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Portrait Inside My Head: Essays (1996)

by Phillip Lopate(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1451696302 (ISBN13: 9781451696301)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: Philip Lopate is one of my favorite essayists. I am always taken aback by his unvarnished honesty and hilarious self-deprecation. As soon as he arrives at a beautiful thought, he will undercut it immediately. In his first essay, "The Moody Traveler," while looking at an Italian villa on his way to a lookout point, he questions, "Perhaps we only envy that which we look at superficially; and a deeper look would take care of our urge for possession? Nah. In any case, I kept walking." That above quote is a key to this book. Lopate questions his own motives and desires. Sometimes this feels formulaic. "A [blank] critic might say, with reason..." appeared with some regularity towards the end of essays. By giving voice to his critics, Lopate both raises another side and closes of... moref any argument. My favorite essays were when Lopate is grappling with something or someone bigger than himself. For example, his brilliant portrait of Donald Barthelme and his "Memories of Greenwich Village," a piece of autobiography that feels freewheeling but arrives at a structure through a sideways approach to two other writers, Leonard Michales and Anatole Broyard. It seems that, at least in this work, Lopate wrote the best when writing about other writers. While "The Invisible Woman" was not about a writer, but rather a postmodern feminist artist, it too is strong for the same reasons: Lopate reflects himself through another person. "The Story of My Father," while strong, could have been honed a little more. I wished that Lopate presented his father in a more complicated light. The person who emerges is the biggest curmudgeon you've ever met. Though I did find it interesting that Lopate's father considered himself a failed writer. The inward pieces, "Confessions of a Shusher" (just the title alone gives me the heebies), the titular essay and "Delivering Lily," a birth story, feel oddly like a comedian who is running out of steam...i.e. "And here's another thing about my back."3.5...you'd think the Internet rating systems were capable of half stars, too, but we're not there yet.
review 2: I had high hopes for this book, as it came highly recommended by several avid readers whose opinions I regard. Yet there were entire chunks that didn't appeal to me at all. Each essay was longer than I expected--where did I get the idea that they are usually shorter? Ah, well--and only one piece really grabbed me: The one about Brooklyn was my favorite. I will not give up on Lopate so quickly; he has other collections that I will try. I totally admire anybody who can go against the current and produce a literary form that is currently, at least, not a very popular one. less

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