In a blazing 1963 Commentary essay, “Writing About Jews,” Roth had said that it was the job of a novelist neither to perform propaganda for his ethnic group nor to concern himself with parochial questions like “What will the goyim think?” Thirty years later, was he letting us know that he had changed his mind, that he was ready to do his tribal duty? Or was the entire ending parody—Roth toying with his Jewish critics by saying: Look, Rabbi, I’m doing state propaganda, like you always wanted me to—even letting the Mossad hack apart my book! Am I a good Jew now? Or maybe he didn’t want to choose: maybe he was telling us that he was both that and this.

QUESTION: Asks whether Roth's Operation Shylock ending was genuine reconciliation with his critics or pure parody — an unresolved interpretive crux.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 1007