Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Ozick, Cynthia (Vol. 155) - Peter Kerry Powers (essay date fall 1995)

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Peter Kerry Powers (essay date fall 1995)

SOURCE: Powers, Peter Kerry. “Disruptive Memories: Cynthia Ozick, Assimilation, and the Invented Past.” MELUS 20, no. 3 (fall 1995): 79–98.

[In the following essay, Powers discusses Ozick's opinions about Jewish identity and the role of the Jewish-American author.]

He that applieth himself to the fear of God, And setteth his mind upon the Law of the Most High, He searcheth out the wisdom of all ancients, And is occupied with the prophets of old.

—The Wisdom of Ben Sira

The popular and academic successes of Jewish writers in the 1950s and 60s led John Updike—in what now seems high comedy—to a sustained fret over the popularity of things ethnic in American literature.¹ While Updike's paranoia about his unmarketable ethnicity has abated, the predominance and importance of Jewish writers certainly have not. Even as I was writing...

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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