{"id":3475,"date":"2016-08-09T09:35:38","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T14:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3475"},"modified":"2016-08-09T09:35:38","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T14:35:38","slug":"ozick-on-updike-steadily-remarkable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2016\/08\/09\/ozick-on-updike-steadily-remarkable\/","title":{"rendered":"Ozick on Updike: steadily remarkable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>In a summer\u00a0New York Times Book Review<\/em> interview, “Cynthia Ozick: By the Book,”<\/a> Ozick mentions Updike in her very first response. Asked what books are currently on her night stand, she replies,<\/p>\n

“Nowadays my night stand is a roughly cubical archaeological mount (33 by 25 inches), long awaiting shelf space. From a middle stratum I’ve excavated the regenerative pleasures of rediscovery\u2014all old books: John Updike’s\u00a0Villages\u00a0<\/em>(an aching reminder of the absence of that steadily remarkable literary voice); a Library of America collection of four novels by William Dean Howells (who ought to be venerated at least as much as Willa Cather, if not more); Frank Kermode’s\u00a0Pieces of My Mind\u00a0<\/em>(consummate reflections on subjects ranging from Don DeLillo and Raymond Carver to ‘Secrets and Narrative Sequence’). And from a lower lode, a pair of memoirs by two boyhood escapees from Nazified Vienna, marking Austria’s loss of a stellar composer and a questioning poet: Robert Starer’s\u00a0Continuo: A Life in Music<\/em> and Arthur Gregor’s\u00a0A Longing in the Land.<\/em> Finally, on the mound always accreting surface, a weighty volume turned upside down to conceal the face on its cover: a new biography of Adolph Hitler by Volker Ullrich, translated from the German, not yet opened. Will I read it? Will I? Sometimes repugnance overrides psychological curiosity, and sometimes psychological curiosity is no more illuminating than pornography.”<\/p>\n

The illustration is by Jillian Tamaki.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a summer\u00a0New York Times Book Review interview, “Cynthia Ozick: By the Book,” Ozick mentions Updike in her very first response. Asked what books are currently on her night stand, she replies, “Nowadays my night stand is a roughly cubical … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-interviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3477,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3475\/revisions\/3477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}