Word: ozick
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FICTION: The Cannibal Galaxy, Cynthia Ozick -Cathedral, Raymond Carver -Franz Kafka...
...Ozick is careful never to allow the prose-poetry pattern to weaken the fabric of the novel. A device that might have seemed sloppy or contrived in the hands of a less skilled novelist, this language effectively heightens the sensual flavor of Ozick's work...
...glimpses that Ozick gives us of the motivated and intellectually curious Brill though are carefully balanced by equally strong--and painful--images of the young man as an outcast, both as an alienated intellectual and a Jew in a strongly anti-Semitic country. The homosexual advances of a close avant garde friend, combined with the prejudice and hostility he repeatedly encounters, heighten his sense of disillusionment...
...dominant--if not guiding--force. It is this undercurrent of anger--against the Nazis who slaughtered his family, his students who are hindered by mediocrity and, most important, at his own failure to excel--that gives the novel its emotional force. By bottling up the tension throughout the novel, Ozick heightens the impact of the climax, and makes Brill's epiphany about himself and the nature of his goals all the more painful...
...successfully knowledge and religion does not imply that the two are utterly irreconcilable. In fact, because the intellectual Hester stands by her daughter when Brill beseeches her to abandon hope, she illustrates the hope of fusing both strands. Based on solely Brill's behavior, it is possible to interpret Ozick's ultimate stance as anti-intellectual. Yet closer inspection reveals The Cannibal Galaxy as a plea for knowledge tempered by Christian love, to pursue knowledge and ambition without ever losing sight of one's family, one's past, and one's beliefs...