The Double, Comic Irony, and Postmodernism in Philip Roth's 'Operation Shylock.'(Ethnic Humor)

Critics have praised Roth as one of major Jewish American novelists, together with Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow. Reviewers often compare Roth's style to that of stand-up comic. His career has been summarized as starting in 1959 as comic realist, Theodore Dreiser meets Jackie Mason, and culminating in something much more postmodern, deconstructionists meet Jackie Mason. Roth's early, realistic novels (Goodbye Columbus, 1959; When She Was Good, 1967; Portnoy's Complaint, 1969) and his political and social satires (Our Gang, 1971; The Great American Novel, 1973) are more traditional than his novels of 80s and 90s (The Ghost Writer, 1979; Zuckerman Unbound, 1981; The Anatomy Lesson, 1983; The Prague Orgy, 1985; The Counterlife, 1987; Deception, 1990; Operation Shylock, 1993; Sabbath's Theater, 1995). The subject matter of later novels is comic handling of fictional systems themselves. Novels engage in postmodern experimentation with multiple narrators in terms of their comic consciousness of their own fictivity. These novels explore all possible ways of doing narrative, as well as connection between told and teller (exhibiting Roth's playfully comic use of details from his own life and even use of his own name, as in Deception and Operation Shylock). Roth's comedy and satire are often directed at Jews and their customs. His use of Jewish stereotypes for scathing humor has alienated and angered some members of Jewish community shaken by Holocaust. The eminent critic Irving Howe, in Philip Roth Reconsidered, called Portnoy's Complaint a vulgar book (77) and denounced Roth's shallow treatment of jewish life. The essay set tone for criticism by Jewish citizenry, which was enraged by Roth's use of offensive traits for hyperbolic comedy, e.g., materialism in Goodbye Columbus; sexual preoccupation in Portnoy's Complaint; vitriolic quarreling in Operation Shylock; scandalous philandering in Sabbath's Theater. Roth's fiction, his interviews, and his essays (many collected in Reading Myself and Others [19751)(1) touch on comic connection between writer's life experiences and creative process. Treating writer's predicament with humor, narrator in Deception observes: write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction...let them decide what it is or it isn't (190). In many respects, Roth's novels are examples of metafiction; that is, their subject is creative process itself. This metafictional preoccupation with creative process has become popular with postmodern writers like William Gass (especially in In Heart of Heart of Country [19681) and John Hawkes (especially in Second Skin [1964]). Postmodern novelists usually mix genres -- history, fiction, non-fiction, film -- and they delight in exploring contrarieties and confusion of twentieth century society. They are encyclopedic in scope, utilizing details from elite and from popular culture. And they show an antirationalist and an antirealist emphasis, as they look to word, or, as William Gass explains, the world within word,(12) to determine metareality. Meaning, if it exists at all, exists only in words and structure we impose on language. Roth, like other postmodern novelists, uses comic irony to mock rational methods of solving contemporary problems, particularly problems with regard to traditional Jewish issues that people hold dear. In Operation Shylock, we laugh at reductio ad absurdum of farcical escapades of protagonist Roth and his double, or alter ego, Moishe Pipik as they meet with Israelis and Arabs in various homes and secret quarters and streets. The actions amuse us and ease our anxiety over topsy-turvy quality of Roth's Post World War II society and ours. And, for while, we believe that this novel's polemical orientation, like that of other postmodern fiction (e. …