LETTER: ALS to Richard Elman.
Cynthia Ozick To Richard Elman
Ozick, Cynthia. Autograph letter signed, “Cynthia,” to “Dick,” January 3, 1967; one leaf of writing paper, creased; recto only; in black and red ink. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
A fine example of Ozickian writing, infused with wit and inimitable word choices; and touching on subjects with which she is most identified: the writing process, women, and Judaism.
Ozick berates Elman for his assumption – more accurately, harassment – about her motivations for coming into the city. “It is offensive to me that you should suppose I ‘go shopping.’ Not merely that you suppose it, but you state it. Would you state it to a male writer? Would you, for instance, call up George P. Elliot and say, ‘How about a little talk over some coffee next time you come into town to go shopping?’ !?”
To great effect – which, it is clear, she also realizes – she switches pen colors from black to red, ostensibly, because the black “slips madly on this lousy paper-surface,” but also to get to the point of her letter. In an informative recapitulation, she enlightens Elman – also a Jewish-American writer – of a conversation she had with David Segal, about another writer named Arthur. She says David explained to her that Arthur’s book is about the fact that:
“a mediocre Jew cannot stand life as a mediocre Jew but can stand it as a mediocre goy.” (Correction: “goy” is my word. David said “Gentile.”) This is interesting, Dick. This is not non-sense. It is a comment (a judgment, really) on a very genuine strain in American Jewry. So it is an interesting & reverberating social observation. (Social observations as the whole burden of a novel are subject to criticism from a literary point of view, but that’s another matter. A good novel deals with more than just social observation[s].)
(#6017)
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