Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life

Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life

By: Joseph Epstein

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

A rich and comic portrait of the radical changes in American life and the literary world over the last eighty years.

An autobiography usually requires a justification. The great autobiographies—those by Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Brooks Adams—were justified by their authors living in interesting times, harboring radically new ideas, or participating in great events. Joseph Epstein qualifies on none of these counts. His life has been quiet, lucky in numerous ways, and far from dramatic. But it has also been emblematic of the great changes in our country since World War II.

He grew up in a petit-bourgeois, Midwestern milieu, and the city of Chicago looms large in his life. He drew a lucky ticket in the parent lottery and his was a happy boyhood spent on playgrounds and hanging around drug stores. At high school dances, he was the rhumba king and at drive-in movies he was never allowed to go as far with girls as he so ardently desired. At twenty-six, after two years in the army, he found himself married, the father or stepfather of four children, and living in New York on the meager salary of a magazine subeditor. He was ablaze with ambition and fettered by frustration. He broke out by moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, to direct the city’s anti-poverty program at the height of the Civil Rights movement. His writing career blossomed, he began teaching at Northwestern University, and, for twenty-five years, edited one of great intellectual magazines.

Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life is an intimate look at one life steeped in radical change: from a traditionally moral culture to a therapeutic one, from an era when the extended family was strong to its current diminished status, from print to digital life featuring the war of pixel on print, and on. But for all the seriousness of Epstein’s themes, this book is memorable for its comic point of view and the constant reminder of how unpredictable, various, and wondrously rich life can be.

©2024 Joseph Epstein (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

A circumspect life?

Most enjoyable. Good dry humor and a practical philosophy of life. The narration is well done

He did it his way

This was such an enjoyable book. So glad that Mr. Epstein finally got around to writing a memoir. I wish him many more happy healthy years.

Highly readable

How well this ordinary life held my attention with beautifully written and humorous observations. I look forward to his next book.

My favorite author, I am immensely pleased to have read anything by him and more pleased that there is more I haven’t read

Mr. Epstein is brilliant, funny and wonderfully thoughtful and thought provoking. I hope he lives to 120 and keeps writing.

His pragmatic view of life and of himself

Epstein’s writing style and attention to grammar. I simply enjoyed his observations of life in general although I could have used less coarse language.

Terrible narrator

I like Epstein so much that I endured the worst narrator ever. Initially I thought that it was AI but even that would have had more personality. I intend to ask for a refund for the second time in my membership.

How dreary

I have long been an admirer of Joseph Epstein’s work. I have a shelf full of his essays. So it was with much anticipation I ordered his autobiography. Yikes was this actually written by him. His humor, his irony, his curmudgeonliness is totally absent… and that dreary reader makes it all the tedious to listen to. I stuck with it to the end (last 10 minutes are the best part) A huge disappointment otherwise