Winners and Losers

AmbitionBy Joseph Epstein Dutton, 298 pp., $13.95 I have the feeling that the people who brought forth this book did so with doubts as to its complete worthiness. The jacket-copy writer at Dutton informs us that “Mr. Epstein is a sober man, but with a mind as lively and wide-ranging as that of a first-rate novelist,” which makes me wonder if the jacket-copy writer thinks that a book about ambition would ordinarily be best written by a drunk. And Mr. Epstein himself, in a closing bibliographical note, says, “This is a book built upon other books, and hence, like other such books, quite fairly open to charges of piracy.” This makes me wonder if the use of secondary sources for essayistic purposes is now held in ill repute at Northwestern University, where Mr. Epstein teaches literature, or by Phi Beta Kappa, which retains Mr. Epstein to edit The American Scholar.

Let there be reassurances all around. What we have here is an intelligent meditation on an interesting theme, written by a well-read man. Money, success, status—these are ongoing preoccupations in our society. If they could stand a more satiric touch than Epstein is inclined to give them, what of it? I am grateful to him for his presentation, and I am happy to do my own harpooning.

MR

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Mitchell S. Ross

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AmbitionBy Joseph Epstein Dutton, 298 pp., $13.95 I have the feeling that the people who brought forth this book did so with doubts as to its complete worthiness. The jacket-copy writer at Dutton informs us that “Mr. Epstein is a sober man, but with a mind as lively and wide-ranging as that of a first-rate novelist,” which makes me wonder if the jacket-copy writer thinks that a book about ambition would ordinarily be best written by a drunk. And Mr. Epstein himself, in a closing bibliographical note, says, “This is a book built upon other books, and hence, like other such books, quite fairly open to charges of piracy.” This makes me wonder if the use of secondary sources for essayistic purposes is now held in ill repute at Northwestern University, where Mr. Epstein teaches literature, or by Phi Beta Kappa, which retains Mr. Epstein to edit The American Scholar.

Let there be reassurances all around. What we have here is an intelligent meditation on an interesting theme, written by a well-read man. Money, success, status—these are ongoing preoccupations in our society. If they could stand a more satiric touch than Epstein is inclined to give them, what of it? I am grateful to him for his presentation, and I am happy to do my own harpooning.