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Art & Ardor: Essays

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When Cynthia Ozick wrote of critic James Wood that "he thinks with a sublime ferocity...[and his writing is characterized by] an intellectual daring that portends literary permanence," she might have been describing herself. A belletrist always, a polemicist when necessary (she agrees with Chekhov that writers should engage in politics only in order to protect themselves from politics), Cynthia Ozick is our most distinguished literary intellectual (perhaps she would prefer the old-fashioned word "thinker"). Some essays in this collection are much finer than others, but a great writer's poor performances have a way of not mattering a great deal. "A Drugstore in Winter," "Literature and the Politics of Sex: A Dissent," and "Justice (Again) to Edith Wharton" are extraordinary.

Ozick writes with the great moral seriousness of one of her major mentors Henry James. She writes with very great intelligence and if her essays at times tend a bit to awkwardness they nonetheless always manage to provide new insight into the subject she addresses. She is naturally especially outstanding in her consideration of writers and writing.