As a writer, I inevitably get asked a somewhat difficult question from time to time that I haven’t known how to answer: what should I be reading? The question usually comes from someone genuinely curious to find something compelling to read, but perhaps a bit intimidated to look beyond whatever small set of shelves in the bookstore are comfortable and familiar. (We all do that, by the way: I go to my “usual” sections to find something new before I venture into new territory.) Until now, I haven’t known how to respond, but the answer has just come to me: Joseph Epstein.
Who? Admit it: that was your response. Perhaps you were curious enough to click on his name just now to learn whatever Wikipedia might tell you… but that’s just as likely to bore you (it IS Wikipedia, after all) as delight you, so let me say a bit more.
As an essayist—and that’s what he’s best known for, though he also writes lovely fiction—Epstein writes the kind of pieces that make you forever more intelligent about the subject he’s engaged with. His subjects are pedestrian (actually, the proper word is “familiar”)—ambition, celebrity, envy, and a thousand others just like those—but his explorations of them are both delightful and thoughtful. Once you read his essay on, say, cats, you’ll never think about them the same way again… and wonder whether you actually ever did consider them at all, because YOU certainly never had the thoughts he’s had.
His writing is at once literary and human, by which I mean accessible. Take this opening bit, for example, from his essay “About Face,” which I love more than most of them:
“At fifty,” wrote Orwell, “everyone has the face he deserves.” I believe this and repeat it with confidence, being myself forty-six and hopeful that for me there is still time.
A quick throw to literature, followed by a witty personal observation… and we’re off to the races for 2o or so pages of bon mot after bon mot.
In some ways, I wish all of our work in the theater was a bit more like this: smart, but not off-puttingly obscure. Â Accessible, but not pandering. I believe we have a lot to learn from him.
And learn from him I did: I had the great good fortune to be Professor Epstein’s student one semester at Northwestern, and though we remained in touch until about ten years ago, the pathway between us has overgrown with time. I will, however, always treasure the few typewritten letters he sent me (one after I had the privilege of reviewing his essay collection Narcissus Leaves the Pool for the Baltimore City Paper).
Perhaps you can learn from him, too—just give him a read. I guarantee you’ll have a damn good time.
What I love about Epstein is his generosity and intellectual honesty. His sympathies and sensitivities are always with the common reader, and he’s always ready to tell on himself and his own one-time ignorance about the very subject or writer he’s currently writing about. You cannot help but find him endearing. And, like you Gwyd, others have written about his generosity and kindness in real life. “The best part of an author is in his book,” said Johnson, but Epstein proves that his “best” is equally dispersed throughout his books and throughout his life. Thanks for alerting me to this blog post, Gwyd.
His generosity is also essential to my reading of him, too.
He’s also an old school public intellectual — we don’t have those any more, sadly, but I remember them fondly. He thinks, in some ways, for all of us.
Prof. Epstein (not steen but stein, mind you), was a great professor but, truth be told, a better writer and Fabulous Small Jews is a gem and a great teacher for those of us prone to long-windedness….thanks for remembering him. He won the Presidential something or other a few years ago and I was dying to know how he felt standing next to Bush and, if my memory is correct, John Irving? I’ll have to look that up….
You know, I remember now that you weren’t quite as fond of his “professing” as I was. Our classwork wasn’t what made the difference for me: it was the personal attention he gave me outside of class, and the latitude he allowed me in meeting his intellectual demands. I do remember, however, that others didn’t share my opinion.
What you’re recalling, I think, is when Epstein received the Congressional Gold Medal. At the time, as I recall, he was excoriated by the liberal elements of the media, mostly because he was seen as terribly conservative, which strikes me as just plain “off,” but also it seems simply because Bush was president at the time that he won. The Professor Epstein I knew was old school more than he was conservative; he valued certain ideas and cultural practices that have since fallen off. But I don’t think of him as mean in any way. And in fact I think he was, strictly speaking, a member of the Democratic party, even if he did say a few inappropriate things in his day. (As which of us has not?) In any event… I love him even with his complications, as any mature love requires us to do.