Author(s): Joseph Epstein

Cultural Studies

Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite-all cluster at the center of envy. "Envy" clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly sins, he concludes, only envy is no fun at all. Writing in a conversational, erudite, self-deprecating style that wears its learning lightly, Epstein takes us on a stimulating tour of the many faces of envy. He considers what great thinkers - such as John Rawls, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche - have written about envy; distinguishes between envy, yearning, jealousy, resentment, and schadenfreude ("a hardy perennial in the weedy garden of sour emotions"); and catalogs the many things that are enviable, including wealth, beauty, power, talent, knowledge and wisdom, extraordinary good luck, and youth (or as the title of Epstein's chapter on youth has it, "The Young, God Damn Them").