Alfred Kazin

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 more than sixty 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 the groundbreaking A Walker in the City and two other memoirs, books of criticism, and a stream of essays and reviews that ceased only with his death in 1998. Cook tells of Kazin's childhood, his troubl