Portrait Inside My Head: Essays - Softcover

"There's something tremendously absorbent about Phillip Lopate's essays. . . . The reading experience he assembles for us always commands my attention like the wise and mysterious shrug of someone smart."--Eileen Myles "author of The Importance of Being Iceland "

"Phillip Lopate's new collection of essays is refreshingly, delightfully, and justifiably acerbic, a miscellany that consistently delivers thoughtful and touching insights that sway from sadness to hilarity, to tenderness, grumpiness, exasperation, etcetera. The result is not only a portrait of what's going on inside Lopate's head, but of the mechanisms of essaying that have made this genre vibrant for millennia. "Essay" doesn't look as cool as some other words do on coffee mugs or tote bags, but its legacy is one that doesn't need a lot of bling. Pardon my potty mouth, but it takes balls to insist on eschewing the momentary fads that grab attention, and to vigorously align oneself instead with an art form that has fallen out of fashion. It's a risk that he's taken on behalf of the essay for more than thirty years. God bless Phillip Lopate's balls."--John D'Agata "author of Lifespan of a Fact "

"The personal essay is one of the most intellectually satisfying and most entertaining literary forms that we have in our day and age and Phillip Lopate is its undisputed master."--Charles Simic "author of Selected Poems "

"Phillip Lopate is one of the greatest essayists of our time, and Portrait Inside My Head proves it again. His writing is provocative, intimate, intellectually curious, clear-eyed, and funny as hell. He's a fearless, exquisitely aware chronicler of thought and feeling. Being Phillip Lopate, he'd probably also be skeptical about so much praise, but in this case he'd be totally (tenderly, tragically) wrong."--Sam Lipsyte "author of The Ask and The Fun Parts "

"Few living writers have done as much to shape the contemporary essay as Phillip Lopate, but he's clearly not done. Portrait Inside My Head is a welcome reminder of how good he is as an essayist and how vital he makes the form, in all its miscellany, reverie, sparkle, and spectacle. Memoir is for suckers. The essay is--and these essays definitely are--where the jam's at."--Ander Monson "author of Vanishing Point "

"It's impossible to overestimate how completely Phillip Lopate's anthology The Art of the Personal Essay reframed and revivified the personal essay for contemporary American writers and readers. In his new collection of essays, Portrait Inside My Head, Lopate demonstrates his own immense virtues as an essayist--his ceaseless ability to "think against" himself."--David Shields "author of How Literature Saved My Life "

In this stunning collection of personal essays chosen as one of The New Yorker’s “Books to Watch Out For,” distinguished author Phillip Lopate weaves together the colorful threads of a life well lived and brings us on an invigorating and thoughtful journey through memory, culture, parenthood, the trials of marriage both young and old, and an extraordinary look at New York’s storied past and present. The result is a charming and spirited new classic from the undisputed master of the form.