Joseph Epstein

5 days ago | thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Joseph Epstein |Jude Russo |Paul Griffiths

In the blue afternoon the bird appeared, perched on a high roof in the capital of the world. It was a seagull, dancing in the sun. Perhaps it felt lonely, for it was soon joined by its mate and their hungry offspring. Indifferent to the cheers below them in the ruined circus and to the old men who lurked in the gilded ossuary chattering and marking bits of paper destined for oblivion, the mother spat out the corpse of a rodent, which the chick happily devoured.

6 days ago | thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Joseph Epstein |Jude Russo |Paul Griffiths

America has finally joined the ranks of great Western civilizations and produced a pope, along with the Italians, the French, the Germans, the Greeks, the Dutch, the Jews, and, somewhat inexplicably, the Poles.

2 weeks ago | thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Joseph Epstein |Mary Rogers |Peter Hitchens

The sad fact of it is that any idiot can write a book. If you write two hundred words a day for a year, taking off on the weekends (don’t want to strain the system), at the end you will have a manuscript of respectable proportions that you can inflict on contest judges, agents’ slush piles, and so forth. It’s comparable to becoming fit; but, unlike becoming fit, I’ve actually done the book thing a few times.

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Jesse Tisch |Akiva Schick |Joseph Epstein |Abraham Socher

Free Press 304 pp., $29.99 Simon & Schuster 464 pp., $20.99 Memoir is risky business. Its reputation? Slightly dubious. Its vices? Vanity, indiscretion, omission. Don’t trust it, said Orwell, unless it reveals something shameful. Even then, you might wonder why someone probes their past, poking around in the attic of their psyche. Why not let demons rest? If anyone understands these hazards, it’s Joseph Epstein, a great practitioner and skeptic of personal writing.

Jan 14, 2025 | commentary.org | Joseph Epstein

Whenever I am among people discussing politics and the discussion begins to turn contentious, I generally remind my companions that "I have never lost a political argument" and, after a brief pause, add, "but, then, neither have I ever won one." The reason for this seeming paradox is simple: To win an argument you need reason, and, when it comes to politics, you cannot, as Jonathan Swift had it, reason someone out of something into which he or she has not been reasoned.