[Even] if one wants to argue with Ozick every step of the way—and I only want to argue with her every third step—one must start by noting how very well she writes. [The twenty-three essays collected in Art and Ardor], on subjects ranging from Edith Wharton to John Updike to Gershom Scholem, with stops in between for mulling over what art should be doing and what Jewishness is, are a pleasure to read for their vividness of thought and language….

Ozick is a writer of passionately held beliefs and values asserted with great confidence and verve, a fierce moralist who often sees herself as the solitary caretaker of truths everyone else is too wrongheaded to understand. Her opposition to contemporary feminism is a case in point. For Ozick, the women's movement has given itself over to "separatism," when it should be tearing down the whole idea...