Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 568 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Cynthia Ozick. Heir to the Glimmering World.(Book Review)
Author: Elizabeth Powers
Publication: World Literature Today (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 79Issue: 3-4Page: 89(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
3 cassettes plus Listener's Guide.Approx 4 hours.Includes exclusive audio interview with the author.

From Cynthia Ozick come two classic novellas:

The Pagan Rabbi - Isaac Kornfield, a learned rabbi, has hangedhimself in a park.His old friend pays a condolence call upon thebereaved wife.And he is shocked to find her cold, unforgiving, asshe tells the story of her husband's great struggle... between theflowering nymph of his passions and the book-laden old Jew of hissoul...

Envy, or Yiddish in America - Ostrover the Story Teller is theonly Yiddish writer in America whose wok is regularly translated andpublished.Edelshtein the Poet seethes with jealousy.If he,Edelshtein, had a translator, he'd be famous too!Tongueless inAmerica, imprisoned in Yiddish, Edelshtein plots and yearns andstaggers through the snows of Manhattan, looking for a translator tosave him from his fate. ... Read more

Product Description
This novel is a portrait of one day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm, a man on the brink of despair. He is a man who has lost his wife, his children, all his money, the respect of his father, and is on the point of losing the support of the one woman whose love could help save him. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (73)

A day in the life
There are any number of good reasons to read this alarmingly lovely and grimly hilarious novella from 1956. Here's just one, an unforgettable paragraph on page 87 in which Tommy Wilhelm and Dr. Tamkin go out to lunch:

"They ate in the cafeteria with the gilded front. There was the same art inside as outside. The food looked sumptuous. Whole fishes were framed liked pictures with carrots, and the salads were like terraced landscapes or like Mexican pyramids; slices of lemon and onion and radishes were like sun and moon and stars; the cream pies were about a foot thick and the cakes swollen as if sleepers had baked them in their dreams."

For anyone who has ever had a soft spot for a good cakeshop, that last bit is especially sweetly crafted.

An overrated book by an overrated writer.
This slender novel -- really just an extended character sketch -- presents a morose, self-pitying loser gazing into his navel. There is almost nothing else worth reading here. I give it two stars rather than one because Bellow is obviously a serious writer. It's too bad he isn't a more interesting one.

Depressing Day in a Depressing Person's Life
As a novelist whose work certainly mirrors his personal life, Saul Bellow's 1956 novella Seize the Day certainly depicts what apparently was the worst time in the author's early life.

In 1956, Bellow waited 8 months in Reno while his divorce was finalizing.During that time this work was finished. This book focuses upon one bad day for a washed-up actor, washed-out salesman protagonist named Tommy Wilhelm whose ignorance or bad luck make for one really bad day.

Unlike the overly worked and extremely detailed depressing events of other famous one-day novels -Ulysses or the sop melodrama ending of life day in Under the Volcano -the details are crisply portrayed in this piece. Like Ulysses or Under the Volcano, this fictional account of a man's day in a man's life can be deemed depressing by the vast majority of its readers - maybe even a unanimous crowd of readers would agree to the depressing aspects of this and the other two novels.

Although the Beatles told us "Money can't buy me love", Tommy would like a little of it.Pay some to the ex-spouse so as to make her less belligerent in hounding him for more money for she and "her boys."If he had made a little more, he may have earned a little more respect from the person most people want to receive praise or respect from: their parent(s). At one time, realizing his affluent and very successful father's objectionable impression of his failed son is about money, he blurts to his father, ". .. You hate me. And if I had money you wouldn't. By God, you have to admit it. The money makes the difference. Then we would be a fine father and son.. . " To which his father replies, "I can't give you any money. There would be no end to it if I started . . . I want nobody on my back. Get off!"

That may have been one of the less painful discussions between the two as they were at least direct and honest with one another.Something which many other passages lack.

This author, I believe, delivers novels from the heart.When times are better, happier pieces like The Adventures of Augie March emerge.When they are sadder, you receive works like this or Herzog (.March is styledmore like fellow Chicagoan - Theodore Dreiser.This work and Herzog are more like John O'Hara, John Updike or Richard Ford.Choose to your liking

A good look at the desperation all of us have within
One of Bellow's more famous works, Seize the Day is a novella depicting the very tumultuous goings-on in a day of "Tommy" Wilhelm Adler's life.Tommy is the quintessential has-been (or possibly never-was).He is an actor who never made it.In his middle-age, he still depends on his father as an adolescent does--even throwing tantrums when his father does not see things his way.Tommy is estranged from his wife, has no job or hope of finding work, and lacks the wherewithal to function as an adult in society.He is easily swept up by confidence men such as Dr. Tamkin, an unctuous snake who swindles him in the commodities trade.
The pages fly by all too quickly here.Tommy, at the end, comes to terms with his lot, but still the reader is left with the idea that nothing will change.Essentially, Tommy becomes a neurotic allegory for the child in all of us who never wants to grow up, who wants to be taken care of, who refuses to accept life as it truly is and instead dwells in a mental utopia.When the time comes, I shall definitely be seeking more of Bellow's works.

Matt Finizio
[...]
Box off.Life on.

There ain't no little ways to make things better, and the only big thing is money
In the story Looking for Mr. Green, in my edition of Seize the Day, a minor character summarizes the mood of this entire work.In Seize the Day, we can find the Ur-Bellow concerns; most of the themes that can be found in his later literature, somewhat more fleshed out, are found here.

Overwhelmingly, this is the place of money, power and position in American life.Some later Bellow work appears to reveal in American prosperity and materialism.He is adept at explaining in detail the quality and price of a jacket or tie or a sports car.But in Seize the Day, Americam capitalism runs over the main character, at the end reducing him to literal tears.

If anyone wants to see the early Bellow flexing his new literary muscles, this work must be read. ... Read more

Product Description
A welcome addition to Holocaust literature, this work presents a series of 49 personal reminiscences of non-Jewish citizens in various European nations who risked their lives to hide resident Jews from the Nazi horror. Most of those interviewed felt their actions were done out of friendship and for people caught in a web of hatred and anti-Semitism. They did not feel that they were acting heroically but that they were doing what was right. Portraits by Block of each of the rescuers accompany the text. These 49 are representative of the 9,295 rescuers honoured at the Yad Vashem in Israel. This is recommended reading for general readers as well as for college and university libraries. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust
The thing I LOVE about this book (since it was first issued I have given at least 50 copies to young people as a gift) are the pictures of the rescuers then and now. The point of each true story is that ordinary people were suddenly thrust into extraordinary and fearsome times and they went out of their way to do the moral and very courageous thing to help rescue Jews. Sometimes the people were friends before hand and sometimes they were not.At least one time, the "saved" people were seemingly ungrateful out of their own fear and frustration. This act was personally dangerous and also dangerous for the families of the rescuers.Each rescuer made it clear that they had not thought twice about it at the time and that they had never expected to play such a role before it happened.These people were HEROES.Every story is deeply affecting.Sometimes there was reward at the end and sometimes not.Sometimes years of struggle followed.

True stories of moral courage and goodness
On the front cover of "Rescuers" are 12 photographs of some very nice looking people. They are pictures of people that you might meet every day; of friends and family, or someone that you might pass by on thestreet. They are the faces of very ordinary people, but they are also muchmore than that. They are the faces of people that risked their lives tosave the lives of others during the Holocaust. They are the faces of therescuers. There are many more photographs inside the book, of rescuers fromcountries all over Europe. Author Malka Drucker and photographer Gay Blockinterviewed and photographed the rescuers, seeking the heart of compassionand moral courage. They found that heart in men and women; the young andthe old; and in people from all walks of life.Every story told by therescuers is very moving. Some rescuers saved one person from death; somesaved many thousands. All of the rescuers are worthy of the greatestrespect and honor. The rescuers were sometimes asked the question of whythey helped others to live, when so many other people stood by and didnothing. The rescuers would answer that question by saying that they wereonly doing what they knew was right. By caring for other people, they wereacting the way that everyone should have been acting. One of the mostinspiring truths found in the book, is the thought that we all have thatsame spark of goodness within our hearts, that was shown so nobly by therescuers. We all have the capacity for doing what is right, even in timesof the greatest fear and terror. This is a book that will warm your heart,and it is well worth reading.

A beautiful photo-interview essay on altruism...
This book is wonderfully formatted, arranged by geographic area of Europe. Each interview starts with black and white photos a person who helped Jews and other persecuted people during WWII. A personal narrative of that timein their lives follows, and each interview closes with a color photo ofthat person as they were in 1992 when the interviews were done. Acomplicated and moving picture of altruism emerges, and one gets a glimpseof how individuals chose to protect others at the risk of threat tothemselves and their families. ... Read more