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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
BOOKSHELF
Bookshelf
Phillip Lopate ’64 Takes Stock
B y Jessamine Chan ’12 A r t s
The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory
of Jack Kerouac [’44] by Joyce
Johnson. Johnson explores Kerouac’s
dual identity as a French-Canadian
and an American, and assesses
how being caught between the two
cultures and languages affected his
writing (Viking, $32.95).
The Mating Flower by Dr. Enoch
Callaway ’45. Callaway’s novel
revolves around a mystical flower
and the research to harness its
love potion-like powers, leading
to tales of love and crime-solving
(self-published, $10).
Betty Sue’s Homecoming and Her
Rocky Path to Respectability by
Durham Caldwell ’48. In this novel,
a young woman returns home 27
years after disappearing to find
she must adapt to small town life
and overcome the demons from
her years in NYC (CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform,
$14.95).
Vastation by Lewis E. Birdseye ’60.
In this novel, a father and son take
a journey on the trails of Oregon’s
Willamette National Forest, gaining
an understanding of life and its
complexities along the way (Xlibris
Corp., $19.99).
The Mountain of Long Eyes: An
Anthology of Science Fiction and
Fantasy by Thomas Wm. Hamilton
’60. This collection includes more
than 25 stories on subjects such
as time travel, alternate history,
horror, politics and space opera
(Strategic Book Publishing and
Rights, $13.95).
Qualities of Duration: The Architecture
of Phillip Smith [’61] and
Douglas Thompson by Alastair Gordon.
This book showcases the work
of architects Smith and Thompson,
whose designs embody a sense of
spatial quietude and inspiration
(Damiani/Gordon de Vries Studio,
$50).
John Dante’s Inferno, A Playboy’s
Life by Anthony Valerio ’62. The
author recounts tales of hedonism,
excess and friendship from the 26
years his late friend and Playmate
recruiter — under the pseudonym
John Dante — lived in the Playboy
Mansion (Daisy H Productions,
$9.43).
The Man Who Got Lost: North
Quabbin Stories by Allen Young
’62. In this collection of articles and
columns written between 1978–
2012, Young describes life in the
area north of Quabbin Reservoir in
Massachusetts (Haleys, $15).
To Show and To Tell: The Craft
of Literary Nonfiction by Phillip
Lopate ’64. The School of the Arts
professor assembles a comprehensive
guide to writing literary nonfiction
(see this issue’s featured
book for the story of Lopate’s
other new work) (Free Press, $16).
The Death and Life of Main
Street: Small Towns in American
Memory, Space, and Community
by Miles Orvell ’64. Orvell studies
the nostalgic construct of Main
Street in American culture, including
its allure, ideology and function
as a space (The University of
North Carolina Press, $39.95).
The Ellington Century by David
Schiff ’67. Schiff examines the work
of American composer Duke Ellington
and other composers of his time,
their relationship to music’s modernization
and their effects on their successors
and music today (University
of California Press, $34.95).
Moneywood: Hollywood in Its
Last Age of Excess by William Stadiem
’69. Digging into the culture
of 1980s Hollywood, Stadiem highlights
a crooked cast of the era’s
powerful executives and producers
who cheated, embezzled and
womanized their way to the top
(St. Martin’s Press, $26.99).
The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis
on Science, Scientism, and Society
edited by John G. West, featuring
essays by M.D. Aeschliman ’70 and
others. Aeschliman discusses Lewis
and scientism in two essays (Discovery
Institute Press, $24.95).
The Life & Times of Fred Wesley
Wentworth: The Architect Who
Shaped Paterson, NJ and Its
People by Richard E. Polton ’70.
More than 130 photos illustrate
Polton’s chronicle of the life and
work of Wentworth, a littleknown
New Jersey architect (Pine
Hill Architectural Press, $34.95).
The Complicity of Friends: How
George Eliot, G.H. Lewes, and
John Hughlings-Jackson Encoded
Herbert Spencer’s Secret by Martin
N. Raitiere ’70. Raitiere discloses
the neurological disorder that
afflicted philosopher Spencer and
explores the impact it had on the
few who knew his secret (Bucknell
University Press, $95).
The Ethical Challenges of Human
Research: Selected Essays by Frank
G. Miller ’70. The author compiles
22 essays that address the challenges
posed by the use of humans
as test subjects (Oxford University
Press, $55).
Communicating the Bird by Robert
Ronnow ’73. Ronnow explores
political, sexual and emotional
themes in this collection of poems
(Broken Publications, $10).
Casebook of Interpersonal Psychotherapy
edited by John C.
Markowitz ’76 and Myrna M.
Weissman. This book responds to
the need for a foundational text to
supplement manuals on interpersonal
psychotherapy (Oxford
University Press, $55).
Inside CEO Succession: The
Essential Guide to Leadership
Transition by Tom Saporito and
Paul Winum ’77. The authors present
a comprehensive overview
of how boards can manage CEO
succession while maintaining
corporate success (Wiley, John &
Sons, $50).
The personal essay as a literary form resists easy
definition; it can be erudite, intimate or irreverent,
as suited for debating the wider world as it is relating
matters of the heart. Celebrated practitioners
include authors as varied as Michel de Montaigne,
George Orwell and Joan Didion. Today, savvy readers
often associate the essay with Phillip Lopate
’64, editor of the influential 1994 work, The Art
of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the
Classical Era to the Present.
The latest collection from the famed essayist
and director of the graduate nonfiction program
at the School of the Arts is Portrait Inside My
Head: Essays (Free Press, $26), a diverse — or as
admitted in the introduction, “motley” — assortment
of personal and critical reflections. Organized
into four sections — “The Family Romance,”
“The Consolations of Daily Life,” “City Spaces” and
“Literary Matters” — the book wrestles with topics
including his daughter’s health crisis as an infant;
his marriage; baseball; his appreciation for femme
fatales; his relationship with Brooklyn; and his resistance
to reading Thomas Bernhard. Throughout,
Lopate’s wry voice and an awareness of his
own limits offer unifying threads.
In January, sitting in the book-lined, top-floor
office of his Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, brownstone,
Lopate discussed Portrait, his memories
of Columbia, the writer’s life and what he still
hopes to achieve in a career that has already
produced an entire shelf of books.
As the son of textile clerks growing up in
the then-ghettos of Williamsburg and Fort
Greene, Brooklyn, Lopate recalls his culture
shock upon entering Columbia. “I felt a chip
on my shoulder,” he says. “You’re dropped
into this genteel environment, where it is sink
or swim.” In addition, he says, “I was trying to
solve the problem of women” — a particularly
challenging endeavor for a 16-year-old
freshman in an all-male college.
Lopate recalls positive aspects of his experience
as well, such as working on the Columbia Review and
founding clubs for filmmakers and jazz aficionados. He worked
two jobs, one at Ferris Booth Hall where he made sure students
were wearing the expected jackets and ties. From professors
such as Lionel Trilling ’25, ’38 GSAS and Eric Bentley, he learned
that “when you study literature or art history with a great
professor, you’re studying the professor as much as you’re
studying the subject.”
During his “powerless and in the dark” years in the mid- to
late-1960s, Lopate responded to calls for editorial assistants
(ghost writers, really) on Columbia’s unemployment wall and
earned money working on manuscripts for psychologists, social
scientists and educators. He chronicles this early period in his
essay, “The Poetry Years,” admitting that of his 15 years writing
poetry: “I am tempted to rub my eyes, as though recalling a time
when I ran off and joined the circus.” Despite the “bluffing” that
PHOTO: SALLY GALL
the form required, Lopate’s 12 years as a consulting writer-poet
in a Manhattan public school informed his memoir, Being with
Children: A High-Spirited Personal Account of Teaching, Writing,
Theatre and Videotape. It was also the foundation for a teaching
career that has since included positions at the University of
Houston, Hofstra and Bennington.
Lopate’s prodigious output encompasses three
essay collections, two novels (Confessions of a
Summer and The Rug Merchant), a pair of novellas
and three poetry collections, not to mention
a volume of movie criticism, a meditation on the
New York waterfront, a study of Susan Sontag
and the many anthologies he has edited. A guide
for writers, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary
Nonfiction, was published simultaneously
with Portrait in February (see Bookshelf). His
awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and
two National Endowment for the Arts grants.
Speaking fondly of the place teaching holds
in his career, Lopate says, “For me, teaching is a
form of writing out loud. [It’s] a little like being
a jazz musician; it’s very improvisatory. I’m
chasing meaning, much the way that essays
are an exploration. There’s also a psychological
dimension to being a teacher where
you’re in front of people with their hopes
and dreams and pain. This is the drama of
being a human being and in almost every
situation, it comes down to responding in a
human way and in a commonsensical way.”
Though readers of his earlier essay collections
may feel that they know Lopate
intimately, he’s not as curmudgeonly and
nature-averse as his work suggests. “In real
life, I’m perfectly content to have a good
time, and I can even have fun at a dinner
party,” he says. Writing offers an opportunity
for control, much more than he has in his
daily life as a husband and father. “I go up to
my room and close the door, and I can control
the field of the page,” he says.
Taking stock, he says that he’s achieved
more than he ever expected. “When I went to Columbia, a trembling
freshman, I had two models in my head,” he says. “One
was to become a great writer like Dostoevsky and the other
was to be an utter failure. I didn’t imagine being a successful
‘minor writer.’ I have my place in the culture, and it’s not a huge
place, but it’s respectable. Anything I write from now on will
have to come from the pleasure of experimenting.”
That said, he would like to write a proper autobiography, noting
the difference between individual essays and memoirs. “Personal
essays are like guerilla raids,” he says. “You get in there, you rip
off a sheep and you go back.
“The hope or rationalization is that people will read my writing
and think, oh yeah, I feel better about my own silliness and
mistakes. It’s an attempt to create a community of consolation.”
Jessamine Chan ’12 Arts is a reviews editor at Publishers Weekly.
SPRING 2013
46
SPRING 2013
47