“The Biographer’s Hat”
by Cynthia Ozick
from the March 14, 2022 issue of The New Yorker
Yay! More Cynthia Ozick! Ozick will turn 94 next month, but she is still getting new work out! Last year, one of my favorite books was her short novel Antiquities. Then, a few months later, we got a story in The New Yorker called “The Coast of New Zealand.” I really thought that might be the last, but here we are! And this looks like a lot of fun.
When the biographer of Emanuel Teller came to see me, he left behind his hat. It was the kind of hat a gaucho would wear, flat on top, wide-brimmed, but without the strings that tie under the chin. It was a very dark green, soft and fuzzy to the touch. It seemed familiar. I thought I knew that hat. As the biographer trotted down the stairs to the waiting taxi, I called out, “Hey! You forgot your hat!”
He didn’t hear me; the driver was leaning on his horn.
I picked up the hat. It looked exactly like Emanuel Teller’s hat in his photos.
In her interview with The New Yorker, Ozick talks about con men, so there’s something amiss here!
I have been loving the fiction The New Yorker has been publishing lately, and this is probably the one I’m most excited about. Please feel free to share your thoughts below!
I found the descriptions of the unattended-to hat to be a bit much (either I missed that the genre was magical realism, or the narrator was suffering from a dreadful bout of synesthesia). However this was overall an enjoyable read. The narrator seems to think herself aware of the biographer’s tricks, pointing them out even as she continues to fall for them. Her weakness is her desire for notoriety and spotlight, that fantastical carrot which the biographer dangles before her eyes. I might not do the same in her position, but I don’t doubt that I’d feel the same temptation.
I really enjoyed her comic touch here and the weaknesses of the deluded narrator. The con-artists eternal game of telling YOU that YOU are in on the game and then suckering you. But what is this guy getting besides bed and board in NYC for a month? Actually, that’s a lot but it’s not like he’s gadding about town, he’s sitting in an apartment. He’s conning himself as well! Some of the ideas are maybe a bit heavy-handedly presented but the comic tone sort of alleviates that.