A Brief Look Back (FYI)

Some of you may still be contemplating a revision of the Research Review paper. I just yesterday saw this quote by Cynthia Ozick (from an interview in the May/Summer 2009 edition of The Writer's Chronicle) in response to the question of what it means to be a review writer, and I thought you might find it interesting (she finds a more articulate way of framing my assignment directive to find opportunities to turn your review into a broader conversation, making it a hybrid genre that combines straight review and an essayistic sensibility): "A review is a job of probity: of honest and honorable responsibility to a fellow writer's craft and thought. Otherwise it will be nothing more than a hit-and-run verdict, a vacuous Yes or No in a brief final paragraph. This may be why a serious review will generally turn into a review-essay, where there is space enough to engage critically, both broadly and vertically, with prior and contemporary culture. When I saw that my reviews were becoming actual essays, I wondered whether there might be some connecting theme among them that expressed, unwittingly, the Zeitgeist, or, with far less hubris, one writer's idiosyncratic perspective, whether literary or moral."