In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and SavageJoseph Epstein has been called America's "liveliest, most erudite and engaging essayist" (James Atlas), and In a Cardboard Belt! provides ample proof for the claim. Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great Max Bialystock in The Producers -- "Look at me now! Look at me now! I'm wearing a cardboard belt!" -- Epstein gives us his largest and most comprehensive collection to date. Writing as a memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contemporary culture, he uses to deft and devastating effect his signature gifts: wide-ranging erudition, sparkling humor, and a penetrating intelligence. In personally revealing essays about his father and about his years as a teacher, in deeply considered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to Truman Capote, and in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as Harold Bloom and George Steiner, this remarkable collection presents us with the best work of our country's most singular talent, engaged with the richness and variety of life, witty in his response to the world, and always entertaining. |
Contents
Oh Dad Dear Dad | 3 |
Talking to Oneself | 15 |
Goodbye Mr Chipstein | 32 |
On the Road Again Alas | 45 |
Memoirs of a Cheap and Finicky Glutton | 59 |
Speaking of the Dead | 72 |
Why I Am Not a Lawyer | 82 |
Books Wont Furnish a Room | 96 |
The Medical Keats | 218 |
The Great Bookie | 243 |
Curious George Steiner | 254 |
Bloomin Genius | 263 |
Thank You No | 273 |
Forgetting Edmund Wilson | 281 |
Intellectuals Public and Otherwise | 295 |
Cmon Reiny Lets Do the Twist | 308 |
The Intimate Abstraction of Paul Valery | 111 |
Monsieur Prousts Masterwork | 127 |
Vin Audenaire | 145 |
The Godhaunted Fiction of IB Singer | 164 |
Truman Capote and the Cost of Charm | 177 |
The Max Beerbohm Cult | 186 |
Pink Pigeons and Blue Mayonnaise | 195 |
The Return of Karl Shapiro? | 208 |
The Torture of Writers Block | 321 |
Is Reading Really at Risk? | 331 |
The Perpetual Adolescent | 343 |
The Culture of Celebrity | 356 |
Why Are Academics So Unhappy? | 373 |
What Happened to the Movies? | 383 |
Im History | 394 |
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In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage Joseph Epstein No preview available - 2008 |
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