In the following excerpt, Siegel lambasts an article on Seize the Day written by Cynthia Ozick, accusing her of trying to turn Bellow into a "Jewish wisdom-writer. "

The New Criterion is the Dow Jones of cultural journals, where "high" art is always gaining, and the touchstone of literary greatness might just as well be Shakespeare's First Portfolio. Yet Cynthia Ozick's essay on Saul Bellow's 1956 Seize the Day in a recent issue (September 1995) made me think first not of official culture's sour exhalations but of Beauty and the Beast.

The story goes that Greta Garbo once gave a private screening of Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast in her apartment. Beauty passed through her ordeal, she and the newly restored prince fell into each other's arms, the kingdom sprang back into shape. The film stopped rolling. Some seconds passed. Then, rising in a slow, silky pout from the...