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Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays
Joseph Epstein's Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays is the third volume of essays from Axios Press. It contains 142 short essays, literary sprints rather than marathons. Subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of contemporary nuttiness.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
608 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2016
45 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Epstein
105 books114 followersJoseph Epstein is the author of, among other books, Snobbery, Friendship, and Fabulous Small Jews. He has been editor of American Scholar and has written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Commentary, Town and Country, and other magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 8, 2018
Sprint to the End
I recommend Mr. Epstein's Wind Sprints for various reasons:
For readers in their 60's or higher: the intimate relevance of topics,
For readers in their 50's: the detail that sound writing demands,
For readers in their 40's: the contrasts from one generation to the next,
For readers in their 30's: an appreciation of the vast cultural differences that have emerged in the USA,
For readers in their 20's: a useful history extravaganza.
For all readers: an enjoyment of this author's writing ability. In short essays, as in poetry, every word matters. Well done, Mr. Epstein. (I'd call you "Joe," but that title would be inappropriate and disrespectful - HINT: you have to read the book!)
I recommend Mr. Epstein's Wind Sprints for various reasons:
For readers in their 60's or higher: the intimate relevance of topics,
For readers in their 50's: the detail that sound writing demands,
For readers in their 40's: the contrasts from one generation to the next,
For readers in their 30's: an appreciation of the vast cultural differences that have emerged in the USA,
For readers in their 20's: a useful history extravaganza.
For all readers: an enjoyment of this author's writing ability. In short essays, as in poetry, every word matters. Well done, Mr. Epstein. (I'd call you "Joe," but that title would be inappropriate and disrespectful - HINT: you have to read the book!)
August 31, 2022
Epstein is a great writer. Always interesting. Always amusing. Always intelligent. I read this book in bits and pieces in spare moments and it took me over a year to get through it, but I enjoyed it every time I cracked the covers. Not as good as his long essays, but consistently witty and entertaining.
June 19, 2016
As I wrote in my review of A Literary Education, I am a long-time fan of Mr. Epstein. His political views reduced my enjoyment of that book; fortunately, here, we hear little of them. Mr. Epstein has, however, become a curmudgeon (although a seemingly harmless one). He has many pet peeves, among them - overuse and improper use of the words focus and icon, baseball caps (particularly worn backwards), jeans on men over a certain age, Maureen Dowd, use of first names, modern cuisine, aging hippies, Jack Kerouac, cell phones and so much more. Nevertheless, if you are not put off by those eccentricities, this is Epstein back in form and quite enjoyable. The essays are nearly all very bite-sized, most of them just 2 pages long, allowing for a wide range of topics and making it easy to read just a few at a sitting.
July 30, 2016
(Technically, I didn't quite finish this book. I was about 4/5 of the way through it when the library demanded I return it. Being an Obedient Citizen, I did so.)
I picked this book up because it was one of WORLD magazine's Books of the Year. It was rather daunting, about 3.5 inches worth of short essays. This would be a good book to have lying around, to pick up and read a few essays, then put back down again. Because you can't really read too many of these in a row; they get repetitious. I like Epstein's way with words—he's a clever phrase-maker. It's just that the format grows formulaic: quirky intro to topic, examples and pithy insights on topic, neat wrap-up. It worked with everything from jokes and khaki pants to a dead acquaintance.
So yes, I would recommend this. Best read in small doses to keep appreciation fresh.
I picked this book up because it was one of WORLD magazine's Books of the Year. It was rather daunting, about 3.5 inches worth of short essays. This would be a good book to have lying around, to pick up and read a few essays, then put back down again. Because you can't really read too many of these in a row; they get repetitious. I like Epstein's way with words—he's a clever phrase-maker. It's just that the format grows formulaic: quirky intro to topic, examples and pithy insights on topic, neat wrap-up. It worked with everything from jokes and khaki pants to a dead acquaintance.
So yes, I would recommend this. Best read in small doses to keep appreciation fresh.
September 13, 2016
An absolute gem of a book, with Mr Epstein at his usual witty, wry and penetrating takes on sports, work, the draft--whatever takes his fancy--but in shorter spurts this time. Reading this is like bumping into a good friend downtown who, while pressed for time, still manages to leave you with wonderful snippets of a story. Keep on writing, Mr E!
June 3, 2019
Epstein writes in one of these essays:
"No, my pleasure in almost perpetual reading has to do with the love of the sentence as a tranquilizer. Something there is about an elegantly turned sentence or a well-made paragraph that calms me and makes me feel that order is possible and life is, against all strong evidence to the contrary, perhaps just possibly manageable. So pleasing is this sensation that I feel, like the alcoholic tippler, that I really must have another one—and as soon as possible."
While Epstein's writing is itself so pleasing in that manner, his essays make a plenitude of rich references (I am awestruck by such extensive reading!) to other great pieces of writing. This really triggers the tippler in me, for I have gone behind many of these works from the contemporary to classics, only to find that I got a lot more tipsy and lost myself in these (IB Singer's short fiction and F.L. Lucas's Style, to give examples).
I am a sucker for writing on writing itself - those that talk about styles, techniques, elegant sentences, and use of language. Epstein's essays appeal to me as I love his wit, apart from leaving bits and pieces of wisdom on what makes good writing - and I cannot seem to have enough of it.
"No, my pleasure in almost perpetual reading has to do with the love of the sentence as a tranquilizer. Something there is about an elegantly turned sentence or a well-made paragraph that calms me and makes me feel that order is possible and life is, against all strong evidence to the contrary, perhaps just possibly manageable. So pleasing is this sensation that I feel, like the alcoholic tippler, that I really must have another one—and as soon as possible."
While Epstein's writing is itself so pleasing in that manner, his essays make a plenitude of rich references (I am awestruck by such extensive reading!) to other great pieces of writing. This really triggers the tippler in me, for I have gone behind many of these works from the contemporary to classics, only to find that I got a lot more tipsy and lost myself in these (IB Singer's short fiction and F.L. Lucas's Style, to give examples).
I am a sucker for writing on writing itself - those that talk about styles, techniques, elegant sentences, and use of language. Epstein's essays appeal to me as I love his wit, apart from leaving bits and pieces of wisdom on what makes good writing - and I cannot seem to have enough of it.
January 4, 2025
Ever read a non-fiction book (especially the self-help variety) and say to yourself
“that could have been a magazine article”? Here are about 140 humorous, intelligent
short essays on everything from high school reunions, restaurants, bores, neckties, writing,
friendships, colleges, to opinions and much more. He’s certainly a bit of a curmudgeon, which
is ok by me.
Here’s a quote on “Opinions” that might give you a feeling for it:
“My own preference is for people who have the independence and confidence to proclaim perfectly heterodox opinions in hostile territory. Someone at a meeting of, say, the Modern Language Association who says that he is nuts about the singing of Wayne Newton.”
“Crudity and Falsehood copulate and give birth to Opinion.”
“that could have been a magazine article”? Here are about 140 humorous, intelligent
short essays on everything from high school reunions, restaurants, bores, neckties, writing,
friendships, colleges, to opinions and much more. He’s certainly a bit of a curmudgeon, which
is ok by me.
Here’s a quote on “Opinions” that might give you a feeling for it:
“My own preference is for people who have the independence and confidence to proclaim perfectly heterodox opinions in hostile territory. Someone at a meeting of, say, the Modern Language Association who says that he is nuts about the singing of Wayne Newton.”
“Crudity and Falsehood copulate and give birth to Opinion.”
May 6, 2019
I love the title - an apt description. I liked his use of language. Some essays make the mundane interesting; others not so much. In any collection this large (this could easily have been two books, IMHO) there will be a wide variety in what readers will find interesting, so my experience may not match yours. Glad I read it.
May 28, 2020
Most anything Joseph Epstein writes is worth reading, and this is a winning volume of odds and ends; all these pieces have in common, really, is their abbreviated length. Very dip-in-able reading. Still, I think Epstein is best in his somewhat longer essays, for instance in his collection The Ideal of Culture, which I enjoyed rather more.
May 21, 2017
A true craftsman. If you want to learn how to write, you couldn't go wrong just studying this book over and over.
Read
July 4, 2020Vintage Epstein. My favorite essayist, now and always.
June 29, 2020
Joseph Epstein is my favorite essayist, so how can you top 500+ pages of 2-3 page essays on every imaginable subject, written with that familiar Epstein crispness and charm? (You cannot.)
April 24, 2016
The writer very good with words. Interesting short bits of writing about words, his cat, coffee, food, etc. Nothing wrong with it, but should have stopped after reading only a third of it because I have other things I need to read...
December 1, 2016
Excellent, fun, short writing in a great, long format. Would make for a stimulating book club pick!
October 18, 2018
A great, great essayist. Go discover him!
April 17, 2017
What a gem! Covers a wide variety of topics, large and small, in an honest and witty way. I had not heard of Mr. Epstein until WORLD honored his latest with "Book of the Year." A true pleasure to read.
Some quotations:
Yet the pull (ostensibly) to improve one's status is always there, turning out to be a goad, often, to dissatisfaction. Perhaps it all started with John Adams, who, in a famous letter to his wife Abigail, wrote: "I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy . . . geography, natural history, naval architecture, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." Put in more contemporary terms, this might read: "I worked at dry cleaning in order that my son could have the liberty to study sociology in order that his son could have the right to undergo a sex-change operation." (280-81)
I do not, I think, qualify as a truly obsessive personality, but I do like to have an obsession going from time to time. (299)
My general pattern is to be haughtily contemptuous of creature comforts and then, once I acquire them, grow accustomed to them with an unseemly haste…. I am a moral puritan, saved only by his hypocrisy. (322)
The MacArthur Fellowships were announced some weeks back, and, for the twenty-seventh year in a row, I did not win one…. At least no one I loathe won; the only person among this year’s winners I have heard of is Alex Ross, the excellent young music critic of the New Yorker. Even better, none of my friends won it, either. (409)
Men, it is said, do not like to go to doctors. Clearly I qualify here. I have long considered myself a Christian Scientist, minus the Christian part. A realist in my taste in fiction, I am a fantasist in my views about physiology. (519)
Liberals, I have heard it said, don’t care what we do so long as it is mandatory. (520)
Some quotations:
Yet the pull (ostensibly) to improve one's status is always there, turning out to be a goad, often, to dissatisfaction. Perhaps it all started with John Adams, who, in a famous letter to his wife Abigail, wrote: "I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy . . . geography, natural history, naval architecture, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." Put in more contemporary terms, this might read: "I worked at dry cleaning in order that my son could have the liberty to study sociology in order that his son could have the right to undergo a sex-change operation." (280-81)
I do not, I think, qualify as a truly obsessive personality, but I do like to have an obsession going from time to time. (299)
My general pattern is to be haughtily contemptuous of creature comforts and then, once I acquire them, grow accustomed to them with an unseemly haste…. I am a moral puritan, saved only by his hypocrisy. (322)
The MacArthur Fellowships were announced some weeks back, and, for the twenty-seventh year in a row, I did not win one…. At least no one I loathe won; the only person among this year’s winners I have heard of is Alex Ross, the excellent young music critic of the New Yorker. Even better, none of my friends won it, either. (409)
Men, it is said, do not like to go to doctors. Clearly I qualify here. I have long considered myself a Christian Scientist, minus the Christian part. A realist in my taste in fiction, I am a fantasist in my views about physiology. (519)
Liberals, I have heard it said, don’t care what we do so long as it is mandatory. (520)
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews