Reading Selection - November 2004
Puttermesser Papers, by Cynthia Ozick
CYNTHIA OZICK was born in New York City, the daughter of a pharmacist. She received a B.A. from New York University in 1949 and an M.A. from Ohio State University in 1950 with a thesis titled "Parable in Henry James." She didn't publish her first work, the novel Trust, until 1966. Three collections of short fiction followed: The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971), Bloodshed and Three Novellas (1976), and Levitation (1981). In 1989 she published Metaphor and Memory: Essays and The Shawl, a novella developing her short story. Cynthia Ozick has won many awards and prizes for her writing, including the American Academy of Arts. She lives near New York City.
In the PUTTERMESSER PAPERS, Ruth Puttermesser, yearning for a life of the mind (her idol is George Eliot), finds herself mired in the lowest circles of city bureaucracy. Her love life is hopeless. Her fantasies are more influential than reality - she takes Hebrew lessons from an uncle who died before she was born; she makes a golem out of the earth of her houseplants. Still, she turns out to be the best mayor New York City ever elected. Soon enough, though, paradise gained becomes paradise lost, and the impact of getting exactly what you want and then losing it plays itself out in dramatic and surprising fashion.
Reviews of Puttermesser Papers Include:
- New York Times
- Review of Contemporary Fiction
- Booklist
- Elizabeth Manus
- Salon.com
- Jewish
Bulletin of Northern California
"With dashing originality and in prose that sings like an entire choir of sirens, Cynthia Ozick relates the life and times of her most compelling fictional creation. Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental. Her love life is minimal (she prefers pouring through Plato to romping with married Morris Rappoport). And her fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true - with disastrous consequences for what we laughably call "reality."" Book Description
"The finest achievement of Ozick's career... It has all the buoyant integrity of a Chagall painting." -San Francisco Chronicle"Fanciful, poignant... so intelligent, so finely expressed that, like its main character, it remains endearing, edifying, a spark of light in the gloom." -The New York Times
"A crazy delight." -The New York Time Book Review
Reading Group Discussion Guide:
1. Does Ruth do anything in this novel absolutely on purpose? Which actions might be called accidents and which would you call decisive?
2. Is this a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy - or what? Is it hard to laugh at a novel in which the main character is repeatedly jilted, demoted, humiliated, and finally killed and raped?
3. Are there any happy or successful female characters in the book? Lidia, the Muscovite cousin, perhaps? Why or why not?
4. What role does sex and sexual desire play in this novel?
5. Though Puttermesser was raised on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, she spends much of her time getting sentimental over forebears, some real and some imagined, who escaped Russian pogroms. What function does her weird nostalgia for old-time Jewish persecution serve in her contemporary life?
6. Can a copy, or reënactment of a painting, be as important as an original? Why or why not? How about a copy of a romance or of an entire life?
7. In portraying the relationship between Puttermesser and Rupert, is Ozick suggesting that authenticity is overrated to begin with?
8. Are there any bad guys, or worthy opponents, for that matter, in this novel, besides the obvious, Puttermesser's murderer?
9. Is Puttermesser smarter than everybody else? Does she think she is? Does it matter?
10. Do you believe in Pardes, or Paradise, as defined on p. 213 and on p. 234? Note that Ozick writes, succinctly, that "the secret meaning of Paradise is that it too is hell." What do you think she means by that? What do you believe happens after death?
11. Why are golems so trendy? More has been written about golems in the past twenty-five years than in the 250 preceding years. Why do you think contemporary Jewish writers might be drawn to this particular literary invention?
12. Why does Ozick have Ruth reading Thomas Mann and thinking about George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, and Joyce before she's raped and murdered?
13. Is this story primarily about Ruth Puttermesser or about New York?
Other Titles by Cynthia Ozick:
Washington Square, 2002
The Book of Job, 1998
Fame & Folly, 1997
The Messiah of Stockholm, 1988
Metaphor & Memory, 1991
Quarrel & Quandary, 2001
The Shawl, 1990
Those Who Forget the Past, 2004
The Cossacks, 2004