“More often than not I find myself both thoroughly annoyed with what Joseph Epstein is saying and happily amused by the way he is saying it. Essays in Biography, his latest collection, is no exception. A staunch card carrying conservative, he seems to specialize in melting the clay feet of any liberal, political or cultural, who comes within range of the blow torch of his wit. At times his attacks seem little more than mean spirited gossip. But then, what is as delicious as a spicy dish of mean spirit, especially when well-seasoned with wit and erudition?”

Jack Goodstein, Blogcritics.org (July 14, 2013)

——

“Epstein writes suave, free-wheeling, charged essays.”

Robert Fulford, National Post (February 5, 2013)

——

“Essays in Biography reflects . . . [Epstein’s] kaleidoscopic range and iconoclastic views on thinkers, novelists, poets, and the occasional academic intellectual.”

Michael Johnson, Open Letters Monthly – An Arts and Literature Review (February 2013)

——

“[He] brings to biography a genius of discernment.”

Choice (February 1, 2013)

——

“[Joseph Epstein is] one of the few living writers whose every book I try to read promptly. He is never—really never—less than a pure thoughtful joy. . . .”

Brian Doherty, Senior Editor, Reason (December 18, 2012)

——

“[Joseph Epstein’s] personal mission statement, apparently, is to instruct and delight. . . . This is a book you can pick up and skip around in with pleasure and profit.”

Christopher Flannery, Claremont Review of Books (Fall 2012)

——

“Joseph Epstein is a prolific master of several genres, in all of which he is widely read with pleasure, profit, and admiration. [He has] a place among the great essayists.”

Edward Alexander, Chicago Jewish Star (Nov. 30-Dec. 6, 2012)

——

“Joseph Epstein[‘s] . . . style and wit make his subjects come alive. . . . [He is] the dean of contemporary essayists.”

Washington Times (November 2, 2012)

——

“This . . . collection of biographical essays . . . [is] unabashedly personal, and flavored throughout by a wit that never stays in the background for long. [What Epstein calls a] ‘heightened sense of life’s possibilities’ is . . . what a reader may take away.”

The Boston Globe (October 27, 2012)

——

“Epstein is a gifted storyteller, a discerning critic, and a peerless stylist. . . . It’s fair to say that a variety of over-used adjectives—witty, urbane, intelligent—are in this case quite appropriate.”

The Weekly Standard (October 15, 2012)

——

“Mr. Epstein’s essays are brilliant distillations . . . [which] bring to biography a genius of discernment.”

Carl Rollyson, the Wall Street Journal (October 6, 2012)

——

“Essays in Biography . . . is smart, witty and a pleasure to read.”

Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post (October 21, 2012)

——

“Insightful and scholarly . . . Essays in Biography is a fine addition to any essay or biography collection, very much recommended.”

Midwest Book Review (October 2012)

——

“Epstein (former editor of American Scholar and author of Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit) brings an erudite gift for portraiture to the subjects of this volume’s 40 essays. Focused primarily on figures from the 19th and 20th centuries (with occasional excursions into Greek antiquity and colonial America), Epstein offers eloquent assessments of philosophers, politicians, athletes, composers, social scientists, movie stars, and especially writers and critics. He is particularly drawn to figures whose renown is at odds with their personal and professional shortcomings—hence, his evaluation of Ralph Ellison, author of The Invisible Man, as a writer whose inability to complete his second novel for the next 42 years suggests that “perhaps it is not a good idea to write a great book the first time out.” His studies of Dwight Macdonald, Gore Vidal, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, and Irving Kristol create a lively, multifaceted portrait of America’s postwar intelligentsia. Though not uncritical, Epstein is more adulatory of celebrities, among them George Gershwin (“a genius of the natural kind”), Irving Thalberg (“the most talented producer in the history of American movies”), and Michael Jordan (“this magnificent athlete who turned his sport into art”). Opinionated and sometimes personal (notably in his piece on Saul Bellow, who fell out with him), these essays are edifying and often very entertaining.”

Publishers Weekly (July 2012)

——

“The acclaimed essayist and former editor of the American Scholar presents a provocative collection of essays that illustrate the ways a writer can employ biographical detail.

Epstein (English/Northwestern Univ.; Gossip, 2011, etc.) has assembled a motley crew of characters—from Henry Adams to Xenophon, Michael Jordan to Gore Vidal. The author has a capacious mind, a wide range of interests, political biases (he labels himself a conservative) and a vast storehouse of knowledge about literary history—all of which animate and inform his pieces. (A complaint: There is neither preface nor foreword—no evidence, other than internal, of the date and audience for the pieces.) Epstein begins with a tribute to George Washington, concluding that it was his “moral character” that set him apart—a trait apparently unsullied by his slave-holding? There is little doubt about the author’s conservative preferences; when he writes about literature, he can become downright nasty and laugh-out-loud entertaining. He bites Saul Bellow (“a literary Bluebeard”) substantially in a full essay then returns in other pieces for additional nips. He blasts Arnold Rampersad’s biography of Ralph Ellison, admires Bernard Malamud, eviscerates Dwight Macdonald and sucker punches both Mailer (calling “The White Negro” a “wretched essay”) and Vidal, whose essays he calls “dull hamburger.” His assessments of critics Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin and Irving Kristol range from measured to admiring. Epstein reserves some of his most potent firepower for Susan Sontag (her films, he writes, are surely playing in hell) but loves the work of Max Beerbohm and George Eliot. Writing of the latter, he notes how she had a sympathy for Jews that is lacking in many other major writers. He ends with a moving account of his friendship with a man in a nursing home.

Articulate, funny, informed and bitchy—guaranteed to both delight and disconcert.”

Kirkus Reviews (July 2012)

——

“The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein.”

Karl Shapiro

——

“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

——

“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.”

John Gross

——

“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, indispensable.”

George Will

——

“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. His subjects are tossed up, turned round, stuck with quotations, abandoned and returned to, playfully, inverted, and finally set back on their feet, as is the reader, a little breathless but quite unharmed. But is essentially a merry-go-round, not a view to the death.”

Philip Larkin