Word: ozick
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Donald Hall '51, whose book Remembering Poets was partly devoted to Eliot, called Ozick's article remarkable, not for any kind of revolutionary criticism but for its "gross, lengthy, un-New Yorkerish attack." By un-New Yorkerish, Hall says he means that the piece conflicts with the weekly magazine's policy of not doing any articles about authors except in book reviews...
...Ozick, who begins her article by mentioning last year's "mostly spiritless" centennial celebration of Eliot's birth, says that the poet's reputation has sagged so much that high school and college students "barely" read his work, and cites "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as the only Eliot poem that is studied today...
Like many of Eliot's critics, Ozick says she is repelled by the poet's alleged anti-Semitism and his cruelty towards his wife. She takes particular offense at Eliot's book called The Idea of a Christian Society, in which he says that cultural unity can be achieved through a "Community of Christians...
Professor Eloise Knapp Hay of the University of California at Santa Barbara, whose book T.S. Eliot's Negative Way was published in 1982, lambasts Ozick's article in much the same fashion as Hall, calling the author's arguments "stupid," "ridiculous" and "outrageously wrong...
...addition to these critical comments, Ozick's article also has received some positive reviews. Baumel agrees with Ozick's charges that Eliot was anti-Semitic, and Wayne Koestenbaum '80 calls the article a sad but "beautiful" piece by someone who understands the reasons for Eliot's fall, but at the same time longs to be back in the era when the poet was king...