CHARM: THE ELUSIVE ENCHANTMENT by Joseph Epstein - A Review

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

At the outset, I should confess that the editorial staff at JazzProfiles is a big fan of Joseph Epstein and avidly seeks out his op-eds whenever they appear in The Wall Street Journal.

This is not necessarily a reflection of its political bias, but rather, an indication of its continuing interest in the art of good writing and in interesting and novel points of view.

As regards the latter, Mr. Epstein has a new book out and it is brilliantly reviewed by Thomas Vinciguerra in the Oct. 11, 2018 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

After reading the criteria for what constitutes charming according to Mr. Epstein, we are in the process of developing a list of charming Jazz musicians. Would you be surprised to learn that Miles Davis isn’t on it?

Who would you include and exclude from a charming list of Jazz musicians?

‘Charm’ Review: The Most Pleasing Personality

“In the presence of charm, the world seems lighter and lovelier.”

CHARM: THE ELUSIVE ENCHANTMENT

By Joseph Epstein

Lyons, 187 pages, $24.95

“There was no avoiding it. On page 26 of Joseph Epstein’s excursion into the nature of charm, there popped up the character of Anthony Blanche from “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh (who, Mr. Epstein notes, was “as comically uncharming as possible”). And so the voice of Nickolas Grace, who played Blanche — the stuttering homosexual Oxford aesthete — in the epic 1981 Granada Television production of “Brideshead,” kept echoing in my head. As I recall, every other word that passed from his rouged lips was “charming”—pronounced, with maximum loucheness, CHAAH-ming.

That aural cue was a pleasant companion to Mr. Epstein’s equally pleasant volume. Unlike tiresome sophists, Mr. Epstein doesn’t dogmatically define his terms. Rather, in keeping with his subtitle, “The Elusive Enchantment,” he spins elegantly around his subject. “Charm is magic of a kind; it casts a spell,” he writes. “In the presence of charm, the world seems lighter and lovelier.” Similarly, “charm is a form of pleasure. One is charmed by another person’s looks or personality or general artfulness of presentation.”

Within more or less discrete chapters, Mr. Epstein proceeds seamlessly to and fro, demonstrating — through example and instruction — who and what is charming and, equally important, who and what isn’t. Who’s charming? Duke Ellington, Nora Ephron and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Who’s not? Bill Clinton, John McEnroe and Barbara Walters. What’s charming? Fedoras, good quips and maturity. What’s not? Baseball caps, stubble and “cool” in general.

In teasing out his extended theme, Mr. Epstein takes some unexpected turns. Who would have thought there could be such a thing as a “vulgar charmer”? But the author presses the case for Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason and Louis Prima while arguing, with equal plausibility, against Larry David, Zero Mostel and Don Rickles. Mr. Epstein’s take on Dean Martin (who makes the cut) is spot on: “When he sang about the moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore, something about him supplied a subtext that read, ‘Can you believe people pay me to sing such crap?’ ” That’s vulgar charm, folks.

But be warned: “Charm, like cashmere, can wear thin.” Witness the downward spirals of such renowned charmers as Tallulah Bankhead, Lillian Hellman and Oscar Wilde.

Mr. Epstein, who for 23 years was the editor of the American Scholar and is a frequent contributor to these pages, sure knows how to quote. I was hoping he would cite Albert Camus from “The Fall,” and he didn’t disappoint: “You know what charm is: A way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”

Mr. Epstein has long been an engaging familiar essayist and, as does any good Montaigne, he talks about himself. At one point he asks, “Am I charming?” He doubts it. Still, a publisher once took him to an expensive restaurant and emailed the next morning that “our conversation was so enjoyable that he couldn’t remember any of the wonderful food he had eaten.”

My quibbles (is “trifles” more charming?) here are few. Charm is a pretty broad and subjective notion. Slim though this volume is, there’s sometimes a sense of straining, as if Mr. Epstein were casting too wide a gossamer net.

Some of his inclusions are dubious. He considers the sour Oscar Levant charming; “fascinating” is probably better. Johnny Carson? For all of his 30 years behind his desk at “The Tonight Show,” he was at best reassuring or appealing. Why devote more than four pages to Alcibiades’ charms and fewer than three to Casanova’s?

Mr. Epstein also misses a few chances to sweeten this rich spotted dog of a book with some extra raisins. I would have liked to hear more about FDR’s legendary charm—especially how he thought he could charm Stalin at Tehran, and how the dictator arguably out-charmed him.

Unmentioned entirely is Ben Bradlee, the Harvard-educated, French-speaking, Turnbull & Asser-wearing, grittily street-smart and profanity-spewing editor of the Washington Post, who once at a formal dinner party ground out his cigarettes in a demitasse cup. “Bradlee was one of the few persons,” wrote Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, “who could pull that kind of thing off and leave the hostess saying how charming he was.”

Whither charm? Mr. Epstein isn’t optimistic. “I would argue that there is something about the current age that is, if not outright anti-charm, not especially partial to charm as an ideal.” This he ascribes to the Me Decade, rampant therapy and a tendency to let it all hang out. As he puts it, “The charming person asks, ‘How may I please?’; the therapeutic patient or person asks, ‘How do I please myself?’ The charming person looks outward; the therapeutic person inward.”

Somewhere in this world, there may be a Prince Charming. This much is certain: When it comes to belles-lettres — oh, what a charming word! — Mr. Epstein is king.”

—Mr. Vinciguerra is the author of “Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E.B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker.”