Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Ozick, Cynthia (Vol. 155) - Cynthia Ozick and Elaine M. Kauvar (interview date fall 1993)

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Cynthia Ozick and Elaine M. Kauvar (interview date fall 1993)

SOURCE: Ozick, Cynthia, and Elaine M. Kauvar. “An Interview with Cynthia Ozick.” Contemporary Literature 34, no. 3 (fall 1993): 358–94.

[In the following interview, Ozick offers her views on Jewish culture, her role as a Jewish writer, and the importance of the Holocaust.]

American Jewish writers too often face the unreasonable demand that they be responsible for reinforcing and revitalizing Jewishness. To yield to such a demand is to renounce the freedom of imaginative writing, an unthinkable sacrifice for a serious writer. Small wonder that American Jewish writers—Philip Roth and Stanley Elkin come immediately to mind—have vigorously resisted the label “Jewish writer” together with its attendant restrictions. Yet more than they have with Roth or Elkin, critics have unquestioningly regarded Cynthia Ozick as a Jewish writer whose muses not only are Jews but whose...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Sarah Blacher Cohen (essay date summer 1990)
   2. Mark Krupnick (essay date fall–winter 1991)
   3. Cynthia Ozick and Mario Materassi (interview date spring–summer 1992)
   4. Cynthia Ozick and Elaine M. Kauvar (interview date fall 1993)
   5. Andrew Lakritz (essay date winter 1994)
   6. Sarah Blacher Cohen (essay date 1994)
   7. Sarah Blacher Cohen (essay date 1994)
   8. Victor Strandberg (essay date 1994)
   9. Peter Kerry Powers (essay date fall 1995)
   10. Joseph Alkana (essay date winter 1997)
   11. Susanne Klingenstein (essay date 1997)
   12. Millicent Bell (review date winter 1998)
   13. Janet L. Cooper (essay date spring 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Cynthia Ozick