Phillip Lopate

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 divergences in points of view. Andre Dubus and Tom Beller on apprentice work as a form of true experience; Richard Rorty and George Packer on the quixotic and often self-defeating character of the American left; Siri Hustvedt and Wayne Koestenbaum on the verities of erotic experience; Bliss Broyard and M. G. Stephens on their fathers; Marcus Laffey and Charles Bowden on violence, crime, and police work; Susan Sontag and Martha Nussbaum on the necessity and consolation of art--these are just some of the peerless practitioners of the essay featured in this superb collection. All of this exciting new work is placed in context by an equally superb introductory essay by Lopate. A special feature of this 1999 edition is an appendix in which literary and intellectual notables nominate their selections of the best and most influential essays and essayists of the century. This prestigious Anchor annual is more than ever an unequaled showcase for an indispensable and ever-changing literary form.

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 who loves movies.

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 materials 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 Pin-Up". In his dazzling "The Laying Off of Desire", Jean Baudrillard sets forth a flamboyant dissection of human sexuality. Hubert Butler ruminates on the stunted life of his handicapped grandchild in "Little K." We relive the glories and disappointments of the Borscht Belt in Vivian Gornick's evocative group portrait, "The Catskills Remembered". And we ride a rollercoaster of cultural insight in Daniel Harris's "A Psychosexual History of the Homosexual Body". A a whole, this superb collection is a heady cocktail indeed. All of this exciting new work is placed in context with an illuminating introduction from Phillip Lopate, "the house authority on the genre and its greatest practitioner" (Washington Times). With generous selections from over twenty-five writers from around the world, The Anchor Essay Annual 1997 is the first in what is sure to become a series widely anticipated and highly acclaimed, every October, for years to come.

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, and unmaskings, with his characteristic wry humor and insight. From the title essay, a hilarious physical self-exam, to the haunting portrait of his ex-colleague Donald Barthelme, to the bittersweet account of his long-delayed surrender to marriage, "On Leaving Bachelorhood," Lopate wrestles with finding the proper balance between detachment and empathy, doubt and conviction. In other essays, he celebrates his love of film and city life, and reflects on his religious identity as a Jew. A wrenchingly vivid, unforgettable portrait of the author's eccentric, solipsistic, aged father, a self-proclaimed failure, is the centerpiece of a suite of essays about father-figures and resisted mentors. The book ends with the author's own introduction to fatherhood, as witness to the birth of his daughter. A book that will engage readers with its conversational eloquence, skeptical intelligence, candor, and mischief, Portrait of My Body is a captivating work of literary nonfiction.

In 1977, Bennington College alumna Edith Barbour Andrews established the Ben Belitt Lectureships in gratitude to her teacher Ben Belitt and dedicated the publication of the lectures (in the form of chapbooks) to the memory of William Troy, another of her beloved teachers. The collection, published here in one volume, comprises lectures by some of the most inspiring writers and keenest critics of our time. In his introduciton to The Ordering Mirror, Phillip Lopate contrasts the anticipations and the audience/lecturer dynamic inherent in attending yearly lecture, with the experience of reading them, and the opportunity for reflection and comparison. Lopate summarizes that, "It is enough to appreciate that we are watching masters of the game of essay-writing, who, even as they comment on the masterpieces of other writers, practice their own wizardry." The volume includes: George Steiner, "The Uncommon Reader" (1978) Frank Kermode, "Divination" (1979) Harold Bloom, "To the Tally of My Soul: Whitman's Image of Voice" (1980) Denis Donoghue, "The Politics of Modern Criticism" (1981) Irving Howe, "The Making of a Critic" (1982) Richard Ellman, "The Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce" (1983) Bernard Malamud, "Long Work, Short Life" (1984) Ben Belitt, "Literature and Belief: Three 'Spiritual Exercises'" (1985) Saul Bellow, "Summations" (1987) Hugh Kenner, "Magics and Spells (about curses, charms, and riddles)" (1987) Richard Rorty, "The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty" (1988) Rene Girard, "Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar" (1989) Nadine Gordimer, "Three in a Bed: Fiction, Morals and Politics" (1990) Seamus Heaney, "Dylan the Durable?: On Dylan Thomas" (1992) Cynthia Ozick, "What Henry James Knew" (1992)