LA REVIEW OF BOOKS: RUTH OZEKI IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, "I DON'T SEE A WAY OF SEPARATING COMEDY AND TRAGEDY."

“I don’t see a way of separating comedy from tragedy. They are, as the ancients knew, two faces of the same coin. I was really happy when Jane Smiley, in a review for the Chicago Tribune, described [my work as] “comical-satirical-farcical-epical-tragical-romantical.” That pretty much describes everything you need to know about my aspirations as a novelist!”
— Ruth Ozeki

September 16, 2014
Los Angeles Review of Books
Where We Are for the Time Being with Ruth Ozeki
David Palumbo-Liu

THE DISH: THE BUDDHIST AS NOVELIST

“A Tale for the Time Being plays with this notion of self or selves, which in Buddhism is called no-self, or anatman. Buddhism teaches that because everything is impermanent, there is no fixed self that remains unchanged in time. And Buddhism also teaches that there is not an independent self, that can exist separate from others. Thich Nhat Hanh calls this interbeing. So what we experience as the self is more like a collection of fluid, interpenetrating, interdependencies that change and flow through time. ”
— Ruth Ozeki

September 21, 2014
This Dish
The Buddhist as Novelist
Andrew Sullivan

St Louis Post-Dispatch: Readable and funny, Ruth Ozeki's novel meditates on time →

“I am really interested in the way we relate to time,” she says by phone from New York. “In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.”
— Ruth Ozeki

January 09, 2014
St Louis Post-Dispatch
Readable and funny, Ruth Ozeki's novel meditates on time
Jane Henderson 

Omnivoracious: Ruth Ozeki on Zen and the Art of Creativity →

“Like both of Ozeki’s other books, this one can be read on at least two levels: it’s a story within a story about a lonely Japanese girl and it’s a way to write about old Japan vs. new, about traditional Japanese womanhood versus contemporary Japanese American women, about, as Ozeki says, authenticity.”
— Sara Nelson, Omnivoracious

April 08, 2013
Omnivoracious
Interview: Ruth Ozeki on Zen and the Art of Creativity
Sara Nelson