SOURCE: Pinsker, Sanford. Review of With My Trousers Rolled, by Joseph Epstein. Georgia Review 49, no. 4 (winter 1995): 967-71.

In the following review, Pinsker discusses Epstein's strengths as a familiar essayist.

Am I the only person who finds himself in the middle of a Joseph Epstein essay convinced, absolutely convinced, that I have written—or at the very least, lived—many of its paragraphs myself? I suspect not. If you have the sinking feeling that things in general are sinking; if you find yourself increasingly exasperated by psychobabble or coinages that end in -ize; if you harbor the deep suspicion that what was seems better, richer, and certainly more interesting than what is; if, in short, you are the sort of person who not only recognizes an allusion to Eliot but also (like Epstein) wears your psychic trousers rolled, then it's a safe bet that the sixteen essays of this...