A Literary Education and Other Essays
Author: Joseph Epstein
ISBN: 978-1-60419-078-6
Thirty-eight essays describing a diverse range of subjects that cover the range of Joseph Epstein’s interests and preoccupations as an essayist over a writing career that spans more than fifty years.
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Overview
Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody’s list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down.
Joseph Epstein’s A Literary Education and Other Essays is the second volume of essays from Axios Press following the much acclaimed Essays in Biography, 2012. It contains thirty-eight essays describing a diverse range of subjects. In the new Introduction, Epstein comments that A Literary Education “is not united by the biographical or any other theme but instead covers the range of my interests and preoccupations as an essayist over a writing career that spans more than fifty years: education, language, the arts, magazines, intellectuals, the culture.”
After reading Epstein, we see all these topics and people with a fresh eye. We also see ourselves a little more clearly. This is what Plutarch intended: life teaching by example, but with a wry smile and such a sure hand that we hardly notice the instruction. It is just pure pleasure.
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Introduction
Part One: A Literary Education
A Literary Education: On Being Well-Versed in Literature (2008)
Part Two: Memoir
Coming of Age in Chicago (1969)
Memoirs of a Fraternity Man (1971)
My 1950s (1993)
A Virtucrat Remembers (1988)
A Toddlin’ Town (2009)
Old Age and Other Laughs (2012)
Part Three: The Culture
The Kindergarchy: Every Child a Dauphin (2008)
Prozac, with Knife (2000)
You May Be Beautiful, but You Gonna Die Some Day (2011)
Whose Country ’Tis of Thee? (2011)
Stand-Up Guys (2003)
You Could Die Laughing: Are Jewish Jokes a Humorous Subject? (2013)
Duh, Bor-ing (2011)
Nostalgie de le Boeuf (2010)
The Symphony of a Lifetime (2010)
Part Four: The Arts
What To Do About the Arts (1995)
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)
Culture and Capitalism (1993)
Educated by Novels (1989)
Part Five: Education
A Case of Academic Freedom (1986)
The Academic Zoo: Theory—in Practice (1991)
Lower Education (2011)
English As It’s Taught (2011)
The Death of the Liberal Arts (2012)
Part Six: Language
My Fair Language (2012)
Heavy Sentences (2011)
The Personal Essay: A Form of Discovery (1997)
Part Seven: Magazines
New Leader Days: Can You Have a Political Magazine without Politics? (2006)
Commentary (2010)
The New York Review of Books (1993)
The TLS (2001)
There at the New Yorker (2011)
Part Eight: Intellectuals
Leo Lerman (2007)
Walter Cronkite (2012)
Paul Goodman in Retrospect (1978)
Saul Steinberg (2013)
Hilton Kramer (2012)
Original Publication Information for Essays in this Book
Index
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ISBN-13: 9781604190786
Publication date: 06/10/2014
Pages: 537
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)
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Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits (2020)
Charm: The Elusive Enchantment (2018)
The Ideal of Culture: Essays (2018)
Where Were We?: The Conversation Continues, with Frederic Raphael (2017)
Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays (2016)
Frozen in Time (2016)
Masters of the Games: Essays and Stories on Sport (2015)
A Literary Education and Other Essays (2014)
Distant Intimacy: A Friendship in the Age of the Internet, with Frederic Raphael (2013)
Essays in Biography (2012)
Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit (2011)
The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff: And Other Stories (2010)
Fred Astaire (2008)
In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage (2007)
Friendship: An Exposé (2006)
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy’s Guide (2006)
Fabulous Small Jews (2003)
Envy (2003)
Snobbery: The American Version (2002)
Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays (1999)
Life Sentences: Literary Essays (1997)
With My Trousers Rolled: Familiar Essays (1995)
Pertinent Players: Essays on the Literary Life (1993)
A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays (1991)
The Goldin Boys: Stories (1991)
Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives (1988)
Once More Around the Block: Familiar Essays (1987)
Plausible Prejudices: Essays on American Writing (1985)
Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays (1983)
Ambition: The Secret Passion (1980)
Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life (1979)
Divorced in America: Marriage in an Age of Possibility (1974)
Reviews
“You learn a lot about writing by reading great writers. . . . I’ve been reading Epstein’s essays for several years. Epstein’s writing is always marked by deep insight, wonderful wordsmithing, and a delightful (even devious) sense of humor.”
David George Moore on Amazon.com (April 18, 2015)
“An Honest and Perspicacious Writer…
No one, as has been said countless times, is as good an essayist as Mr. Epstein, which is to say as original, witty, amusing, learned and engaging. He seems able to write well on virtually anything . . .”
George Core, The Sewanee Review (Fall 2014)
“What adds luster to Epstein’s style and thought are the wide range of topics addressed in A Literary Education. He delivers opinions on the health of the United States . . . , takes an affectionate look at the world of comedians . . . , revisits the Jewish delis of his youth . . . , and critiques our obsession with raising children.”
Jeff Minick, Smoky Mountain News (October 29, 2014)
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“[This is a] wonderful book of summer reading that’s [also] . . . good for the cold, gray days ahead. . . . Epstein . . . describes the kinds of ideas he wanted his students to take away. . . , ‘from Charles Dickens, the importance of friendship, loyalty and kindness in a hard world; from Joseph Conrad, the central place of fulfilling one’s duty in a life dominated by spiritual solitude; from Willa Cather, the dignity that patient suffering and resignation can bring; from Tolstoy, the divinity that the most ordinary moments can provide—kissing a child in her bed good night, working in a field, greeting a son returned home from war.’ [ Epstein’s] a man of his time and above his time. . . .”
Suzanne Fields, the Washington Times (August 13, 2014)
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“A Master Essayist Releases a New Collection…
[Joseph Epstein’s] prose is fluid, funny, and always worth attending.”
John S. Sledge, Virginia Quarterly Review (August 4, 2014)
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“Joseph Epstein’s new collection of essays, A Literary Education. He simply cannot be topped as an essayist.”
Christopher Buckley in Stamford Magazine (July/August 2014)
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“Epstein is an essayist of the old school—learned, productive, and available to many occasions. A man gifted with a wit both cutting and self-deprecating, and an easy command of the many syntactic variations of the periodic sentence, he also has a fearless willingness to assert a view—and this, as any reader of the essay knows, is the drive wheel of the whole business, never mind if that view is widely shared or unpopular.”
Sven Birkerts, Los Angeles Review of Books (July 14, 2014)
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“Marvelously lively intellectual company, by turns flinty and opinionated (as when he writes of the 1990s New York Review of Books “[It] has become the representative intellectual journal of our age, with the important qualification that it has not been a great age, and thatthe New York Review of Books has done more than its share to diminish it”) and warm and inclusive, as in his wonderful and insightful piece on Jewish jokes. . . .”
Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly (June 29, 2014)
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“. . . Maybe it’s time for a ‘Joseph Epstein Reader’ that would assemble the best work from his previous books for old and new fans alike. In the meantime, A Literary Education inspires hope that Mr. Epstein’s good run [referring to the author’s 24 books] isn’t over just yet.”
Danny Heitman, the Wall Street Journal (June 17, 2014)
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“Epstein’s . . . A Literary Education and Other Essays . . . . is his 24th book. This volume confirms that Epstein is not only the greatest living American literary critic, but also the country’s foremost general essayist. He is, almost singlehandedly, holding aloft the flame for what used to be the honorable calling of ‘the man of letters.’”
John Podhoretz, Commentary (June 2014)
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“Joseph Epstein turns out the best essays—of the literary or familiar kind—of any writer on active duty today. . . . Those who’ve reviewed Epstein’s work over the years . . . praise his humor, his erudition, his vast learning, and his elegance. . . . Epstein’s writing, like most French desserts, is very rich stuff.”
Larry Thornberry, the American Spectator (May 2014)
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“. . . [Epstein] writes sentences you want to remember. . . . His essays are troves of literary reference and allusion, maps between centuries, countries, genres. . . . [They] have personality and style, yes, but they also have something to say, and that’s the pivotal distinction between Epstein and his bevy of imitators. . . . What’s more, his wit is unkillable. . . .”
William Giraldi, the New Criterion (May 2014)
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“Epstein follows up Essays in Biography (2012) with another collection of provocative and beguiling thought pieces. The range of his curiosity is exhilarating.”
Publishers Weekly (March 31, 2014)
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“[In A Literary Education] prolific essayist, biographer, and novelist Epstein . . . delivers . . . lots of erudition . . . and . . . fun.”
Kirkus Reviews (April 1, 2014)
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“Erudite, penetrating, and decisive . . . Epstein’s delivery is filled with thorough analysis, delightful allusions, and outright laughs. . . . Despite his obvious sophistication and wide range of learning, . . . [this is] fair criticism. . . . [He] seems a humble man.”
Peter Dabbene, ForeWord Reviews (June 2014)
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“[Joseph Epstein is] a contemporary master.”
Patrick Kurp, The Laughing Skeptics (May 23, 2014)
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“Over his long lifetime of writing, Epstein has shared those riches with the rest of us. The subjects on which he has scribbled away have brought devoted readers delight and deep thoughts, and an unceasing admiration for the pleasures given us by his prose.”
Jeff Minick, The Epoch Times (January 5, 2022)
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About the Author
Joseph Epstein
Joseph Epstein was formerly editor of the American Scholar. A long-time resident of Chicago, he has taught English and writing at Northwestern University for many years. He has written for numerous magazines including the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Weekly Standard and Commentary.
He is the author of thirty-one books, many of them collections of essays. His books include the bestselling Snobbery and Friendship as well as the short-story collections The Goldin Boys, Fabulous Small Jews, The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff, Frozen in Time and Charm: The Elusive Enchantment.
