Joseph Epstein is one of the best essayists in contemporary American letters.

A traditionalist who adopts a wary view of literary trends and personalities, he t akes no prisoners when confronting unwarranted reputations. Here is how his revi ew of Sigrid Nunez's memoir of Susan Sontag begins: "Susan Sontag, as F.R. Leavi s said of the Sitwells, belongs less to the history of literature than to that o f publicity." Not only has Sontag been put in her place, that place is among lit erary predecessors who have made spectacles of themselves. Mr. Epstein is, in so me respects, a throwback to the Leavis era, with its touting of a "great traditi on" in literature. But Mr. Epstein is not a throwback insofar as he is constantl y engaged with the present and with an impressive array of subjects: from Malcol m Gladwell to George Washington, from Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Joe DiMaggio "Es says in Biography" is divided into sections on Americans (the largest), Englishm en, popular culture and "Others." He could have included an entire section devot ed to critics, since he has pieces on Dwight Macdonald, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazi n and James Wolcott. Essays in Biography By Joseph Epstein Axios Press, 603 pages, $24 Mr. Epstein's ability to capture a subject in a memorable 3,000 words should be the envy of biographers, who write at greater length but sometimes with no great er effect. Biographies are vats of facts that take patience to digest; Mr. Epste in's essays are brilliant distillations. Biographers are rarely as nimble and pi thy as he can be, and they labor under constraints he would surely chafe at. Ind eed, the author once returned the advance for a biography of John Dos Passos tha t he had agreed to write, an enterprise that would surely have taxed his desire to say what he really thinks. What? Biographers don't say what they think? A biography whatever its rewards usually co mes complete with shackles. Biographers have opinions, but bald judgments are us ually eschewed. The biography of Susan Sontag that I co-wrote ("Susan Sontag: Th e Making of an Icon") could not have begun with Mr. Epstein's first sentence; it would have been called tendentious and worse. The biographical narrative is sup posed to unfold without editorializing, and most biographers will say it isn't t heir place to judge but to understand although Mr. Epstein might counter that judgme nt is a form of understanding. The value Mr. Epstein brings to biography is an incisive grasp of person and pro se. This acuity comes out in his review of Saul Bellow's letters. Mr. Epstein kn ew Bellow and was in a position to observe the touchy novelist's interactions wi th friends. As a result, the review comes to life as both criticism and biograph y: "Saul had two valves on his emotional trumpet: intimacy and contempt." Here, too, a biographer can only gasp at the freedom accorded the essayist, as when he notes the "con in much of Bellow's correspondence." Mr. Epstein thinks "Herzog" works so well because of the letters the title character writes to all sorts of addressees, concluding that, "in some ways," the letter was Bellow's "true mtier. " This is the setup for a devastating verdict: Bellow was not "truly a novelist. " He had ideas but no stories and could not shape a narrative, ending up with th e "high-octane riffs" of a "philosophical schmoozer." Mr. Epstein is to be prized for his ability to stand back from the biographical field, so to speak, while taking aboard the insights of biographers. He brings t o biography what he calls "the amateur view" in an essay on George Washington, i n which he draws on historians like Barry Schwartz and Gordon S. Wood. Mr. Epste in cites a chapter from Lord Bryce's "The American Commonwealth" called "Why Gre at Men Are Not Chosen Presidents" and embarks on an extended meditation on just why it is not quite so easy to determine if Washington was a great man.

Bryce asserts that the American voter does not mind settling for mediocrity and actually prefers someone who is safe over someone with an original or profound m ind. Of Washington, Mr. Epstein asks: "Was he an authentically great man, or ins tead merely the right man for his time?" He then canvasses opinions about our fi rst president, beginning with Thomas Jefferson's mixed review: Washington was no t an agile thinker, proved a cautious and not particularly quick improviser as a general, and though a man of integrity and forceful leadership, had a habit of exactly calculating "every man's value." Mr. Epstein implies that historian Forr est McDonald came close to suggesting Washington was a myth that the country nee ded to believe in. Perhaps only Mr. Epstein would then refer to "Pride and Prejudice," comparing th e reader's tendency to identify with Elizabeth Bennet, because she is left undes cribed, to Americans' desire to read into Washington traits the country most cov ets. Then comes a classic Epstein formulation: "Washington was famous even befor e he was great, monumental while still drawing breath, apotheosized while still very much alive." In 19 words, Mr. Epstein builds a biographical schema that doe s not have to be labored over for 300 pages. The essayist concludes that Washington's greatness inheres in his moral characte r, in his "genius for discerning right action." Something similar might be said about Joseph Epstein, who brings to biography a genius of discernment that is ex pressed in the just and moral character of his prose.