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Cynthia Ozick Is Undiminished
Nearing 97, she’s universally praised, freshly republished, and (maybe even) more widely read than ever. She’s also a world-class emailer.
Though nowhere near all of her books are represented — she’s published more than 20, including the novels The Messiah of Stockholm, The Cannibal Galaxy, and The Puttermesser Papers — most of the celebrated Ozicks at some point turn up: memoirist (“A Drug Store Eden” is a gorgeous remembrance of her northeast Bronx backyard), fabulist, feminist, observant Jew, unabashed belletrist. The next day Ozick sent me a parcel with a note in the tiniest handwriting: “Herewith, some copies of Southwest Review and Salmagundi: fine periodicals that remain dedicated to writing(as opposed to the widespread scorn for the ‘worthy’). And what I discovered was this: Henry James, who, after all, wrote for a living, was a hack!” A formula writer, she means — “plots all built on the same premise and design and trajectory, seemingly fresh if taken one by one — but not when experienced as a flow.” I’m curious, too, about how she views an essay from middle age about her resentment at not being published young.
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