“If all the intelligence agencies in the world were abolished overnight, there would still be Pipiks aplenty to complicate and wreck people’s orderly lives. Self-employed, nonessential nudniks whose purpose is simply balagan, meaningless mayhem, a mess, are probably rooted more deeply in reality than are those who are only dedicated, as you and I are, to coherent, essential, and lofty goals. Let’s not waste any more frenzied dreaming on the mystery of irrationality. It needs no explanation. There is something frighteningly absent from life. One gets from someone like your Moishe Pipik a faint idea of all that’s missing. This revelation one must learn to endure without venerating it with fantasy. Let us move on. Let us be serious.”[1]
Introduction
The Postmodern writer is a mischief-maker: he plays with all expectations of literary form, of the suspension of belief required by art, of the stability of morality and of the solidity of truth. In Operation Shylock, Roth[2]’s method of play to erase the unified narrative voice through creating doubles, and doubles of doubles, to construct a dialogue that destabilises all of the reader’s certainties. However, in a move that runs countercurrent to most Postmodern literature, Roth refuses to abandon himself to this relativism. This is expressed on page 393, when Philip asks Smilesburger, “Isn’t that the message? The unsureness of everything” to which Smilesburger replies, “The message of your book? I wouldn’t say so.”
Roth achieves his mischief-making largely through the character of Pipik, the self-identified double of Philip.
What is Pipik?
On page 389, Smilesburger claims that,
Pipik is the product of perhaps the most powerful of all the senseless influences on human affairs and that is Pipikism, the antitragic force that inconsequentializes everything – farcicalizes everything, trivializes everything, superfictializes everything – our sufferings as Jews not excluded.
Pipik is the troublemaker in the novel, he sets in motion the comedy of errors that makes the novel seem farcical. He is the single most absurd and unbelievable element of the story - and the most obvious literary construction (there could be no Pipik were there no Secret Sharer in Conrad, or Double in Dosteovsky and so on – the doppelganger is a typical and recognisable figure in literature). He seems to be a character that simply begs a psychoanalytic reading[3]: his penile implant (which is both the symbolic phallus and the fear of castration), the displacement of Philip’s anxieties onto him (Philip says that he sees the sick version of himself when he looks at Philip – the Halycon-induced neurotic), his “protean” nature (reminiscent of the id) and the fact that he is neutralised only when he is re-integrated into the self (when Philip sleeps with Jinx, and finally when Philip calls him “Philip Roth”, at which point he disappears from the narrative). Pipik is, in short, the main reason that the reader is inclined to reject the novel as fact and read it instead as fiction: since fiction supplies the means to interpret him. Pipik is therefore not a troublemaker only because of his activities in the plot, but because of his continual fictionalising of it, against which Philip continually struggles to reassert authenticity.
Not only Philip, but all of the “Philip Roth” personae actively argue for the novel to be read as non-fiction: Pipik becomes angry when Philip attempts to impose “readings” on him (“Is this the way [writers] all think? That out there everybody is playing? Man!” p. 199). The psychoanalytic reading is similarly one that the reader is compelled not to take seriously, firstly because Roth has expressed his distrust of essentialising paradigms[4], and secondly because of Pipik’s own rejection of being “read” and his insistence on his unique personhood (through, for instance, the narrating of his own biography[5]). Furthermore, the psychoanalytic dimension of Pipik becomes a source of comedy; his fake erection labeled “Aristophanic”[6]. The interactions between the two characters are always hysterical, alternating between horror and laughter, and become the most highly charged during the scenes when they alternatively inhabit the same hotel room, that is, when the two identities are forced into the same psychic space. When Philip laughs at Pipik (which he does more than once in the course of the novel) it is when his fear of him is neutralized and he sees Pipik as harmless.[7] As a general rule, Philip laughs at Pipik whenever Pipik reveals himself to be different to Philip – the laughter therefore arises from relief, and is expressive of Philip’s temporary realization that fiction is fiction, but that he is a real and whole person. A relief, of course, that is quickly destabilized yet again as the plot becomes increasingly absurd, increasingly fictive.
The fictiveness/non-fictiveness of the novel is further confused in the bookend statements to the reader: the entity who authorizes the “Preface” is “P.R.”, and the “Note to the Reader” should traditionally also be the voice of Roth, even though they make opposite claims (the “Preface” claims that the book is fact, the “Note” claims that the book is fiction). However, even these become the sites of play: the “Note to the Reader” closes with the sentence, “This confession is false”, with the deliberate ambiguity that “confession” could refer to the entire novel (as designated in its subtitle; the novelistic genre) or to the “confession” (as in a religious confession after a sin, or after mischief) that is the “Note to the Reader” itself. What is labeled a confession of mischief therefore only creates more mischief and confusion, and it becomes unclear if these, too, are part of the fiction body of the text. This tension ultimately produces a comic effect – there is simply no other appropriate response to our confounding bafflement, as the plot becomes increasingly absurd, and is simultaneously increasingly authenticated[8]. The novel plays with the reader’s certainties through fiction-making, and the simultaneous “confession” of that fiction-making, followed by the reassertion that the fiction is true. Pipik is not the only “mischief maker”, Philip is one too. Roth is one too[9].
Roth, in an essay for the New York times entitled “A Bit of Jewish Mischief”[10], claims that the character of Pipik was inspired by a real-life impersonator: “In January 1989 … A man of my age, bearing an uncanny resemblance to me and calling himself Philip Roth, turned up in Jerusalem shortly before I did.[11]” Since Roth is a self-“confessed” mischief-maker, there is no guarantee that he is being more honest here than in the novel; he even warns us that the event “had the unmistakable signposts of the impossible”. Whether Pipik was a real person (not metaphorically real, or a real part of Roth’s psyche, but a real person with a birth certificate) is indeterminate, and therefore Roth forces us to read what is presented of him on its own terms, literary terms, because those are the only ones we can be sure of.
Pipik is not only one of Roth’s characters; he is also one of his readers[12]. He tells Philip that his theory, Diasporism, is based upon readings of Philip/Roth’s fiction. Philip is disturbed by being attributed with ideas that derive from readings of his books rather than ideas that he consciously wrote into them, but accepts the fact that his public persona is ultimately what he is, as much as any persona that he writes for himself[13]. Philip, too, is a reader of the book as much as its narrator; which is best illustrated in chapter 8, when Philip summarises the plot thus far and presents his criticism of it[14]. Philip comes to mimic Pipik, impersonating a different possible version of himself. The dialectics of self are a strong theme in all of Roth’s fiction – in writing himself into his books (in the form of his character Zuckerman, or as Philip) he is questioning the degree to which fiction can act as autobiography[15], and the corollary, that autobiography is the ultimate activity of fictionalising the self. By allowing a “misreader” to become a character in the novel (Pipik), Roth is engaging in a dialectic of his own identity: an identity that is equally determined by the writer and the readers[16].
Roth, in Reading Myself and Others[17] (1977), claims that he “set myself the goal of becoming the writer some Jewish critics had been telling me I was all along: irresponsible, conscienceless, unserious. Ah, if only they knew what that entailed!” (p. 80). Pipik accuses Philip of embodying all of these traits (see especially chapter 3); of refusing to engage politically. Even though the novel is set in a politically (and religiously) volatile setting, Israel, Philip refuses to make explicit his own stance. The other characters enact the dialogue for him, the extreme points of view articulated by characters such as Smilesburger (the Zionist), Zaid (the anti-Zionist); and different perspectives are taken by Pipik (the Diasporist), Anna (the pessimist), Gal (the Israeli soldier, disgusted at his own state), Shmuel (the Jewish lawyer for Palistinians, who scorns them) and so on. Almost all of the minor characters articulate some view on Israeli politics. Philip, however, is only negatively constructed by what he rejects in all of those views[18]. This phenomenon seems to have been enabled by post-Benveniste linguistic theory – in which semantic categories are constituted through differentiation, rather than through positive attributes[19]. It is never clarified whether it is the inherent multiplicity of Roth’s own persona which is expressed in such dialogism, or whether the nature of the political situation itself is so confused that it engineers the disintegration of Philip/Roth’s identity. It may be a bit of both.
This theme of competing narratives and impersonations constructing the self is articulated most openly not in Pipik, about whom Philip struggles to think clearly, but in the character of Ivan the Terrible. Ivan is a real historical character, and his trial is verifiably true. However, he also has existence as an artistic character in the 1958 Sergei Eisenstein film, Ivan the Terrible – a comic/horrific portrayal of Stalin. In real life as well as in art, the person of Demjanjuk is overlaid with emotive ideology, with artistic portrayals, and with the narratives about his history that may or may not be true. Demjanjuk, who may or may not be Ivan the Terrible, is therefore the perfect analogy to Roth, who may or may not be Philip, who may or may not be Pipik. The book is littered both with characters that turn their lives into stories (Aharon and Philip) and characters that turn stories into their lives (Pipik and Zaid), the juxtaposition suggesting that the true self is constructed through both activities. Overlaying and inhibiting all of this multiplicity and power of self-determination is the one great enemy, the one doppelganger of all Jews, Shylock[20].
Conclusion: Towards Ethical Fiction
As we have seen, the subtitle of the book, “A Confession”, ambiguously sets up a literary expectation (by placing the book into the genre of “Confessions”, we begin to read it like a “Confession” – and assume that it is autobiography) and then plays with this expectation (by refusing to be real, by becoming a “confession” of mischief-making). But there is more to this title. A “Confession” resonates with notions of ethical responsibility[21]; a connotation that seems entirely at odds with the Postmodern-play aspect of the book. The book is ultimately an Operation Shylock, which, we are told in the text, is a concrete mission on behalf of all Jews. The mission is to displace the über-doppelganger, with numerous doppelgangers; to shatter an outdated, homogeneous model of The Jew into a multiplicity. By conflating the political mission he attempts in the missing last chapter of the book with the book itself, Roth suggests that what his book achieves is not merely literary fun, but that it is a non-literary (just as the mission in the plot is never narrated[22]), active attempt to be responsible in fiction.
The question as to whether or not there is a responsibility in fiction is one that plays itself out over the course of the novel[23]. Originally the dialogue plays out between Philip and Pipik. Pipik embodies a desire towards action and political involvement. His whole life has been a fight for justice – from his actions as a PI to his political actions (which are eventually realised by Philip, not by himself[24]). Whereas Philip imagines kidnapping Demjanjuk’s son, Pipik plans to do it[25]. It is only once Pipik is re-integrated into Philip (as discussed above) that Philip accepts Smilesburger’s political mission. Operation Shylock, in the end, is a product both of “Pipikism” and “Philipism” - it is both action and literature; it is a mission for the Jewish people in the form of a novel. After, in the narrative, Philip returns from his mission, Smilesburger says to him, “I knew you could write. I knew you could do things in your head. I didn’t know you could do something as large in reality. I don’t imagine that you knew it, either” (p. 381).
In finally playing a role that transcends fiction, that surpasses the comedy and play of Postmodern literature, Roth resurrects his writing from moral relativism. Philip, in the end, does come to a conclusion about his own political/moral stance on the Israeli crisis, and he acts it out. Of course, he never quite tells us what either that stance or action is[26] – but this is perhaps an admonition to the reader to determine for ourselves where in the competing points of view we find truth.
References
Kauvar, E. M. (1995). “This Doubly Reflected Communication: Philip Roth’s ‘Autobiographies’” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 36, No. 3: pp. 412-446.
Parrish, Timothy L. (1999). “Imagining Jews in Philip Roth’s ‘Operation Shylock’” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 40, No. 4: pp. 575-602.
Roth, Philip (1977). Reading Myself and Others. Corgi Books, Great Britain.
Roth, Philip (1993). Operation Shylock. Vintage, London.
Safer, Elaine B. (1996). “The Double, Comic Irony, and Postmodernism in Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock” in MELUS, Vol. 21, No. 4: pp. 157-172.
Shostak, Debra (1997). “The Diaspora Jew and the ‘Instinct for Impersonation’: Philip Roth’s ‘Operation Shylock’” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 38, No. 4: pp. 726-754.
Skinner, Quentin (…). “Hobbes and the Classical Theory of Laughter” …
[1] Spoken by Smilesburger in Operation Shylock, page 386. My emphasis.
[2] In order to clearly differentiate between the overlapping personae presented by the novel, the label “Roth” shall designate the author of the book, “Philip” its narrator, and “Pipik” the personage referred to in the first sentence of the novel, “… the other Philip Roth …”. Of course, these labels may become unstable during the course of the interrogation of authorship and authority attempted by the essay.
[3] Indeed, Pipik mentions both Jung and Freud the first time he meets Philip.
[4] See Reading Myself and Others (1977), and Kauvar (1995).
[5] In which it becomes apparent that not only is Pipik’s biography as fully realized as Philip’s, but Pipik as a character is more physical, a PI, more engaged in the real world than Philip, who is accused of being a man who retreats from action into writing.
[6] Referring to the enormous wooden penises sported by actors in Ancient Greek theatre, in the farcical comedy that would precede the performance of a tragedy.
[7] Classical philosophers, from Aristotle to Hobbes, recognized the element of fear or feelings of inferiority that underpin laughter. In the words of Hobbes, “The passion of Laughter is nothyng [sic] else but a suddaine Glory arising from suddaine Conception of some Eminency in our selves by Comparison with the Infirmityes of others, or with our owne formerly” (cited in Skinner, 2007)
[8] It is helpful to remember that Roth taught for many years a course on Kafka, who similarly presents impossible situations as real. See Reading Myself and Others (1977).
[9] On page 106, Philip asks Aharon to “Define ‘mischief’ please?”, to which Aharon replies “To a mischief-maker like you? Mischief is how some Jews get involved in living.” This exchange introduces an idea which is resurrected in chapter 6, “His Story”, where Pipik accuses Philip of succumbing to a typically Jewish flight from physicality by becoming a writer.
[10] The title, in typical Roth style, can be read either as a description of Operation Shylock or of itself.
[11] Cited in Safer, 1996.
[12] In Chapter 8, Philip is presented with yet more “readers”: Supposnik (who accuses Philip of writing anti-Semitic novels) and the schoolchildren Deborah and Tal (who apply his early short stories to their own experiences of religious/political confusion). This reader-writer dialectic is therefore not confined to the exchanges between Philip and Pipik.
[13] Philip admits that the ideas of Diasporism, which have been authorized with his name, “are mine now” (p. 35).
[14] Page 245: “he himself slips silently out of the plot on the grounds of its general implausibility, a total lack of gravity, reliance at too many key points on unlikely coincidence, an absence of inner coherence, and not even the most tenuous evidence of anything resembling a serious meaning or purpose. The story so far is frivolous plotted, overplotted, for his taste altogether too freakishly plotted … as if the look-alike at the story’s storm center isn’t farfetched enough …”
[15] Shostak, 1997, points out that Roth often expresses frustration at being mistaken for his characters by critics; similarly, in Reading Myself and Others (Roth, 1977) he speaks exasperatedly of critics who assumed that Alexander Portnoy was a self-portrait. In his novel Deception, the narrator says, “I 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 isn’t.” (Cited in Safer, 1996)
[16] It could be suggested that this shifting of authority is the product of modern technological society, especially the phenomenon of the internet, where text abounds and authorship becomes impossible to ascertain. However, literary theorists had already proclaimed the “death of the author” by the mid 20th century, most notably Roland Barthes.
[17] The title itself resonates with the idea of self being both a product of the writer and of the reader, Roth in the title proposes to “read himself” rather than to presume authority in interpretation.
[18] The taxi driver (who may or may not work for the PLO), for instance, repeatedly asks Philip if he is a Zionist, to which he refuses to respond. Similarly, he refuses to reply to Smilesburger’s question, “did you approve of Israel and the existence of Israel” on page 351.
[19] Discussed in Shostak (1997), who mentions a passage in The Counterlife when Zuckerman says, “If there even is a natural being, an irreducible self, it is rather small, I think, and may even be the root of all impersonation – the natural being may be the skill itself, the innate capacity to impersonate … in the absence of a self, one impersonates selves, and after a while impersonates best the self that best gets one through”. Analogously, Pipik cures his students of their anti-Semitism by forcing them to listen to a tape of anti-Semitic monologue.
[20] On page 334, Smilesburger argues that the kaleidoscopic self is a phenomenon particular to the Jews. This is belied, however, by the biography Jinx narrates for herself, whose endless reinventions are religious as well as transformations of her personality. However, even she comes to be dominated by the Shylock doppelganger, which obsesses her, and makes her an anti-Semite.
[21] Both because of the use of the word in Catholicism, and the fact that the early writers of the genre, for instance Saint Augustine, were religious men. In more modern times, of course, the word belongs to the realm of Law, and therefore ethical punishment.
[22] The chapter following the deleted one is called “Words Generally Only Spoil Things”.
[23] This occurs implicitly through the narrating of real violence in the novel, and the narrator’s disgust towards real violence. These are the points at which the narrator finds that comedy and literary play are insufficient, for instance when he says of Pipik, “it disgusted me that he should insinuate this crazy stunt into the midst of such a grim and tragic affair [the Demjanjuk trial]”, page 52. On page 374 Philip talks about Céline, the anti-Semitic French novelist whom he “tries hard to despise”, and yet teaches the books to his students.
[24] For instance, Pipik originally plans to meet Arial Sharon. Eventually it is Philip who does. Of course, Philip does not realize all of Pipik’s plans.
[25] And Pipik, it is revealed in the Epilogue (in Jinx’s letter), could not write a word.
[26] This is because the final point of view is Roth’s; there are no more doppelgangers left: Page 377 “Nothing need hide itself in fiction but are there no limits where there’s no disguise?”
