Getting Personal : Selected Essays

From the man who is practically synonymous with the form of the modern personal essay comes a delightful collection of prose, poems, and never-before-published pieces that span his career as an essayist, novelist, poet, film critic, father, son, and husband. Organized in six parts (Childhood; Youth; Early Marriage and Bachelorhood; Teaching and Work; Fiction; Politics, Religion, Movies, Books, Cities; The Style of Middle Age) Getting Personal tells two stories: the development of Lopate's career as a writer and the story of his life. From the man whose name is virtually synonymous with the contemporary personal essay, Getting Personal is a rich and ambitious collection that spans Phillip Lopate's career as an essayist, teacher, film critic, father, son and husband. Lauded as one of America's foremost essayists, a writer who was instrumental in focussing attention on the form, Lopate here admirably demonstrates the obligation to be engaging as well as honest. Witty, insightful, deeply meditative and self-revelatory, with his characteristic candor and curmudgeonly charm, he explores himself, his life, his family, his religion, and his friends. Organized in six parts and spanning childhood to middle age, these twenty-eight essays tell two stories: the story of Lopate's life and the development of his career as a writer. On subjects as disparate as My Drawer, in which Lopate catalogues the bizarre contents of his bureau drawer to learn what they reveal about his life, to The Dead Father, a haunting portrait of his ex-colleague Donald Barthelme; from his famously funny and cranky Against Joie de Vivre, his lament against our relentless, driven and determined pursuit of happiness, to the poignant and deeply moving memoir, Willy, a remembrance of his mother's struggle to choose between his father and her lover, these essays celebrate the impressive range of his talent. Whether Lopate is examining the perils of living above your landlord, the glorious sweep of the Hudson from the George Washington Bridge, the difficulty of teaching gloomy Chekhov to children, or the lamentable collection of parts that comprise the portrait of his body, he is always thoughtful, wonderfully skeptical, and eloquently engaging. Getting Personal stands not only as a guide to Lopate's writing career, but also as an intellectual autobiography, rooted in his experience as one of America's most beloved and respected writers. The editor of the bestsellers The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, Writing New York: A Literary Anthology and The Anchor Essay series, Lopate is known for his exquisite taste in other's essays and a probing revelatory style of his own