Cynthia Ozick

DICTATION: A QUARTET
By Cynthia Ozick
Houghton Mifflin, 179 pages, $24

We can’t go on. We must go on. And Cynthia Ozick does go on, and goes on wonderfully. Eighty this month, it seems she gathers energy. Maybe it’s the recent death of Saul Bellow, il miglior fabbro, that makes the value of her new book, Dictation, stand out so sharply; or maybe it’s the stingy flavor of Philip Roth’s recent writing, the sense he’s giving away what’s in the closet before the tax man can get it—but it’s now clear that the self-deprecating muse of New Rochelle, turtle to Roth’s hare, may just surpass him.

How to begin? What to praise in this delightful book? Dictation consists of four novellas about the perils of egoism and the power of the artistic personality to remake reality.  read more »