THE CANNIBAL GALAXY

Here Ozick has redone her finely balanced, intellectually rigorous, implication-thick story, "The Laughter of Akiva"—which appeared in The New Yorker but was withdrawn at the last moment from her last book, Levitation: Five Fictions. Ozick has broadened it, given it longer chronology; and she has made an odd and not completely satisfying choice of emphasis in terms of character. The novel, like the story, centers on Joseph Brill, the principal of a Hebrew day school (now placed in the Midwest), as he comes to terms with a dull student, Beulah Lilt—who happens to be the unlikely daughter of a brilliant, Suzanne-Langer-like philosopher, Hester Lilt. Hester's acuity of mind, her honesty, seriousness, and moral ballast—all these come to obsess Brill, who is Parisian-born, Holocaust-scarred: "He saw that they were unfailingly alike, members of the same broken band, behind whose dumbshow certain knowings pace and pitch." He cannot fathom, however, Hester's apparent motherly unconcern, her lack of anguish over daughter Beulah's opacity, silence, and paucity of visible spirit. Finally, then, Brill takes refuge in the conclusion that Hester Lilt has distorted her entire philosophical agenda in order to protectively justify mediocrity—Beulah's. But it turns out, in fact—time's irony—that Beulah will grow up to become a famous painter (her verbal limitations irrelevant, her dreaminess an asset), while Brill grows old watching—with no pleasure—the glittering academic achievements of a son born of his old age. (He has made a late, second-best marriage to a school-secretary, Iris: the succor of the plain.) Thus, in both its versions, Ozick's story has an inherent seriousness of ramification beyond the reach (or desire) of most contemporary fiction; and in its new elongation there are opportunities for gleaming satire, for beautiful passages about school-life, the pettinesses and bucolics—as Ozick repeatedly dazzles with beautiful sentences of dignity and concision. Yet, in focusing so much on Brill—his past (which often seems like an excuse for Ozick to scourge French cultural hypocrisy) and then his dotage (nullified by misapprehension, a heap of regret)—Ozick has somehow left out Hester Lilt, the archangel of the book: she comes in too subtly, flames too briefly, is gone too fast, without the mysterious, passionate presence on display in the shorter version. And the novel therefore seems unbalanced, emphasizing (too gloatingly) Brill's vanity, shortsightedness, and defeat. Ozick is so extraordinary a writer that more of her prose is always welcome; but though The Cannibal Galaxy is noteworthy, powerful fiction, "The Laughter of Akiva"—less vengeful and moralizing—remains the superior, richer story.