Synopses & Reviews
Just as his best-selling Snobbery argued that contemporary American snobbery isnt what it used to be, Friendship: An Exposé begins with Joseph Epsteins feeling that friendship, too, is somehow different today. From the idealization of family time” to the acceptance of gender equality, from technological leaps like e-mail and instant messaging to the (very recent) assumption that your husband or wife will be your best friend, Epstein charts the unexpected and surprising forces that have put pressure on and reshaped friendship.
Epstein sketches an amusing yet serious anatomy of friendship in its contemporary version: its duties and requirements (Reciprocity, or Is It Obligation?”), the various kinds of friendships (A Little Taxonomy of Friends”), the differences between male and female friendships, the complications marriage creates (Friendships New Rival”), even what happens when sex enters the equation. Moving easily from Aristotle to Seinfeld, and drawing on his own experiences with people great (Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison) and unknown (an army bunkmate), he uncovers the rich and often surprising truths of friendship, illuminating those relationships -- contradictory, complicated, and wonderful -- without which we'd all be lost.
Review
"Brisk and delightful . . . Engaging . . . 'Friendship' is spangled with winning turns of phrase." --John Freeman The Wall Street Journal
"As entertaining and illuminating as a leisurely lunch with a loquacious, literate friend." Kirkus Reviews
"Epstein lucidly. . .applies wisdom to his own life experience, producing a meditative memoir that is refined and modest in tone." Publishers Weekly
As always, [Epstein] works wonders with words . . . for more than two decades, he has been a national treasure. . . . Enthusiastically recommended." Library Journal Starred
"A fine companion for those who find listening to wry, erudite men holding forth on history and society a pleasure." --Elissa Schappell Elle
"Smart, delightfully literate and sophisticated." --Tim Rutten The Los Angeles Times
"Epstein is an adroit pulse-taker of changing mores." --Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett The Seattle Times
"Engaging, witty and heady. Epstein uses examples from Aristotle to Seinfeld to get at the heart of human relationships." --Gail Rosenblum Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Rich pickings . . . A thoughtful consideration of the pleasures and obligations of friendship . . . honest, unsparing and brimful of illuminating literary anecdotes." --William Grimes The New York Times
"A fascinating look at something that will remain important as long as we remain human." --Jeffrey M. Landaw The Baltimore Sun
Review
"Epstein, always a graceful writer, also happens to possess a stand-up comic's gift for punch lines..." --Diane Cole The New York Times Book Review
"Epstein has compiled a collection of short stories as thoughtful and arresting as its title . . . Gratifying and genuine . . ." Publishers Weekly
Review
"One of a handful of living Americans who have mastered the familiar essay, Epstein never fails to entertain as well as soothingly educate." School Library Journal
"Joseph Epstein is an essayist in the brilliant tradition of Charles Lamb. He moves so effortlessly from the amusingly personal to the broadly philosophical that it takes a moment before you realize how far out into the intellectual cosmos you have been taken. He is also mercilessly free of the petty intellectual etiquettes common at this moment in our national letters. It is refreshing to hear so independent a voice." -- Tom Wolfe, author of A Man in Full
"Epstein's work is well in the Addisonian line of succession that Cyril Connolly saw petering out in Punch and the professional humorists . . . Epstein is a great deal more sophisticated than they were, and a great deal more readable." -- Philip Larkin
"Joseph Epstein's essays no more need his identifying byline than Van Gogh's paintings need his signature. Epstein's style--call it learned whimsy--is unmistakable; for Epstein addicts, indispensible." -- George F. Will
"Joseph Epstein is the liveliest, most erudite and engaging essayist we have--a wonderful combination of Hazlitt and Chicago boy. At once somber and self-assured, he has achieved the considerable feat of fashioning from the minor dramas of his own life--aging, infirmity, coming up against the limits of ambition--major themes. In taking his measure, he takes our own." -- James Atlas, author of a forthcoming biography on Saul Bellow and frequent New Yorker contributor
"If Epstein's ultimate ancestor is Montaigne, his more immediate master is Mencken. Like Mencken, he has fashioned a style that successfully combines elegance and even bookishness with street-smart colloquial directness. And there is nothing remote or aloof about him." The Chicago Tribune
Review
"[SNOBBERY is] like a chorus line of wonderful observational one-liners . . . All these gems add up to a fun and funny read." --Joan O'C. Hamilton Business Week
"[SNOBBERY] is a captivating jeu d'esprit of a book, one that brims over with illuminating perceptions . . ." --Daphne Merkin Elle
"It's hard to criticize a writer who can make you laugh out loud on every third page . . ." --Martha Bayles The New York Times Book Review
"[E]ngaging . . . Epstein [is] one of America's best essayists . . ." --Richard Stengal Time Magazine
". . . [W]onderfully engaging . . . marvelous . . ." --David Brooks The Wall Street Journal
". . . [Epstein] has a wickedly wonderful sense of humor and keen observational skills . . ." Publishers Weekly
"A deliciously readable analysis of the origins of snobbery and its myriad cultural manifestations . . ." Harper's Bazaar
Synopsis
Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great Max Bialystock in The Producers Look at me now! Look at me now! Im wearing a cardboard belt!” the charming essayist Joseph Epstein gives us his largest and most adventurous collection to date. With his signature gifts of sparkling humor and penetrating intelligence, he issues forth as a memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contemporary culture. In deeply considered examinations of writers from Paul Valéry to Truman Capote, in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as Harold Bloom and George Steiner, and in personally revealing essays about his father and about his years as a teacher, this remarkable collection from one of Americas best essayists is a book to be savored.
Synopsis
In his first collection of stories since Fabulous Small Jews, Joseph Epstein delivers all the pleasures his readers have come to expect: stories of ordinary men confronting the moments that define a life, told with the bittersweet humor and loving irony encompassed in the title of the book. These fourteen tales map a very particular world—Jews whose lives are anchored in Chicago—in rich, revealing detail even as they brim with universal longings: complex love affairs and unspoken rivalries, family triumphs and private disappointments. Epstein, who “happens to possess a standup comics gift for punch lines” (New York Times Book Review), brings his emphatically grown-up characters to witty, rueful, and charming life. The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff is a marvelous collection from a master of the short form and one of the most distinctive writers working in America today.
Synopsis
Joseph Epstein has been called Americas liveliest, most erudite and engaging essayist” (James Atlas), and In a Cardboard Belt! provides ample proof for the claim. Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great Max Bialystock in The Producers -- Look at me now! Look at me now! Im wearing a cardboard belt!” -- Epstein gives us his largest and most comprehensive collection to date.
Writing as a memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contemporary culture, he uses to deft and devastating effect his signature gifts: wide-ranging erudition, sparkling humor, and a penetrating intelligence. In personally revealing essays about his father and about his years as a teacher, in deeply considered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to Truman Capote, and in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as Harold Bloom and George Steiner, this remarkable collection presents us with the best work of our countrys most singular talent, engaged with the richness and variety of life, witty in his response to the world, and always entertaining.
Synopsis
Joseph Epstein has been called Americas liveliest, most erudite and engaging essayist” (James Atlas), and In a Cardboard Belt! provides ample proof for the claim. Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great Max Bialystock in The Producers -- Look at me now! Look at me now! Im wearing a cardboard belt!” -- Epstein gives us his largest and most comprehensive collection to date.
Writing as a memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contemporary culture, he uses to deft and devastating effect his signature gifts: wide-ranging erudition, sparkling humor, and a penetrating intelligence. In personally revealing essays about his father and about his years as a teacher, in deeply considered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to Truman Capote, and in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as Harold Bloom and George Steiner, this remarkable collection presents us with the best work of our countrys most singular talent, engaged with the richness and variety of life, witty in his response to the world, and always entertaining.
Synopsis
Is it possible to have too many friends? Is your spouse supposed to be your best friend? How far should you go to help a friend in need? And how do you end a friendship that has run its course?
In a wickedly entertaining anatomy of friendship in its contemporary guises, Joseph Epstein uncovers the rich and surprising truths about our favored companions. Friendship illuminates those complex, wonderful relationships without which we'd all be lost.
Synopsis
A national bestseller, Snobbery examines the discriminating qualities in all of us. With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewers all manner of elitism in contemporary America. He offers his arch observations of the new footholds of snobbery: food, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it, name-dropping, and much more. Clever, incisive, and immensely entertaining, Snobberyexplores the shallows and depths of status and taste -- with enviable results.
Synopsis
A collection of short stories in the manner of FABULOUS SMALL JEWS.
Synopsis
Joseph Epstein's sixth collection of personal pieces winningly and brilliantly rounds off his twenty-three-year tenure as editor of The American Scholar. "The trick with these essays," he recently wrote, "is to take what seems a small or mildly amusing subject and open it up, allow it to exfoliate, so that by the end something arises that might be larger and more intricate than anyone -- including the author -- had expected." Among the things that arise here are naps, Gershwin, aging, name-dropping, long books, pet peeves, talent vs. genius, Anglophilia, and surgery -- the head and the heart.
Synopsis
Joseph Epstein's highly entertaining new book takes up the subject of snobbery in America after the fall of the prominence of the old Wasp culture of prep schools, Ivy League colleges, cotillions, debutante balls, the Social Register, and the rest of it. With ample humor and insight, Epstein uncovers the new outlets upon which the old snobbery has fastened: food and wine, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, health, being with-it, name-dropping, and much else, including the roles of Jews and homosexuals in the development of snobbery. He also raises the question of whether snobbery might, alas, be a part of human nature. Snobbery: The American Versionis the first book in English devoted exclusively to the subject since Thackeray's THE BOOK OF SNOBS.
Synopsis
Fans of Joseph Epstein's best-selling Snobbery: The American Version will recognize the same wit, insight, and incisive social examination in Fabulous Small Jews, Epstein's first collection of stories since 1992's The Goldin Boys. In these pages are artists, writers, a commodities trader, a concert pianist, lawyers on the make, all at various crossroads and turning points in their lives. These are classic stories with universal themes: the rights of talent, the attempt to shake one's identity, the desperation of strangled impulses, the complexities of family love. But, as always with Epstein, the magic, the charm, and the humor are in his lavish details. The stories in Fabulous Small Jews are small worlds writ large, and Epstein's observant eye and engaging voice bring them alive on the page.
About the Author
In Fabulous Small Jews, the best-selling author Joseph Epstein has produced eighteen charming, magical, and finely detailed stories. They are populated by lawyers, professors, scrap-iron dealers, dry cleaners, all men of a certain age who feel themselves adrift in the radically changed values of the day. Epstein's richly drawn characters are at various crossroads and turning points in their lives: bitter Seymour Hefferman, who anonymously sends scathing postcards to writers until he gets caught; Moe Bernstein, who, inspired by his grandson, decides to attend to his own health after long delay; divorcé Artie Glick, who wants to marry his pregnant girlfriend. Fabulous Small Jews is a marvelous collection from a master of the short form.JOSEPH EPSTEIN is the author of the best-selling Snobbery and of Friendship, among other books, and was formerly editor of the American Scholar. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and other magazines. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: Kid Turns Seventy, Nobody Cheers xi
I. Personal Oh Dad, Dear Dad 3 Talking to Oneself 15 Goodbye, Mr. Chipstein 32 On the Road Again, Alas 45 Memoirs of a Cheap and Finicky Glutton 59 Speaking of the Dead 72 Why I Am Not a Lawyer 82 Books Wont Furnish a Room 96
II. Literary The Intimate Abstraction of Paul Valéry 111 Monsieur Prousts Masterwork 127 Vin Audenaire 145 The God-haunted Fiction of I. B. Singer 164 Truman Capote and the Cost of Charm 177 The Max Beerbohm Cult 186 Lord Berners: Pink Pigeons and Blue Mayonnaise 195 The Return of Karl Shapiro? 208 The Medical Keats 218
III. Attacks Mortimer Adler: The Great Bookie 243 Curious George Steiner 254 Bloomin Genius 263 Thank You, No 273 Forgetting Edmund Wilson 281
IV. The Intellectual Life Intellectuals, Public and Otherwise 295 Cmon, Reiny, Lets Do the Twist 308 The Torture of Writers Block 321 Is Reading Really at Risk? 331 The Perpetual Adolescent 343 The Culture of Celebrity 356 Why Are Academics So Unhappy? 373 What Happened to the Movies? 383 Im History 394