The man sitting behind me at Temple Israel asked what had brought me, as if a talk on Jewish humor by Joseph Epstein wasn’t enough. I told him that the speaker was the first magazine editor who published me.
That wasn’t exactly true. I had sold one piece, years earlier, to The North American Review. But that had been a one-time affair, while Joe ended up publishing a few of my essays in his quarterly, The American Scholar. And before publishing my work, he had written me thoughtful, encouraging letters of rejection. It seems remarkable, unbelievable, today, when many editors can’t be bothered to send out even form rejections. Whenever anyone asks me about my mentors, I mention Joe.
So after his entertaining talk, which covered all categories of Jewish jokes – from synagogue jokes to waiter jokes – Hania and I took Joe for dinner. We drove through downtown, across the Miami River (I mentioned that it had been Jan Morris’s point of reference in her essay on the city), past the Espirito Santo bank, and down the banyaned corridor of Coral Way, ending – where else? – at Books & Books. After a stroll through the store, we found a table in the courtyard. A waitress came and took our orders, and when she asked if there was anything else she could get us, Joe asked offhandedly: “World peace?”
