SOURCE: Iannone, Carol. “Payment in Full.” National Review 41, no. 7 (21 April 1989): 46-7.

In the following review, Iannone contends that in Partial Payments, Epstein strives to deflate inflated literary reputations and “to uncover genuine achievements that have been overlooked or undervalued, or looked at and valued for the wrong reasons.”

Nowadays, while critics in the professional arena indulge in feverish overestimation, those in the academy busy themselves with the deconstruction of all literary value whatsoever. Meanwhile, a precious handful of writers—among whom Joseph Epstein is surely the foremost—are engaged in what might be called the reconstruction of our literary culture, or what Epstein himself has termed the Resistance. In his two alliteratively entitled collections, Plausible Prejudices and now Partial Payments, Epstein works both to deflate inflated reputations and to uncover genuine achievements that have been overlooked or undervalued, or looked at and valued for the wrong reasons. Moreover...