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Product Description
"A stunning book. . . . Perhaps the most evocative reminiscence of a vital corner of the nineteen-thirties that we are likely to get. A beautifully written memoir in which the author's location of himself as a man, an intellectual, and a moral being is interwoven with the chronicle of an era. It is a wonderful book."--Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times "Men lived in the thirties, Kazin is saying, with peculiar stresses, particular faces and one or another kind of relationship to the age which bred them and asked them to respond to it. His book is as admirable a record of how they did that as any we have been given."--Richard Gilman, Dissent
Amazon.com Review
The great American literary critic Alfred Kazin's passion for books grew out of his belief in their power to shape the real world. First published in 1965, this classic memoir chronicles Kazin's apprentice years, during which he enthusiastically participated in New York's left-wing cultural life--vivid portraits of V.F. Calverton, Philip Rahv, and Malcolm Cowley are among the book's many pleasures--while writing his pioneering study of American literature, On Native Grounds. Few authors convey their love for art as infectiously as does Kazin in descriptions of works as diverse as Fontemara by Ignazio Silone and Awake and Sing by Clifford Odets. He writes with equal warmth about family, friends, and lovers. --Wendy Smith
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