Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson - review

A modern-day revenger’s tragedy, says William Leith

Venice’s maligned merchant: Shylock, as played by Antony Sher

Alastair Muir/REX

29 January 2016

Simon Strulovitch, a wealthy Jewish art dealer, is visiting his mother’s grave in a Manchester cemetery. He’s a deeply troubled man. His mother, Leah, is in the graveyard; his wife, Kay, is mentally and physically disabled after a stroke, and his teenage daughter, Beatrice, is “going off the rails”. He feels as if he has lost two women, and now he’s about to lose his daughter. This final loss really gets to him.

He’s very introspective, this guy, troubled by the fact that he’s so troubled. He is “rich”, “furious” and “easily hurt”. He collects art and old books, and he loves Shakespeare. In fact, he used to think Shakespeare (those “Sephardi looks”, maybe his forebears were called Shapiro!) was Jewish himself.

This novel is part of a series in which modern authors rework Shakespeare’s plays. So when Strulovitch spots another mourner and hears the words “My dearest Leah”, he immediately knows who it is. Why, it’s Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice! Our man is convinced of it. For one thing, Shylock was always mourning his late wife, Leah. For another, he had a daughter, Jessica, who went off the rails, causing him no end of torment.

Like Strulovitch, Shylock was a deeply troubled man and now here he is, wandering through eternity, trying to make sense of it all. A fascinating prospect: what if a modern Jewish guy, a Shakespeare obsessive with an errant daughter, could get to know this man who is one of Shakespeare’s most elusive and difficult characters? Strulovitch invites Shylock into his life. He takes him home and makes him a cup of coffee.

Shylock, of course, is a famous literary problem. We know him as the money guy, the man who says “My daughter! Oh my ducats! Oh my daughter!” when Jessica runs off with his money. We think of him as the classic usurer, an early version of the reviled modern bankster.

So why, then, when it comes to the crunch, does Shylock demand a pound of actual flesh, rather than money? As James Buchan puts it in a brilliant essay in his book on money, Frozen Desire: “He abandons money for its predecessor, vengeance. At precisely the moment when he must succeed, Shylock falls prey to that violence that money was invented to replace.”

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That’s the point about Shylock. He’s not a cold money guy. He’s a tortured angry guy. He’s furious because people misunderstand him and people misunderstand him because he’s furious. He’s caught in a loop of anti-Semitism.

And, four centuries on, what about Strulovitch? One thing he’s furious about is that Beatrice, who is 16, is dating a footballer who plays for Stockport County. This player has been in trouble for appearing to do a version of a Nazi salute on the pitch. Angry and disturbed, Strulovitch demands his own fleshly recompense from this man, the famous rite of passage common to all Jewish males.

Naturally, other characters are versions of people in The Merchant of Venice such as D’Anton, who is rich and shallow and artsy, and Plurabelle, who is rich and shallow and sort of ghastly. But the best thing is Shylock. Strulovitch gets right inside Shylock here. He puts him on the spot. The big question: why did he demand his pound of flesh from Antonio? “My own blood was up,” says Shylock. “My hatred for that superior, all-suffering, all-sorrowing, sanctimonious man boiled in my veins.”

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