SOURCE: Ozick, Cynthia. “The Year of Writing Dangerously.” New Republic (8 May 1995): 31-8.

In the following essay, Ozick investigates autobiographical aspects of the stories in Red Cavalry and elucidates the relationship between the short story collection and his 1920 Diary.

Identity, at least, is prepared to ask questions.

—Leon Wieseltier

A year or so before the Soviet Union imploded, S.'s mother, my first cousin, whose existence until then had been no more than a distant legend, telephoned from Moscow. “Save my child!” she cried, in immemorial tones. So when S. arrived in New York, I expected a terrified refugee on the run from the intolerable exactions of popular anti-Semitism; at that time the press was filled with such dire reports. For months, preparing for her rescue, I had been hurtling from one agency to another, in search of official information on political asylum.

But when S. finally turned up...