List Price: $25.00 Details

Save: $4.12 (16%)

FREE delivery: Sep 22 - 29

Only 4 left in stock - order soon.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

$$20.88 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from and sold by Joshua Creek Services.

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement

1-Click ordering is not available for this item.

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery: Thursday, Sep 23 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Used: Good | Details

Sold by FindAnyBook

Fulfilled by Amazon

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers on Amazon

$23.62
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Books Unplugged

$20.12
+ $3.98 shipping

Sold by: Mesilla Internet

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Follow the Author

Cynthia Ozick

Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays Hardcover – July 5, 2016

by Cynthia Ozick (Author)

38 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$11.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$20.88

$20.12

$1.63

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$29.99

$11.98

Enhance your purchase

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.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date

July 5, 2016
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.83 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0544703715
ISBN-13

978-0544703711
See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Cynthia Ozick
9
Hardcover
$29.98
Cynthia Ozick
109
Paperback
$11.49
Cynthia Ozick
63
Paperback
$14.39
Cynthia Ozick
4
Hardcover
$28.40
Cynthia Ozick
8
Paperback
$16.83
Cynthia Ozick
30
Hardcover
40 offers from $6.00

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Cynthia Ozick
18
Paperback
$15.00
Cynthia Ozick
133
Hardcover
$13.99
Cynthia Ozick
30
Hardcover
40 offers from $6.00
Cynthia Ozick
63
Paperback
$14.39
Cynthia Ozick
4
Hardcover
$28.40
Cynthia Ozick
4
Hardcover
10 offers from $39.95

Editorial Reviews

Review

"“A sorceress of silken prose, wholly incapable of platitude, of cliché, of even the stray dead phrase, Ozick can make anything happen with a sentence.”—The New Republic

"A forceful and witty collection of literary criticism by a brilliant critic and novelist."—Shelf Awareness

"Often intricate and lovely leaves from the author's literary tree."—Kirkus Reviews

"'Serious criticism is surely a form of literature,' she posits, and serious readers will agree and find it practiced here."—Publishers Weekly

From the Inside Flap

Cynthia Ozick is one of the sharpest and most distinguished critics in American letters. For decades, her extraordinary readerly sensitivity and deep well of knowledge have informed penetrating judgments that delight and spark debate. Assembling ten years worth of Ozicks nonfiction writing in one volume, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays is both an exemplar of brilliant criticism and a powerful argument for the vitally important role of the critic, as much now as ever.

With the gauntlet-throwing essay that opens this book, Ozick contends that if literary fiction is to thrive in a culture awash in uncertainty and disruption, we need true critics to make sense of the present, illuminate the past, and point the way forward. The essays that follow reveal Ozick in peak form as she examines writers from the early twentieth century to today. Saul Bellow is here, and Bernard Malamud; Auden and Kafka; William Gass, Martin Amis, and moreall gathered in provocatively named groups with new introductions: Figures, Fanatics, Monsters, Souls. Uncompromising and brimming with insight, these essays are marvels of elegant prose and discerning intellect from one of our most treasured writers.

Start reading Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (July 5, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0544703715
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0544703711
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.83 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,270,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #93 in 21st Century Literary Criticism (Books)
- #378 in 20th Century Literary Criticism (Books)
- #1,829 in General Books & Reading

Customer Reviews:
38 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		79%
4 star		7%
3 star		12%
2 star		3%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Abigail L. Rosenthal

Cynthis Ozick's Celebratory Achievement

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

Cynthis Ozick's latest collection of literary essays takes one into the presence of a master. The aim permeating this collection is to celebrate the part played by the informed critic in providing a cultivated context for the writer. Ostensibly it's a lament for the loss of that commons of sensibility. Actually it's a re-creation of it. She's herself a one-person critical world -- of appreciation, of nuanced understanding, of recognition -- into which any real writer, past or present, can find admission as a member in good standing. Her discounting of the importance of Amazon reviews, annual awards & celebrity, should not be construed as an attack on anybody in particular, nor as snobbism. She is not founding a clique or a club. On the contrary, her purpose is deeply constructive. She is asserting, in the teeth of the zeitgeist, that the genius of writing occurs and is read on a plane different from the plane of fashion. Does one doubt this? Does one fear to believe it? Does this sound all too idealistic and unworldly? Ozick's own talent as a writer, in full view in this collection, certifies her claim as simply true.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

W. Royal Stokes

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

Excellent service. I am very satisfied with the book

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

One can never tire of reading this consummate author's work!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Matthew J. Realff

Very lucid prose and thought provoking throughout. Fact is ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2016

Verified Purchase

Very lucid prose and thought provoking throughout. Fact is that much of the material is quite Jewish centered, quite naturally, which at times made it somewhat recondite for me.

Helpful

Patrick O

Me say this good book

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2016

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

It is surprising that this book was offered for our consideration. Ozick does not regard Amazon reviewers very highly, certainly not as a group and seemingly begrudgingly in rare instances. Add to this the fact that I am also an academic and I fear that anything I write will not even merit a parentheses in consideration. That said, I write not as a literary critic but as a simple book reviewer.

Book reviewers here on Amazon aren't critics at all. We're more like co-consumers, suggesting whether an item is worth buying based on our experiences. The better reviews add some useful insights, building on the product description in a--hopefully--honest way.

A literary critic isn't in the business of consumer counselor. Rather, a literary critic seeks to understand a written work, putting it into its cultural and historical context, adding insights into ideas and patterns and contributions of the work to broader conversations.

Amazon reviews abound. The work of literary criticism has fallen on rough times. Ozick is an amazing writer. I got this book mostly so that I could learn from her style and approach. I had friends who raved about her work. This skill is quickly apparent not only in style but also in content. Though English lit was one of my least favorite subjects, since I was very young I have loved reading all kinds of books, articles, you name it. I didn't like how critics pulled apart and took the joy out of a text. But it seems I was not given the best examples. Ozick offers a call towards the place and purpose and need for intelligent literary criticism and then, in later essays, describes particular examples, adding a mostly cohesive call towards a dying art in our age of click bait and celebrity distractions.

I wasn't expecting to be drawn in as much as I was. So, yes, I recommend buying this book even if you're not particularly enthralled with the topic of literary criticism. You will be by the end of the first chapter and the rest will make for a valuable treat.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

stay excited, good toiler, stay excited

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2016

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

here, in a series of essays, cynthia ozick states her case for literature of a high sort, introduced by a clarion call—more like a cry from the heart. cue the elegiac clarinet, please; from a hillside in duino, if she would cry, who would hear her—anyone?

for the necessity of criticism to separate the wheat from the chaff, she bends, scythe in hand, swiping at amazon customer reviews and book clubs for failing to fall under the red pens of editors and their lack in extended digressive erudition, as she moves up and down her swathe, gleaning, by definition, what is intended as a good crop of literature and shouting why such meager husbandry should be planted, cultivated and harvested.

i fear no critic can meet her standards, except for the uber-passionate book critic, harold bloom who she quotes in the division, MONSTERS. “ ‘At eighty-four, I lie awake at night, after a first sleep, and murmur Crane, Whitman, Shakespeare to myself, seeking comfort through continuity, as grand voices somehow hold off the permanent darkness that gathers though it does not fall.’ These are the yearning yet inflamed intimations not of a poet, but of a lover—a critic who has fallen in love with incantation as a conduit to the Elysian horizon luringly beyond his reach. And like any monster gazing past the rest of us, he stares alone.”

the critic business is a thankless job. but who otherwise is there to tell the brazen autodidact, who frantically rushes out into the night, pacing streets of a city after reading d h lawrence; or the homeless person who cackled aloud at the audacity of ahab, breaking silence in the public library; or the graduate from a master’s program, staking a livelihood on the words of stephan dedalus: ‘And I am not afraid to a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too. …’; or the pot washer who cringes with woe while reading of the transgressions in the novels of james baldwin as familiar, that even though it may not be alright, there are other readers who experienced the same feelings and other flaming books awaiting to be read, but the critic? this is what cynthia ozick is getting at—when the sun rises and the exhausted reader sees the city come alive with commerce, where does one find the next book, what voice has passion and conviction enough to engender trust with a sweeping magnitude for the lonesome word afflicted reader, comparable to the writer and the reader?

the reviewer? cynthia ozick answers: What separates criticism from reviewing—intrinsically—is that the critic must summon what the reviewer cannot: horizonless freedoms, multiple histories, multiple libraries, multiple metaphysics and intuitions. Reviewers are not merely critics of lesser degree, on the farther end of a spectrum. Critics belong to a wholly distinct phylum.’

few readers are interested in horizonless freedoms, wanting merely something good to read, or to the find a few of the books listed on their syllabus and call it quits. and fewer are the writers who forge the smithy of their souls to such depths they’re even blind, oblivious and dismissive of their own audience, the only audience who hungers for their words, the literature fanatics. and they won’t find them in classrooms in iowa or hoarding stacks of new yorkers, where short stories share space with ads for designer cosmetics.

in the essays which follow, cynthia ozick not only writes a twenty five page critical essay on lionel trilling and his unfinished novel, she writes an essay on an obscure literary movement of american hebraists, and in her section on the holocaust novel, she writes about h g adler. as little known as these writers are, she opines that without continual literary criticism these obscure writers will be forgotten, and, with them, or without them, lists of names of writers which should be familiar, which were once familiar, the writers she lists in THE LASTINGNESS OF SAUL BELLOW, an essay on the letters of bellow. her lists of names, of authors obscure and illuminated by the lights of fame, are inexhaustible inventories. her essays cover critics, letter writers, biographers and the translated. she doesn’t shy away from criticizing the responses to jewish writings, from updike’s bech to THE ZONE OF INTEREST by martin amis. nor is she out of touch with contemporary literature, two of her essays are provoked by discourses by ben marcus with jonathan frantzen and marilynne robinson with robert alter.

personally, i’m at a loss, more readers, critics and literary writers in literary realm of which she writes, do not mention cynthia ozick’s work. you say you love that of which she speaks, and you have not read TRUST or LEVITATION? really?

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Peter Kettle

VIVID, BRILLIANT, COGENT

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

Cynthia Ozick is that rare writer; one who explains and enlarges the reader's experience of reading. She guides us through the tangles of writing, and enthuses us enough to try a writer we may previously have rejected. She has a sharp wit and a fresh outlook. I salute her.

Amazon Customer

Nothing that hasn't been said before, essays on kafka in prague etc.

Reviewed in Canada on August 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

It is hard to understand how such an original writer (I was blown away by a novel of her's) can write such.. okay essays.

See all reviews