Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on How ‘Biography Counters Determinism’)

“Biography counters determinism, the notion of history being made chiefly, or even exclusively, by irresistible tendencies, trends, and movements. It reinforces the idea that fortune, accident, above all strong character can rise above the impersonal forces of politics, economics, and even culture to forge human destiny and change the flow of history itself. For this reason, and many more, I say, long live biography.” — American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Life Within Lives,” The Weekly Standard, Apr. 11, 2016

This is one reason why I have been captivated by biography (unlike my peers, more, even, than fantasy) since I was a child—as well as something I kept in mind while writing a biography of my own with my friend Rob Polner, An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O’Dwyer.

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on Self-Improvement and Encyclopedias)

“Self-improvement is at the heart of the encyclopedic enterprise. People certified with degrees from what the world considers the best universities and colleges sometimes forget that we are all autodidacts, on our own in the endless attempt to patch over the extraordinary gaps in our knowledge. Doing so in an efficient way is the promise held out by an encyclopedia, which claims to provide all the world's pertinent knowledge, right there in 24, 29, 32 volumes, usually with a bookcase thrown in at no extra charge.” —American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Wisdom on the Installment Plan,” Wall Street Journal, June 18-19, 2016

As a youngster, my “self-improvement,” such as it was, came courtesy of a more modest encyclopedia set than the one Epstein posits: the 10-volume New Wonder World Encyclopedia.

My family couldn’t afford a 10-volume set, let alone one double or triple in size, so I believe this one came as a gift from a neighbor who worked for the publisher, Parents’ Institute.

What I know is that, while ignoring some volumes in the set (e.g., Agriculture and Industry), I positively tore through several others: Masterpieces of the Arts, Treasures of Literature, Highlights of American History, Great Events of World History, The Nations of the World, and most of all, Famous People of All Time, foreshadowing my lifelong interest in biographies.

The volumes were liberally filled with photos and illustrations, increasing its appeal for a child. They whetted my interest enough so that several years later, I was ready for the three-volume Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, with denser type but no eye-catching graphics.

It’s impossible to imagine for someone growing up in the digital age, but for a reader with endless curiosity decades ago, minutes could fly by with print volumes—and it was not time the least bit wasted.

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on Words in Print and Digital Form)

“When I have a book or magazine in hand, I generally read every word, attentive not alone to meaning but to style. In digital form, prose has a different feel; style gives way to mere communication. If I discover an essay or article on, say, artsandlettersdaily.com that runs to more than 25 paragraphs, by the fifteenth paragraph or so I feel a tug of impatience I rarely feel with printed prose. The idea of reading serious poetry online doesn’t even qualify as an abomination.”—American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Casual: Kindle at the Cleaners,” The Weekly Standard, Nov. 14, 2011

Later in the same essay, Epstein observes, “I like the look of books, the heft of them in my hands, their different sizes and various fonts and dust jackets, the smell of them.”

Amen, I say to that. Yes, I have used a Kindle, and I value digital communication for putting at my fingertips what I wouldn’t be able to discover otherwise, such as the original sources of many quotes cited on this blog.

But a printed book, as a physical artifact, is an often undervalued work of art. You don’t have to be an old fogy to appreciate the labor it took to produce it. Maybe that’s why so many of us remain stubbornly resistant to the digital incursion.

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on Cliches in Politics)

“In the realm of clichés in extemporaneous speech, politicians surely lead the field. Without such clichés as ‘bring to the table,’ ‘level playing field,’ ‘tipping point’ and ‘the American people,’ most would be reduced to stuttering, if not rendered speechless. The characteristic cliché-studded political sentence might run: ‘At the end of the day, given a level playing field, we have to bring to the table [blank] to allow the American people to go forward before we reach a tipping point.’” —Essayist-editor Joseph Epstein, “Having a Conversation, One Cliché at a Time,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 19, 2019

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on Why a Writer Reads Slowly)

“My reading is slowed down even further by my being a writer. Most reasonably scrupulous people reading a sentence take the following quick inventory: Was it clear? Correct? Precise? Interesting? If they have the least esthetic sense, they will perhaps add, Beautiful? But the writer, when confronted with an interesting or beautiful sentence, must ask two other questions: First, How was it done? Second, How, properly camouflaged, might its magic be stolen for my own writing? This, too, can slow a fellow down.”—American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Stop and Smell the Prose,” The Weekly Standard, Jan. 18, 1999

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on ‘The Modest Reputation of the Essay’)

“One might, at an early age, wish to be a poet or a dramatist or a novelist or even possibly a critic. One somehow wanders or stumbles into becoming an essayist. But, given the modest reputation of the essay and the way it has tended to be taught in schools, it is quite amazing that anyone should ever again wish to read essays let alone write them.” —American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, A Literary Education and Other Essays (2014)

Although I don’t think that one develops an interest in the essay from an early age, as one does for the other forms that Epstein cites, I would not attribute this to how it is taught. I think it has ever been thus.

Nearly 40 years ago, one of the best contemporary essayists, Edward Hoagland, told me, when I interviewed him for my college newspaper, that, at least in his case, resort to the essay resulted from “the reformer’s impulse” to set the world right. Even if you qualify it and say one’s own world, that still holds true.

The genre is a meditative one, one to come at the point in a life that calls for self-assessment or self-improvement. Childhood is hardly the time for that.

If one aspect of our age threatens the essay as a genre, it might the tendency toward assertion—i.e., simply stating a position—rather than persuasion—a thorough consideration of counter-arguments and an honest attempt to speak to them. The confessional impulse behind the essay may be stronger than ever, but without this attempt at reader outreach and understanding, I fear for its future ability to engage those who encounter it.

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, With Thoughts for a New Season of Car Sales)

“Fraught, that vogue word meaning heavily complicated with the possibility of an unhappy ending, fraught is what everything having to do with buying a car is. Along with the fear of being made a fool of goes that of being treated as if one were a child. Some years ago a car salesman told me that he wanted to find a car for me in which I’d feel comfortable. ‘What would make me feel a lot more comfortable,’ I told him, ‘is if you’d lower your price a few grand.’ ‘Right,’ he said, ‘no problem,’ and then scarcely budged on his price.”—American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Dancing With Wolves,” The Weekly Standard, Feb. 13, 2012

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on the Limits of A-V Teaching Aids)

“[A]udiovisual aids, far from being an advance in pedagogy, may well be nothing more than another form of dumbing down. One of the reigning clichés in pedagogy for some while now has been that current generations are visual-minded; they cerebrate not through words but pictures. So, the argument runs, it makes sense to appeal to them visually. Some learning can doubtless be accomplished visually. But that it can doesn’t necessarily mean that the visual is the best way to accomplish it. The visual has its limits, and they may be more extreme than devotees of the audiovisual know.”—Joseph Epstein, “Audio-Dismal Aids,” The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2013