This new collection of essays by novelist Ozick offers a staggering array of fierce attractions: a style that combines light grace, virility, and profundity; literary analysis of measured brilliance; a lack of all timidity in asserting difficult beliefs; and—most specifically—her stiff-necked, powerful notion of Jewish covenantal "ardor." Ozick begins, however, with Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Truman Capote—coming away from each one with something hard-won and unexpected: Woolf's madness is seen as an opportunity to provide moment for the Jewish seriousness of husband (and assumed saint) Leonard; Forster's homosexual shame, not pride, is revealed in Maurice; Capote's work becomes the foremost example of the novel "that is fragrant with narcissism, that claims essence sans existence, that either will not get its shoes drekky or else elevates drek to cultishness—the novel, in short, of the esthetic will—[which] cannot survive its cult." And though each of these essays illuminates a very complex flaw or failure, how they fit in with Ozick's unique view of Art only becomes clear when she moves on to more particularly Jewish subjects: Harold Bloom, Harris' The Goy, Up-dike's Bech, and the oddly Christian formulations of Allen Ginsberg. As a Jew, it soon emerges, Ozick is concerned with the "sacral," the novel of Deed instead of sensibility, the non-transcandent. Thus, in her vision, Jewish artists and thinkers who deny—or fudge with—the Second Commandment against idol-worship ("Art," for Ozick, is the equivalent of idol-making) only commit a multiplied and vitiating illusion: "The problem of Diaspora in its most crucial essence is the problem of esthetics. . . . The religion of Art isolates the Jew—only the Jew is indifferent to esthetics, only the Jew wants to 'passionately wallow in the human reality'. . . The Jewish writer, if he intends himself really to be a Jewish writer, is all alone, judging culture like mad, while the rest of culture just goes on being culture." And this provocative mixture of approaches—the covenantal, the critical, the anti-idolatrous—is then given its most vigorous stir in "Towards a New Yiddish," a controversial essay which rejects for Jewish writers an ecumenical, widened-out art, recommending in its place a "liturgical novel" that speaks directly only to other Jews. ("Not. . . didactic or prescriptive: on the contrary: Aggadic, utterly freed to invention, discourse, parable, experiment, enlightenment, profundity, humanity.") Hard to swallow? It is indeed. But Ozick knows how difficult her ideas are: a remarkable essay on "Literary Blacks and Jews" sings out with the tension of voluntary reghettoization; she realizes that to again shtetl-ize Jewish literary culture means giving up either enormous gains or enormous illusions. And the result is a book that recognizes opposing ideas without evasion or surrender—with an unashamed yet astonishingly sophisticated zealotry that seems to invite dissent on its own level (unlike the antipodal, curatorially expert views of Susan Sontag). In sum: a discomforting challenge—to Jews, to writers, to Jewish writers, to anyone concerned with "culture"—and a masterful, significant book.
Pub Date: May 17, 1983
ISBN: 0525481176
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
