Mick

history. As he parses through ruin, “looking for things rich and strange,” he admits that he rarely knows what he is looking for. Even when he discovers certain verities, he interrogates himself, wondering how much certainty he wants in what he seeks. Keith Garebian Mississauga, Canada Cynthia Ozick. Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2016. 211 pages. This slender but dazzling collection of thirteen essays, some previously published but refurbished, is primarily concerned with fiction and criticism, both of which Cynthia Ozick practices with ease. It is clear that she is not a reviewer but a critic. Reviewers are allocated a certain amount of space, while critics can—or should—be given free rein, addressing not just the work but its relationship to the world in which it gestated and into which it arrived. Naturally, such critics are rare. Most can synopsize and summarize, but not all can judge, the root meaning of “critic ”—one who can adjudicate, producing something akin to literature. Ozick asks as much of critics as Alexander Pope did in “An Essay on Criticism,” who demanded “a knowledge both of books and humankind.” Ozick is very much the kind of critic Pope envisioned. The epigraph is taken from Pope’s essay, and the title was suggested by Pope’s challenge to critics, urging them to attack the excesses of the age: “These monsters, Critics! with your darts engage, / Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!” Two such critics who can satisfy Ozick’s criteria are the polymath Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling, who based his criticism on moral as well as aesthetic grounds. To Ozick, the ability to wield language creatively, even in letter writing, is paramount . She praises Saul Bellow’s letters both for their expression and insights. The prose may not be as inventive as that of the novels, but the letters are a worthy ancilla. Ozick has never considered the Holocaust a horror of the past but an everpresent reminder of hearts so hardened and “so inhumanly wicked, that only God can fathom them.” Ozick does not claim to fathom the darkness of the heart, only to expose it in the profoundly disturbing “Love and Levity at Auschwitz: Martin Amis,” a reflection on Amis’s novel The Zone of Interest. As Matthew Arnold might have said, Ozick saw literature steadily and saw it whole. . . . Pope would have welcomed her into the pantheon. Bernard F. Dick Fairleigh Dickinson University Suzanne Falkiner. Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow. Crawley, Australia. UWA. 2016. 890 pages. Suzanne Falkiner’s prodigious biography of Randolph Stow is a book long awaited by many; not just the literati of his native Australia but those countless readers who feasted on his novels and wondered what kind of person could write with such imaginative power. Eliot Weinberger The Ghosts of Birds New Directions The thirty-five essays of The Ghosts of Birds exemplify Eliot Weinberger’s unique approach to the world around: strange subjects greet the reader in a natural way, and academic studies are reimagined with broad fervor. Throughout, the reader is both enchanted and educated, though sometimes joyfully uncertain of which. Enrique Vila-Matas Vampire in Love Trans. Margaret Jull Costa New Directions One of Spain’s leading literary figures, Enrique Vila-Matas writes with pervasive intelligence and sober irony. Vampire in Love is his first collection of short stories in English; spanning his career, this collection offers the reader a rounded introduction to a rare wit. Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 93 Falkiner’s premise that an author’s works are more accessible when contextualized by the events of his life is well borne out in this 900-page tome. Not only do we come to appreciate what led this renowned Australian writer to create his celebrated fictional works, but we are also given rare glimpses into the inner world of this most private individual, whose personal demons included a dependence on alcohol, two suicide attempts, and struggles with homosexuality. Although Falkiner probes deeply, she refrains from making judgments about Stow, preferring to leave those up to the reader. Her meticulous research provides abundant material to work with. She wisely avoids an analysis of

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