Description: From the distinguished essayist, film critic, and poet, a lively, tender, and provocative new collection celebrating the life of the mind, from challenges of a Brooklyn childhood to the pleasures of baseball, movies, sex, books, friendship, and more.
Brief description: Phillip Lopate is the author of more than a dozen books, including three personal essay collections, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, and Waterfront. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences anda winner of fellowships from the New York Public Library, National Endowment for the Arts, andGuggenheim, heis a professor ofgraduate nonfiction writing at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
Review Quotes: "Immensely readable essays. . . As riveting as short stories, with arresting openings, sculptured scenes worthy of fiction, introspective passages fingering his own feelings, and haunting conclusions that resonate. . . .What holds it together is an engaging voice, the projection of a curious, appealingly modest, sometimes self-mocking character behind that voice, and the "the fluent play of a single consciousness." He's gifted at staging his inner conflicts, radiating intimacy without descending into the confessional. . . . [Lopate] remains "a storyteller at heart" who can liven up any subject with nimble anecdotes from his life. . . . Delightful."