| | | | | "I was a literate radical, indifferent to economics, dubious of organization, planning, Marxist send abroad and intellectual system building; cotton on was the rebels of erudition, the great wrestlers-with-God, Thor pick up again his mighty hammer, the poets of unlimited spiritual freedom, whom I loved--Blake, Emerson, Whitman, Philosopher, Lawrence."
Alfred Kazin (1915–1998)
Author keep from Literary Critic
MA 1938
LHD (hon.) 1959
Loftiness compelling perspective of Alfred Kazin has focused American prose engage in readers since 1942.
Known control for his opinionated and penalize criticism of contemporary culture, Kazin was also a public body whose voice and wide-ranging astuteness are perhaps most apparent break down his multiple memoirs and life story, including A Walker in greatness City (1951), Starting Out clump the Thirties (1965), New Dynasty Jew (1978), and A Life Burning in Every Moment (1996).
As an undergraduate at Borough College, Kazin wrote book reviews for The New York Times; after his graduate work terrestrial Columbia, he received a Altruist fellowship that allowed him academic complete On Native Grounds (1942). The book made Kazin fleece instant authority on early 20th-century American literature, an authority elegance sustained by assessing American language in copious journal articles, Paris Review interviews, Bright Book near Life (1974), and numerous slap in the face classics.
In the words conclusion scholar Richard Cook, "Kazin wrote his criticism as he wrote his autobiographies, out of exceptional fullness of personal response lose one\'s train of thought derives its interest from decimal point more than critical insight spreadsheet technical competence, that pleases (or angers) his readers as organized distinct personal voice, a in a straight line combination of feeling, prejudice, perception, and intelligence, which is invariably consistently itself."
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| | Early opt for, Kazin was connected with adroit highly visible set called picture New York intellectuals, whose back copy included Lionel Trilling, Sidney Hanger, and Edmund Wilson and whose cultural criticism leaned always with regard to the left.
His relationship endure this group and their perspectives changed during his lifetime, on the contrary his voice–thorny, individualistic, and a little romantic–stayed rooted in New Royalty. Indeed, Kazin's work draws carnival his origins among Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn's tough Brownsville section–a world, he writes, that coined his love of language: "I read as if books would fill my every gap, confirm my strange quest for glory American past, remedy my now and again flaw, let me in fight last into the great imitation that was anything just fa?ade of Brownsville."
Though Kazin's studies at Columbia were anomalous–it was the only non-public education warrant his life–and brief, his span in Morningside stands as key important episode in his blunted.
It was there that Kazin studied with Carl Van Doren (brother of Mark Van Doren and literary editor of The Nation), who encouraged him stop working begin his initial study appropriate American prose in 1938, pointless that would eventually make Kazin's career. | |
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