Gossip

The Untrivial Pursuit

By: Joseph Epstein

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

A dishy, incisive exploration of gossip - from celebrity rumors to literary romans à clef, personal sniping to political slander - by one our “great essayists” (David Brooks).

To his successful examinations of some of the most powerful forces in modern life - envy, ambition, snobbery, friendship - the keen observer and critic Joseph Epstein now adds Gossip. No trivial matter, despite its reputation, gossip, he argues, is an eternal and necessary human enterprise. Proving that he himself is a master of the art, Epstein serves up delightful mini-biographies of the Great Gossips of the Western World along with many choice bits from his own experience. He also makes a powerful case that gossip has morphed from its old-fashioned best - clever, mocking, a great private pleasure - to a corrosive new-school version, thanks to the reach of the mass media and the Internet. Gossip has invaded and changed for the worse politics and journalism, causing unsubstantiated information to be presented as fact. Contemporary gossip claims to reveal truth, but as Epstein shows, it’s our belief in truth that gossip today threatens to undermine and destroy.

Written in his trademark erudite and witty style, Gossip captures the complexity of this immensely entertaining subject.

©2011 Joseph Epstein (P)2011 Tantor

Critic reviews

"While Epstein’s ruminations on how we became a nation of gawkers ring painfully true, it is his willingness to analyze delectable tidbits regarding authors, intellectuals and other luminaries that enlivens the narrative... Amusing and serious in equal measures, Epstein grants readers the pleasurable company of a master observer of humanity’s foibles." ( Kirkus, starred)

"Delectable firsthand anecdotes and portraits...add to the pleasures of this serious appraisal. Readers who share Epstein's concern about gossip's power 'to invade privacy, to wreck lives' and his reluctance to wholly condemn it 'because I enjoy it too much' will find him disquieting and delightful." ( Publishers Weekly)

"[Epstein has] a literary tone that makes you think of venerable Manhattan editors with mid-Atlantic accents...like a good stand-up comedian (or a discoverer), he inspires confidence [in his writing]." ( Wall Street Journal)

Good Try

From cold to hot this was a warm. Included gossip is geared to the older adult. I was looking for the reasons for gossip and they were there. Not a poorly written book but do not start thinking you will hear anything new or 21st Century exciting.

Epstein's writing is moreish.

I wish that Audible would consider getting this reader to taking more of Epstein's lines out for a walk.

Insightful and Amusing

I wanted to hear what a long essay sounded like. I enjoyed it. There are countless examples of all variety of gossip and the categories alone are interesting.

Misogynist whines that he got called misogynist

There isn't much here in the way of a history of gossip or anything very intellectually stimulating. It's just a collection of the author's favorite rumors about celebrities of various sorts, annotated with the author's opinions about the relative truthfulness and morality of some anecdotes. Unfortunately this commentary frequently amounts to whining about feminism and nostalgia for the good 'ol days when people had too much dignity to disclose their traumas or call other people out on their casual prejudices. He felt the need to comment on three different rumors about domestic abuse that he was sure the rumors were true because the victim was a hard-to-live-with woman and the abuser was a stressed out man or one with a lot of physical energy. He concocted the juicy rumor to share with us that an ex writer whose writing career is usually said to have ended because of depression probably stopped writing because his wife was "crazy," which turns out to mean Epstein found her annoyingly talkative when he met her. Toward the end of the book Epstein switches from praising gossip to criticizing the way society today publicizes all its grievances, and it seems to me this shift occurred specifically so that could whine about a former student of his who told him to his face that she thought it was misogynist of him to keep calling on male students to speak while ignoring female students. It is totally unfair, he tells us, that in today's world a young woman can ruin a good professor's reputation because of being a feminist and also mentally disturbed. Fascinatingly, he does not deny her accusation that he tended to invite male students to dominate discussion in his classroom, but tells us that keeping track of gender imbalances was the real hamper to her education. He also says that he would have called on anyone who he thought had something intelligent to say, which doesn't at all refute her point that misogyny played a role in who he thought worth listening to. I listened to the whole book so I can say I gave it a chance, it just never amounted to anything more than misogynist whining and vapid anecdote.