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Ozick, Cynthia : Quarrel & Quandary: Essays

Alfred A. Knopf, New York City, NY, 2000

ISBN 0375410619

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 247 pages. The author's fourth collection of essays. Now considered a late-modern classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Cynthia Ozick's "Quarrel & Quandary: Essays". Twenty essays on subjects as diverse as Franz Kafka, Henry James (the greatest influence on her work), Gertrude Stein, William Styron, and a controversial, quarrelsome essay on Anne Frank. "I urge all lovers of American prose to read it. Cynthia Ozick is, for my money, the most accomplished and graceful literary stylist of our time. Her pieces have genuine durability. They are great essays" (The New York Times). A cult writer once upon a time, Cynthia Ozick is now firmly established as one of our finest writers. It took a very long time for the reading public as well as the critics to realize her greatness. By her own admission, it was a struggle to achieve the recognition she deserved and the belated fame is more "folly" than anything else, as one of her collections aver. She is writing in three literary traditions simultaneously, all of them at the most profound level imaginable: The ancient Jewish, the modern European, and the Jamesian American. Hence, the dazzling allusiveness, poignant beauty, and sheer intensity of her work. Her prose style - imbricated, brachiate, and filigreed, to borrow three of her own favorite words - is a paradox: The rush of metaphors arrives at and realizes a work of luminous beauty. An absolute "must-have" title for Cynthia Ozick collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed, dated, and inscribed in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Cynthia Ozick September 19, 2005". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient is named. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for "Fame & Folly". Finalist for the National Book Award in 1997 for "The Puttermesser Papers". Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001 for "Quarrel & Quandary". Recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. One of the greatest American writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER CYNTHIA OZICK TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0375410619.

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