Essay as Novel and Fiction as Art: The Evolution of Two Genres in the Oeuvre of Cynthia Ozick

Abstract

Abstract Embarking on her first novel in 1950 as an ardent admirer of Henry James, Cynthia Ozick developed a demanding theory of literary high art. When she emerged from her self-seclusion in 1964 with her novel Trust and began to publish short stories, her new work was sharply critical, from a Jewish point of view, of the arrogance, vanity, and maddening ambition that drives the creation of art. In the mid-1980s, Ozick managed to resolve the conflict she had perceived between Jewish moral imperatives and literary art. At the same time, as her career was taking off and editors began to request nonfiction contributions to high-profile magazines, she split her writing into two distinct but complementary genres, fiction and essay. They serve two distinct purposes and differ in their poetics and mode of composition. Essays comment on the world, the present and the fleetingness of time; fictions are mind games; they show timeless ideas in action. This article traces the evolution of the split into two genres and delineates Ozick’s theory of art.