Alfred Kazin: A Biography

by Richard M. Cook

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.

 

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History

463 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 2007

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end of Alfred Kazin: A Biography, Richard Cook describes how a year after his death Kazin's family walked to the center of the Brooklyn Bridge and dropped his ashes into the East River midway between his beloved Brooklyn and his beloved Manhattan. This touched me. What better gesture to honor this giant of criticism who loved America and literature than to locate him finally in such a powerfully symbolic spot of American letters as that evoking the likes of Walt Whitman and Hart Crane. I've long admired Kazin. I suppose that predisposed me to like the book. But more, I found the coupling of intelligent and comprehensive biography with the physical attraction of a book sturdily printed and bound on paper intended to last made this a memorable reading experience. This is majestic biography. One characteristic making it authoritatively robust is that Cook so firmly and with certainty positions Kazin within his times and his history. In this way we can easily imagine him striding through prewar New York or postwar Europe as he did in his sharply inquisitive way. In so solidly defining Kazin in relation to his times this biography becomes one of the most successful at that in my experience. Kazin's acquaintance with the writers and intellectuals of his day was extensive. Cook's accounts of his relationship with each, friend or rival, makes for many interesting stories. A favorite book of mine is Kazin's first memoir, A Walker in the City, and its evocation of the New York Jewish community as explained by Cook is one of the more impressive features of the book. But even before that beginning Kazin was well on the way to becoming one of the century's eminent critics. I believe Cook understands Kazin's criticism well and how his hitching history and literature together was one of his major contributions to American letters. Cook's analysis of Kazin's analysis is magnificent reading. One complaint, a small one, is that Cook uses the quote too much. Reading a biography, especially of a person whose work I've read, I prefer the biographer to interpret in words that stand off to the side and offer appraisal rather than using the subject's words. Cook doesn't use the extended quote so much as the isolated phrase or word which he would borrow to make a point. For me this tends to break up the flow of the thought being projected because my reading has to make the conscious distinction between biographer and subject. But I also think that Cook's biography is an essential rider to the splendid autobiographical material Kazin himself gave us.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging and well-researched biography of Kazin, another figure in the New York intellectual scene, and Mary McCarthy's friend/rival. Useful for fleshing out one's understanding of that group, their beliefs, and the period in which they lived.

[Howard Cincotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never quite knew exactly what "lucid" writing meant, but this biography of the great 20th century critic and writer is a fine example. Inspired me to begin reading Kazin's essays directly.