Ethnic appraisals

Operation Shylock, The Facts (1988), and Patrimony (1991) are grouped by Elaine Kauvar as a
series of nonfictional trilogy (qtd in Parrish, Imagining Jews 575). Parrish also stresses the fact
that Harold Bloom included The counterlife (1987) in this group and labelled it a tetealogy
hinting at Roths playful intention to transform his autobiographical references into a fictional
game (575).

In Parrishs perception all of Roths novels have at their center a crisis of identity (575).

Debra Shostak stresses the importance of Israel seen as a sort of welcoming Homeland Israel
poses an identity crisis for the Diaspora Jew largely because of its symbolic power as the Jewish
home (742 qtd. In Parrish 576).

With respect to Roths postmodernist attempts at deconstructing the lives of his characters, or
providing the reader with elusive versions of the self, Timothy Parrish highlights that his stylistic
devices merely represent a response to the contradictory identities that his experience as a Jew
who is also an American has enforced upon him| 576. These are neither |fictions that are
separate from life or| philosophical debates concerning the nature of the self (576).

Nevertheless, Philip Roth has faced various negative perceptions or misperception of his work.
His self- reflexive fictional expression prominent in the Counterlife in Robert Alters view has
been perceived as being thin, when compared to a major novelist like Nabokov. Operation
Shylock with its overlapping of reality and fictional imagination received some poor reviews, cul
minating with the disappointing review written by John Updike, Roths close friend in The New
Yorker who considers it a trite dumping ground , it seems for everything in Roths copious file
on Jewishnesss 112 qts in Parrish. Parrish observes that Updike was particularly objecting to
Roths reliance on postmodernist elements.

Probably, one of Roth fiercest opponents was Irving How who harshly criticicized the lurid detils
mentioned in Portnoys Complaint