Cynthia Ozick

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental; her love life is minimal. And her most idle fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true. She yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem - a Jewish mythological homunculus. She also manages to get herself elected mayor. Then Puttermesser inadvisably contemplates the afterlife, whereupon she is immediately hurtled into it headlong and discovers, at the end of it all, that a paradise found is also paradise lost.

En un futuro no muy lejano -casi un presente si nos atenemos a la seguridad poco literaria del cálculo aritmético-, un personaje longevo narra la historia de Elia Gatoff, inmigrante judío europeo arribado a Nueva York, devenido poeta y fallecido tempranamente, que supo gozar en vida de una fugaz y altisima cuota de fama. En "Virilidad", que fue publicada por primera vez en una revista literaria y luego en la compilacion de relatos "The Pagan Rabbi and other stories" (1971), Cynthia Ozick define minuciosamente a los personajes, confirma una vez mas su habilidad para el dialogo y crea una fabula sobre los misterios del talento poetico y los riesgos de la usurpacion de personalidad.

From one of Americas great literary figures, a collection of essays on eminent writers and their work, and on the war between art and life. The perilous intersection of writers lives with public and private dooms is the fertile subject of many of these remarkable essays from such literary giants as T.S. Eliot, Isaac Babel, Salman Rushdie and Henry James.

From the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, whos been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, the Man Booker International Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction comes the brilliant novel The Messiah of Stockholm.Lars Andeming, perhaps overly intellectual and certainly eccentric, is the Monday book reviewer for a Stockholm daily. He is also the self-proclaimed son of Bruno Schulz, a Polish writer who was executed by the Nazis before his last novel, The Messiah, could be published. When a manuscript of The Messiah mysteriously appears in Stockholm, in the possession of Schulzs daughter, Larss circumscribed world of paper, apartment, and favorite bookstore turns upside down, catapulting him into a whirlwind of dream, magic, and illusion.A Brilliant novel... The Messiah of Stockholm is a worthy companion to Philip Roths superb Prague Orgy... A complex and fascinating meditation on the nature of writing and the responsibilities of those who choose to create - or judge - tales. - Harold Bloom, New York Times

If every outlet for book criticism suddenly disappeared - if all we had were reviews that treated books like any other commodity - could the novel survive? In a gauntlet-throwing essay at the start of this brilliant assemblage, Cynthia Ozick stakes the claim that, just as surely as critics require a steady supply of new fiction, novelists need great critics to build a vibrant community on the foundation of literary history. For decades, Ozick herself has been one of our great critics, as these essays so clearly display. She offers models of critical analysis of writers from the mid-twentieth century to today, from Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Kafka, to William Gass and Martin Amis, all assembled in provocatively named groups: Fanatics, Monsters, Figures, and others. Uncompromising and brimming with insight, these essays are essential reading for anyone facing the future of literature in the digital age.

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental; her love life is minimal. And her most idle fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true. She yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem - a Jewish mythological homunculus. She also manages to get herself elected mayor. Then Puttermesser inadvisably contemplates the afterlife, whereupon she is immediately hurtled into it headlong and discovers, at the end of it all, that a paradise found is also paradise lost.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012, Foreign Bodies is a dazzling and profound exploration of the human face of the central relationship in the last century: that between the old world and the new.The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingales life, leaving her middle-aged and alone, teaching in an impoverished borough of 1950s New York. A plea from her estranged brother gives Bea the excuse to escape lassitude by leaving for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows; but the siren call of Europe threatens to deafen Bea to the dangers of entangling herself in the lives of her brothers family. By one of Americas great living writers, Foreign Bodies is a truly virtuosic novel. The story of Beas travails on the continent is a fierce and heartbreaking insight into the curious nature of love: how it can be commanded and abused; earned and cherished; or even lost altogether.

One of Americas foremost novelists and critics, Cynthia Ozick has won praise and provoked debate for taking on challenging literary, historical, and moral issues. In her spirited essay collection The Din in the Head, she focuses on the essential joys of great literature. With razor-sharp wit and an inspiring joie de vivre, Ozick investigates unexpected byways in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and Henry James, among others. Throughout this bracing collection, she celebrates the curative power of the literary imagination.

From the author of The Messiah of Stockholm and Art and Ardor comes this collection of supple, provocative, and intellectually dazzling essays. In Metaphor ### Memory, Cynthia Ozick writes about Saul Bellow and Henry James, William Gaddis and Primo Levi. She observes the tug-of-war between written and spoken language and the complex relation between arts contrivances and its moral truths. She has given us an exceptional book that demonstrates the possibilities of literature even as it explores them.

Art & Ardor was the first of Cynthia Ozicks collections of her non-fiction pieces, and covers the longest span (1968 to 1983) of the now seven volumes. First printed in a variety of publications, these pieces appeared in not only The New Republic, Partisan Review, and The New York Review of Books, but also Mademoiselle and Ms.

In this collection of essays, Cynthia Ozick, everywhere acclaimed as a critic, novelist, and storyteller, examines some of the worlds most illustrious writers and their work, tackles compelling contemporary literary and moral issues, and looks into the wellsprings of her own lifelong engagement with literature.She writes - quarrelsomely - about Crime and Punishment, about William Styrons Sophies Choice, about the Book of Job. She inquires into the subterranean dispositions and quandaries of Kafka and Henry James. She discusses the difficulties inherent in the translation of great books, whether into film or into another language.

"Amori assurdi, bugie enormi ma convincenti, finzioni che durano fino alla tomba, piccoli stratagemmi per sopravvivere alla vita moderna... Un giovane avvocato incontra sul molo di New York, dove e andato ad accompagnare uno zio, una bella signora quarantenne; la passione gli fa perdere talmente la testa da convincerlo che la donna sia una specie di sirena o di strega del mare. Un vecchissimo ex direttore di giornale rievoca la straordinaria impresa di un immigrato russo, che diventa un poeta famoso pubblicando a nome suo, col titolo ""Virilita"", i testi scritti dalla vecchia zia. Una giovane promettente latinista si lascia coinvolgere emotivamente dallo pseudo-spiritualismo di una coppia di approfittatori e finisce per diventare la loro schiava. Un uomo corteggia la vedova di un rabbino che si e suicidato; lei ha maturato un odio profondo per il marito, di cui fa vedere lettere e scritti vari, che testimonierebbero una sua caduta nel paganesimo. Queste e altre storie, in un caleidoscopio di piccole verita che ci fanno riflettere sui nostri vizi. "

"Per il suo sesto romanzo, Cynthia Ozick sceglie una sfida intrigante: raccontare ""Gli Ambasciatori"" - uno dei romanzi migliori di Henry James - come un negativo fotografico, ovvero lasciando intatta la trama ma stravolgendone il significato. Al centro della storia troviamo Bea Nightingale, una maestra cinquantenne, la cui vita scorre stancamente dopo il divorzio dal marito. Quando suo fratello Marvin le chiede di lasciare New York per andare a Parigi a ritrovare un nipote che lei conosce a malapena, Bea rimane impigliata nelle vite della famiglia di Marvin e persine, in seguito, del suo ex marito. Ognuno di loro sara irreversibilmente cambiato dagli eventi in pochi mesi di quell''anno fatale. Viaggiando da New York a Parigi a Hollywood, aiutando e appoggiando il nipote e sua sorella, iniziando una guerra di lettere con il fratello, affrontando l''ex marito e finalmente scrollandosi di dosso le esitazioni del passato, Bea Nightingale si riscopre una donna di nuovo libera, capace di mettere inavvertitamente a soqquadro tutte le persone che cerca di aiutare. "

Nel 1935 la diciottenne Rose Meadows, orfana, brillante, colta, distrutta, "essenzialmente una persona che si limita a guardare e ascoltare" e appena buttata fuori dalla casa di suo cugino Bertram dall'odiosa fidanzata comunista, risponde a un annuncio di un giornale di Albany che richiede un'assistente per una famiglia recentemente arrivata da Berlino che deve, da li a poco, trasferirsi a New York. Sebbene non sia chiaro se Rose debba fare da segretaria a Rudolf Mitwisser (uno studioso ossessionato dall'antica eresia ebraica del kartismo), da infermiera a sua moglie Elsa (ex ricercatrice nel piu importante istituto scientifico tedesco, espulsa perche ebrea) o da tata ai loro cinque difficili figli, Rose e l'unica ad aver risposto all'annuncio.

Due racconti: in un campo di concentramento, una madre ebrea cerca di proteggere la figlia neonata; trentanni dopo, in Florida, la stessa donna ormai anziana e sullorlo della follia incontra un uomo. Una madre, una figlia, una nipote. Tre figure femminili travolte dalla Storia e dai suoi orrori. Un indumento magico, un feticcio: lo scialle che protegge e nasconde. In pagine sobrie ed essenziali, con pochi, nitidi tratti, Cynthia Ozick cerca di narrare linenarrabile: lesperienza del lager, la sopravvivenza al lager. "Lo scialle" e stato pubblicato per la prima volta da Garzanti nel 1990.