Routledge Mostly Grave Thoughts: On Mortality and Other Matters

In this new collection, Eugene Goodheart, scholar of English literature, essayist, and public intellectual, reveals himself in a way that will interest readers already familiar with his expansive body of work as well as those new to his writing. Rising above the particular, the essays focus on themes of universal importance. The opening essay, "Whistling in the Dark," is a meditation on the gravest of subjects: aging and mortality. The chapters that follow are a series of reflections on teaching, retirement, illness, marriage, fatherhood, friendship, regret, indignation, sports, and writing―activities that make up a life. The book wrestles with the question of what constitutes the reality of the self in the present when many writers view the self as an illusion. Each essay alludes to writers of the past and present who have addressed the question of what constitutes the self. Looming largest is Montaigne, the inventor of the modern personal essay. This book focuses on universally important subjects, including an individual's place in a community, family, fatherhood, growing older, being Jewish, and friendship. Written in a vividly accessible manner, this book reaches out to a general audience. Review -Mostly Grave Thoughts is the most personal and philosophical book yet to flow from the pen of one of our leading literary humanists. Goodheart in old age is infinitely more profound and apposite than any of the newer breed of critical theorists. He reminds us that criticism is connected to life. --Robert Brustein, Harvard University -Goodheart writes with the terse aphoristic precision of classic essayists like Montaigne, but also with a piercing intelligence and unflinching honesty all his own. His essays are personal but not merely personal, for he conjures up his experience to explore fundamental elements of our lives: friendship and marriage, anger and regret, aging, illness, and the sense of mortality. This is strong stuff, a gripping and continually illuminating book, difficult to put down.- --Morris Dickstein, author, Gates of Eden and Dancing in the Dark -From his first book. . . published in 1963, to his most recent. . . Goodheart has shown generosity, thoughtfulness, and insight as a literary critic and cultural commentator. We find resolve and steady reflection in everything that he writes; his sentences are clear, careful, measured. Goodheart gives us the writing of a penetrating mind, doing its work with precision and lucidity. . . . Goodheart prompts us to reconsider and revise judgments that we thought we were certain about. He is a true intellectual, a writer of high consciousness and conscience.- --William E. Cain, Society "Mostly Grave Thoughts is the most personal and philosophical book yet to flow from the pen of one of our leading literary humanists. Goodheart in old age is infinitely more profound and apposite than any of the newer breed of critical theorists. He reminds us that criticism is connected to life. --Robert Brustein, Harvard University "Goodheart writes with the terse aphoristic precision of classic essayists like Montaigne, but also with a piercing intelligence and unflinching honesty all his own. His essays are personal but not merely personal, for he conjures up his experience to explore fundamental elements of our lives: friendship and marriage, anger and regret, aging, illness, and the sense of mortality. This is strong stuff, a gripping and continually illuminating book, difficult to put down." --Morris Dickstein, author, Gates of Eden and Dancing in the Dark "From his first book. . . published in 1963, to his most recent. . . Goodheart has shown generosity, thoughtfulness, and insight as a literary critic and cultural commentator. We find resolve and steady reflection in everything that he writes; his sentences are clear, careful, measured. Goodheart gives us the writing of a penetrating mind, doing its work with precision and lucidity. . . . Goodheart prompts u