Cynthia Ozick, 94, is an acclaimed short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Ozick’s fiction and essays are often about Jewish American life, but she also writes about politics, history, and literary criticism. In addition, she has written and translated poetry. The Holocaust and its aftermath are also dominant themes. The novelist David Foster Wallace called Ozick one of the greatest living American writers. She has been described as “the Athena of America’s literary pantheon,” the “Emily Dickinson of the Bronx,” and “one of the most accomplished and graceful literary stylists of her time”
Quotes: “In an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological discovery. But when you write fiction, you don’t know where you are going — sometimes down to the last paragraph — and that is the pleasure of it.” | “To be a Jew is an act of the strenuous mind as it stands before the fakeries and lying seductions of the world, saying no and no again as they parade by in all their allure. And to be a writer is to plunge into the parade and become one of the delirious marchers.”
Sources: Introduction from Wikipedia, quotations from BrainyQuote
Learn more about Cynthia Ozick from Wikipedia. ►
Watch “A Conversation with Cynthia Ozick Directed by Lawrence Bridges” (2009) [22:48]. ►
Watch “Cynthia Ozick with Roger Rosenblatt” (2008) [7:30]. ►
Photo: NPR
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Amazing Jews
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