. is the national intelligence agency ...
operative made me realize it was in my interest to say this book was fiction. And I became quite convinced that it was in my interest to do that. So I added the note to the reader as I was asked to do. I'm just a good Mossadnik.'"


Reception

Roth's long-time professional acquaintance
John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...
gave the novel a famously caustic review in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''. Updike found the book "an orgy of argumentation...this hard-pressed reviewer was reminded not only of
Shaw Shaw may refer to: Places Australia *Shaw, Queensland Canada *Shaw Street, a street in Toronto England *Shaw, Berkshire, a village *Shaw, Greater Manchester, a location in the parish of Shaw and Crompton *Shaw, Swindon, a List of United Kingdom ...
but of ''Hamlet'', which also has too many characters, numerous long speeches, and a vacillating, maddening hero who in the end shows the right stuff." Updike closed with the admonition, "It should be read by anyone who cares about (1) Israel and its repercussions, (2) the development of the postmodern, deconstruction-minded novel, (3) Philip Roth." In ''
The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', novelist and poet
D. M. Thomas Donald Michael Thomas (born 27 January 1935), is a British poet, translator, novelist, editor, biographer and playwright. His work has been translated into 30 languages. Working primarily as a poet throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Thomas's 1981 ...
called the novel "an impassioned quarrel...Despite the seriousness of its theme, the book carries the feeling of creative joy. One feels that Roth feels that he's ''let rip.''" The novel appears to have grown in stature since publication. In 2006, when ''New York Times Book Review'' editor Sam Tanenhaus mailed a short letter to "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors," asking that they identify the best work of American fiction published in the preceding quarter-century, several respondents named ''Operation Shylock.'' (The eventual winner was
Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...
's 1987 ''
Beloved Beloved may refer to: Books * ''Beloved'' (novel), a 1987 novel by Toni Morrison * ''The Beloved'' (Faulkner novel), a 2012 novel by Australian author Annah Faulkner *''Beloved'', a 1993 historical romance about Zenobia, by Bertrice Small Film ...
''.) Reporting upon Roth's reception of the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, critic Jonathan Derbyshire of the ''
New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...
'' wrote, "The judging panel make the inevitable reference in their summing-up to Roth's extraordinary fecundity over the past 15 years or so, at a stage in his life when 'most novelists are in decline'. The most notable fruits of Roth's Indian summer, 1995's ''
Sabbath's Theater ''Sabbath's Theater'' is a novel by Philip Roth about the exploits of 64-year-old Mickey Sabbath. It won the 1995 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. The cover is a detail of ''Sailor and Girl'' (1925) by German painter Otto Dix. Summary and t ...
'' and ''
American Pastoral ''American Pastoral'' is a Philip Roth novel published in 1997 concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a successful Jewish American businessman and former high school star athlete from Newark, New Jersey. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle cla ...
'', published two years later, are certainly among his most luminous achievements. But two slightly earlier novels stand out for me, both of them hectically metafictional works partly set in Israel: ''
The Counterlife ''The Counterlife'' (1986) is a novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the fourth full-length novel to feature the fictional novelist Nathan Zuckerman. When ''The Counterlife'' was published, Zuckerman had most recently appeared in a no ...
'' (1986) and ''Operation Shylock''." After Roth's passing, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' asked several prominent writers to name their favorite book by him.
Daniel Mendelsohn Daniel Mendelsohn (born 1960), is an American author, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator. Best known for his internationally best-selling and award-winning Holocaust family memoir The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, he is curre ...
cast his vote for ''Operation Shylock'', writing: "Here, the coruscating linguistic brilliance, the profanity and playfulness (and the deep, often irritated engagement with Jewishness) that characterizes his earlier novels rise to new — and, I would say, philosophical — heights. For the two Roths finally meet in a Jerusalem that is anxiously hosting the trial of John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian-born Ohio autoworker who was revealed to have been a sadistic guard at a Nazi death camp: a setting that amplifies the significance of Roth’s favorite themes of identity and imposture, truth and fictionality, and gives the ostensibly zany, Quixote''-''esque plot an ultimately tragic historical resonance."


Awards

''Operation Shylock'' received the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel.''The Associated Press'', "Philip Roth Wins Literary Award," February 26, 2007. (For his novel '' Everyman.'' "Roth is the first three-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner, having received it in 1994 for ''Operation Shylock'' and in 2001 for ''The Human Stain''.") Roth would eventually become the first three-time winner of the award: for ''Shylock'', 2001's '' The Human Stain'', and 2007's '' Everyman''.


References


External links


Roth on ''Operation Shylock'' in ''The New York Times''


{{PhilipRoth 1993 American novels Novels by Philip Roth Metafictional novels Novels set in Israel American spy novels Simon & Schuster books PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction-winning works