The Grapes of Roth

Several of the Ebmud Venetians have been reading Philip Roth's Operation Shylock. When the Harvey Milk Public Library sent me an overdue notice, I stayed up late and finished it. Its a brave, chicken soup of a book. And its great to be in such a brave prouduction. And very weird, too. Since this play began, Israel went to war, so all that stuff is in the air everywhere everyday we go to Orinda, California to do a four hundred year old "Jew-play." The act of saying Shakespeare's lines makes it impossible to be lazy, intellectually and morally, about fascism and prejudice and race-based hatred and hate-based fear and hypocrisy and paranoia and Victimhood and revenge, which makes the play a great work of art and why it must be done, and done anew, again and again. Sometimes it makes one long for the naiiv pleasure of slapping on a liberal swath of Secret Garden eye shadow.