Philip Roth: Prometheus or plaintive goat?

Slothrop, or anyone, I need help. I just finished Roth's derivative Kafka-of-the-breast novella, and as always happens when the adamantine grip of his prose begins to relax its influence, I wonder whether his art consistently interests me because I respond to its depth of feeling, its apoplectic delivery, and its sensual contradictions, or because I like the meaty, masculine shame of his narrators? Does it seduce with agon, earning its value by the conflict of its quest for the impossible, or is it merely a seduction--empty, epiphenomenal, apparent? I can never tell with Roth. Do I like his books because they're good or because they're clever? Do his characters use their eloquence and trenchant wit in the service of moral profundity or as a reflex against it? Are their lyrical gifts really lithe distractions, their paradoxes simple platitudes? Is the art specious logic made beautiful and mean, too tough to be intimidated by conscience or clear thinking, or is it actual art? I can't tell. I don't understand fiction, anyway, so I'm appealing to authorities greater than I: sophistical Slothrop and his legions of wordies.