Getting Personal: Selected Essays

by Phillip Lopate

From the man who is practically synonymous with the form of the modern personal essay comes a delightful collection of prose, poems, and never-before-published pieces that span his career as an essayist, novelist, poet, film critic, father, son, and husband. Organized in six parts (Childhood; Youth; Early Marriage and Bachelorhood; Teaching and Work; Fiction; Politics, Religion, Movies, Books, Cities; The Style of Middle Age) Getting Personal tells two the development of Lopate's career as a writer and the story of his life.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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

[V · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Homework response September 27th, 2011)

When I first began reading this book, Lopate's humor and vivid descriptions of life events captured me. He manages to pack a lot into his metaphores, such as "The whirling dervishes of Kabul could not have been more ecstatic than we with our thwacking book satchel's" (3) which establishes his humor and his character as a child, and suggest his Jewish heritage. Another early powerful moment for me was when he watched his father writing the poem for his mother and he says, "I was fascinated by the way he kept crossing out words and moving around lines. Writing seemed suddenly sculptural, like moving around lines" (11). Since the reader knows that Lopate grows up to become a writer, and a poet at that, this interest in his father's writing becomes more meaningful than just any child watching his father write. The metaphor of the sculpture begs the questions if Lapote still sees writing that way or if any events changed his mind.

Even though these essays on his childhood and early youth must have large segments that are reconstructed, since there is no way that he memorized all that dialogue, not to mention the poems that his father wrote, there is still something honest and confessional about them. The fact that he admits that he is not sure if Willy actually drove a Willy truck or if that was just a childish association, allows his memory to become part of the structure of the narrative itself.

However, when the essays began to be more about his opinions than his life's events, my interest began to wane. "Against Joie de Vivre" I found particularly frustrating. He did, however, do a good job weaving in personal anecdote and imagery, such as the line "Drunk, sunbaked, stretched out in a beach chair, I am unable to ward off the sensation of being utterly alone, cut off from the others" (149). I found the section on dinner parties mildly interesting merely because I have never experienced that culture. But all throughout the essay I couldn't bring myself to care how he feels about Joie de Vivre. He shows his life experiences that lead him to be against this lifestyle, and no one can argue against personal experience, but those experiences are far removed from mine, and the if-it-feels-good-do-it philosophy of the 60's and early 70's met its own end between AIDs and economic crisis before I even existed.

Luckily, he moved back into more memoir-istic essays when in the section on his teaching. These were easily my favorite essays in the book. "Suicide of a School Teacher" allows him to not only explore his own feelings on suicide, but also the relationship between a teacher and his students. That's why I thought the children's essays on Becker were an important part of this essay as they showed how his controversial teaching style related to real kids. I found it really powerful that one kid wrote, "Mr. Becker had no right to kill himself, he should have been proud of his work." But the kids who were more indifferent had legitimate reactions too. The principal talks about parents who had "selfish reactions," caring more about their child's education than the fact that someone died. The essay is not just about one teacher who killed himself, but about the relationships that all teachers have with their students, with their co-workers and superiors, and with the community at large.

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't have read this in one go. Indeed, I am at the end of my third library renewal. For one thing, I'm not always in the mood for this kind of pensive observation. For another, these personal essays, which span a half-century of Lopate's life, are best savored. I didn't like them all equally, but I enjoyed the form. His writing is insightful with the kind of observations that imply some time with a psychotherapist. The longish essay on producing Uncle Vanya with elementary school children was my favorite.

I ended up with this compilation when my local library failed to have his newest; the New York Times had reviewed it favorably. Budget cuts?

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read only Lopate's essay "Against joie de vivre" which I found clever and insightful. But I was slightly disappointed(for reasons undefined)with "Getting Personal", as these essays go in chronological order of his life, hence are more about his personal development. But then all essays really are, aren't they? For some strange reason I did not even like to see a photo of Lopate in the back of the book. Kind of like discovering that the sexy radio voice does not belong to a good looking man. I find some of his writing too narcistic. But above all: Lopate is HONEST!

[Elyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays that spans Philip Lopate's career. A couple of my favorites are "Against Joie de Vivre" and "Chechkov for Children". I believe this book also includes an essay about the birth of Lopate's daughter, which was quite memorable.

[Elizabeth A.]

great, great, great

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Completed at long last. A good read, for sure, but it required much downtime between essays.

[Gil Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd give it more stars if that was an option.

[David Pace]

The godfather of creative nonfiction. Everything from excruciating detail about the aftermath in a school of a teacher's suicide, to a rich description and meditation on every part of his own body: yes, including Mr. Happy.