Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Ozick, Cynthia (Vol. 155) - Cynthia Ozick and Mario Materassi (interview date spring–summer 1992)

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Cynthia Ozick and Mario Materassi (interview date spring–summer 1992)

SOURCE: Ozick, Cynthia, and Mario Materassi. “Imagination Unbound: An Interview with Cynthia Ozick.” Salmagundi, nos. 94–95 (spring–summer 1992): 85–113.

[In the following interview, Ozick comments on her writing career and the influences behind The Messiah of Stockholm.]

[Materassi:] Let's begin with a standard “first question”: How and when did you become a writer?

[Ozick:] This question is really very easy for me, because I never was not a writer. I think I knew this very, very early, before I could even hold a pen. Partly it was simply instinct, and partly I had a model: there was a writer in my family, my mother's brother, who died a few years ago. He was a Hebrew poet.

What was his name?

His name was Abraham Regelson. He emigrated to Israel when that state declared its independence in 1948. And...

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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