First Things RSS Feed - Joseph Epstein https://www.firstthings.com/author/joseph-epstein en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:56:00 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/joseph-epstein 60 Writing My Autobiography https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/writing-my-autobiography https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/writing-my-autobiography Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400 Are you still writing?” he asked.

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]]> Saved by Books https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/03/saved-by-books https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/03/saved-by-books Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0500 Rescuing Socrates:
How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation
by Roosevelt Montás
 Princeton, 248 pages, $24.95

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]]> How Great Was He? https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/03/how-great-was-he https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/03/how-great-was-he Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0500 Philip and Alexander:
Kings and Conquerors
 by adrian goldsworthy
basic, 608 pages, $35

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]]> Style Reveals the Man https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/style-reveals-the-man https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/style-reveals-the-man Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 -0400 Writing cannot be taught, as I came to realize after attempting to teach it for thirty years to university students, but it can be learned. One can only teach the mistakes bad writers make and provide examples of what makes good writers good. One cannot teach a love of language, the power of observation, a sense of drama, an aptitude for metaphor and simile, the rhythm of a well-constructed sentence or paragraph. Above all, one cannot teach desire—specifically the desire, dominating all other desires, to write something striking and stirring, original and memorable.

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]]> Learning Latin https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/04/learning-latin https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/04/learning-latin Wed, 01 Apr 2020 06:00:00 -0400 Some people acquire foreign languages more easily than others. I, alas, am one of those others. I cannot truly say that I have possession of any foreign language. I have perhaps two hundred or so words of Yiddish—just enough to fool the Gentiles into thinking I know the language, but not enough to speak to real Jews. When I was a boy, I was sent to Hebrew school. But Israel only recently having become a state, Hebrew was still thought of chiefly as a liturgical and scholarly language, and not yet as a spoken one. So my fellow students and I learned pronunciation and prayers, this in preparation for reading our Torah portions at our  bar mitzvahs ,but regrettably we did no translation. I have sufficient French to read ­Pascal and La Rochefoucauld but not Montaigne nor Proust. Owing to the elision so rampant in French speech, I do not hear spoken French very well. On the few occasions when I have been called upon to speak French, I sounded, I have a sad hunch,  comme une vache espagnole.

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]]> Bodily Curiosities https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/01/bodily-curiosities https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/01/bodily-curiosities Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 -0500 I am not altogether incurious, but one entity about which I have over the years felt little curiosity is my own body. Until recently, I could not have told you the function of my, or anyone else’s, pancreas, spleen, or gallbladder. I’d just as soon not have known that I have kidneys, and was less than certain of their exact whereabouts, apart from knowing that they reside somewhere in the region of my lower back. As for my entrails, the yards of intestines winding through my body, the less I knew about them the better, though I have always liked the sound of the word “duodenum.” About the cells and chromosomes, the hormones and microbes crawling and swimming about in my body, let us not speak.

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]]> Stefan Zweig, European Man https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/06/stefan-zweig-european-man https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/06/stefan-zweig-european-man Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400 The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig
 by stefan zweig
translated by anthea bell
 pushkin, 384 pages, $30

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]]> Big Julie https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/04/big-julie https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/04/big-julie Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400 James Boswell, who knew a thing or two about hero worship, called Julius Caesar “the greatest man of any age.” Alexander Hamilton told Thomas Jefferson that Caesar was “the greatest man who ever lived.” Theodor Mommsen, in his History of Rome , called Caesar “the sole creative genius produced by Rome, and the last produced by the ancient world.” Jacob Burckhardt called Caesar “the greatest of mortals.”

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]]> The Bookish Life https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/11/the-bookish-life https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/11/the-bookish-life Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0400 The village idiot of the shtetl of Frampol was offered the job of waiting at the village gates to greet the arrival of the Messiah. “The pay isn’t great,” he was told, “but the work is steady.” The same might be said about the conditions of the bookish life: low pay but steady work. By the bookish life, I mean a life in which the reading of books has a central, even a dominating, place. I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. Reading happens to be my hobby, too, along with peristalsis and respiration.

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]]> Edward Shils in Heaven https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/08/edward-shils-in-heaven https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/08/edward-shils-in-heaven Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400 Edward Shils in Heaven

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