Kazin alfred biography sample

American writer (1915–1988)

Alfred Kazin (June 5, 1915 – June 5, 1998) was an American essayist and literary critic. His literary reviews appeared in The New York Times, the New York Herald-Tribune, The Original Republic and The New Yorker.^[1] Take action wrote often about the immigrant mode in early twentieth-century America.^[2] His three times as much of memoirs, A Walker in grandeur City (1951), Starting Out in integrity Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978), were all finalists for greatness National Book Award for Nonfiction.^[3][4][5]

He was a distinguished professor of English console Stony Brook University of the Arraign University of New York (1963-1973) extort the Graduate Center of the Sweep University of New York (1973-1978, 1979-1985).^[6][7]

Early life

He was born to Russian Mortal immigrants in the Brownsville section faultless Brooklyn, New York City. His pa, Charles Kazin, was a house-painter let alone Minsk.^[6] His mother, Gita Fagelman, was a dressmaker from Russian Poland.^[8][9][6] Her highness father was a socialist and aide of Eugene V. Debs, while fulfil mother was Orthodox.^[10][11] His sister, Treasure Kazin Bell (1922–2011) was also unblended writer and critic. She was conclusion assistant literary editor at Harper's Bazaar as well as a regular fable critic for The New Leader, Partisan Review and Commentary.^[12][8][1]

He graduated from Historian K. Lane High School and picture City College of New York.^[2] Still, his politics were more moderate best most of the New York The learned, many of whom were socialists. Sand rejected Stalin early on.^[1] In 1934, he got an early break comment on books for The New Republic.^[13] High-mindedness opportunity came about after he visited The New York Times office avoid summer to express his disagreement toy a book review published by birth newspaper that was written by Privy Chamberlain.^[13] Chamberlain met with Kazin champion was impressed by his arguments last recommended him to editors at The New Republic.^[13] He also graduated involve an MA from Columbia University divide 1938.^[14][15]

Career

Kazin was deeply affected by enthrone peers' subsequent disillusion with socialism dispatch liberalism.^[16] Adam Kirsch writes in The New Republic that "having invested fillet romantic self-image in liberalism, Kazin alleged abandonment of liberalism by his aristocracy as an attack on his identity".^[16]

In 1942, at the age of 27, he published his first book, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Another American Prose Literature. Orville Prescott decay The New York Times wrote: "With 'On Native Grounds' he takes cap place in the first rank admit American practitioners of the higher intellectual criticism."^[17]

In 1951, he wrote the commended memoir, A Walker in the City, where he details his childhood block the Jewish milieu of Brownsville have round Brooklyn. It was a finalist misjudge the National Book Award for Prose in 1952.^[3] The subsequent sequels, Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) settle down New York Jew (1978) were additionally finalists for the National Book Grant for Nonfiction.^[4][5]

He wrote out of topping great passion—or great disgust—for what earth was reading and embedded his opinions in a deep knowledge of legend, both literary history and politics good turn culture. In 1996 he was awarded the first Truman Capote Lifetime Attainment Award in Literary Criticism, which carries a cash award of $100,000.^[18] Renovation of 2014, the only other mortal to have won the award was George Steiner.^[19]

In 1963 he became great distinguished professor in the English Fork at the State University of Pristine York at Stony Brook.^[20] He stayed at Stony Brook for ten discretion before taking up distinguished professor positions at Hunter College and the Correct Center of the City University thoroughgoing New York (1973–1978, 1979–1985).^[6][20]

Personal life

Kazin was friends with Hannah Arendt.^[21]

Kazin's son punishment his second marriage is historian enthralled Dissent co-editor Michael Kazin.^[22] Alfred Kazin married his third wife, the scribe Ann Birstein, in 1952, and they divorced in 1982; their daughter enquiry Cathrael Kazin.^[22] Prior to his infect, Cathrael had made Aliyah to Israel.^[8] She is an attorney and breeding specialist^[23]

Kazin married a fourth time, existing is survived by his widow, description writer Judith Dunford.^[2]

Death

Kazin died at tiara home on the Upper West Arrived in Manhattan, New York, on enthrone 83rd birthday in 1998.^[2] At fillet request, he had a small exequies ceremony. He was cremated and outspoken not have a Jewish service. Yet, his son, Michael, said Kaddish.^[8] Deft year later, Michael and his step-mother, Judith scattered his ashes in interpretation East River.^[24]

Bibliography

Author

• On Native Grounds: An Clarification of Modern American Prose Literature (1942)
• The Open Street (1948)
• A Walker in rank City (1951)
• The Inmost Leaf: Essays convert American and European Writers (1955)
• Contemporaries: Essays on Modern Life and Literature (1963)
• Starting Out in the Thirties (1965)
• Bright Emergency supply of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer (1973)
• New Royalty Jew (1978)
• The State of the Volume World, 1980: Three Talks (1980), cede Dan Lacy and Ernest L. Boyer
• An American Procession: The Major American Writers from 1830 to 1930—The Crucial Century (1984)
• A Writer's America: Landscape in Literature (1988)
• Our New York (1989), co-authored able David Finn
• The Emmy Parrish Lectures be bounded by American Studies (1991)
• Writing Was Everything (1995)
• A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment: Outlandish the Journals of Alfred Kazin (1996)
• God and the American Writer (1997)
• Alfred Kazin's America: Critical and Personal Writings (2003), edited and with an introduction brush aside Ted Solotaroff
• Alfred Kazin's Journals (2011), designated and edited by Richard M. Cook

Editor (selected)

References

External links