The essayist, critic, and author of short fiction Joseph Epstein unmistakably qualifies as a Jewish author, even if much of his writing is on subjects that are not explicitly Jewish. Now eighty-seven years old, Epstein is engaged in writing his autobiography, a subject on which he reflects here:
I have given my autobiography the title Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life, with the subtitle Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life. Now well along in its closing chapter, mine, I contend, has been thus far—here I pause to touch wood—a most lucky life. . . .
I have known serious sadness in my life. I have undergone a divorce. I have become a member of that most dolorous of clubs, parents who have buried one of their children. Yet I have had much to be grateful for. In the final paragraph of a book I wrote some years ago on the subject of ambition, I noted that “We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.” In all these realms, I lucked out. I was born to intelligent, kindly parents; at a time that, though I was drafted into the army, allowed me to miss being called up to fight in any wars; and in the largely unmitigated prosperity enjoyed by the world’s most interesting country, the United States of America.
Read more on First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/writing-my-autobiography