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Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937 in Chicago) is an essayist, short story writer, and editor. From 1974 to 1998,〔Ted Widmer, ("The Scholar at 75: An Educated Guess ), ''The American Scholar'', Winter 2007.〕 he was the editor of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's ''The American Scholar'' magazine. ==Biography== Epstein was born in a Jewish family in 1937. He graduated from Senn High School in Chicago and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.〔http://www.identitytheory.com/joseph-epstein/〕 He received a B.A. from the University of Chicago. He was a lecturer at Northwestern University from 1974 to 2002 and is an Emeritus Lecturer of English there.〔http://www.english.northwestern.edu/people/emeritus/epstein.html〕 He is a contributing editor at ''The Weekly Standard'' and a long-time contributor of essays and short stories to ''The New Criterion'' and ''Commentary''. In 2003, he was awarded a National Humanities Medal by the National Endowment for the Humanities.〔("Awards & Honors: 2003 National Humanities Medalist: Joseph Epstein" ), National Endowment for the Humanities (accessed 2012-07-24).〕 During his many years as editor of ''The American Scholar'', Epstein was known for his essays, signed "Aristides", which led off each issue. Epstein's removal as editor in 1998 (following a 1996 vote of the Phi Beta Kappa senate) was controversial.〔Cynthia Grenier, ("Conservatives on the move" ), ''Washington Times'', January 3, 1998 (via HighBeam Research, subscription required).〕 Epstein later said that he was fired "for being insufficiently correct politically".〔Joshua Cohen, ("Uncle Joe the Exquisite" ), ''The Forward'', September 28, 2007.〕 Some within Phi Beta Kappa attributed the senate's decision to a desire to attract a younger readership for the journal, whose circulation had declined from 40,000 to 25,000 during Epstein's tenure.〔Jonathan Mahler, ("Fresh Vision for an Intellectual Journal: Diversity, Brevity, Even a Cover Picture" ), ''The New York Times'', February 28, 1998.〕 Epstein's writing is provocative and has frequently met with controversy. His essay "Who Killed Poetry?", published in ''Commentary'' in 1988,〔https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/who-killed-poetry/〕 has generated much discussion in the literary community decades after its publication.〔David X. Novak, ("The Man Who Killed Poetry: Joseph Epstein And His Essays" ), ''Contemporary Poetry Review'', December 6, 2012.〕 In 1970, Epstein wrote an article for ''Harper's Magazine'' called "The Struggle for Sexual Identity" that was widely criticized for its perceived homophobia, although ''Harper's'' editor Midge Decter defended it as an "elegant and thoughtful account".〔Larry P. Gross & James D. Woods, ''The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics'' (Columbia University Press, 1999), ISBN 978-0231104463, p. 595. (Excerpts available ) at Google Books.〕 Among other things, Epstein wrote that he considered homosexuality "a curse, in a literal sense" and that his sons could do nothing to make him sadder than "if any of them were to become homosexual."〔〔Christopher Bram, ''Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America'' (Hachette Digital, 2012), ISBN 978-0446575980, p. 142. (Excerpts available ) at Google Books.〕 The response of gay writers and readers to Epstein's piece included a landmark ''New York Times Magazine'' essay by Merle Miller (subsequently reprinted as the book ''On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual''),〔Emily Greenhouse, ("Merle Miller and the Piece That Launched a Thousand 'It Gets Better' Videos" ), ''The New Yorker'', October 11, 2012.〕 as well as a "sit-in" at ''Harper's'' by members of the Gay Activists Alliance, and has been identified as a significant turning point in the gay rights movement of the early 1970s.〔Larry P. Gross, ''Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America'' (Columbia University Press, 2001), ISBN 978-0231119535, pp. 43ff. (Excerpts available ) at Google Books.〕〔David Ehrenstein, ("Sexual Snobbery: The Texture of Joseph Epstein" ), ''LA Weekly'', August 30, 2002.〕 In 2015 Epstein addressed the controversy in a ''The Weekly Standard'' article entitled ″The Unassailable Virtue of Victims: On the rise of Hillary Clinton and other underdogs", in which he states that he is "pleased the tolerance for homosexuality has widened in America and elsewhere" and that his "own aesthetic sensibility favors much homosexual artistic production".〔(″The Unassailable Virtue of Victims: On the rise of Hillary Clinton and other underdogs" ), ''The Weekly Standard'', May 18, 2015.〕 Epstein's body of work reveals his fascination with common everyday situations, amusing trends and small pleasures that he brings to his reader's attention. He also specializes in essays that shed light on the musings and ideas of famous and forgotten authors and writes short stories that prominently feature the city of Chicago and the characters that have populated his 70 years as an observer of the city. William F. Buckley, Jr., in his review of Epstein's 2002 essay collection, ''Snobbery: The American Version'', called Epstein "perhaps the wittiest writer (working in his genre) alive, the funniest since Randall Jarrell."〔William F. Buckley, Jr., ("Who's he?" ) ''The New Criterion'', September 2002. Epstein's humorous response to Buckley's accolade, and to its mention in this Wikipedia article, is at: Joseph Epstein, ("At My Wit's End" ), ''Standpoint'', January 2009.〕 A writer for ''The Forward'' called him "perhaps the smartest American alive who also writes well."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Joseph Epstein (writer)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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