Essays on Things

William Lyon Phelps was the kind of professor universities no longer produce: a polymath who could discourse with equal authority on Russian literature before the revolution and the proper way to brew tea. This collection of fifty-two essays, written with the kind of effortless wit that came from a man who founded Yale's secret Pundits society and later became its most beloved lecturer, ranges from the profound ("War," "Optimism and Pessimism") to the gloriously trivial ("A Pair of Socks," "Molasses," "Spooks"). What unites them is a voice of singular warmth and curiosity, a scholar who believed that nothing was beneath his attention and everything was worthy of insight. Reading these essays feels like visiting a brilliant friend's study in 1914, when a man could travel to Honolulu and record his impressions with unhurried pleasure, or attend church in Paris and find unexpected wisdom there. Phelps writes about Russia before the revolution with the prescience of someone who sensed what was coming, and about American life with the affection of a man who treasured his country's idiosyncrasies. These are essays written in an age when being learned meant being readable, when a professor could be both profound and personable. They remind us that the essay was once the natural form of civilized conversation.