SALON

Friday, Nov 6, 1998 8:00 PM UTC

Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays And Criticism From A Lifelong Love Affair With The Movies

Jonathan Lethem reviews 'Totally, Tenderly, Tragically' by Phillip Lopate.

By

Topics: Books,

For a writer like Phillip Lopate, with his deep commitment to the essay as a literary form, any piece of journalism — a film review, a profile of a director or another critic, even a summary-style “film festival roundup” — is a chance to practice the higher calling of his art. And for an essayist as committed to personal disclosure as Lopate is, every gathering of essays into a book is an opportunity to smuggle another chapter of his own autobiography into the hands of readers. In “Totally, Tenderly, Tragically,” we see Lopate occasionally stumble at the task of making art in the form of journalistic assignments, while succeeding spectacularly at making the collection more, much more, than the sum of its parts.

Lopate is right to call his filmgoing a lifelong love affair. He’s a passionate advocate for the films and directors he adores, foreign directors such as Visconti, Mizoguchi, Ozu and Godard in particular. In “Memories,” the first section of the book, he shares with the reader the development of his tastes, evoking the early highs and spectacular disappointments of his dawning infatuation with film. What’s most striking, however, is how tireless and devoted a lover he remains. Lopate in his 50s is still devouring new films with the same intensity he did his earliest discoveries, a fact that struck this younger, more fickle reviewer first as chastening, then inspiring. (On Lopate’s recommendation I’ve already watched three of the contemporary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s films — they’re wonderful.)

A handful of the pieces here seem time-bound or incidental; a few are made lopsided by Lopate’s friendship with their subjects or by a relative lack of critical rigor. A long defense of a minor Jerry Lewis film, written when Lopate was 23, seems comically disproportionate, if only because no one is arguing much about Lewis anymore. Blandly earnest directors like Sidney Lumet and John Sayles are perhaps treated too generously. And a rant about the “dumbing-down” of American movies descends too much into crotchety generalities. Yet in almost every case Lopate knows these failings full well, as he makes clear in a series of reflective postscripts to the essays — which themselves become a key element in the book. The result is a kind of turning of time’s prism to shed new light, and the filtering of that light through and between the essays collected here has a magical effect. And paradoxically, it’s precisely the fallibility of a few of these essays on their own that makes the book such a tour de force of Lopate’s art. In gathering apparently disparate and occasional writings into a kind of sly autobiographical whole, “Totally, Tenderly, Tragically” is a typically Lopatian success.

Jonathan Lethem, the Roy E. Disney Professor in Creative Writing at Pomona College, is the author of, most recently, the novel "Chronic City." He is currently at work on his next novel, "Dissident Gardens," publishing October 2013. More Jonathan Lethem.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations