"Shylock Is My Name" by Howard Jacobson *****

• Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• Publish date Feb. 2016
• US author
• Vocabulary:
• obloquy:  harsh or critical statements about someone, the condition of someone who lost the respect of other people
• chthonic:  of or relating to the underworld
• indurated:  having become firm or hard especially by increase of fibrous elements <indurated tissue>
• Characters:
• Shylock....religious Jew, "the Hebrew", protagonist, symbol of timelessness
• Strulovich....cultural Jew, father of Beatrice
• Beatrice...runs from father only to appreciate his value later, modern child, wants to be a performance artist
• Leah....Shylock's dead wife
• Plurabelle....the spoiled smart type, manipulator, 
• Kay...Strulovich's wife, bedridden and mute from stroke, calls Strulovich a "Judeolunatic"
• D'Anton....Plurabelle's procurer
• Barnaby...........Plurabelle's beautiful and brainless lover
• Gratan....Beatrice's Gentile lover, footballer, gave Nazi salute during match
• Quotes:
• p.12..."When mothers see what's been done to their baby boys the milk turns sour in their breasts."....intense
• p.13..."...there is no end to what those executioners we call fathers do.  First they maim their boy children than they torment them."
• p.17..."Sometimes....even the fortunate and gifted can feel their lives are mortgaged to a perplexing sadness."
• p.18..."Only someone who enjoyed the benefits of great wealth himself could have been made so angry by the great wealth of others--the difference being that he hadn't had to earn his, the fact of which also made him obscurely angry."
• p.25..."For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some covered after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows"
• p.27..."Whether it's a flaw or a stratagem I cannot say, but they have always put themselves at the centre of every drama, human or theological.  I think of it as a political sadness.  The glue of self-pity is very strong."
• p.33..."A girl who would sleep with her father's enemies was of a succulence beyond description, plunder that exceeded in value even Simon Strulovich's rubies and turquoises."
• p.34..."Beatrice's presence cheered her, but she seemed to wish to see her only on her own, as though they were separate families, individual spokes of a wheel that had fallen off."...just like that metaphor
• p.49.."It's an invariable law that fathers love their daughters immoderately."
• p.54..."Wounding doubt wounds not as fatally as wounding certainty."
• p.66..."After so many years of eing told what Gentiles see when they look at us it's hardly a surprise that we end up seeing something similar.  That's how vilification works.  The victim ingests the views of the tormentor."
• p.67..."Jews hunched over their private parts.  Jew hunched over their money.  In the eyes of Gentiles it's one vas fevered panorama of degenerate self-interest."
• p.83..."Christianity, when all was said and done, counted as no more than an interregnum; the only true distinction was between Judaism and paganism."
• p.112..."And finally, he failed to see that a gallery of British Jewish art was any less intrinsic to North Cheshire than an ostrich park would have been."
• p.120..."There was no fine point of etiquette that said a father interviewing an accidental Nazi sympathizer who wanted to sleep with his daughter had to wear a tie."...LOL
• p.122..."..the magnetic force of indurated revulsion..."
• p.175..."Every transaction between Jew and Gentile is metaphorical."
• p.177..."To lose to Jews is to lose to half-men."
• p.251..."Sadness is among the tools which those who would live nobly employ to distance themselves from the farcicality of existence engulfing everyone else.  The unfairness, the banality, the repetition of cruelty.  That some are delivered to far grander sorrows than these is proved by their sadness."
• p.273..."To the modern mind there is a dignity in being tricked.  it confirms the preposterousness of existence."

• Notes:
• Anna Livia Plurabelle Cleopatra A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever Christine...a character
• Plurabelle's trap with three cars, a BMW, a Porsche, a Volkswagen, p.21
• p.37...eloquent description of the "covenant" Strulovich feels at the birth of Beatrice, the reasoning he wants her to marry a Jew
• p.40...Mehdi Mehdi, French Algerian ventriloquist whose dummy espouses Nazi affinity, but he himself says he does not
• Monkey....used as a metaphor for the primitive, in epithets, 
• Beatrice misses her father the one time he does not chase her
• Strulovich wants Beatrice to marry a Jew for "the sake of continuity", the "covenant"
• p.238....notion of God speaking vs. painting the world into existence, so the word rules over the senses, Shylock's thoughts as he gazes at and begins to appreciate Strulovich's artwork

• Review:   "Merchant of Venice" meets reality TV.  Not enough to decide whether to read this absolutely brilliant novel? I was deeply impressed by Jacobson's "The Finkler Question" and now feel comfortable saying that I think he is a brilliant writer.  Crisp, eloquent use of language coupled with a gripping plot and satirical wit matched by few make this an outstanding read. Meanwhile, the central theme of the novel, Jewish identity, is examined in depth.  Cultural Jews debate with religious Jews, both Jews debate with Gentiles. Using Shakespeare's play as a jumping off point, the author highlights the seeming timelessness of the Jewish position in society across time.  Anti-Semitism is described in all of its glaring subtleties as well.  A superlative story, an erudite dissection of Jewish identity, and writing to write home about. And it all starts with two Jews in a graveyard!