Alfred Kazin

Alfred Kazin , 1915-98, American critic, b. New York City, grad. College of the City of New York (B.S., 1935) and Columbia (M.A., 1938). Kazin was one of the outstanding literary critics of his time. His first book, the influential and pioneering On Native Grounds (1942), is a critical study of American prose literature from Howells to Faulkner . His later essay collections include The Inmost Leaf (1955), Contemporaries (1962), Bright Book of Life (1973), An American Procession (1984), Writing Was Everything (1995), and God & the American Writer (1997).

Bibliography: See his autobiographical works, A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), and New York Jew (1978), as well as A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment: From the Journals of Alfred Kazin (1996); biography by R. M. Cook (2008).

Kazin, Alfred (1915–), literary critic, best known for his critical works, On Native Grounds (1942), a study of American prose literature after Howells; The Inmost Leaf (1955), essays on European and American literature; Contemporaries (1962), essays on American authors, past and present; and Bright Book of Life (1973), treating American fiction from Hemingway to Mailer; and his moving autobiographical writings, A Walker in the City (1951), a lyrical treatment of his youth in Brownsville, then a Jewish immigrant section of Brooklyn; Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), reminiscences of his young manhood; and New York Jew (1978), considering his life into the 1970s. An American Procession (1984) is on U.S. authors from 1830 to 1930, and A Writer's America (1989) concerns landscape in literature. Our New York (1990), heavily illustrated, combines memoirs and social history.