America has produced only one great essayist of the sort that Charles Lamb and G. K. Chesterton were: someone capable of composing a seemingly effortless short piece that begins by describing a trivial incident like a bug bite and goes from there to a thoughtful consideration of life’s essential questions. Still with us, he’s a retired Northwestern University professor named Joseph Epstein.
Epstein’s latest book is an extended look at the novel. It has two aims: to persuade us that it is a uniquely important art form and to examine why it appears to be losing readers. That latter concern was particularly awakened in 2015 when he received a package in the mail. Contained within was a comic-book version of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Swann’s Way had been given the same treatment as a rooftop battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin.
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