Items related to The Puttermesser Papers: A Novel (Vintage International)
From Cynthia Ozick, a masterful modern-day picaresque - the adventures of a female Don Quixote transplanted in Manhattan. 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 wan 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 has ever elected (with the most unusual campaign manager). 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.
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Review:
New York writer and critic Cynthia Ozick was shortlisted for the 1997 National Book Award (the American Booker Prize) with this novel. In it, she creates her most compelling fictional character yet--Ruth Puttermesser--a name fittingly ridiculous (it means "butter knife" in German) for such a monumental perfectionist. Ruth is obsessed with learning, and afraid of love; she is the token Jewish female in a top-notch Manhattan law firm, where Jews never get to be made partners no matter how hard they practise their squash strokes. But Ozick turns Ruth's story into a resonant parable that has no room for social realism. When Ruth's career takes a downslide, her fantasy life takes an upturn. She yearns for a daughter, and creates the first recorded female golem. Together they campaign to make Ruth mayor, and then create an Eden out of corrupt and filthy New York. But the dream turns sour when the golem turns against her mistress displaying the voracious need for sex and power that Ruth so assiduously suppresses. Ozick's cerebral, comic narration subtly offsets the fantastic events she describes. And despite Ruth's need for life to resemble Platonic ideals, her humanity is stamped on every page. --Lilian Pizzichini
Review:
Wonderfully rich and entertaining * Observer * A fabulous novel... A modern fable, a satire that shows how it ought to be done * The Times * A novel of unspeakable joys * Guardian *
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- PublisherVintage Books
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0679777393
- ISBN 13 9780679777397
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages256
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The Puttermesser Papers Format: Paperback
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. 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." Puttermesser yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem. Laboring in the dusty crevices of the civil service, she dreams of reforming the city - and manages to get herself elected mayor. Puttermesser contemplates the afterlife and is hurtled into it headlong, only to discover that a paradise found is also paradise lost. Overflowing with ideas, lambent with wit, "The Puttermesser Papers" is a tour de force by one of our most visionary novelists. "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" 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." Puttermesser yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem. Laboring in the dusty crevices of the civil service, she dreams of reforming the city - and manages to get herself elected mayor. Puttermesser contemplates the afterlife and is hurtled into it headlong, only to discover that a paradise found is also paradise lost. Overflowing with ideas, lambent with wit, "The Puttermesser Papers is a tour de force by one of our most visionary novelists. "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 Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780679777397
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