In The New York Times Book Review, critic Morris Dickstein[2] compared the novel to its predecessor Portnoy's Complaint: No writer, not even Mailer or Lowell, has contributed more to the confessional climate than Philip Roth.

This would be a dubious distinction had Roth's book not also boldly altered the tone of our confessional writing, most of which had been lugubrious and realistic, smothered in angst and high-seriousness.

Reaching back instead to the raunchy, delirious autobiographical manner of Henry Miller and Céline--indeed, perpetuating an unseemly imitation of the latter's great "Death on the Installment Plan"--Roth pitched his anguish in such a low comic strain that the effect was irresistible.

To get the story out Roth is willing to look not only ignoble and self-centered, but also foolish, helpless, even a little ugly (as in Peter's final satisfaction at his wife's death).

But if the personal-confessional mode highlights Roth's limitations it also returns him to the day-to-day carnival of human folly that he can describe so ringingly, so comically, even as it goes on tormenting him.