Joseph Epstein, editor of the quarterly journal The American Scholar, has drawn sharp fire in recent weeks over comments he made that were considered derogatory to feminist scholars.
The comments, which appeared in an essay on contemporary literary theory in the spring issue of The Hudson Review, prompted charges of bigotry and at least one call for Mr. Epstein’s resignation.
“The American Scholar is the official journal of Phi Beta Kappa, which honors academic merit, and presumes to be gender- and race-free,” the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote in a letter published in the August 13 issue of The New York Times. “It is an embarrassment that Joseph Epstein should have been its editor for so many years. His resignation is long overdue.”
Mr. Epstein, who has been editor of The American Scholar since 1975, maintained that his remarks had been misinterpreted. “I think it’s all part of a general touchiness in the world,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Epstein also teaches English at Northwestern University and writes frequently on literary topics for journals such as The New Criterion and Commentary. His essay in The Hudson Review, a literary quarterly based in New York, is a harsh attack on literary theory in general, which he considers antithetical to the study of literature.
“The point of view literature teaches is inherently anti-system, anti-theory, and sceptical of all ideas that do not grow out of particular cases,” Mr. Epstein wrote.
No school of literary theory escapes Mr. Epstein’s barbs, but he does appear to harbor a special animus toward feminist critics and scholars. Two specific remarks about them have proved particularly offensive to some readers.
In the first, Mr. Epstein maintains that the attitude of feminist scholars reminds him of an old witticism: “The feminists roll on, perpetually angry, making perfectly comprehensible the joke about the couple in their West Side Manhattan apartment who, having been twice robbed, determine to protect themselves, he wanting to get a revolver, she a pit bull, and so they agree to compromise and instead get a feminist.”
In the second instance, he quotes Catharine R. Stimpson, dean of the graduate school at Rutgers University, speaking about the conservative position in the debate over multiculturalism, and then says of her remarks: “This not from a member of Dykes on Bikes but, you understand, from the woman who is the outgoing president of the Modern Language Association.”
Mr. Epstein’s words have provoked responses in The New York Times and letters of protest to Phi Beta Kappa, the national honor society that publishes The American Scholar.
In an op-ed piece on political correctness in the July 12 issue of The Times, Joel Conarroe, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, wrote that it was “startling” to see Mr. Epstein “amusing himself in The Hudson Review by likening feminists to pit bulls and making little jokes about `Dykes on Bikes.’ ”
In her August 13 letter to The Times, Ms. Oates, who is also a professor of English at Princeton University, attacked what she characterized as Mr. Epstein’s “bigotry” and “crude remarks” made in the guise of humor.
Neither Mr. Conarroe nor Ms. Oates were available for comment.
Douglas W. Foard, secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, said he had received a couple of dozen letters in recent weeks pertaining to Mr. Epstein and The American Scholar. He noted, however, that most were concerned with the handling of a review, which appeared in the spring issue, of a book called Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry, by Michael Ruse. A minority of the letters mentioned Mr. Epstein’s essay in The Hudson Review, he said.
Mr. Foard said the letters covered the “whole spectrum” of opinion, from protest to approval of Mr. Epstein. He added that he considered the Hudson Review essay an expression of Mr. Epstein’s personal opinion and not a matter with which Phi Beta Kappa should become involved.
Mr. Foard said he found the sudden flurry of letters somewhat puzzling. “Prior to that there had been nothing but 15 years of kudos,” he said.
Ms. Stimpson said she had written directly to Mr. Epstein objecting to his characterization of her remarks and noting that he had picked up a misquotation that had appeared in New York magazine. She declined to comment further on the controversy.
Mr. Epstein has responded to Mr. Conarroe in a letter that appeared in the July 30 New York Times, and to Ms. Oates in a letter to The Times that has not yet been published.
In an interview, he argued that the responses to his essay were all part of a “deep humorlessness” that pervades political and scholarly dialogue in this country today.
“In the Hudson Review piece,” he said, “I was not attacking women, but academic feminists and an ideology which I believe they have. They are very far from any sort of interesting reality.”
He noted, for example, that he considered feminists’ criticism of “phallocentrism” and “dead white European males” a “trivial idea.”
“Literature is against this kind of systematizing,” he said.