`It Makes It Difficult for Seriousness to be Understood'

Sometimes you have to disregard the messenger for the slipshod way he delivers the message. Thanks to Dave Lull, I read Ben Naparstek’s piece about Cynthia Ozick, published recently in the Cleveland Jewish Review and based on his interview with the novelist. Naparstek is a clumsy writer who speaks of Ozick and Philip Roth as “ranking alongside” such nullities as Doctorow and Mailer simply because all are Jewish. The headline, too, is vulgar, but Ozick is a master who speaks nearly as well as she writes, so Naparstek’s article is worth reading if only for his ample use of Ozick’s conversation:

“There used to be a high-brow, middle-brow and no-brow. That hierarchy is now absolutely erased. It makes it difficult for seriousness to be understood, welcomed and appreciated.”

And this:

“I don't trust my essays. They don't tell permanent truths in the way that fiction does. My essays haunt me because people use them as a yardstick for my fiction. I resent that. That's like writing a review and describing the looks of the writer. It's irrelevant.”

I met Ozick once, in the spring of 1987, when she took part in a conference on writing and the Holocaust at the state University of New York at Albany. Also on the panel were the novelist Aharon Appelfeld and historian Raul Hilberg. Her girlish voice surprised me. She said she would never visit Germany or buy a Volkswagen, and that bothered some people sitting near me in the audience. She autographed my copy of The Messiah of Stockholm, only recently published. Her demeanor and everything she said confirmed my love and respect for her work.

In his piece, Naparstek mentions Ozick’s Collected Stories, which I had never seen before. That’s because it was published earlier this year only in England, by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Ozick’s early reputation was built on her short fiction, and I hope an American publisher collects the stories in The Pagan Rabbi (1971), Bloodshed (1976), Levitation (1982) and The Shawl (1989). In his Paris Review interview, Guy Davenport said he would read anything written by Ozick, and as usual his judgment was unassailable.