Portrait Inside My Head by Phillip Lopate  

Hardcover  Essays

In this stunning new collection of personal essays, 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. 

Opening with his family life, Lopate invites us first into his rough-and-tumble childhood on the streets of Brooklyn, learning the all-important art of cowardice. From there, he takes us to the ball game to discuss the trouble with ex–baseball fans; to high tea at the Plaza; to the theater to dissect Virginia Woolf ’s opinion that  film should keep its hands off literature; and to visit his brother, radio personality Leonard Lopate, offering a rare glimpse into the unique sibling rivalry between two men at the top of their fields. 

Throughout this rich, ambitious, deliciously readable collection, Lopate’s easy, conversational style pushes his piercing insights to new depths, celebrating the life of the mind—its triumphs and limitations—and illuminating memories and feelings both distant and immediate. The result is a charming and spirited new book from the undisputed master of the form.

Reviews:

Civilized.  Thoughful. Insightful.

Philip Lopate is a wonderful essayist. His personal reflections have the sharp ring of truth. He is also the finest example of urbane intelligence... the perfect New Yorker. Reading Lopate is like listening
to a close friend on a long and pleasant airplane trip.

J.Korman, Amazon Reviewer

Phillip Lopate's latest volume of essays are at once highly personal and extremely intelligent and provocative. They are also clearly written by a New Yorker with a New Yorker's sensibility. Having known him, however, when he was teaching creative writing at the University of Houston creative writing program and haunting zydeco halls around the Houston barrios, I also know Phillip Lopate to be a man with an unending curiosity about any environment in which he finds himself, and a great enthusiasm for participatig in its culture. He is a great observer of life in all of its diversity and richness. An inspired writing teacher from whom I was privileged to take a creative writing course many years ago, he is also extremely knowledgeable about film and a variety of other art forms. This extensive expertise and attention to all the many details of life, wherever his life takes him, give his essays an endless source of acute observation and thoughtful analysis. His descriptions of his relationships with his brother and other members of is family are not only vivid and honest, but touchingly dear. And when he talks about his daughter, your heart melts. Phillip Lopate is a great writer, who just gets better and better and better every year

-Sheri Nelson Maclean, Woodlands, TX