Alfred Kazin : a biography / Richard M. Cook.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cook, Richard M., 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kazin, Alfred, 1915-1998.

Kazin, Alfred.

American literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

American literature.

Criticism--United States--History--20th century.

Criticism.

Critics--United States--Biography.

Critics.

United States--Intellectual life--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (463 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Born in 1915 to barely literate Jewish immigrants in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Alfred Kazin rose from near poverty to become a dominant figure in twentieth-century literary criticism and one of America's last great men of letters. Biographer Richard M. Cook provides a portrait of Kazin in his public roles and in his frequently unhappy private life. Drawing on the personal journals Kazin kept for over 60 years, private correspondence, and numerous conversations with Kazin, he uncovers the full story of the lonely, stuttering boy from Jewish Brownsville who became a pioneering critic and influential cultural commentator. Upon the appearance of On Native Grounds in 1942, Kazin was dubbed "the boy wonder of American criticism." Numerous publications followed, including A Walker in the City and two other memoirs, books of criticism, as well as a stream of essays and reviews that ceased only with his death in 1998. Cook tells of Kazin's childhood, his troubled marriages, and his relations with such figures as Lionel Trilling, Saul Bellow, Malcolm Cowley, Arthur Schlesinger, Hannah Arendt, and Daniel Bell. He illuminates Kazin's thinking on political-cultural issues and the recurring way in which his subject's personal life shaped his career as a public intellectual. Particular attention is paid to Kazin's sense of himself as a Jewish-American "loner" whose inner estrangements gave him insight into the divisions at the heart of modern culture.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE. Brownsville

CHAPTER TWO. The Thirties: Starting Out

CHAPTER THREE. The Thirties: On Native Grounds

CHAPTER FOUR. The Break 1942-1945

CHAPTER FIVE. After the Apocalypse 1945-1950

CHAPTER SIX. A Walker in the City

CHAPTER SEVEN. Living in the Fifties 1951-1958

CHAPTER EIGHT. The Writer in the World: Part 1 1958-1963

CHAPTER NINE. The Writer in the World: Part 2 1963-1970

CHAPTER TEN. New York Jew 1970-1978

CHAPTER ELEVEN. A New Life 1978-1984

CHAPTER TWELVE. Politics

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. ''The End of Things'' 1984-1998

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [413]-439) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-08856-4

9786612088568

0-300-14504-7

OCLC:

608649879