Envy (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Cynthia Ozick
- First Published: 1966
- Type of Work: Short story
- Genres: Short fiction, Satire
- Subjects: Values, Tradition, Authors or writers, Alienation, Jews or Jewish life, Anti-Semitism, Satire, Yiddish
- Locales: New York
“Envy: Or, Yiddish in America” first appeared in Commentary, then was published as part of Ozick's first short-story collection two years later. The connection between language and culture is explored as an aging Yiddish poet, a fictionalized Joseph Glatstein, centers his life on his all-encompassing jealousy of Yankel Ostrover, a thinly disguised Isaac Bashevis Singer.
True to Ozick's belief that large themes can be explored in short fiction, she expresses her concern with the nature of language while entertaining her audience with a comically wry story. It takes...
[The entire page is 776 words long]
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