Quarrel & Quandary: Essays
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.31 (702 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0375724451 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-12-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Shalom Freedman said High seriousness at its best. Ozick is an earnest and profound writer. She shares that quality her mentor Henry James so valued,the quality of ' high seriousness'. Her essays not only reveal a discerning literary intelligence but a wise moral voice. In her essays here she like the metaphysical poets yanks together subjects from seemingly diverse worlds and makes meaning of the connection between them. The crimes of modern radical terrorists are connected to Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov's going outside and beyond t. "Essays? They're better than you'd think!" according to A Customer. I admit it; I am not a reader of essays. Normally I shun them as much as I would recoil from an invite to go see a big screen remake of "Charlie's Angels." The thought of either would make me shudder. As to the former, perhaps I had my fill of Kant in college, or maybe reading "Gorgias" finally put me over some particular intellectual edge that I've yet to recover from twenty years later. Whatever the cause, I've spent very little time with pedantic or polemical prose since. So wh. Sparkling, near perfect prose Noted essayist Cynthia Ozick begins her new, alliterative collection with a nearly heretical thought in this kinetic cyber-age: "Journalism is a necessity, but it is not a permanence. When I hear someone (seventy-plus or twenty-something) utter 'my generation,' I know I am in the vicinity of a light mind." Rest assured that should you choose to pick up Quarrel & Quandary, you will not be in the vicinity of a light mind. Rather, Ozick embarks, as all essayists must, on a journey of
She roams effortlessly from Kafka to James, Styron to Stein, and, in the book's most famous essay, dissects the gaudy commercialism that has reduced Anne Frank to "usable goods." Courageous, audacious, and sublime, these essays have the courage of conviction, the probing of genius, and the durable audacity to matter.. Quarrel & Quandaryshowcases the manifold talents of one of our leading and award-winning critics and essayists.In nineteen opulent essays, Cynthia Ozick probes Dostoevsky for insights into the Unabomber, questions the role of the public intellectual, and dares to wonder what poetry is
At its best, Ozick's prose is equally, radically amazing. Sebald, whom she clearly admires, is something of a puzzler--but her voice never ceases to register distinction and detail, emitting what she calls "the hum of perpetual noticing." Five cheers, then, for Quarrel & Quandary. Her introduction, in fact, is one long riff on the importance of being earnestly engagé, at the end of which Ozick manages to have her cake and eat it too: "Two cheers, then--when there is no choice--for being engagé; but thr