The Ideal of Culture

Essays

Author: Joseph Epstein

ISBN: 978-1-60419-123-3

Essay subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of “contemporary nuttiness.”

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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 The Ideal of Culture: Essays is the fourth such volume from Axios Press and contains 63 essays. Subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of “contemporary nuttiness.” It follows the much acclaimed Essays in Biography, 2012, A Literary Education and Other Essays, 2014, and Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays, 2016.

After reading Epstein, we see life 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.

  • Introduction

    Part One: The Culture 

    • The Ideal of Culture (2017)

    • From Parent to Parenthood (2015)

    • Death Takes No Holiday (2014)

    • Wit (2015)

    • Genius (2013)

    • Cowardice (2015)

    • Old Age and Other Laughs (2012)

    • What’s So Funny? (2014)

    • The Fall of the WASPs (2013)

    • The Virtue of Victims (2015)

    • Cool (2017)

    • The Sixties (2017)

    • University of Chicago Days (2017)

    Part Two: Literary 

    • Eric Auerbach (2014)

    • Kafka (2013)

    • Orwell (1990)

    • Proust (2012)

    • K. Scott Moncrieff (2015)

    • The Young T. S. Eliot (2015)

    • Philip Larkin (2014)

    • Willa Cather (2013)

    • George Kennan (2014)

    • Isaiah Berlin (2016)

    • Michael Oakeshott (2015)

    • John O’Hara (2016)

    • Scott Fitzgerald, A Most Successful Failure (2017)

    • Wolcott Gibbs (2011)

    • Evelyn Waugh (2017)

    • F. Powers (2013)

    • Edward Gibbon (2015)

    • Herodotus (2014)

    • Tacitus (2016)

    • Encyclopaedia Britannica—The Eleventh (2016)

    • Grammar (2014)

    • Clichés (2015)

    • Literary Rivals (2015)

    • Why Read Biography? (2016)

    Part Three: Jewish 

    • Sholem Aleichem (2014)

    • Jokes: A Genre of Thought (2017)

    • Jews on the Loose (2016)

    • Jewish Pugs (2016)

    • Harry Golden (2015)

    • Gershom Scholem (2017)

    • Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas (2015)

    Part Four: Masterpieces 

    • The Brothers Ashkenzai (2009)

    • Civilization of the Renaissance (2013)

    • Montesquieu (2016)

    • Machiavelli (2016)

    • Gogol (2013)

    • Speak, Memory (2014)

    • Epictetus (2016)

    • W. Fowler (2017)

    • As a Driven Leaf (2015)

    • Joseph and His Brothers (2012)

    • Life and Fate (2007)

    • Memoirs of Hadrian (2010)

    • Charnwood’s Lincoln (2014)

    • Book of the Courtier (2013)

    • Ronald Syme (2016)

    • Quest for Corvo (2009)

    • The Old Bunch (2012)

    • Life of Johnson (2015)

    Part Five: Hitting Eighty 

    • Hitting Eighty (2017)

    Original Publication Information for Essays in this Book

    Index

  • ISBN-13: 9781604191233

    Publication date: 05/07/2018

    Pages: 572

    Product dimensions: 6.37(w) x 9.35(h) x 1.76(d)

  • Selections from The Ideal of Culture

  • 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

“The release of a major collection of Joseph Epstein’s essays stands as something of an event in the world of belles-lettres. . . . Epstein . . . is not merely someone with a feeling for words. He has the breadth of knowledge, wide perspective, and the mix of shrewdness and prudence that a great commentator must.”

Jonathan Leaf | Modern Age (Fall 2018)

“The Ideal of Culture . . . seems, in its insistence on essential verities in an age of great flux, just the right book for our historical moment. . . . As more than one Epstein fan has noted, he seems to have read everything . . . [with] effortless intelligence.”

Danny Heitman | the Christian Science Monitor (May 8, 2018)

“Epstein’s work is . . . thoughtful and playful . . . a rarely found combination of . . . light, energy, and grace. . . . He parses . . . the delights, the irritations, and the many mysteries of life. . . . He’s neither right-wing nor left-wing, but the entire bird . . .  (one of the requirements of wisdom being the ability to distinguish a moral crusade from a racket.)”

Larry Thornberry | the American Spectator (May 7, 2018)

  • Gone are the days,… [Epstein] writes, when “stability, solidity, gravity, a certain weight and aura of seriousness suffused public life.” Although “in our egalitarian age,” cultural elitism is damned, Epstein happily champions “the best that has been thought and said.”

    Kirkus Reviews (March 1, 2018)

    ——

    “Masterful writing from Joseph Epstein. . . .”

    Seattle Book Review

    ——

    “The essays are delightful and informative reading. … Epstein has a winsome and engaging way of communicating. By another’s pen, the subjects of these essays would probably be tortuously dull. But, Epstein has a knack for integrating personal, historical, and literary anecdotes that make the whole book an entertaining learning event.”

    Jeff Z. | Goodreads Review (June 27, 2018)

    ——

    “Epstein is such a fine writer, I almost hate to put a sentence together that he might see. Nevertheless, I need to praise this collection of essays he has written over the past ten or fifteen years. This collection is a celebration of western thinkers, modern and classical, who have brought our culture to its heights. Sounds boring? Not at all...Epstein writes with wit and clarity.” 

    Amazon Review (July 11, 2018)

Related Reading

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.

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