Alfred Kazin | |
|---|---|
 Kazin in 1973 | |
| Born | May 5, 1915 |
| Died | May 5, 1998 (aged 83) Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupations |
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| Spouse(s) | Natasha Dohn (divorced) Caroline Bookman (divorced) Ann Birstein (1952-1982) Judith Dunford (1983-1998) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parents |
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Alfred Kazin (June 5, 1915 – June 5, 1998) was an American writer and literary critic. His literary reviews appeared in The New York Times, the New York Herald-Tribune, The New Republic and The New Yorker.[1] He wrote often about the immigrant experience in early twentieth-century America.[2] His trilogy of memoirs, A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978), were all finalists for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.[3][4][5]
He was a distinguished professor of English at State University of New York (1963-1973) and the Graduate Center of City University of New York (1973-1978, 1979-1985).[6][7]
He was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. His father, Charles Kazin, was a house-painter from Minsk.[6] His mother, Gita Fagelman, was a dressmaker from Russian Poland.[8][9][6] His father was a socialist and acolyte of Eugene V. Debs, while his mother was Orthodox.[10][11] His sister, Pearl Kazin Bell (1922-2011) was also a writer and critic. She was an assistant literary editor at Harper's Bazaar as well as a regular fiction critic for The New Leader, Partisan Review and Commentary.[12][8][1]
He was a graduate of the City College of New York.[2] However, his politics were more moderate than most of the New York Intellectuals, many of whom were socialists. He rejected Stalin early on.[1] In 1934, he got an early break reviewing books for The New Republic.[13] The opportunity came about after he visited The New York Times office that summer to express his disagreement with a book review published by the newspaper that was written by John Chamberlain.[13] Chamberlain met with Kazin and was impressed by his arguments and recommended him to editors at The New Republic.[13] He also graduated with an MA from Columbia University in 1938.[14][15]
Kazin was deeply affected by his peers' subsequent disillusion with socialism and liberalism.[16] Adam Kirsch writes in The New Republic that "having invested his romantic self-image in liberalism, Kazin perceived abandonment of liberalism by his peers as an attack on his identity".[16]
In 1942, at the age of 27, he published his firs book, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature. Orville Prescott of The New York Times wrote: "With "On Native Grounds" he takes his place in the first rank of American practitioners of the higher literary criticism."[17]
In 1951, he wrote the acclaimed memoir, A Walker in the City, where he details his childhood in the Jewish milieu of Brownsville in Brooklyn. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1952.[3] The subsequent sequels, Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978) were also finalists for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.[4][5]
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. In 1996 he was awarded the first Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award in Literary Criticism, which carries a cash reward of $100,000.[18] As of 2014, the only other person to have won the award was George Steiner.[19]
In 1963 he became a distinguished professor in the English Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.[20] He stayed at Stony Brook for ten years before taking up distinguished professor positions at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of City University of New York (1973-1978, 1979-1985).[6][20]
Kazin was friends with Hannah Arendt.[21]
Kazin's son from his second marriage is historian and Dissent co-editor Michael Kazin.[22] Alfred Kazin married his third wife, the writer Ann Birstein, in 1952, and they divorced in 1982; their daughter is Cathrael Kazin.[22] Prior to his death, Cathrael had made Aliyah to Israel.[8] She is an attorney and education specialist[23]
Kazin married a fourth time, and is survived by his widow, the writer Judith Dunford.[2]
Kazin died at his home on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, New York, on his 83rd birthday in 1998.[2] At his request, he had a small funeral ceremony. He was cremated and did not have a Jewish service. However, his son, Michael, said Kaddish.[8] A year later, Michael and his step-mother, Judith scattered his ashes in the East River.[24]
