Cynthia Ozick

Why do we become what we most...

<HTMLGIANT> (Free subscription) | yesterday

Why do we become what we most desire to contend with? - Cynthia Ozick, preface to Bloodshed and Three Novellas

Veterans Day

Swing Me Way Down South (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009

"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." - Cynthia Ozick I love that quote for personal reasons but I always find it appropriate when it comes to our military. Thanks to all who have served.

Veteran's Day Quotes: 15 Best, Most Famous Remembrance Day Sayings

The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009

Veteran's Day Quotes are not hard to come by, but here's a compilation of some of the best and most famous in one place. "Freedom is never free." -Author Unknown "How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!" -Maya Angelou "When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?" -George Canning "Courage is almost a contradiction in...

• Honoring America's Veterans - Benning's Writing Pad

Two More Sweet New Journals You Can (Should) Hold in Your Hands: PEN America #11 and Saltgrass #4

<HTMLGIANT> (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009

PEN America’s MAKE BELIEVE issue is seriously out of this world. Poetry by Christian Hawkey, Mathias Svalina, Cynthia Cruz; A forum on the titular theme featuring Lynne Tillman, Terese Svoboda, Cynthia Ozick, and Damion Searls; plus Brian Evenson, Philip Gourevitch, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, and a whole lot more. Super bigtime. SALTGRASS 4, meanwhile, features poetry from [...]

Reading about writing

Tym Blogs Too! (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009

The Singapore Writers Festival is on, plus I need to close some my Firefox tabs, so here's a writing-related linkdump. 1. " When Writers Speak " by Arthur Krystal in the New York Times Excerpt: ... writers don’t have to be brilliant conversationalists; it’s not their job to be smart except, of course, when they write. This is why I still love blogging and books, of course, while...

From the Fever-World

Chicks Dig Poetry (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009

Today I was back at the Writer's Center to hear the 2009 winners of the Washington Writers' Publishing House Prizes: Calvin by William Littlejohn and From the Fever-World by Jehanne Dubrow . I love the concept behind From the Fever-World , which is being published as Jehanne's second full-length collection. The conceit is that the book is actually a translation from Yiddish of the life's work of Ida...

The Life and Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee

Tom Conoboy's Writing Blog (Free subscription) | 10/02/2009

The K of the title alerts the reader immediately to the nature of this book: for all Coetzee’s realistic language, we’re in Kafkaesque territory, where the aspirations and needs of the individual are subordinated to the imperatives of the state: a study in power and powerlessness, in the way that all of our individual ideals are eventually buried by the impersonal nature of modern life....

Tracing the Many Lives of Anne Frank...

Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | 10/01/2009

Tracing the Many Lives of Anne Frank and Her Still-Vivid Wartime Diary By JANET MASLIN , New York Times, Published: September 30, 2009 When Francine Prose taught Anne Frank ’s diary to a class at Bard College two years ago, one of her students reported getting funny looks from students not in the class. “They acted as if he were assuming some sort of ironic-regressive pose that involved...

Cynthia Ozick and the fun quotient

bookeywookey (Free subscription) | 09/17/2009

What’s the most enjoyable, most fun, most just-darn-entertaining book you’ve read recently? The winner in the 'just-darn-entertaining' category this year would go to Cynthia Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers . What really gives this book the fun quotient for me is the fact that it is not merely entertaining. Ozick's prose is can be fluid or sharp but is always tinged by whimsy. Her humor...

Anne Frank: A New Version

Baristanet (Free subscription) | 09/14/2009

Meyer Levin , an American journalist, was one of the first to hear of Anne Frank's diary. He brought it to public attention and then adapted it into a radio play, "Diary of a Young Girl." But the play has not been heard for more than 50 years because of a longstanding dispute between Levin and Otto Frank, Anne's father. Tonight (Monday, Sept 14), with permission of Frank's only surviving...

The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time, 13

Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 09/13/2009

by Patrick Kurp Anecdotal Evidence What are the non-electronic precursors of book blogging? Essays, reviews, feuilletons, maxims, commonplace books, journals, letters, bull sessions, reveries, mental rambles. Some of us were born bloggers and waited for the technology to catch up. Posts are digital editions of words and thoughts that would otherwise evaporate, and the internet permits us to inflict...

The Imperfect Blogger

World of Psychology (Free subscription) | 08/03/2009

"If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage." ~ Cynthia Ozick It's a curse to have a thin skin. For a writer, it is deadly. If you need to be liked by all the people all of the time, writing is impossible. Too often I ... ...

Last 5...

Is there anything wrong with plastic rosaries? (Free subscription) | 08/02/2009

I'm not exactly busy at the moment but I have a few bits and pieces to do around work etc & I have a new blog idea (OK, Claire suggested a new blog idea to me and I love it) so watch this space (or a new space as it will most certainly be!) For some reason my computer hasn't been letting me view certain blogs for a few weeks but today it's let me back into them all! The first thing I'm doing with...

The tragedy of the Shabas Goy

xymphora (Free subscription) | 07/30/2009

Larry Franklin is apparently trying to get a Jewish publishing house to issue his memoirs, so he is Jewing up his story to the max (the comments to both links, even in the Washington Times (!), reflect the growing fury at the Jewish running of the United States). Not only is the FBI filled to the brim with anti-Semites (just think of the blurbs by Cynthia Ozick, David Mamet, and Abe Foxman!), but he...

"Frenzied tract or self-indulgent hobbyhorse"

The Existence Machine (Free subscription) | 07/29/2009

Reading this Bookslut interview with Cynthia Ozick the other day (the interview is from December; I don't remember where I found the link, sorry), I was interested in her remarks about politics and the novel. The interviewer, Paul Morton, is trying to press her about what he perceives as her lack of engagement with the present, a premise to which she objects. He tries to clarify his question: I may...