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by Alexandra Vallis

"His thighs were taut, his calf sinews thick; he had the inky curly hair of a runner on a Greek amphora," and Cynthia Ozick fell in love at once. Actually, she was not struck by that "venerable image of arrow or dart," until her second meeting with this imposing gladiator, when he was marrying one of her friends. It is strange envisioning this instantaneous and objectionable infatuation-this "divination" that caused Ozick an overwhelming sense of loss (as soon as she left the reception)-without understanding a little bit about Ozick's character: she was already married, had been a childhood friend of the bride whom she described as having "a small head and a Cheshire-cat smile," and had only met the bridegroom once during a game of Frisbee. What a plot for a story, and it unfolds in her own heart! She captures this memory in an essay, aptly titled, "Lovesickness," years after it happened.

Ozick is the master of the worlds that she herself creates. She was not defeated by that unattainable love, and in fact "in a week or so" that "dazing infatuation" had faded from her thoughts. The dizzying rapture had lost its excitement, but her suffering was electrifying, and later we see, controllable. She created an opportunity to expunge her affections when she received a thank-you note from the newly wedded couple and observed the groom's handwriting for the first time. She absorbed the details of the note down to the shapes of each letter: "The sentences themselves were sturdy and friendly, funny and offhand-entirely by-the-by" (205). Everyday Ozick traced over this man's scribbles. It was a dark, secret obsession. She "pursued his marks. . .trapped and caged them." She "was his fanatical, indelible Doppelganger," and worst of all, "a forger besides" (207). But, the idea and her hidden exploits eventually lost their thrill. Ozick had exerted her passion and let go; the story had run its course.

Ozick feeds off imagination, and it empowers her. On the surface her essays show her fascination with the imagination and the mind's ability to absorb knowledge, but I believe Ozick's passion for writing derives from the mutual relationship she accepts between the reader and the writer. She is content playing either role, because she understands and appreciates the purpose of each. A reader escapes from her own life, and chooses a writer as a guide. Ozick is enthralled by the power of the writer. Her "mind meanders, slipping from one memory to another, from reality to memory to dreamscape and back again" ("She" 183). And when she is finished, she can be confident that a part of her life will be significant and valuable to someone else, if only one of her readers; she has shared her problems or maybe even her most trivial thoughts with what seem like inexhaustible listeners. She also envisions the influence she will have on readers for generations because an essay ensures permanence. Its "heat is interior. . .an essay defies its date of birth, and ours too" ("She" 178).

Most of the essays in her collection Quarrel and Quandary are inspired by other writers' books. Nevertheless, the essays are not book reviews. She focuses more on the necessity of the novel, which facilitates an escape from the doldrums of life. In "Imaginary People," Ozick emphasizes the purpose of telling a story. "History seeks truth; philosophy seeks truth. . . Novels. . .are made to allow us to live, for a little time, another life; a life different from the one we were ineluctably born into. Truth, if we can lay our hands on it, may or may not confer freedom. Make-believe always does" (161). Her book-driven essays are tributes to men and women she considers exquisite writers, who have earned her appreciation. They have the imagination and prose to create genuine essays, a term she explicates in "She: Portrait of an Essay as a Warm Body." A genuine essay, she maintains "has no educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play. . .it is reflection and insight." Essayists, like novelists, "suspend our participation in the society we ordinarily live in" (182).

But, what Ozick praises in other writers can also be applied to her own work. Her essays embrace the movement of her own free mind. In her portrait of the essay she relates "the pleasure-sometimes the anxiety of a new idea" to a legend of Titus the emperor of Rome who was said to have gone mad "because of the buzzing of a gnat that made her home in his ear." She explains that writers suffer from a similar incessant buzzing. "But an essayist is more resourceful than an emperor, and can be relieved of this interior noise, if only for the time it takes to record its murmurings. To seize the hum and set it down for other's to hear is the essayists genius" (185). Ozick uses writing to control her own inner hum. She insists in "Imaginary People," that all humans have the internal buzzing that she compares to the hum of a gnat. But, perhaps only writers are blessed with the means to express that inner throbbing.

Ozick is an adamant proponent of letting the mind go. Writing may not be the only way for a person to seek out his fantasies or just something new, but she sees it as the best way. In her essay "Cinematic James," she underscores the impact that films can have when compared to the beauty evoked by carefully written novels. She criticizes the film adaptation by Jane Campion of Henry James' novel The Portrait of a Lady. After discussing some of its accomplishments: "backgrounds and views [that are]. . .immaculately beautiful," she addresses some of its failures, concluding, "That is why the novel is a tragedy-it enacts the defeat of freedom. And that is why the movie, through its governing credo, adds up to little more than a bad marriage" (154). Ozick's main objection to films is that while they may beautifully and even accurately project the image the author had in her own mind while writing, they obstruct the creativity that in a novel is placed in the hands of each individual reader. Even if Ozick agreed with all the filming tactics Campion used, she would still regard the product as a mere "picture show." A film is a single interpretation; the images "are not sentimental; they convince" (150). It is odd to imagine something that has the ability to "convince," as undesirable, but while she may agree with the importance of believable, reasonable information, Ozick rejects its function in art. Her imagination can merely be sparked by a film. She sees the characters, their houses, their expressions. Her open distaste for film, however, is deeper than her claim that it is restrictive to the viewer. She seems to resent the limitless power in the hands of the director, which ultimately means that, as a viewer, she is offered less.

Her interest in readers and their imaginations reflects her desire to seek comfort from the uncertainties of life. But as a writer she also accepts control over what problems she will confront. As a narrator, Cynthia Ozick becomes supreme. She decides her voice and a direction for her work, or maybe she will choose to detail a passing image that has been meandering through her thought. She can nurture any little seed of her imagination, and that is precisely how she interprets her own idea. In "Imaginary People," she concurs with Henry James on inspiration. He described his muse as an insignificant "germ" he gathered in his daily travels. He would listen to anecdotes and gossip at parties, but would turn away "on principle, as the teller moved on to the story's real-life outcome." He ignored the conclusion of the story because it was that initial seed that presented the chance to discover. He had interpreted "what lay implicit in any overheard circumstance-the intimation, the possibility, and captured the initiating spore" (159). Ozick is free to transform obscure trivialities into meaningful literature, but she may just as easily choose to manipulate her real fears into her writing. When the images she develops on paper coalesce, a passing thought takes on new meaning while her worries become less critical.

Ozick's writing even gives her the strength to combat death, a reoccurring image in many of her essays. She described in "Lovesickness" her jealousy of the bride even when they were children "because she was almost two years younger, and even in girlhood [she] lamented the passing of [her] prime. At eleven," she said, "I scribbled a story and appended a lie: 'By the Young Author,' I wrote, 'Age Nine'" (205). Ozick is frightened by the impending loss of her most treasured collection, her thoughts. She had dedicated her career and her life to gathering immeasurable spores of knowledge, and sharing them with her readers. But, while she may be apprehensive towards the future, she is more than ready for it. Her dedication to writing ensures that her thoughts will remain even after she is gone. "The Ladle," an essay devoted to the accumulation of knowledge, describes "a brilliant editor," whose "brain was mobbed with literature; the remembering dipper [had] fetched and fetched." And, she expressed his despair "that all this joyful mental stock is impermanent; ephemeral; it will go to waste; it will vanish when [he vanishes]." Ozick ends the essay, however, by describing the foundation of the cycle of knowledge. She "saw a newborn infant, and marveled at how perfectly it was formed, a complete human simulacrum [that] had no mental stock at all. It was a freshly made ladle: a replenishing ladle ready soon enough to dip into pictures and melodies and rhymes" (165). By surrendering her thoughts to essays, Cynthia Ozick protects her mind from the ephemeral nature of the imagination. Whether her images wait patiently on a page to be discovered in a century as a memento or whether her words are greedily absorbed by some fresh new mind and influence one of her decisions, Ozick's ideas will retain their permanence.

While Ozick emphatically supports the readers' proclivity to escape their inner thoughts, she decidedly alludes to the fact that as a writer, she leads that journey. She may focus on the readers' role, but behind her love for their imagination is her desire to channel it. She forms a relationship with her readers. The reader, she explains, "rides the seesaw," but it is in fact "along with the writer, [that he weighs] in against the writer's proclivity" ("Imaginary" 160). Readers relate to her thoughts and can use her stories to create their own, but it is Ozick who captures their inspiration. On paper, her fears and her most trivial thoughts carry the same significance, and she has ultimate control over both.

Works Cited

Ozick, Cynthia. Quarrel and Quandary. New York: Knopf, 2000.

--. "Cinematic James." 147-158.

--. "Imaginary People." 159-161.

--. "The Ladle." 162-165.

--. "Lovesickness." 204-212.

--. "She: Portrait of the Essay as a Warm Body." 178-187.

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