Volume 25, Number 8 · May 18, 1978
Tales of Manhattan
By Robert Towers
New York Jew
by Alfred Kazin
Knopf, 255 pp., $10.95
New York Jew—the third and much the longest installment of Alfred Kazin's autobiography—begins on a note of high exhilaration: 'One dreamlike week in 1942 I published my first book, On Native Grounds, became an editor of The New Republic, and with my wife Natasha, moved into a little apartment on Twenty-fourth Street and Lexington.' The young man from the outer reaches of Brooklyn had never lived in Manhattan before, and his move there was symbolic of his 'arrival' on the New York literary scene; together these events produced a 'dizzy exaltation' that was mixed with 'the direst suspicion of what might happen next.' Then, taking up roughly where he left off in his previous volume of autobiography, Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), Kazin recapitulates the five years spent in writing the ambitious book of literary history that had placed him so conspicuously on the scene at the age of twenty-seven.
Review, 3477 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |