New York Jew

by Alfred Kazin

The distinguished literary critic picks up the story of his life in 1940 and chronicles the significant events, people, and places of his life thereafter and comments on the literary doings of the forties, fifties, and sixties

Genres: Nonfiction, Jewish, Memoir, New York, American, Literature, Judaica

307 pages, Hardcover

First published April 12, 1978

About the author

Alfred Kazin (June 5, 1915 – June 5, 1998) was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America.

Kazin is regarded as one of "The New York Intellectuals", and like many other members of this group he was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and attended the City College of New York. However, his politics were more moderate than most of the New York intellectuals, many of whom were socialists. He wrote out of a great passion-- or great disgust -- for what he was reading and embedded his opinions in a deep knowledge of history, both literary history and politics and culture. He was a friend of the political theorist Hannah Arendt. In 1996 he was awarded the first Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award for literary criticism.

His son is historian and Dissent co-editor Michael Kazin.

(from wikipedia.org)

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 3d volume of Kazin's autobiographical trilogy. I feel Kazin was the leading literary critic of his generation. While his autobiographical writings don't offer much in the way of interpretive literary analysis, he does write close, penetrating portraits of almost everyone in the New York literary scene. No one escapes his critical eye, whether approving or unfavorable, not even himself. Some he admired as writers but disliked as individuals. Saul Bellow was an example. While he admired the mind and work of Hannah Arendt, he also liked her immensely as a person and was even sexually attracted to her, but held a strong enmity toward Arendt's best friend Mary McCarthy.

As interesting are Kazin's social portraits. Unable to serve in the military during WWII, he finally made it to Europe in early 1945 as a reporter. His vividly descriptive picture of England and London during the war is one of the most interesting I've ever read. Coming as he did from the intense leftist stew of immigrant Brooklyn during the 20s and 30s, he was politically and liberally bent his whole life. That political orientation flavored his role in a cultural exchange visit he made to the Soviet Union and in the portrait of the people he met there. The student protests at home during the Vietnam era also inspired comments revealing an understanding of the immense social forces at work.

While never a deeply religious man needing a close relationship to a supreme being, he nevertheless was always aware of his Jewish roots and was earnestly outspoken about the direction they gave his personal life. The book ends with his articulate debt to that heritage as he struggles with the anxieties brought on by the Jewish-Arab debate over Israel which threads through most of the book.

This book's resolute, unblinking gaze at the man he saw himself to be combined with his legendary critical sense about American letters and ability to define its currents make this fascinating reading. If not quite the Kazin of the recently-published Journals, to see the 1940s through the 1960s as he did is worth the read.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written book, filled with original insights into American and European postwar intellectual history and fascinating portraits of writers, academics, journalists, political leaders, and artists. I hope to find the other parts of this trilogy soon. Love the parts dealing with Arendt and Trilling and Edmund Wilson especially.

[Alismcg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, such a fine read, Kazin's writing... absolutely phenomenal, though at times, I may have felt the true substance - hidden within the words - of what Kazin was reporting had slipped out and flown over my head 🤭. There's a bit of an abrupt shift at times in his telling and I found myself quite suddenly jolted and thrown off the 'train' I'd been on and running down the track, scratching my head, trying to get my seat back. (My explanation for that one missing ⭐). There's definitely no way I will remember everyone he writes about. Would anyone ? The man's fascinating. Some of the writers I had not read at all but been introduced to in my prior reading of Kirsch's "The Blessing and the Curse", like Saul Bellow. His descriptions intrigued me enough to stir my interest in reading others, eg. Edmund Wilson.

"As Bellow talked, I had an image of a wrestler in the old Greek style, an agonist contending in the games for the prize. Life was dramatically as well as emotionally a contest to him. In some way I could not define, he seemed to be always training for it. And he was wary—eager, sardonic, and wary."

"I think, damn it to hell, that Edmund Wilson is the best critic in the English-speaking world!” And Wilson, a real 'character' , who never really fit into the time, in Kazin's own estimation, and who never stopped talking and sharing his stories, plays a BIG part throughout, right down to the "Hazak Hazak Vinithazak" (Be strong, be strong , let us strengthen one another) etched in stone.

Loved all of the little bits of historical stuff prior to my time like this:

"Natasha - ie.Kazin's wife #1 (Louise #2, Beth #3) - wears the brown stockings worn by all progressive girls in the thirties (we boycott the silk produced by imperialist Japan) and walks slightly pigeon-toed."

And then the 60's which I did live through, especially everything he tossed in about JFK and Kissinger 🤭:

"The key to Kennedy’s character was one I thought I knew all too well: the need to remodel himself, to recreate himself, to fit himself to the endless demands behind which gleamed the immense stakes available in American life."

Have you ever just read something then quite unconsciously, chosen your next read and there ... the actual leap of the pulse jumps 'cross to complete the connection? I had just read Tokarczuk's "Drive Your Plow..." and requested a book from the library of Blake's poetry and here again Blake.

"My heart was raw. The only energy in my life came from the mind of William Blake, the perpetual reaching sweep of his illuminated and heaven-colored penmanship across the golden pages of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The Book of Thel."

Absolutely loved the fullness of life packed into his descriptions 🤭 best of all. It's always the writing that holds me to the finish of my favorites and brings me back to pick them up again.

"...large woman bodies like square dumplings crammed into leafy Russian blouses over pink slips, gold proudly flashing from their teeth; old women in aprons and white head-cloths forever sweeping the streets, sweeping them as clean as can be, sweeping every path in the park clean of every leaf with witches’ twig brooms, sweeping around every Russian standing on an outdoor scale to get himself weighed, sweeping around elderly men wearing rumpled Panama hats as they sit on park benches reading Cervantes, Stendhal, Mark Twain."

Like Edmund Wilson as a standout personality for Kazin, he speaks well of Hannah Arendt and the impression that she made upon him ... all the way into the very last line of the very last page. And that, the greatest treasure for this reader, like the "Hazak Hazak..." on Edmund Wilson's tombstone, brought the warmest smile to my heart... that very last line.

"[Hannah] had devoted herself to Augustine because of a single sentence: 'Love means that I want you to be.' "

But the last line my friends, you must read for yourselves, but only as it falls into its proper place.

[Alan Korolenko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overview of Kazin's life over a 30+ year period from the 1930s to the 1960s. At times fascinating in it's portraits of the well-known authors, critics and politicians. At other times frustrating when Kazin writes in almost a stream of consciousness which can be hard to follow and seems not to make a point. But overall it is a passionate, honest and revealing work by one of our finest critics of the 20th Century.

[Orest Mercator · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Kazin is a really brilliant critic and an excellent writer. If I may, he is perhaps a less gifted memoirist: the writing is enjoyable and there’s much to be learned, but the narrative is quite impressionistic and can be hard to follow. I think the form truest to his art is probably an extended profile or an essay on however many decades in American letters.

- “I wanted to get out the historical skeleton behind the flesh. I was fascinated by the seed time of modern America.”
- “A sense of grace in the protracted summer light”
- “In this surpassing silence of the heart, we live like two friends”
- The crazed anti-Semitism of Pound: “The 60 k*kes who started this war might be sent to Saint Helena as a measure of world prophylaxis—and some hyper-k*kes or non-Jewish k*kes along with them.” - April 30, 1942
- Pound is Whitman’s ransacking of the world gone frenetic
- What a keen observer; give him a few paragraphs and he can make anyone seem tragic
- “The closeness of his mind to his hand” - of Blake
- Check out Thomas Wolfe’s letters to his mother
- “there is not one who does not feel that he is lifted above humanity by being an American” on Navy men
- “Love means that I want you to be” - Augustine
- Really beautiful piece on Randall Jarrell (see, btw, RJ’s review of Lord Weary’s Castle)

[Norene · Rating 1 out of 5]

don't waste your time.