Wind Sprints
Shorter Essays
Author: Joseph Epstein
ISBN: 978-1-60419-100-4
The third volume of essays from Axios Press. It contains 143 short essays, literary sprints rather than marathons.
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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 Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays is the third volume of essays from Axios Press following the much acclaimed Essays in Biography (2012) and A Literary Education and Other Essays(2014). It contains 143 short essays, literary sprints rather than marathons. Subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of “contemporary nuttiness.”
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.
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Introduction
Essays
The Romanian Air-Force Diet (1996)
Take A Flying Focus (1996)
Withholding the Facts of Life (1996)
It Rings—You Jump (1997)
My Detested Fellow Pilgrims (1997)
Numbers on the Brain (1997)
A Jones for Generalizations (1997)
Out for a Read (1997)
Please Sam, Don’t Play It Again (1997)
Overbooked (1997)
Bio-Degradable (1998)
Neologism, the Name of My Desire (1998)
A New Nobel (1998)
Gotcha (1998)
Literary Tippling (1998)
Great Talk (1998)
Stop and Smell the Prose (1999)
Can’t Take That Away from Me (1999)
A Sad Case of Mono (1999)
Political Shopping (1999)
The High Miles Club (1999)
Rolodeath (1999)
Confessions of a Craven Materialist (1999)
Hats Off (1999)
A Taxonomy of Bores (1999)
Send in the Clowns (1999)
No Acknowledgment Needed (1999)
Dear Editor (2000)
Don’t Tutoyer Me, Pal (2000)
Don’t Ask, Multitask (2000)
HMS Punafor (2000)
Jervis (2000)
Foot Fop (2000)
You Got Attitude? (2000)
The Game of the Name (2000)
Upsizing (2000)
Singing (Sort of ) in the Rain (2001)
The Eppy and Other Jackets (2001)
The Enlivening Sins (2001)
Mr. Epstein Regrets (2001)
The Worried Well (2001)
The Language Snob, Reinvented (2001)
Looking for King Kong (2001)
A Walker Outside the City (2001)
Penman (2001)
Popcorn Palaces (2002)
Situation Comedy (2002)
All the News Unfit to Read (2002)
Sorry Charlie (2002)
Book Swining (2002)
Khaki-Pantsman (2002)
A Cheap Night Out (2002)
An Offer I Could Refuse (2002)
Back on the Bus (2003)
The Food of My People (2003)
No Opinion (2003)
The Attack on the Hot Dog (2003)
Shine (2003)
Marginalized (2003)
Paid Subscriber (2003)
Quote-idian (2003)
Let Old Acquaintance Be Forgot (2004)
It’s Only a Movie (2004)
Jacques Barzun: An Appreciation (2012)
Fighting Poverty (2014)
Mel Lasky (2004)
“Won’t You Join Me?” (2004)
They Said I Was Low-Tech . . . (2004)
Letter from Bedlam (2004)
Tailor-Made (2004)
Sublime Competence (2004)
Do Go Changin’ (2005)
The Postman Won’t Even Ring Once (2005)
A Secret Vice (2005)
Orchidacious (2005)
Switch & Rebate (2005)
Early Riser (2002)
Fred (2004)
No Joke (2005)
The Big Picture (2005)
Trend Stopping (2005)
Santayana’s Chair (2005)
The Artist Athlete (2013)
Fat Moe, Hot Doug, and Big Herm (2005)
Out of Business (2006)
Plagiary, It’s Crawling All Over Me (2006)
The Perils of Prolificacy (2006)
A Plague of Phones (2006)
Perchance to Dream (2006)
Spandexless (2006)
$129 on the Dotted Line (2006)
Cleaning Up My Act (2006)
Don’t Call Me Ishmael (2007)
Memory Laine (2007)
Excellent Choice (2007)
Gimme Shelter (2008)
Negative Pleasures (2008)
It’s Only a Hobby (2008)
Vernon (2008)
The Unnaturals (2013)
Cool Chapeau, Man (2008)
Prizeless (2008)
Another Season, No Whoopee (2009)
Funny Papers (2009)
Fit To Be Tied (2009)
Sound Off (2009)
Joseph Epstein Has a Cold (2009)
Home Mechanic (2009)
A Happy Problem (2010)
Adios, Gray Lady (2010)
Full Slab (2010)
Dancing with Wolves (2012)
Bye, Bye, High Five (2011)
Kindle at the Cleaners (2011)
At Moral Rest in Old New York (2011)
Katie in Kabul (2011)
The Divine Miss H (2011)
Bring It on, Fyodor Mikhailovich (2011)
Down the AmaZone (2012)
The Proustian Solution (2012)
The Great Apartment Hunt (2012)
Weepers Keepers (2013)
Audio-Dismal Aids (2013)
Go Google Yourself (2013)
Pretensions a la Carte (2013)
The Greatest Story Never Read (2012)
Toting a Dumb Phone (2013)
Nostalgia Organized (2013)
A Condition in Need of a Label (2013)
Hold the Gluten (2014)
The Reluctant Bibliophile (2014)
Making a Spectacles of Myself (2014)
Portnoy’s Children (2013)
The Issue Issue (2015)
How I Learned to Love the Draft (2015)
Unsentimental Journey (2014)
Everyone Has His Price (2014)
Incommunicado (2015)
That’s a Nickel (2015)
Funny, But I Do Look Jewish (2003)
Cuppa Joe (2015)
The Divine Miss H, Revisited (2015)
Remembering Torelli (2015)
Original Publication Information for Essays in this Book
Index
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ISBN-13: 9781604191004
Publication date: 04/07/2016
Pages: 608
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.60(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
“In Wind Sprints, his latest collection of essays, Joseph Epstein confesses to literary tippling – sampling bits of prose while in the supermarket line, during television commercials, or even in traffic. . . . He excels at lively, instructive, and often funny essays that sometimes run to 10,000 words. The only complication in starting them is that they’re so charming and chatty that one cannot easily put them down. A reader who begins an Epstein piece behind the wheel is likely to be stalled on the freeway for a very long time.”
Danny Heitman | the Christian Science Monitor (April 6, 2016)
“Witty, common-sensical, civilized, reliably pleasure-giving, Epstein is solace.”
Patrick Kurp | Anecdotal Evidence (May 8, 2016)
“The 143 essays in Epstein’s entertaining new collection . . . are compulsively readable. . . . Epstein shows himself capable of writing engagingly at that brief length on just about any topic that strikes his fancy. . . . The essays are peppered with personal memories and quotes from literature and punctuated with bursts of humor—Epstein likens a bandleader’s bellow to that ‘of a man who has just been pushed off a cliff’—and they abound with pleasures that belie their brevity.”
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“It has long been implausible to argue that there’s a more engaging essayist on the planet than Epstein. . . . There are 143 pieces in Sprints, with almost no repetition of subject. Perhaps because of the length of these pieces, Epstein takes on fewer literary questions and deals with more small, quotidian matters, though in ways to demonstrate that almost anything can be dealt with intelligently, and in an entertaining way.”
Larry Thornberry, the American Spectator (April 4, 2016)
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“I am purring, chortling and cursing my way through [Wind Sprints]. Cursing, because [the] wit, . . . erudition, . . . elan, panache, and . . . je ne sais quoi is just too depressing. There’s treasure in every sentence. It’s like spoon-eating caviar. I may have a stroke, but what a way to go.”
Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking
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“A master of the essay form returns with a collection of brief pieces spanning nearly 20 years. . . . Another subtitle might have been Healthful Snacks, for these bite-size pieces are both enjoyable to ingest and good for you.”
Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review (January 15, 2016)
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“This collection is the perfect introduction to the erudite and entertaining work of a prolific essayist. . . . Noted writer Joseph Epstein offers a smorgasbord of wit in the collection Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays.”
Peter Dabbene, ForeWord Reviews (Spring 2016)
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“Epstein (emeritus lecturer of English, Northwestern Univ.), a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard, is acclaimed for his witty, perceptive, and occasionally contentious essays, which he began during his editorship (1974–97) of American Scholar.”
Lonnie Weatherby, Library Journal (March 1, 2016)
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“In the 143 short essays, Epstein discusses his reading habits, language snobbery, his love of khakis and good ol’ fashioned shoe shines, the need for a word to describe someone who is more than an acquaintance but less than a friend, the rise of hot dog prices, and the demise of the high five. . . . Generally acknowledged as one of America’s foremost essayists, Epstein’s short pieces are delightful and infuriating, endearing and aggravating.”
Sean West, San Francisco Book Review (January 2016)
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“We find other treasures here besides the topics: the author’s eye for detail, his erudition, and the rich prose style, humor, and wisdom.”
Jeff Minick, The Epoch Times (January 5, 2022)
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.