Henry James and Joseph Conrad, their hands cramped from too much writing, have hired “typewriters,” as typists were called circa 1900. The two great writers and rivals stand for Ozick’s polarity of art and ardor: “James thought Conrad a thicket of unrestrained profusion. Conrad saw James as heartless alabaster.” Some of the resulting comedy is predictable: the fastidious James will be subjected to untidy children and tedious conversation, even as he declaims in his ornate fashion, “May I presume, Mr. Conrad, that you, in the vigor of youth, as it were, are not of a mind to succumb to a mechanical intercessor, as I, heavier with years, perforce have succumbed?”
NYTimes Review by Christopher Benfey
DICTATION
A Quartet.
By Cynthia Ozick.
