Phillip Lopate

  • Seek Memory

    What is it about the memoir that forces it, in spite of its many wonderful achievements, always to stand in the docket? Was it ever thus, or is it our age that feels especially defensive, apologetic, and guilt-ridden about the practice of the genre? We can only begin reckoning with such questions by placing the memoir in historical perspective, which is exactly what Ben Yagoda has done with his timely, useful, and informative study, Memoir: A History.

    Yagoda, a journalism professor at the University of Delaware, has written in the past a fine biography, Will Rogers (1993), and About Town: The

  • Adapt This

    A COMEDY OF REMARRIAGE: THE PLOT SO FAR

    The relationship between novels and movies is such a seemingly tired subject that one can be forgiven for yawning at its mention. This soporific quality derives in part from the many high school and college English courses that dutifully explore film adaptations of novels as a means of killing two birds with one stone and luring a visually besotted generation back to reading. Then there are the countless film-studies courses that approach it from their end. At professional conferences, armies of academics present papers singling out the filmic treatment