Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Shoshana Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.[1]

Cynthia Ozick
Born (1928-04-17) April 17, 1928
New York City, New York, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
Period1966–present
Notable awardsAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, 1988
Signature

Biography

Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Russian-Jewish parents, Celia (Regelson) and William Ozick, proprietors of the Park View Pharmacy in the Pelham Bay neighborhood.[2] As a girl, Ozick helped to deliver prescriptions. Growing up in the Bronx, she remembers stones thrown at her and being called a Christ-killer as she ran past the two churches in her neighborhood. In school she was publicly shamed for refusing to sing Christmas carols. She attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan.[3] She earned her B.A. from New York University and went on to study at Ohio State University, where she completed an M.A.[2] in English literature, focusing on the novels of Henry James.[4]

Ozick is married to Bernard Hallote, a lawyer. Their daughter, Rachel Hallote, is an associate professor of history at SUNY Purchase and head of its Jewish studies program.[4] Ozick is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson. She lives in Westchester County, New York.[4]

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. The Holocaust and its aftermath is also a dominant theme. Much of her work explores the disparaged self, the reconstruction of identity after immigration, trauma and movement from one class to another.[2]

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.[5]

Awards and critical acclaim

In 1971, Ozick received the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and the National Jewish Book Award[6] for her short story collection, The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories.[7] For Bloodshed and Three Novellas, she received, in 1977, The National Jewish Book Award for Fiction.[8] In 1997, she received the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Fame and Folly. Three of her stories won first prize in the O. Henry competition.[3]

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 Award for Quarrel & Quandary.[9] 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, and in 2008 she was awarded the PEN/Nabokov Award and the PEN/Malamud Award, 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 (2012) and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize (2013).[10]

The novelist David Foster Wallace called Ozick one of the greatest living American writers.[11] She has been described as "the Athena of America’s literary pantheon," the "Emily Dickinson of the Bronx," and "one of the most accomplished and graceful literary stylists of her time."[4]

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)

Shorter fiction

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)

Drama

  • Blue Light (1994)

Miscellaneous

  • A Cynthia Ozick Reader (1996)
  • The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (introduction 2001)
  • Fistfuls of Masterpieces [12]
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See also

References
  1. Articles about Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times
  2. Emma Brockes. "A life in writing: Cynthia Ozick", The Guardian, 2 July 2011
  3. "Cynthia Ozick - Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  4. Profile: Cynthia Ozick Archived 2012-04-23 at the Wayback Machine
  5. "Profile: Cynthia Ozick - Hadassah Magazine". 28 February 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  6. "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Archived from the original on 2020-03-08. Retrieved 2020-01-19.
  7. "The Edward Lewis Wallant Award". Section: "Past Recipients". The Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies. University of Hartford. hartford.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-23.
  8. "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Archived from the original on 2020-03-08. Retrieved 2020-01-19.
  9. Brockes, Emma (4 July 2011). "A life in writing: Cynthia Ozick". Retrieved 12 January 2018 – via www.theguardian.com.
  10. Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2013 Archived November 5, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  11. Brief Interview with a Five Draft Man, Amherst Magazine
  12. "The New York Times: Book Review Search Article". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved 12 January 2018.

Reviews
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