Books February 2001
Venturesome paths
A review of Quarrel & quandary, by Cynthia Ozick.
Cynthia Ozick is keenly alert to the sometimes uneasy tension in literature between reality and fiction, history and imagination, and she doesnt shy away in the least from bringing moral judgments to bear in discussing this tension. Politics alone do not account for her fervid interest in these subjects. In her Forethoughts, Ozick lays out her view of the essays purpose, a discussion she further elaborates in She: Portrait of the Essay as a Young Body.
If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion in it, you need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay has no educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use.
It is difficult to imagine an essay without information or opinions, and certainly Ozick avoids neither. Why insist opinions dont matter in the long run when in the long run it is generally...
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