SOURCE: Cohen, Sarah Blacher. “Introduction: Cynthia Ozick's Comic Art of Truth-Telling.” In Cynthia Ozick's Comic Art: From Levity to Liturgy, pp. 1–20. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Cohen discusses Ozick's use of humor and satire in her writing.

“Can one write comically without knowing one is doing it?” Cynthia Ozick posed this rhetorical question (in “Letter to Sarah Blacher Cohen,” 28 January 1992) but claimed to have no answer for it. Rather, she offered a tentative explanation for the uninvited presence of the comic muse intruding upon her work. She recalled the following experience from childhood:

At age eleven or twelve, I read and reread a short story by Somerset Maugham called “Jane,” [about] … a country cousin who arrives in London as a mousey and dowdy insignificance and becomes a social lioness, taking the town by storm. She is regarded as a great wit; all of London society...