SANFORD PINSKER
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twenty-t\Vo-year-old philosophy student who passionately argued the
following proposition:
Once the God of the Jews forbade art in religion, then art was
released-released forever-to follow its own spoor. Once art was
exempted from idol-making, from religious duty, it could see what
it wished, it could record what it liked, it could play and cavort and
distort-what it pleased! And all without obligation
to
sanctity.
Pious obeisance was dismissed-unwanted! Excluded! Art was free
to be free!
One docs nor normally think of Ozick as the sort of writer who
would easily sign her name to such a manifesto; but I would argue that
the freedom of literary artists
to
go wherever the imagination takes
them and
to
think of the life of Art as the only life that truly matters has
become much more attractive
to
Ozick. As with everything about Ozick
and her work, one must allow ample room for nuance, and this is cer–
tainly true for the contention that, in the final analysis, she is most accu–
rately written down as an aesthete. Because the term carries a good deal
of cultural baggage, Ozick might well prefer the plainer, less trouble–
making word "writer." What matters, however, is that her critics
dampen their enthusiasm for making facile connections between the
pronouncements occasioned by the life she leads as public citizen and
committed .Jew and the fiction she produces. With regard to the former,
one can argue with Ozick's public positions as one will, agreeing (or dis–
agreeing) with her about Israeli politics, certain aspects of contemporary
feminism, or the potential danger of much that passes as multicultural–
ism. However, to twist the title of a Raymond Carver story, what we
talk about when we talk about Ozick's fiction is simply the artful ways
that her stories and novels are constructed, the rhythms of her sen–
tences, and how their cumulative effects change our lives-not so much
because they give us new intellectual positions (although that can hap–
pen), but because they give us continuing pleasures. Art cannot promise,
or achieve, more than this. But for the right sort of reader, that is
entirely sufficient.
