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Life Sentences

literary essays

by Joseph Epstein

Cover of Life Sentences
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Reading an essay by Joseph Epstein is much like watching Joe DiMaggio hit a pitched ball: the pleasure is in watching a difficult art performed with matchless grace and ease. In Life Sentences, his fourth collection of literary essays, he considers the lives and works of nineteen writers of note, appreciating many of them, roughing up some others, and weighing them overall in the finely calibrated balance of his well-stocked mind.

Books and readingAuthorsLiteratureBiographyHistory and criticismAmerican literature, history and criticism, 20th centuryNew York Times reviewed