SOURCE: Eder, Doris L. “Joseph Epstein: Combating Gross National Ennui.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism 204, edited by Jeffrey William Hunter. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2005.

In the following essay, Eder examines Epstein's career as a literary critic.

Introduction: an Intellectual Life

Joseph Epstein is an impressive and surely the most entertaining American literary critic writing today. Born in Chicago on January 9, 1937, he is one of two sons of Maurice and Belle (Abrams) Epstein. He was educated at Nicholas Senn High School on Chicago's North Side. After briefly attending the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Epstein went to the University of Chicago, from which he received a B.A. in 1959. In his twenties he served in the U.S. Army in Texas and Arkansas, later working in urban renewal in Little Rock. Epstein has been married twice—to Joan Elizabeth Bales, whom he married in 1960 and divorced in 1970, and by...