Being of a younger generation, my acquaintances are generally surprised to find me reading a collection of essays. This provides me with a golden opportunity to share the wealth I have found in this book. Not only have the essayists here provoked thought and surprising emotion from me, but this art has pushed me in a new direction. Witnessing all of the unexpected beauty pouring from this book has made me want to write essays. I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of this series. Fiction has been moved to the back burner. I am forever grateful.

I found this series a couple of years ago, and each issue is a treasure to enjoy. I often find myself reading about things outside my experience, outside what I expect to be interested in - and every time I learn and think and imagine and am given pleasure in the reading. The essay form, in the hands of these writers, is a grand and various opportunity for thought and exploration of grand themes and of the minutiae of human life.

I'm really glad to meet this place. Now I am defencing these on Thomas Pynchon. So I wish you could send me a new list on Pynchon. Thank you.

When Cynthia Ozick wrote of critic James Wood that "he thinks with a sublime ferocity...[and his writing is characterized by] an intellectual daring that portends literary permanence," she might have been describing herself. A belletrist always, a polemicist when necessary (she agrees with Chekhov that writers should engage in politics only in order to protect themselves from politics), Cynthia Ozick is our most distinguished literary intellectual (perhaps she would prefer the old-fashioned word "thinker"). Some essays in this collection are much finer than others, but a great writer's poor performances have a way of not mattering a great deal. "A Drugstore in Winter," "Literature and the Politics of Sex: A Dissent," and "Justice (Again) to Edith Wharton" are extraordinary.

In general I find this one of the best series of collection but this one was even better than the others. Afew essays were only mearly good but most of them were outstanding and left me thinking. One essay about how man of 60 views the world and hislife was exellent; then another essay about how a man of 90 views the world. Made for a great comparison

Avoid Cynthia Ozick if you would rather be hip than learned. If you wish to read a remarkable analysis of how we (they) came to revere the hip over the learned, turn to "The Question of Our Speech: The Return to Aural Culture," the collection's best essay. Ozick is a thinker of luminous seriousness. I reread her gratefully.

A superbly written insider's look at the Russian revolution. Babel can convey the horrors of war with very few words. I enjoyed the best his sarcastic treatement of the bombastic communist rhetoric in such stories as "Salt" and "Treason" (maybe because I was exposed to it myself at one time).

I stumbled across Isaac Babel because of a single line quoted in Paul Johnson's "History of the Jews". And then I was forever hooked.

First, a caveat. Be sure you understand when reading Babel's short stories that you are not reading his autobiography or journal. He did in fact listen to our creative writing teachers; he wrote what he knew. He knew the Russian revolution. He knew the Cossacks. He knew war. He knew living inside and outside the pale. His world jumps off the page because he lived it first.

The stories contain autobiographical material, actively mixed with the yeast of fiction. Use this aspect of his writing to chase rabbits. Follow up this book with his biography or find out more about the Russian revolution. Both of those topics will make more sense after reading his collected stories.

As a writer, I stand in awe of Babel's stingy use of words. Some scenes are so hugely horrible that I would have been tempted to throw in appropriate adverbs and adjectives in an attempt to convince you, my reader, just how hugely horrible it really was. Babel simply tells the story, and you gasp when you are done, horrified when you peak through the keyhole (and I would have blasted a hole in the wall).

When you read Babel, you must be willing to go at the stories with an open mind, not expecting him to flatten the Commies, defend the Jews, or paint the picture the way you want him to. He will not do that, no matter how many times you try to make it so. You will hear no overtones of right or wrong, get no definitive answers about the people on either side of the Russian revolution.

For that, I am most grateful to Isaac Babel. Nothing about our world can be easily distilled into sharp black and white. His stories give us the real world in astounding color.

The frightfully ugly picture on the cover of this edition (what in the world were the publishers thinking?) might keep a lot of people away, but the few brave souls that look inside will find one of the great 20th century craftsmen of prose. I can't think of another writer than chooses his words more carefully, that can pack more into a single sentence. "Pierced by the flashes of the bombardment, night arches over the dying man." Single words can take your breath away - the choice of "arches" is the one that does it for me - but you'll probably have others. The brutality of the world he describes may seem foreign, but it never becomes oppressive, mainly because the writing is so good. The stories themselves are rather difficult to love - there is very little hope to latch on to, there are very few characters one can feel close to; there are very few real characters at all, except the narrator. Even under these horrific circumstances, though, Babel creates emotions than one can identify with - pride, love, lust, anger. He has a thorough understanding of human character. It is apparent that the circumstances of war don't create new emotions, they just amplify things we feel anyway.

This book is a necessary read for anyone that wants to learn how to write poetically without being florid, compress pages of description into a few words. This compression is one of the reasons that the stories stay in mind long after they've been read. Buy the book - or get the other edition in a used book store, so you don't have to look at that awful picture.

Babel is a great model for new writers in his ability to place "life on the page." This translation is as complete as they come and well translated for the contemporary American ear.

There were only a few Soviet writers who tried to tell the story exactly how it happened and Isaac Babel was on of these very few bright and brave men. His work deserves to be known, remembered, and the highest points.

Unfortunately I can't appreciate the Mr. Peter Constantine's english translation
I read Isaac Babel in russian
He is the one of my favorite short story writer
very good language, humor
I'm glad that english-speaking readers have opportunity
to meet Babel's wonderful stories

Cynthia Ozick, a fiction writer, clearly depicts the affects of the Holocaust on one woman, Rosa Lublin. Ozick uses an accumulation of two of her short stories, one being "The Shawl," and the other being, "Rosa." In "The Shawl," Rosa witnessed the murder of her baby daughter, Magda, while at the hands of the malicious concentration camp guards. Magda was thrust towards an electric fence the first time that she was seen by a Nazi guard. Rosa had done an efficient job of hiding Magda until Rosa's neice, Stella, stole Magda's "magical shawl" for her own comfort, thus wielding Magda to the guards. The tragic death of Magda changes the course of Rosa's life forever; long after the Holocaust is over. There is a time where Rosa tells the way that life goes... "there's life before, life during, and life after-Before is a dream. After is a joke. Only during stays." For Rosa, Hitler's reign during the Holocaust is "during." "The Shawl" follows "Rosa". In this sequel, Rosa is now living in Florida, "a hellish place," where she is meagerly financially supported by Stella. Stella lives in New York; both women live alone. The reason for their separation stems to the time when Rosa flipped out and completely destroyed her shop in Brooklyn; for she would have been placed in a mental rehabilitation center, had she not left New York immediately. Rosa, 59, continues to agonize over the loss of Magda, even after nearly 30 years. Everyday, she writes letters to Magda in "the most literary Polish," while she can only communicate with Stella in English. Unable to afford simple things such as paper, Rosa either finds blank sheets in the "hotel" lobby where she is staying or she finds envelopes which she delicately unfolds to form squares of paper, or, as she puts it, "the fresh face of a new letter." Rosa's life then changes when she encounters a wealthy man by the name of Mr. Persky. Persky is a rather obvious flirt in their chance meeting. Does anything happen between Rosa and Persky?

The Shawl is a hauntingly beautiful story and novella of a woman, Rosa, who watches her baby daughter, Magda, die at the hands of a concentration camp guard during the holocaust. Told in lyrical prose, Ms. Ozick captivates us with the symbol of the shawl representing everything that Rosa lost during the war. The shawl is what she hid her daughter Magda in at the concentration camp so that Magda wouldn't be thrown into the gas chambers. But, her evil niece Stella (who is with Rosa and Magda at the concentration camp) steals the shawl from the baby one night. The baby is then found and killed by a guard.

The rest of the story tells of Rosa's life 39 years later as she has taken residence in a dumpy hotel room in Florida that evil Stella (who now resides in New York) pays for. Here, Rosa lives day to day in a sort of mental fit, deluding herself that Magda is still a live, a beautiful lioness, a doctor married to a doctor, living in a gorgeous house in New York. Amid open sardine cans and half eaten eggs, Rosa writes letters to this daughter.

Toward the end of the novella, Rosa finally receives a box with the shawl in it which Stella has reluctantly sent to her. "Get on with your life; join a club; put on your bathing suit!" Stella tells her in a letter attached to the shawl. But, all that Rosa cares about is breathing in the shawl, Magda.

Overall, this was certainly one of the greatest pieces of writing I've ever had the chance to read. Cynthia Ozick knows her subject, is deeply deeply in tune with her characters and touches us with all that they feel and do.

I look forward to reading more of her work. She is a truly gifted writer who has much to offer the world.

Both stories in this brief book ("The Shawl" and "Rosa") are about the same women, who sees her baby killed in the camps and thirty years later is haunted by her memory. "The Shawl" (the first story) is, I think, the best short story in the English language (it dwarfs Carver and Cheever in scope, has deeper moral thrust than O'Conner and in a few pages evokes the Holocaust as much as Primo Levi was able to do in his eloquent long works). In a few words: Read this story and you will be changed. On the other hand, "Rosa" (a novella) is drawn out and, though powerful, more nuanced and subtle than its predecessor. Although usually good things, these elements work against the story (especially if read in succession) - "The Shawl"'s power is its unwillingness to compromise anything whereas "Rosa" seems to err a bit on the long side. It's almost tempting to give the stories entirely different ratings but the "10" of "The Shawl" so far eclipses any "9" or "8" I would give "Rosa" that I think it unfair to lower the status of the better story. This work is not nice or easy and doesn't attempt any of the catharsis some Holocaust Fiction ludicrously includes. It is hard to read (and should be) because both works are more or less a statement about our own humanity (or inhumanity). The prose itself is wonderfully easy, but the depth of emotion Ozick strikes makes this a very difficult 69 pages. Read it and you too will "never forget".

I admit it; I am not a reader of essays. Normally I shun them as much as I would recoil from an invite to go see a big screen remake of "Charlie's Angels." The thought of either would make me shudder. As to the former, perhaps I had my fill of Kant in college, or maybe reading "Gorgias" finally put me over some particular intellectual edge that I've yet to recover from twenty years later. Whatever the cause, I've spent very little time with pedantic or polemical prose since. So what it was that made me pick up "Quarrel and Quandary" is still beyond my ken, especially because I have never read any of Ozick's fiction. That said, it's satisfying to report that there is some life left in the old essay form yet, at least as practiced by Ms. Ozick. The Three Screens, as she calls them--TV, cinema, and computer--have not completely made moot the challenge of good writing or intricate analysis, and these Ozick patently demonstrates. You may not turn these pages at accelerated rates, hanging on every word, but you may just as easily marvel at her gifted turn of phrase, not to mention nuance of thought, as you would any plot by the latest faddish producer of pot-boilers. One thing you'll have to admit when you read this collection is that Ms. Ozick has an active mind on her shoulders, and she has the specific skill of being able to plausibly place on the page the arguments she has constructed in her head. You'll also notice that she has the uncanny ability to link diverse subjects. In a universe that is haystack filled with competing straws of information, she has a certain facility for finding one straw and sensing its relationship with another where the intimacy is by no means self-evident. It should come as no shock that her work herein just received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. So, kudos to Ms. Ozick, who entertained me in unexpected ways--and who should do the same for you.

Noted essayist Cynthia Ozick begins her new, alliterative collection with a nearly heretical thought in this kinetic cyber-age: "Journalism is a necessity, but it is not a permanence. When I hear someone (seventy-plus or twenty-something) utter 'my generation,' I know I am in the vicinity of a light mind." Rest assured that should you choose to pick up Quarrel & Quandary, you will not be in the vicinity of a light mind. Rather, Ozick embarks, as all essayists must, on a journey of attempted understanding. She fiddles with Crime and Punishment in the context of the Unabomber. She wonders if the world wouldn't be better without Anne Frank's diary. She questions the rights of historical novelists and wrestles, as always, with the Holocaust. Her essays are sometimes obscure, often politically incorrect, sometimes personal and even humorous. But they are always intelligent and written in sparkling, near perfect prose.

A strange book and a bit hard to follow. The four stories about Puttermesser were a bit more intriguing than Levitation, but a very odd thread wound throughout the book. I enjoyed the character development and the story of the Golom, but overall, this book was not one of my favorites.

This book, a collection of five stories, introduces us to Ruth Puttermesser, the overly-intellectual, overly-contemplative heroine of Cynthia Ozick's most recent novel, "The Puttermesser Papers." In the first story, Puttermesser is a down-and-out NYC lawyer hauled from firm to firm without much hope of success. When she's not working, she's daydreaming...rather, when she's not daydreaming, she's working. Puttermesser's most meaningful, most invigorating experiences occur inside her own head. She gets pep talks from a dead uncle, she creates a golem who serves as a housekeeper and campaign manager when she runs for city office. What's real, what isn't? The sentences twist and surprise; each passage is dense and filled with comic irony.

The title story, "Levitation," is about two writers, married to each other, who vow never to write about writers ("the forbidden act") or write about NYC ("the forbidden city"). A wonderful irony in itself. At a cocktail party they've thrown, Jewish guests levitate in the air; everyone else remains grounded, including the main character, who, up until that point, considered herself a convert to the faith. All of these stories are stories of ideas: the characters don't chatter mindlessly; rather, they possess, unlike many other literary characters, a high degree of self-awareness.

What really shines in this book, though, is Ozick's love of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E. You'll find no minimalism here. Like James and Nabokov, Ozick is dead-set on compressing as much detail as possible into a single sentence. The result is a narrative style of such elegance and originality, you'll be compelled to read these fictions allowed.

The title story itself is worth the price of admission. This book illustrates Ozick's imaginative use of language more than perhaps any other of hers. It's to the mouth what wine is.

"Seize the Day" is a sad little novel about a man, lost in the wilderness of his life, whose struggle "toward the consummation of his heart's ultimate need" can succeed only when he surrenders his composure to his deepest emotions, that secret place in all of us from which we beckon our tears. The one day in which the entire novel takes place completely encapsulates his past, present, and future into the portrait of a man mired in his environment.

The man is 44-year-old Tommy Wilhelm who, like some of Bellow's other fictional protagonists Augie March, Eugene Henderson, and Moses Herzog, is a little piece of the chaos of twentieth-century urban America distilled into a single confused character. Wilhelm is a native New Yorker (although it's obvious his author is not), a failed actor, and an unemployed former sales executive. He is separated from his wife, who is always selfishly demanding from him money that he doesn't have, and his two sons. His only financial support now is from his father, a successful physician who is annoyed by his son's lack of discipline but nevertheless brags about his past accomplishments to anyone who will listen.

Wilhelm has a friend named Dr. Tamkin who professes to be a psychologist, has many various interests but dubious talents, and persuades him to invest his last dollar in lard commodities. Tamkin, a world traveler, has told Wilhelm that he "had attended some of the Egyptian royal family as a psychiatrist," a statement that evokes an image of the biblical Joseph prophesying for the Pharaoh seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine; but Tamkin's optimistic expectation for lard is all profit, no loss. His philosophy is that the future is not worth the worry; live for the "here-and-now": seize the day. He is undoubtedly a charlatan, but in Wilhelm's eyes he means well.

One of the novel's themes is atonement, which is signified by the reference to Yom Kippur. Wilhelm is not very religious and has not planned to attend a synagogue, but he recognizes the importance of saying Yiskor for his dead mother; his sincere but idle threat to the unknown hoodlums who vandalized the bench next to her grave will not suffice to honor her memory. Ironically, the place where he ultimately atones is the funeral of a man who is evidently not Jewish (open casket, presence of flowers) -- and he weeps with the knowledge that death is all we achieve from life. Seize the day, indeed.

This little treasure lacks clear conflict and struggle between characters, instead focusing upon one man's slow and pathetic drowning in life. Beautiful language and symbolism, as well as a look into 1950's New York culture.

This book is a lovely piece of painful truth. As I go through each of Bellow's novels one thing that stands out progressively is the assured confidence that grows and grows each time we cross through similar terrain. This is not to say that he repeats himself--certainly not as the on-going philosophy matures through both personal life experience and a further understanding of human nature. Seize the day is, as usual, extremely well-written but with this short novel I believe that Bellow began crossing into that phase of maturity that makes an author ever-lasting and forces his vision upon the world at large. It is no wonder that when Bellow won his Nobel Prize twenty years after the publication of this book that it was singled out for special notice. Basically your middle-class everyman is portrayed (with, of course, the particularities related to Bellow himself to give the human reactions more sincerity) at one of those mid-life boiling points when the decisions made will effect everything that comes later. You read along with a similar urgancy, rooting yet never hoping, aware that many of Tommy Wilhem's mistakes are similar to your own and breathlessly hoping to find an answer to your own questions.

Four books into Mr. Bellow's career I am now convinced that all the high-handed praise is, for once, truly justified. This guy is one of the true American wonders, one of the gods of our literature.