Fame & Folly: Essays

by Cynthia Ozick

From one of America's great literary figures, a new collection of essays on eminent writers and their work, and on the war between art and life. The perilous intersection of writers' lives with public and private dooms is the fertile subject of many of these remarkable essays from such literary giants as T.S. Eliot, Isaac Babel, Salman Rushdieand Henry James.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, 20th Century, Criticism

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Recipient of the first Rea Award for the Short Story (in 1976; other winners Rea honorees include Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Alice Munro), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and the PEN/Malamud award in 2008.

Upon publication of her 1983 The Shawl, Edmund White wrote in the New York Times, "Miss Ozick strikes me as the best American writer to have emerged in recent years...Judaism has given to her what Catholicism gave to Flannery O'Connor."

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cynthia Ozick is ferociously intelligent and she seems to have read nearly everyone worth reading. A novelist of the first rank she is also a skilled literary critic. She artfully combines textual analysis with an understanding of the character of the writers/thinkers who authored these texts.
Ozick’s essays are generally not political but they are also thoughtful about the evolution of our culture and how that impacts how and what we think about books and reading

[J. J.]

My second tour through a book of Ozick’s essays. A delight each time. She’s razor sharp, quick of wit, and stubbornly anchored in the Great Tradition. She continually reminds me of our increasingly and sadly unremarked loss of towering literary criticism.

[Rohan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my sole review so far, I feel compelled to say that, though I gave this three stars, I feel like the book was seriously flawed. Ozick, who I'm fairly new to, is still an oddity to me--at times deeply distasteful and at others really quite spot-on. Three stars for skill, I guess, though I'd dock one for the general unease I feel about her, if I could.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon arriving home I dived into Cynthia Ozick's Fame and Folly and discovered not only a short piece about her peculiar friendship with Chester but also a new writer that I really enjoyed. J succeeded in whetting my appetite not only for more Chester but also for more Ozick, a lovely way to spend an evening.

[Paul Jellinek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only is she a great novelist, but now I find that Cynthia Ozick is also a terrific essayist. Not all of the essays in this volume are equally compelling (including, unfortunately, the first one about TS Elliott), but there were others that truly moved me or made me think--or both.