Strangely comforting in its reassurance that the reader is not alone in being a petty SOB.
Career essayist Epstein wields a nimble pen in this consideration of the “most pervasive” mortal sin.
When invited to contribute a volume to the Oxford series on the seven deadly sins, Epstein (Fabulous Small Jews, p. 699, etc.) found that only four remained to choose from. Too thin for gluttony, too nervous for sloth, and too embarrassed to choose lust, he was left with envy. (This is the first in the series.) He makes the best of it, arguing that, in addition to being a common thread uniting all the other sins, envy is ubiquitous: “To err may be human; to envy is decidedly so.” And though experiencing envy may be “no fun at all,” under Epstein’s guidance, this sin is pretty entertaining to contemplate in all its fine permutations. It appears that there are distinctions to be drawn, for example, among jealousy, resentment, and envy. Schadenfreude gets its own chapter, as do “The Young, God Damn Them.” Epstein repeatedly notes envy’s tendency to crop up close to home, be it between colleagues, close friends, or professionals in the same field. After all, “It doesn’t really seem to make sense, does it, to envy the Queen of England?” Accordingly, it’s those cultures that promote equality as an ideal that do best in cultivating its ugly bedfellow; Epstein puts forth the Soviet Union, the US, and ancient Greece as examples of particularly envious cultures. While he almost always hits the mark, the author isn’t infallible. His comparison of male and female envy makes questionable generalizations about the personal nature of women’s feelings, versus the “zanier” nature of men’s, although it’s nonetheless almost shamefully entertaining in its gratuitous skewering of Paul Simon’s appearance.
Strangely comforting in its reassurance that the reader is not alone in being a petty SOB.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-515812-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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