Zuckerman in The Anatomy Lesson is a pugnacious rebel and one can well imagine his railing at God and waving a banner saying 'Unfair to Zuckerman!'. Indeed, the polemics in Philip Roth's third Zuckerman book are among its most effective passages….

Roth is at his best complaining, as he has shown in Portnoy's Complaint and, indeed, in most of his fiction. He—and one cannot help thinking of the 'he' as a composite character, Philip Nathan Roth Zuckerman—rants and raves against all his enemies, especially 'those sentimental, chauvinist, philistine Jews' who regard his satires as treachery. The most hated of them is a critic, Milton Appel, who had referred to Zuckerman's 'mean, joyless, patronizing little novels'. Zuckerman has it in for others, too. There are those who pay only lip-service to the idea of freedom. There are moralists who profess to consider pain 'significant'. There are feminists who read a hatred of all women into his books. Whenever Roth gets steamed up, whenever Zuckerman gets hot under his surgical collar, the result is riveting. (p. 106)

Everything Roth wants to say comes through loud and clear. Some will think him too shrill and too verbose. However, like all Roth's fiction The Anatomy Lesson offers savage satire, shrewd self-analysis, albeit tainted with self-pity, and vivid pictures of slices of American life. It is also very funny, as well as perceptive, about the nature of a novelist. (p. 107)