I’ve read all of Phillip Lopate’s previous collections of essays and enjoyed them. Lopate presents himself as a common man and his essays reflect this stance. The first part of Portrait Inside My Head concerns Lopate’s family, his wife, his ex-wife, his sick child, and the common annoyances of Life. In later sections, Lopate writes about movies, books, and celebrities. If you’re in the mood for a wide-ranging collection of intelligent essays, look no further than Portrait Inside My Head. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: In Defense of the Miscellaneous
I. The Family Romance
Tea at the Plaza
The Camera Shop
The Countess’s Tutor
My Brother the Radio Host
Wife or Sister?
The Limits of Empathy
The Lake of Suffering
II. The Consolations of Daily Life
Memoirs of a Wishy-Washy Left-Liberal
Why I Remain a Baseball Fan
Novels and Films
On Changing One’s Mind About a Movie
Laws of Attraction
Duration, or, Going Long
Warren Sonbert
III. City Spaces
Brooklyn the Unknowable
Robert Moses Rethought
City Hall and Its Park
Walking the High Line
Getting the South Wrong
IV. Literary Matters
“Howl” and Me
The Poetry Years
The Stubborn Art of Charles Reznikoff
The Improbable Moralist
James Agee
On Not Reading Thomas Bernhard
Worldliness and Regret
Coda: The Life of the Mind
You should write a book on reading, George. I know of no one who reads so widely and so much.
Patti, I’m just a hopeless reading addict. There are very few things I would rather do than read. But, one of them is talking to friends like you and Phil.
I agree. I can’t keep up, don’t have the time to read as fraction of what George reads, and I admit I wouldn’t read much of what he does, though this sounds great.
As many of my friends have told me, Rick, “You read those books so we don’t have to read them.”
Good point. However, this does sound interesting. I see my library has a lot of his books. Should I start with this one or pick another?
Inquiring minds…etc.
You can jump into any of Lopate’s books, Jeff. Scan the Table of Contents to see what might interest you. Lopate’s BEING WITH CHILDREN is a funny (and sad) memoir of Lopate’s year teaching kids in an inner-city school.
Thanks, George. I think I’ll just try the new one and see. He is a Brooklyn boy so can’t be bad!
Jeff, Lopate’s essay on Brooklyn in PROTRAIT INSIDE MY HEAD was my favorite essay in the book!