Set against a vividly depicted background of fin de siecle New York, this novel centers on the conflict between a self-made millionaire and a fervent social revolutionary-a conflict in which a man of goodwill futilely attempts to act as a mediator, only to be forced himself into a crisis of conscience. Here we see William Dean Howells's grasp of the realities of the American experience in an age of emerging social struggle. His absolute determination to fairly represent every point of view is evident throughout this multifaceted work. Both a memorable portrait of an era and a profoundly...

For more than four hundred years, the personalessay has been one of the richest and most vibrantof all literary forms. Distinguished from thedetached formal essay by its friendly, conversationaltone, its loose structure, and its drive towardcandor and self-disclosure, the personal essayseizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities, fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love anddisappointment, the pleasures of solitude, reading, taking a walk -- to offer insight into thehuman condition and the great social and politicalissues of the day. The Art of the Personal Essay isthe...

Phillip Lopate's richest and most ambitious book yet--the final volume of a trilogy that began with Bachelorhood and Against Joie de Vivre--Portrait of My Body is a powerful memoir in the form of interconnected personal essays. One of America's foremost essayists, who helped focus attention on the form in his acclaimed anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, Lopate demonstrates here just how far a writer can go in the direction of honesty and risk taking.

In thirteen essays, Lopate explores the resources and limits of the self, its many disguises, excuses,...

This fall, Anchor Books proudly launches an annual essay series. Acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate has selected the most surprising, important, and exquisite pieces published during the last twelve months. Bringing together material from both periodicals and books, The Anchor Essay Annual 1997 also includes essays never before published, as well as translations from abroad. The result is as rich and unique as it is cosmopolitan.

In her brilliantly frank "Revelation," Mary Gaitskill recounts the religious epiphany that changed her life. Hilton Als explores the "Negressity" of his soul in "My...

Now in its third year, this annual collection presents the most notable, influential, and surprising essays published in the last twelve months in either books or periodicals throughout the English-speaking world. Selected with consummate taste and a catholic openness to style and subject matter by famed essayist, critic, and editor, Phillip Lopate, the 1999 edition demonstrates that the form continues its renaissance as an unrivaled vehicle of intelligence and sensibility.
For this edition, Lopate has paired his tewnty-eight selections by topic, which offers suprising parallels and...

Phillip Lopate has been obsessed with movies from the start. As an undergraduate at Columbia, he organized the school's first film society. Later, he even tried his own hand at filmmaking. But it was not until his ascent as a major essayist that Lopate found his truest and most lasting contribution to the medium. And, over the past twenty-five years, tackling subjects ranging from Visconti to Jerry Lewis, from the first New York Film Festival to the thirty-second, Phillip Lopate has made film his most cherished subject. Here, in one place, are the very best of these essays, a joy for anyone...

East Side, West Side, from the Little Red Lighthouse to Battery Park City, the wonders of Manhattan s waterfront are both celebrated and secret hidden in plain sight. In his brilliant exploration of this defining yet neglected shoreline, personal essayist Philip Lopate also recovers a part of the city s soul.
A native New Yorker, Lopate has embraced Manhattan by walking every inch of its perimeter, telling stories on the way of pirates (Captain Kidd) and power brokers (Robert Moses), the lowly shipworm and Typhoid Mary, public housing in Harlem and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. He...

From the man whose name is 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. 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.

For more than a century, the Hudson River piers in Greenwich Village bustled with the maritime commerce that made New York the greatest port in the country. By the 1960s, after years of economic decline, the great waterfront was disappearing. After the West Side Highway was closed in 1973, many of the piers, now abandoned, burned, while others collapsed into the river. By the 1990s, only ghosts were left.Yet there came a moment in time-fifteen years, perhaps-when the decaying piers supported a thriving other life. These ravaged iron structures became the Jones Beach of Manhattan; rotting...

"Over the years I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre, the knack of knowing how to live," begins the title essay by Phillip Lopate. This rejoinder to the cult of hedonism and forced conviviality moves from a critique of the false sentimentalization of children and the elderly to a sardonic look at the social rite of the dinner party, on to a moving personal testament to the "hungry soul." Lopate's special gift is his ability to give us not only sophisticated cultural commentary in a dazzling collection of essays but also to bring to his subjects an engaging honesty...