“So immensely pleasurable to read–like time spent with a wonderfully intelligent and learned, witty, observant and very open friend. Sometimes you want to argue, but more often to say, ‘Oh, right.’ I was alternately moved and amused, entertained and enlightened.”–Alice Adams
Critical Acclaim for Phillip Lopate:
“Lopate more than fulfills his authorial obligation to be engaging as well as honest. His is the work of a fascinatingly complex individual, clearheaded and intermittently cantankerous, calmly articulate, hungry for truth, and above all, appealingly forthright.”–Philadelphia Inquirer
“Lopate has the true essayist’s gift of living on the page .”–The New York Times
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: THE SKEPTIC’S PROMENADE
The Moody Traveler
Portrait of My Body
The Dead Father: A Remembrance of Donald Barthelme
Confessions of a Shusher
The Movies and Spiritual Life
Resistance to the Holocaust
PARTTWO: THE INESCAPABLE EGO
On Leaving Bachelorhood
Detachment and Passion
Terror of Mentors
The Story of My Father
The Invisible Woman
Memories of Greenwich Village: A Meander
Delivering Lily
