Portrait of My Body

by Phillip Lopate

Phillip Lopate's richest and most ambitious book  yet--the final volume of a trilogy that began with  Bachelorhood and Against  Joie de Vivre--Portrait of My  Body is a powerful memoir in the form of  interconnected personal essays. One of America's  foremost essayists, who helped focus attention on  the form in his acclaimed anthology The  Art of the Personal Essay, Lopate  demonstrates here just how far a writer can go in the  direction of honesty and risk  taking.

In thirteen essays, Lopate explores the  resources and limits of the self, its many disguises,  excuses, and unmaskings, with his characteristic  wry humor and insight. From the title essay, a  hilarious physical self-exam, to the haunting  portrait of his ex-colleague Donald Barthelme, to the  bittersweet account of his long-delayed surrender  to marriage, "On Leaving Bachelorhood,"  Lopate wrestles with finding the proper balance  between detachment and empathy, doubt and  conviction. In other essays, he celebrates his love of  film and city life, and reflects on his religious  identity as a Jew. A wrenchingly vivid,  unforgettable portrait of the author's eccentric,  solipsistic, aged father, a self-proclaimed failure, is  the centerpiece of a suite of essays about  father-figures and resisted mentors. The book ends with  the author's own introduction to fatherhood, as  witness to the birth of his daughter.  

A book that will engage readers with its  conversational eloquence, skeptical intelligence,  candor, and mischief, Portrait of My  Body is a captivating work of literary  nonfiction.

Genres: Essays

325 pages, Hardcover

Published August 1, 1996

About the author

Phillip Lopate is the author of three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a memoir of his teaching experiences, and a collection of his movie criticism. He has edited the following anthologies, and his essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Paris Review, Harper's, Vogue, Esquire, New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Conde Nast Traveler, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School and Bennington.

Reviews

[Drew Daves]

Lopate! Kind, sharp, exhausting. A master of the personal essay form. I particularly enjoyed “The Dead Father.” May we all be given 27 pages to eulogize our almost-friends.

[Jesús Bedoya]

Lopate es un ensayista talentoso, que domina las formas, los juegos y los intersticios en los que se ilumina el género del ensayo. Sin embargo, su excesivo solipsismo y su ego explícito —que no tiene rubor en reconocer e incluso exaltar: "si el ego es una enfermedad ponzoñosa, y lo es, por desgracia confío más en ella que en su cura", dice al final del libro— hacen que seguirlo en ocasiones se torne tedioso.

Montaigne, por ejemplo, también recurría al yo para sus ensayos, pero el ego no era tema de fascinación sino objeto de estudio para explorar algo mayor: una excusa, un "estudio de caso" para alcanzar una reflexión más general y amplia. Lopate, en cambio, termina este libro insinuando que su hija quizá algún día lo termine persuadiendo "de que existen otros seres humanos tan reales" como él mismo. Con esa frase, parece no solo clausurar el espacio de la otredad, sino afanarse en su egolatría.

Quizás no sea gratuito que los ensayos más interesantes de esta colección sean aquellos en los que hay más tiempo para dedicarle a los otros: a Barthelme, a su padre, o a la falsa artista Lori Becker. O aquellos que podrían ser considerados más de tesis, como "La renuencia al holocausto". Cuando Lopate sale de sí mismo, su escritura gana profundidad. Su talento formal funciona mejor cuando no se resiste a la alteridad y el círculo narcisista se abre.

[Karen]

A collection of 13 lengthy essays by what Newsday refers to as “a major national literary figure.” I admire Lopate’s keen observations, especially his willingness to be honest and vulnerable about his own limitations. The essays ‘Resistance to the Holocaust’, ‘The Story of My Father’, and ‘Delivering Lily’ were magnificent.

[C]

Charismatic, clever, emotionally hefty essays.