New Releases by Cynthia Ozick

Selected by Cynthia Ozick from a dozen books written across more than fifty years, the essays and short stories gathered here constitute a summing-up of her remarkable literary career. In such classic essays as "Who Owns Anne Frank?," "What Helen Keller Saw," "Dostoevsky''s Unabomber," and "Transcending the Kafkaesque," Ozick examines some of the world''s 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. In her short stories, including "A Hebrew Sibyl," "What Happened to the Baby?," "Dictation," "The Biographer''s Hat," and "The Conversion of the Jews," Ozick demonstrates again and again her stylistic brilliance and the originality of her distinctive interweaving of the strands of history and myth.

« Je m’appelle Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, et j’écris, en ce 30 avril 1949, sur ordre des membres du conseil d’administration de l’Académie du Temple-école de garçons. » L’école a fermé ses portes depuis longtemps. Reclus dans son bureau, Petrie rédige ses mémoires sur sa fidèle Remington. Et raconte sa relation avec Ben-Sion Éléphantin, un ancien élève dont le nom lui a valu bien des moqueries. Pourquoi revenir sur ce lointain passé ? Et qu’est-ce qui a bien pu rapprocher ces deux garçons, en dehors de leur passion commune pour les antiquités égyptiennes ? Au fil de ce conte où rôde en permanence une inquiétante étrangeté, on s’interroge sur la fiabilité de ce narrateur à l’esprit troublé. Avec une incroyable virtuosité, Cynthia Ozick nous entraîne à nouveau dans un monde à part, proche des romans de son maître Henry James. Traduit de l’anglais (États-Unis) par Agnès Desarthe.

From one of our most preeminent writers, a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past and how our experience colors those meanings, now alongside four previously uncollected stories In Antiquities, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, one of the seven elderly trustees of the now-defunct (for thirty-four years) Temple Academy for Boys, is preparing a memoir of his days at the school, intertwined with the troubling distractions of present events. As he navigates, with faltering recall, between the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school''s ethos and his fascination with his own family''s heritage--in particular, his illustrious cousin, the renowned archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie--he reconstructs the passions of a childhood encounter with the oddly named Ben-Zion Elefantin, a mystifying older pupil who claims descent from Egypt''s Elephantine Island. Included alongside this wondrous tale, touched by unsettling irony and with the elusive flavor of a Kafka parable, are four additional stories in Cynthia Ozick''s brilliant, distinctive voice, weaving myth and mania, history and illusion: The Coast of New Zealand, The Bloodline of the Alkanas, Sin, and A Hebrew Sibyl.

From the author of The Messiah of Stockholm and Art and Ardor comes a new 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 art''s contrivances and its moral truths. She has given us an exceptional book that demonstrates the possibilities of literature even as it explores them.

From one of our most preeminent writers, a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past and how our experience colors those meanings In Antiquities, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, one of the seven elderly trustees of the now-defunct (for thirty-four years) Temple Academy for Boys, is preparing a memoir of his days at the school, intertwined with the troubling distractions of present events. As he navigates, with faltering recall, between the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school''s ethos and his fascination with his own family''s heritage--in particular, his illustrious cousin, the renowned archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie--he reconstructs the passions of a childhood encounter with the oddly named Ben-Zion Elefantin, a mystifying older pupil who claims descent from Egypt''s Elephantine Island. From this seed emerges one of Cynthia Ozick''s most wondrous tales, touched by unsettling irony and the elusive flavor of a Kafka parable, and weaving, in her own distinctive voice, myth and mania, history and illusion.

Permítanos comenzar con la misma frase que inauguraba la contratapa de Metáfora y memoria: “Existe un amplio consenso en señalar a Cynthia Ozick como una de las más grandes escritoras norteamericanas contemporáneas. Nosotros compartimos esa opinión, allí están sus novelas y cuentos para comprobarlo. Menos conocido es que también es una extraordinaria ensayista”. Pero precisamente después de la aparición de Metáfora y memoria su talento para el ensayo pasó a ser tan conocido en castellano como su arte para las novelas. Comprobado entonces que Ozick es tan fantástica para la novela como para el ensayo, Críticos, monstruos, fanáticos y otros ensayos literarios –su más reciente libro– no necesita demasiada presentación. Tan solo hace falta mencionar que aquí nos reencontramos con su clásica elegancia para la prosa de ideas, sus ironías ácidas frente a los lugares comunes de la época, su gusto por los autores que funcionan como puente entre la tradición centroeuropea y la norteamericana, el humor judío y una erudición asombrosa. La lectura de los ensayos de Ozick solo depara inmensos momentos de placer.

Una magnífica edición ilustrada de una pieza imprescindible de la narrativa del siglo XX: El chal de la candidata al premio Nobel de Literatura Cynthia Ozick, con prólogo de Berta Vias Mahou. Un trapo que gotea leche, el sabor extraño de un dedo en la boca, un lugar sin piedad envuelto en alambres y tres nombres que estallan en la oscuridad: Rosa, Stella y Magda. Fueron los tiempos sin sentido en un campo de concentración donde el horror se repartía a granel, pero hubo quien logró sobrevivir, llevar su tragedia lejos e hilvanar un futuro. Stella ahora está en Nueva York y se ha inventado una vida nueva. Magda... Magda era muy niña cuando todo pasó. Rosa ha ido rodando como un botón maltrecho hasta las costas de Florida, y cultiva su extravagante cordura por las calles de Miami. Para ella no hay futuro porque todo es pasado y la memoria, terca, insiste en devolverle aquel chal sucio con sabor a leche y saliva... Con esas pocas cosas, casi nada para casi nadie, Cynthia Ozick construyó en 1977 esta pieza única en la literatura del siglo XX, y Oscar Astromujoff ha iluminado sus palabras con unas imágenes que indignan y emocionan. «Estas ilustraciones son hilos visionarios, gritos silenciosos que hieren el aire y se quedan grabados en la retina... Estoy emocionada.» Cynthia Ozick

From one of America''s 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.

Art & Ardor was the first of Cynthia Ozick''s 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.

Ruth Puttermesser vive a New York. La sua cultura è monumentale. La sua vita amorosa minima. Preferisce, ad esempio, versare lacrime per Platone che divertirsi con Morris Rappoport, un uomo sposato con cui ha una relazione blanda e molto breve. Ma Ruth ha un dono: le sue fantasie rivelano una sconcertante tendenza ad avverarsi – con conseguenze disastrose per ciò che siamo abituati a definire la “realtà”. La Signorina Puttermesser vorrebbe tanto una figlia, e prontamente, senza aiuto, ne crea una nella forma del primo golem femmina di cui si abbia memoria. Mentre si dà da fare nelle pieghe polverose del dipartimento municipale in cui lavora, sogna di cambiare la città – ed ecco che ne diventa il sindaco. La Signorina Puttermesser riflette sull’aldilà e ovviamente vi si butta a capofitto, solo per scoprire che trovare un paradiso significa anche perderlo. Romanzo dotato di una sconfinata immaginazione e vibrante umorismo, Le carte della Signorina Puttermesser è un vero e proprio luna-park letterario, scritto da una delle autrici più visionarie e limpide del nostro tempo.

A selection of essays by the acclaimed and beloved writer Cynthia Ozick, collected by David Miller.

In a collection that includes new essays written explicitly for this volume, one of our sharpest and most influential critics confronts the past, present, and future of literary culture. 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.

Los cuentos reunidos de la gran heredera de Henry James . «Peleo con cada frase, sílaba a sílaba. Bien mirado, escribir es en el fondo un acto de valor.» Cynthia Ozick Al hablar de la condición humana se corre el riesgo de caer en la frivolidad, pero basta con leer cualquiera de los cuentos de Cynthia Ozick para olvidarse de las frases hechas y asumir lo que es ajeno como nuestro. En esta recopilación de cuentos descubrimos a hombres y mujeres que a primera vista podrían parecer seres patéticos, pero que en el fondo conservan y muestran su dignidad, a menudo gracias a la ironía, siempre tan oportuna. Si, como decía Mark Strand, vivir consiste en estar alerta y prestar atención al mundo, Cynthia Ozick, «una de las pocas maestras vivas de la literatura norteamericana» (David Foster Wallace) es el testigo que buscábamos. La crítica ha dicho... «Cynthia Ozick es una escritora de escritores, una especie de George Steiner sin complejos con un toque feminista. Su intelecto se presta a destellos de brillantez.» Ilan Stavans, The Times Literary Supplement «Si hay algo parecido al panteón literario en América, Cynthia Ozick es entonces nuestra Atenea.» Washington Post Book World «Ozick se ha consolidado como una de las escritoras más importantes de nuestra época, con un amplio abanico de exquisitas obras de ficción y bellas letras.» Giles Harvey, The New Yorker «Ozick es la mejor escritora americana de los últimos años. [...] El judaísmo le ha dado lo que el catolicismo le dio a Flannery O''Connor: autoridad, agudeza e indignación.» Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review «Es una escritora con atracción innata por la paradoja y por las cuestiones morales inherentes a las relaciones entre riqueza y pobreza, mente y cuerpo, historia e imaginación.» Ali Smith, The Guardian «Cynthia Ozick es una especie de hipnotizadora narrativa. La variedad de su registro es extraordinaria; aparentemente no hay nada que no pueda hacer.» Johanna Kaplan, The New York Times Book Review «Un cuento de Cynthia Ozick estira el cuello y luego se muerde la clavícula o – entre risillas – se hace un tajo en la garganta. Parece querer castigarse a sí misma por sus propios actos de magia.» John Leonard, The New York Times «Una voz tan neoyorquina como lo fue la de Edith Wharton antes que ella, pero el Nueva York de Ozick es un lugar de suburbios maltrechos, de cavernosos edificios municipales, de antiguos profesores de hebreo que viven encima de tiendas de ultramarinos cubanas, de bibliotecas públicas, amantes astutos y apariciones milagrosas aunque inconvenientes.» Anita Brookner, The Spectator «Tanto si no conoces su obra como si eres un viejo admirador, encontrarás muchas cosas en Ozick que te sorprenderán.» Diane Cole, The Washington Post «El estilo más logrado y elegante de la narrativa contemporánea.» John Sutherland, The New York Times «Cualquiera que haya seguido la carrera de Ozick sabe que es una delicia.» Dwight Garner, The New York Times «Terriblemente inteligente, hasta el punto de que resulta un poco deshumanizante. Cada vez que crees haberla entendido, tras un considerable trabajo, refina su análisis una vez más, subiendo un peldaño más en su escalera hacia alguna perspectiva última. Uno se pregunta, si se saliera con la suya, si la ficción podría sobrevivir a sus exigencias, si no la intimidaría hasta hacerla desaparecer.» Anatole Broyard, The New York Times

Gran admiradora de Henry James, Cynthia Ozick rinde aquí su particular homenaje al autor de Los embajadores con una novela donde el talento está en los detalles. Una mujer de mediana edad parece andar sin rumbo por las calles de París una tarde de calor asfixiante de finales de julio de 1952. Finalmente se sienta en un bar, pide un zumo y pregunta al camarero si por casualidad conoce a un tal Julian. No es la primera vez que lo hace, pero nadie recuerda a ese chico norteamericano, de pelo rubio y aspecto desaliñado, que un buen día dejó su casa de California para viajar por Europa e instalarse en París, lejos de un padre intransigente y una madre que se ha refugiado en la locura para aliviar el deber de vivir. Quien busca y pregunta es su tía Bea, dispuesta a llevárselo de vuelta y hacer de él un hombre de provecho, pero cuando finalmente la mujer descubre el paradero de Julian, habrá algo insólito esperándole: otros cuerpos, otras voces, reclamándole una nueva versión del amor. Lejos de su tierra y abrumada al principio por el desorden que aún arrasa Europa tras la guerra, Bea ahora quiere comprender, y lo que había empezado como un simple viaje acaba siendo una lección de sabiduría. Reseña: «Una novela llena de perspicacia, que Henry James hubiera aplaudido.» The New York Times «Una de las pocas maestras vivas de la literatura norteamericana.» David Foster Wallace

In her sixth novel, Cynthia Ozick retells the story of Henry James’s The Ambassadors as a photographic negative, retaining the plot but reversing the meaning. Foreign Bodies transforms Henry James’s prototype into a brilliant, utterly original, new American classic. At the core of the story is Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to leave New York for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of her brother’s family and even, after so long, her ex-husband. Every one of them is irrevocably changed by the events of just a few months in that fateful year. Traveling from New York to Paris to Hollywood, aiding and abetting her nephew and niece while waging a war of letters with her brother, facing her ex-husband and finally shaking off his lingering sneers from decades past, Bea Nightingale is a newly liberated divorcee who inadvertently wreaks havoc on the very people she tries to help.

Four stories of comedy, deception, and revenge (including one previously unpublished) showcases heroes who suffer from willful self-deceit. These not-so-innocents proceed from self-deception to deceiving others, who do not take it lightly. The novella "Dictation" imagines a fateful meeting between the secretaries to Henry James and Joseph Conrad at the peak of their fame. Timid Miss Hallowes, who types for Conrad, comes under the influence of James''s Miss Bosanquet, high-spirited, flirtatious, and scheming. In a masterstroke of genius, Ozick hatches a plot between them to insert themselves into posterity.--From publisher description.

Rose l''orpheline a dix-huit ans lorsqu''elle entre au service des Mitwisser, une famille d''intellectuels juifs de Berlin exilés dans le Bronx. Déchus, déracinés, tous attendent avec espoir le retour de leur bienfaiteur, l''énigmatique James A''Blair. Rose, spectatrice fascinée des divagations solitaires des uns et des autres, navigue à vue dans cet univers fantasque où les folies et les rêves se frôlent, dans un silence inquiétant, sur le seuil d''un monde vacillant...

Ruth Puttermesser est une fonctionnaire américaine, placardisée par sa hiérarchie. Pour laver son humiliation, elle crée un golem et, avec son aide, conquiert la mairie de New York. Sa carrière sera de courte durée... et plus dure sera la chute. Mais voici que Puttermesser tombe amoureuse d''un faussaire, ce qui n''est guère surprenant - ne se prend-elle pas elle-même pour George Eliot ? De nouveau, la désillusion succède à l''illusion. Et si Puttermesser se fait un sang d''encre, c''est qu''elle n''est peut-être rien d''autre qu''une créature de papier pour qui seul existe l''imprimé. Entre Kafka et Cervantès, le roman victorien et l''imaginaire juif, Cynthia Ozick invente une mythologie moderne à l''humour dévastateur, une fable sur le pouvoir des mots et la folie de l''écriture.

A collection of essays on the joys of great literature from the New York Times–bestselling author and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. One of America’s foremost novelists and critics, Cynthia Ozick has won praise and provoked debate for taking on challenging literary, historical, and moral issues. Her new collection of spirited essays focuses on the essential joys of great literature, with particular emphasis on the novel. With razor-sharp wit and an inspiring joie de vivre, she investigates unexpected byways in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and others. In a posthumous and hilariously harassing “(Unfortunate) Interview with Henry James,” Ozick’s hero is shocked by a lady reporter. In “Highbrow Blues,” and in reflections on her own early fiction, she writes intimately of “the din in our heads, that relentless inner hum,” and the curative power of literary imagination. The Din in the Head is sure to please fans of Ozick, win her new readers, and excite critical controversy and acclaim. “Open the collection anywhere—I guarantee it—and you will feel the bite of her distinctive voice.” —Sven Birkerts, Los Angeles Times “The passion that fills these essays is invigorating. In our age of irony and commercial pandering, we need writers like Ozick.” —Danielle Chapman, Chicago Tribune

It is the stories upon which Cynthia Ozick''s literary reputation rests. She writes about bitterness, cruelty and compulsion with brutal acuity and tenderness. She has created a timeless collection in which Greek mythology, superstition and the religious and cultural experience of the Jewish diaspora in America collide. The Pagan Rabbi is seduced by a tree sprite after seeing his daughter rescued from drowning by a water sprite. Such ecstasy is not permitted to mortals and so the scholar must die. He hangs himself with his prayer shawl as he watches the strangely beautiful nymph decay. In Envy, a Yiddish poet who watches the success of a contemporary, becomes very like a character in an I.B. Singer story entrapped by his anguish and haunted by the memory of a child. In the Doctor''s Wife, the most gentle of the stories, a poor doctor not unlike Chekhov endures family life in which he is adored by his three sisters and oppressed by his family obligations. In these stories, we see Ozick defining herself and her literary territory. The stories may be read purely as evocations of Jewish experience, where time seems to have by-passed these characters. In the Butterfly and the Traffic Light, Jerusalem is seen upon a hill as only it can be in legend, and America is said not to have cities scarred by battles. This is a dazzling collection of short stories by an internationally celebrated novelist.

In the outskirts of the Bronx in 1930s New York, the Mitwisser clan are German refugees who survive at the whim of their vagabond benefactor, James A''Bair. James is heir to the fortune amassed by his father, the author of a wildly popular series of children''s books called The Bear Boy. Into their chaotic household comes Rose Meadows, orphaned at the age of eighteen. Employed as an assistant to the eccentric Professor Mitwisser, Rose''s position within the family is precarious, especially when the arrival of James threatens the fragile balance of the household.

Os dois contos reunidos neste pequeno volume foram publicados originalmente em separado, na década de 1980, na revista The New Yorker. Juntos, constituem um feito artístico monumental, uma das obras de ficção mais corajosas e complexas já escritas sobre o Holocausto. Com prosa lacônica e hipnótica, o conto ''O xale'' decorre num campo de concentração ou, mais exatamente, na consciência de Rosa, uma prisioneira que tenta desesperadamente salvar a vida de sua filha pequena. No segundo conto, ''Rosa'', encontramos a mesma mulher trinta anos depois, vagando por uma Miami surreal, em busca de algo que jamais poderá encontrar - a vida que lhe foi roubada. Essas pequenas obras-primas de Cynthia Ozick foram incluídas na coletânea anual Best American Short Stories e agraciadas com o primeiro lugar na O. Henry Prize Stories. ''O xale'' também foi selecionado por John Updike para a coletânea ''The Best American Short Stories of the Century''.