Getting Personal: Selected Essays

by Phillip Lopate

Overview

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 stories: the development of Lopate's career as a writer and the story of his life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465041749
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/03/2004
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Currently the John Cranford Adams Chair of the English Department at Hofstra University, Phillip Lopate is the author of five works of nonfiction, two novels, and two books of poems, as well as serving as editor of the bestselling collections Writing New York and The Art of the Personal Essay. The recipient of two Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts grants, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

Read an Excerpt

Getting Personal

Selected Writings

---

By Phillip Lopate Basic Books

Copyright © 2004 Phillip Lopate
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780465041749

---

Chapter One

My Early Years at School

In the first grade I was in a bit of a fog. All I remember is running outside at three o'clock with the others to fill the safety zone in front of the school building, where we whirled around with our bookbags, hitting as many proximate bodies as possible. The whirling dervishes of Kabul could not have been more ecstatic than we with our thwacking book satchels.

But as for the rest of school, I was paying so little attention that, once, when I stayed home sick, and my mother had to write a letter of excuse to the teacher, she asked me what her name was and I said I did not know. "You must know what your teacher's name is." I took a stab at it. "Mrs. ... Latka?" I said, latka being the Jewish word for potato pancakes (this was around the time of Hanukkah celebrations). My mother laughed incredulously, and compromised with the salutation "Dear Teacher." As I learned soon after, my teacher's name was actually Mrs. Bobka, equally improbable. She wore her red hair rolled under a hairnet and had a glass eye, which I once saw her taking out in a luncheonette and showing to her neighbor, while I watched from a nearby table with my chocolate milk. Now, can it be possible that she really had a glass eye? Probably not; but why is it that everytime I think of Mrs. Bobka my mind strays to that association? She had a hairnet and a very large nose, of that we can be sure, and seemed to have attained middle age. This teacher paid no attention to me whatsoever, which was the kindest thing she could have done to me. She had her favorite, Rookie, who collected papers and handed out pencils - Rookie, that little monster with the middy blouse and dangling curls, real name Rochelle. "Teacher's Pet!" we would yell at her.

Yet secretly I was attracted to Rookie, and admired the way she passed out supplies, as well as the attention she got.

Otherwise, I was so much in a daze, that once I got sent on an errand to a classroom on the third floor, and by the time I hit the stairwell I had already forgotten which room it was. Afterward, Mrs. Bobka never used me as her monitor.

The school itself was a wreck from Walt Whitman's day, with rotting floorboards, due to be condemned in a year or two; already the new annex that was to replace it was rising on the adjoining lot. But in a funny way, we loved the old school better. The boys' bathroom had zinc urinals with a common trough; the fixtures were green with rust, the toilet stalls doorless. In the Hadean basement where we went for our hot lunches, an overweight black woman would dish out tomato soup. Every day tomato soup, with a skim. Sometimes, when the basement flooded, we walked across a plank single file to get to the food counter. And that ends my memories from first grade.

In the second grade I had another teacher, Mrs. Seligman, whose only pleasure was to gossip with her teacher pals during lineups in the hall and fire drills (when we were supposed to be silent). Such joy came over her when another teacher entered our classroom - she was so bored with the exclusive company of children, poor woman, and lived for these visits.

By second grade, I had been anonymous long enough. One day we were doing show-and-tell, wherein each child bragged how he or she had been to the beach or had on a new pair of tap shoes. My parents had just taken me to see the movie Les Misirables, and Robert Newton as the tenacious gum-baring Inspector had made a great impression on me. Besides, I knew the story backwards and forwards, because I had also read the Classics Illustrated comic book version. As I stood up in front of the class, something possessed me to elaborate a little and bend the truth.

"Mrs. Seligman, I read a book called Les Misirables ..."

She seemed ready to laugh in my face. "Oh? Who is it by?"

"Victor Hugo." I stood my ground. There must have been something in my plausible, shy, four-eyed manner that shook her. Her timing was momentarily upset; she asked me to sit down. Later, when there was a lull in the activity, she called me over to her desk.

"Now tell me, did you honestly read Les Misirables? Don't be afraid to tell the truth."

"Yes! it's about this man named Jean Valjean who ..." and I proceeded to tell half the plot - no doubt getting the order confused, but still close enough to the original to give this old war-horse pause. She knew deep down in her professional soul that a child my age did not have the vocabulary or the comprehension to get through a book of that order of complexity. But she wanted to believe, I felt. If I stumbled she would dismiss me in a second, and I would probably burst into tears. Yet even then I knew (children know it better than adults) that in telling a lie, fidelity is everything. They can never be absolutely sure if you keep denying and insisting.

Just then one of her teacher pals came in, the awesome Mrs. McGonigle, who squeezed bad boys into wastebaskets.

"Do you know what? Phillip here says that he read Victor Hugo's Les Misirables."

"Really!" cried her friend archly. "And you believe him?"

"I don't know."

"What's it about? I've never read it. He must be very smart if he read it and I haven't."

"Tell Mrs. McGonigle the story."

"It's about this man named Jean Valjean who stole a loaf of bread," I began, my heart beating as I recounted his crime, aware that I myself was committing a parallel one. By this time I had gotten more than the attention I wanted and would have done anything to return to my seat. Mrs. McGonigle was scrutinizing me sarcastically with her bifocals, and I was much more afraid of her seeing through my deception than Mrs. Seligman. But it came to me in a dim haze of surprise that Mrs. Seligman seemed to be taking my side; she was nodding, and shushing the other woman's objections. Perhaps nothing so exciting had happened to her as a teacher for months, even years! Here was her chance to flaunt a child prodigy in her own classroom before the other teachers. I told the story as passionately as I could, seeing the movie unroll scene by scene in my mind's eye, a foot away from the desk.

"There's only one way to find out," interrupted Mrs. McGonigle. "We will take him down to the library and see if he can read the book."

My teacher could not wait to try this out. She rose and took my arm. "Now, class, I'm leaving you alone for a few minutes. You are to remain quiet and in your seats!" So they marched me over to the school library. I was praying that the school had no such volume on its shelves. But the librarian produced Victor Hugo's masterpiece with dispatch - as luck would have it, a sort of abridged version for young adults. I knew enough how to sound out words so that I was able to stumble through the first page; fortunately, Mrs. Seligman snatched the book away from me: "See? I told you he was telling the truth." Her mocker was silenced. And Seligman was so proud of me that she began petting my head - I, who had never received more than distracted frowns from her all year long.

But it wasn't enough; she wanted more. She and I would triumph together. I was to be testimony to her special reading program. Now she conceived a new plan: she would take me around from class to class, and tell everyone about my accomplishment, and have me read passages from the book.

I begged her not to do this. Not that I had any argument to offer against it, but I gave her to understand, by turning dangerously pale, that I had had enough excitement for the day. Everyone knows that those who are capable of great mental feats are also susceptible to faints and dizzy spells. Insensitive as she was, she got the point, and returned me regretfully to the classroom.

Every day afterward I lived in fear of being exhibited before each class and made to recount the deed that I had not done. I dreaded the truth coming out. Though my teacher did not ask me to "perform" Les Misirables anymore, nevertheless she pointed me out to any adult who visited the classroom, including the parents of other children. I heard them whispering about me. I bowed my head in shame, pretending that modesty or absorption in school-work made me turn red at the notoriety gathering around me.

So my career as genius and child prodigy began.

"Victor Hugo, hilas!" Gide said, when asked to name the greatest poet in the French language. I say "Victor Hugo, hilas!" for another reason. My guilt is such that every time I hear that worthy giant's name I cringe. Afterward, I was never able to read Les Misirables. In fact, irrationally or not, I have shunned his entire oeuvre.

Continues...

---

Excerpted from Getting Personal by Phillip Lopate Copyright © 2004 by Phillip Lopate. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Childhood
1	My Early Days at School	3
2	Willy	7
3	Samson and Delilah and the Kids	25
	Youth
4	The Countess's Tutor	47
5	Anticipation of La Notte	67
	Early Marriage and Bachelorhood
6	Washington Heights and Inwood	85
7	My Drawer	91
8	Osao	95
9	Never Live Above Your Landlord	119
10	On Shaving a Beard	130
11	Getting a Cat	133
12	Against Joie de Vivre	142
13	The Brunch	157
14	Modern Friendships	159
	Teaching and Work
15	Hanging Out	169
16	Chekhov for Children	189
17	Suicide of a Schoolteacher	220
	Politics, Religion, Movies, Books, Cities
18	Resistance to the Holocaust	263
19	The Movies and Spiritual Life	280
20	Detachment and Passion	288
21	Contempt: The Story of a Marriage	302
22	Confessions of a Shusher	311
23	Reflections on Subletting	316
	The Style of Middle Age
24	Portrait of My Body	327
25	The Moody Traveler	335
26	The Dead Father	339
27	The Story of My Father	358
28	First Love	397

Editorial Reviews

"Lopate's frank and nervy essays are as vivid in their characters, story lines, and emotional intensity as fiction, but because they are, instead, idiosyncratic inquiries into the mysteries of real-life conundrums, they offer a gratifying intimacy."

From the Publisher

Lopate's slightly ironic tone flavors an easygoing, good-humored, conversational style. — Diane Cole

The New York Times

Essayist, poet and cultural critic Lopate gleans from his previous works a selection representing various interests and illuminating his life. The essays form a discontinuous but satisfying whole. The first three sections center on his personal life and resemble fictional narratives, with fully drawn characters (e.g., Osao, a romantic interest whose love was "like the bonsai tree, perfect in its own limited way... doomed to grow no higher than one's knee," and a landlord who thinks typing will bring the ceiling down). Lopate captures speech so believably, it's easy to trust his memory for long-ago conversations. Craftily etched scenes draw readers into his second-grade classroom, onto a subway ride, along streets and into watching Samson and Delilah. The emphasis in the latter three sections, on Lopate's public life, veers toward the journalistic. Lopate revisits his experiences as a poet in residence and creative writing teacher at a New York City elementary school, recalling teaching writing with examples from student work, putting on Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and dealing with the disruptions wrought by the 1968 school strike. Lopate's political analyst voice emerges in his provocative essay "Resistance to the Holocaust." He also displays his prowess as a movie critic, sharing a close analysis of Godard's Contempt. The final section closes the circle with a return to the private, with the witty "Portrait of My Body," an evocative tribute to Donald Barthelme and a moving account of his father's last days. Having edited the popular The Art of the Personal Essay (1994), Lopate is both legatee and guardian of the genre. Photos. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Lopate, a consummate poet, novelist, editor, film critic, and essayist (Being with Children; The Art of the Personal Essay), has collected 29 previously published personal essays in this superb literary account of his life as a son, teacher, husband, and father. Retrospective glimpses of the precocious Lopate's childhood in racially mixed Brooklyn neighborhoods and observations of his parents' tempestuous relationship give the reader a cinematic view of life in the 1950s. Lopate includes essays on his career as a writer who taught streetwise children in New York's inner-city schools, interspersing references to the Bible and classic literature throughout. Reflections on a man's body at middle age, cat ownership, the art of friendship, and being a self-appointed movie shusher round out this robust collection. Highly recommended for creative nonfiction fans and literary collections in public and academic libraries.-Joyce Sparrow, Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas Cty., Pinellas Park, FL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a motley collection of previously published pieces, novelist and essayist Lopate examines with unique intelligence and an unforgiving eye everything from the smell of his navel to a film by Godard. The volume begins playfully with "Notes Toward an Introduction," which the author never completed due to an untimely death (fear not: he lives). Fortunately, Lopate (Totally, Tenderly, Tragically, 1998, etc.) quickly abandons this unnecessary inanity and proceeds to offer evidence why he is one of America's most admired essayists. The 29 pieces form a sort of rough memoir, beginning with a reminiscence of his early years of school (his first grade teacher had a glass eye) and concluding with a wrenching description of the death of his father in 1995, followed by a brief mediation on love serving as a sort of encore. Some of these essays are-or soon will be-classics of the genre. "Samson and Delilah and the Kids," which considers the impact on his own life of both the biblical and Cecil B. DeMille versions of this classic battle of the sexes, is a brilliant instance of how research and scholarship can illuminate the most intimate of concerns. A piece about his infatuation with a Korean woman appears in some ways to be a transcript of everyman's imagination. Lopate can wax silly (he writes about shaving a beard and buying a cat and shushing noisy people in movie theaters), somber (he tells about the deaths of colleagues, one by suicide, another by cancer), bemused (he wonders why a relationship with a woman named Claire never seemed to ignite), and (fortunately not often) a tad self-righteous. One of his longest, most tedious narratives tells about a production of Uncle Vanya he once mountedwith elementary-school children: it turned out wonderfully, and everyone learned ever so much. Thank goodness this is not typical. Displays in abundance the author's astonishing ability to listen to-and record in prose that approaches perfect-the music of his own thoughts as he sometimes stumbles, sometimes glides through life.

Kirkus Reviews