SOURCE: Jacoby, Russell. “Is ‘Aristides’ Just?” Nation 237, no. 16 (19 November 1983): 489-91.

In the following review, Jacoby discusses Epstein as a political and familiar essayist and argues that the “political essays on culture” collected in The Middle of My Tether are often successful.

Joseph Epstein may be the most engaging and least noticed essayist on American life and manners today. For ten years he has edited The American Scholar, contributing a graceful, wry and personal essay to each issue under the pen name “Aristides.” With deft vignettes and literary allusions he has ruminated on fountain pens and jogging, on human faces and boutiques. He collected some of those essays in Familiar Territory, and now presents us with another batch [in The Middle of My Tether]. Many are gems. If his name does not spark recognition, it is because he keeps a low profile, paying no heed to headlines or Yale...