Quarrel and Quandary: Essays Book

Most of Ozick's essays are learned. I wasn't surprised at how erudite they are. I expected it. That anticipation of learning new perspectives and enjoying fine writing were my incentives to reading in the 1st place, and I was rewarded.

The collection includes what you might consider traditional subjects like Kafka and Dostoyevsky and Henry James. But she's not afraid to address more slippery writers like Gertrude Stein and W. G. Sebald. In fact, she frames her essays with an early entry on Sebald and a final one on New York City, both fueled by the adjective sublime. Along the way between Sebald and New York City she writes about public intellectuals, the nature of poetry, and the art of biography. My favorite is one called "The Ladle" in which she equates all of literature to a rich stew into which we're able to dip and scoop from lifetimes of memory, fetching time and again from the mental soup we've been simmering. I have to say my least favorites are what I consider personal essays, like "Lovesickness", a memory of her family's pharmacy in the Bronx, and one on a summer job. Perhaps the best known of these essays, and one I thought particularly fascinating because I don't have an easy familiarity with the subject, is that on the commercialism that's arisen around Anne Frank and her extraordinary work.

This is my 1st experience in reading Ozick essays, and I'm sure I'll return to her.