SOURCE: Binyon, T. J. “Problems of Identification.” Times Literary Supplement (13-19 October 1989): 1134.

In the following review, Binyon asserts that charm and humor infuse the essays in Partial Payments and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the collection.

Joseph Epstein begins this collection of literary pieces [Partial Payments], written between 1980 and 1988, with a statement of his critical position. He is, he says, an old-fashioned critic, who uses “literary criticism as an occasion … for literary portraiture”: only an examination of a writer's life can throw light on some of the questions we might wish to ask about his or her work. And the assumption behind the approach is that there is a “general, non-academic public … interested in good writing about good writing” (one suspects that he might have been sorely tempted to substitute “fine” for the first “good”). The attitude is, however, not only defensive, but also combative. An essay...