Now and again through this memoir of the Forties, Fifties, and
Sixties, critic Kazin refers to the problem he had with his first
autobiographical work, A Walker in the City: it "included
everything in New York except me." And "me" remains a problem for
Kazin, who is marvelously lucid and firmly grounded here as long as
he is eyeing the places and people he has known - at The New
Republic, as wartime correspondent for Fortune, as teacher,
traveler, and a leading light of New York's literati. London under
siege, Germany under guilt, New York from orgone boxes to
Brownsville arson. Complacent Van Wyck Brooks in his "wonderful
white linen waistcoat. . . gently slipping away from every public
topic and literary issue." Lionel Trilling, "intent on not
diminishing his career by a single word." Henry Luce, "lending an
ear to any overcharged thinker with a mission. . . a man puzzled by
the limits he had set himself." Ancient Robert Frost afraid of
going to bed, Paul Goodman drawing "every experience into himself
like a gull snapping up a fish," power-hungry W. W. Rostow's
"professional boyishness," old Leo Stein's resentment of dead
Gertrude ("She never liked Picasso at first!"), Bellow and Hannah
Arendt and Robert Lowell (even as a "happily excited"
Commie-hunter) in remarkable focus. But Kazin is after much more
than a book of critical portraits. He wants to confront himself as
the conflict-ridden, Russian-Jewish-socialist from Brooklyn - son,
lover, husband, father, and angrily involved witness to mid
century's crises the Holocaust, McCarthyism, the Camelot illusion,
the Vietnam protest years. And with this material, weaving a dense,
almost free-associating fabric of intellect and emotion, Kazin is
less successful. It's often difficult to find a flesh-and-bone "me"
behind the exhibitionistic but evasive confessions straining for
poetry (the woman-trouble stuff reads like Bellow without the
pulse), behind the socio-political generalizations straining to be
the Last Word. This is not posing, but a sincere, ambitious
grappling, and the effort itself is stimulating. Kazin's customary
strengths, however - as shrewd critic and warm portraitist - are
what will make this demanding, often murky life-and-times required
reading for anyone alive and alert to 20th-century American
writing. (Kirkus Reviews)
In this book, Alfred Kazin, who for more than 30 years has been one
of the central figures of America's intellectual life, takes us
into his own life and times. His autobiography encompasses a
personal story openly told; an inside look at New York's innermost
intellectual circles; strong and intimate revelations of many of
the most important writers of the century; and brilliantly astute
observations of the literary accomplishments, atmosphere, and fads
of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s in the context of America's shifting
political gales.
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