SOURCE: "Roth Contemplates His Pipik," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 7, 1993, pp. 3, 7.

[Eder is an American critic who has won a citation for excellence in reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In the review below, he presents a mixed assessment of Operation Shylock.]

"Mischief," Philip Roth writes partway through his new novel [Operation Shylock: A Confession], "is how some Jews get involved in living." He quotes his friend, the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, but it is hard not to think that Appelfeld was talking about Roth.

Almost more than the stories they tell, Roth's recent novels—particularly The Counterlife and Deception—have been about the uncertain and illusory relationship he sets up between himself and his characters. Each book gives us a multiplicity of fictional Roths, directly or by means of alter egos, so that the teller and...