I have been reading Joseph Epstein's essays (collected in many books) for over thirty years--not always with agreement, but always with interest and illumination. His new essay "There Are Too Many Overweight Biographies", in the September 2020 issue of Commentary, is a good example. Read it here. One small observation:
[There is] a new trend in publishing: accounts of the writing and publication of other books.
Strangely, I find myself currently engaged in just this sort of thing, in preparing my talk for Oxonmoot on "Humphrey Carpenter on Tolkien: Then and Now (Fifty Years Later)"
A "new essay" published five years ago!
ReplyDeleteThe author of two fine slim biographies (The Man Who Went into the West, about R.S. Thomas, and The Last Englishman, about J.L. Carr), Byron Rogers died recently.
It says "September 2025" on the page itself. Not sure why you think it is five years old.
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