Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.

Biography

Cynthia Ozick was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, the second of two children. She moved to the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, Belarus: Celia ( Regelson) and William Ozick, proprietors of the Park View Pharmacy in the Pelham Bay neighborhood. She attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan. She earned her B.A. from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

and went on to study at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, where she completed an M.A. in English literature, focusing on the novels of

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

. She appears briefly in the film '' Town Bloody Hall'', where she asks Norman Mailer with her signature wit and incisiveness, "in ''Advertisements for Myself'' you said, quote, 'A good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls'. For years and years I’ve been wondering, Mr. Mailer, when you dip your balls in ink, what color ink is it?". Ozick was married to Bernard Hallote, a lawyer, until his death in 2017. Their daughter, Rachel Hallote, is a professor of history at SUNY Purchase and head of its

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

studies program. Ozick is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson. Yale University has acquired her literary papers. A forthcoming special issue of ''Studies in Jewish American Literature'' will examine her contributions to the art of non-fiction.

Literary themes

Ozick's fiction and essays are often about Jewish American life, but she also writes about politics, history, and literary criticism. In addition, she has written and translated poetry. Henry James occupies a central place in her fiction and nonfiction. The critic Adam Kirsch wrote that her "career-long ''agon'' with Henry James... reaches a kind of culmination in ''Foreign Bodies'', her polemical rewriting of '' The Ambassadors''."

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

and its aftermath is also a dominant theme. For instance in "Who Owns Anne Frank?" she writes that the diary's true meaning has been distorted and eviscerated "by blurb and stage, by shrewdness and naiveté, by cowardice and spirituality, by forgiveness and indifference." Much of her work explores the disparaged self, the reconstruction of identity after immigration, trauma and movement from one class to another. Ozick says that writing is not a choice but "a kind of hallucinatory madness. You will do it no matter what. You can't not do it." She sees the "freedom in the delectable sense of making things up" as coexisting with the "torment" of writing.

Awards and critical acclaim

In 1971, Ozick received the

Edward Lewis Wallant Award In 1962, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award was established at the University of Hartford, in Connecticut, USA by Fran and Irving Waltman. It is presented annually to a writer whose fiction is considered to have significance for American Jews. The award ...

and the

National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. for her short story collection, '' The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories''. For ''Bloodshed and Three Novellas'', she received, in 1977, The National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. In 1997, she received the

Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to an author for a book of original collected essays. The award was founded by PEN Member and author Barbaralee Diamonstein an ...

for ''Fame and Folly''. Four of her stories won first prize in the O. Henry competition. In 1986, she was selected as the first winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story. In 2000, she won the

National Book Critics Circle The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization (501(c)(3)) with more than 700 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics C ...

Award for ''Quarrel & Quandary''. Her novel ''Heir to the Glimmering World'' (2004) (published as ''The Bear Boy'' in the United Kingdom) won high literary praise. Ozick was on the shortlist for the 2005

Man Booker International Prize The International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced ...

, and in 2008 she was awarded the PEN/Nabokov Award and the

PEN/Malamud Award The PEN/Malamud Award and Memorial Reading honors "excellence in the art of the short story", and is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. The selection committee is composed of PEN/Faulkner directors and representatives of Bernard Ma ...

, which was established by Bernard Malamud's family to honor excellence in the art of the short story. Her novel ''Foreign Bodies'' was shortlisted for the

Orange Prize The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...

(2012) and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize (2013). The novelist

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...

called Ozick one of the greatest living American writers. She has been described as "the

Athena Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded ...

of America's literary pantheon", the "

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

of the Bronx", and "one of the most accomplished and graceful literary stylists of her time".

Published works

Novels

* ''Trust'' (1966) * ''The Cannibal Galaxy'' (1983) * ''The Messiah of Stockholm'' (1987) * ''The Puttermesser Papers'' (1997) * ''Heir to the Glimmering World'' (2004) (published in the United Kingdom in 2005 as ''The Bear Boy'') * ''Foreign Bodies'' (2010) * ''Antiquities'' (2021)

Shorter fiction

* '' The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories'' (1971) * ''Bloodshed and Three Novellas'' (1976) * ''Levitation: Five Fictions'' (1982) * ''Envy; or, Yiddish in America'' (1969) * '' The Shawl'' (1989) * ''Collected Stories'' (2007) * '' Dictation: A Quartet'' (2008)

Essay collections

* ''All the World Wants the Jews Dead'' (1974) * ''Art and Ardor'' (1983) * ''Metaphor & Memory'' (1989) * ''What Henry James Knew and Other Essays on Writers'' (1993) * ''Fame & Folly: Essays'' (1996) *"SHE: Portrait of the Essay as a warm body" (1998) * ''Quarrel & Quandary'' (2000) * ''The Din in the Head: Essays'' (2006) * ''Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays'' (2016) * David Miller, ed. Letters of Intent: Selected Essays (2017)

Drama

* ''Blue Light'' (1994)

Miscellaneous

* ''A Cynthia Ozick Reader'' (1996) * ''The Complete Works of Isaac Babel'' (introduction 2001) * Fistfuls of Masterpieces

Reviews

* 2000 ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'':
The Girl Who Would Be James
by John Sutherland (on Ozick's book ''Quarrel & Quandary'') * 2002 ''

Partisan Review ''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated Joh ...

'':
Cynthia Ozick, Aesthete
by Sanford Pinsker * 2005 ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'':
The World is Not Enough
by Ali Smith (on Ozick's book ''The Bear Boy'') * 2006 ''The New York Times Book Review'':

, by Walter Kirn (on Ozick's book ''The Din in the Head'') * 2010 ''The New York Times Book Review'':

, by Thomas Mallon (on Ozick's book ''Foreign Bodies'') * 2010 ''The New York Times Book Review'':

, by Charles McGrath (on Ozick's book ''Foreign Bodies'')

References

External links

* *
"The Uncut Interview with Cynthia Ozick"
at City Arts
Cynthia Ozick Interview
at The Morning News {{DEFAULTSORT:Ozick, Cynthia Hunter College High School alumni Writers from New Rochelle, New York 1928 births 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists American women short story writers Jewish women writers Living people Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters O. Henry Award winners PEN/Nabokov Award winners PEN/Malamud Award winners PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award winners Ohio State University Graduate School alumni Writers from New York City National Humanities Medal recipients Jewish American novelists Postmodern writers New York University alumni American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Jewish American short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners Novelists from New York (state) 21st-century American Jews