A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays

The ``lines'' that Epstein ( The Middle of My Tether ) here takes out for walks are his subjects, and where they will lead him he is ``unlikely to know in advance.'' Generally they include topics one doesn't encounter on the evening news, such as the etiquette of hats, the stomach needed for bigtime gambling and the author's years at the intensely intellectual University of Chicago--where the average undergraduate struck him as being ``someone from New York who had been reading the New Republic from the age of 11 and decided against going to an Ivy League school because they were all deemed too lightweight.'' His essays vary in complexity of structure, but all move from solitary observation to a larger meditation on life. To reveal more would erode the pleasure of reading Epstein, a writer at the top of his powers in these serious, funny, pleasantly unpredictable musings. (Apr.)