Finished Cynthia Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers

 

Last night, I finished Cynthia Ozick's book the Puttermesser Papers. 

Jack Miles has a very good review of Ozick's book in the Times. He writes:

Cynthia Ozick has an amphibious talent. She is interested in ideas to the extent that they yield stories and stories to the extent that they yield ideas. Literary intellectuals (''Wait'll you meet him!'' one Ozick character crows. ''He's got this mind'') may groan when the novelist in Ms. Ozick intrudes on the critic. Lovers of pure story may sigh when the critic breaks the novelist's spell. But others read Ms. Ozick for the fun of just this double-crossing. Her latest book, ''The Puttermesser Papers,'' is a crazy delight, like Chris Burden's sculpture ''The Flying Steamroller.'' Its author doesn't fall between two stools, she floats there.

The word ''papers'' in the title properly suggests that these five previously published episodes from the imagined life of Ruth Puttermesser have been collected rather than constructed. There could have been 15; there could have been none. These are the five that survive, not that there is any faux-documentary framework around them.

Like Miles, I, personally, enjoyed the book. Here are two of my favorite passages:

First, we see Ruth Puttermesser, the protagonist, looking for a relationship. She decides to check the personal ads in, of all places, the New York Review of Books:

    She bought a copy of the New York Review of Books and looked through the Personals. Brains, brains everywhere.

Fit, handsome, ambitious writer/editor, non-smoker, witty, imaginative, irreverent, seeks lasting relationship with non-smoking female. Must be brilliant, unpretentious, passionate, creative. Prefer Ph.D. in Milton, Shakespeare, or Beowulf.

University professor, anthropologist, 50, gentle, intellectual, youthful, author of three volumes on native Aleutian Islanders, cherishes the examined life, welcomes marriage or long-term attachment to loyal accomplished professional woman, well-analyzed (Jung only, no Freud or Reich please). Sense of humor and love of outdoors a must (p. 106).

Second is a passage that comes in a section where Puttermesser has welcomed a young Russian female relative into her home.

    And in New York -- in the very hour of perestroika, of glasnost! -- Puttermesser picks up a joke that is at this moment circulating through Moscow: Because there is a rumor of a delivery of meat a long queue forms outside the butcher shop. After a four-hour wait, the manager emerges to address the crowd: "The meat hasn't arrived yet, but there won't be enough for everyone, so all the Jews must leave." Another four hours pass, and out comes the manager: "No delivery yet, but there won't be enough, so all the chronic grumblers against the regime must leave." Another four hours, and finally the manager announces" "Sorry, comrades, but there will be no meat delivery after all. Everyone go home!" And a great moan rises up" "Wouldn't you know it? The Jews are always getting favored!"