An American Procession [Paperback]

Alfred Kazin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

With An American Procession, Alfred Kazin confirms a reservation in the front tier of the reviewing stand, next to his eminent predecessors Van Wyck Brooks and Edmund Wilson. I have nothing but praise for An American Procession. Alfred Kazin himself can write brilliantly, catching the 'very essence' of an author in an epithet or a phrase...He is a first-rate comprehender, explainer, and savorer. The power of his book lies, in the last analysis, in Mr. Kazin's profound instinct for style.
--Marcus Cunliffe (New York Times Book Review )

The Procession is wonderfully exciting to read...An authentic entrance, as Whitman called the self, to all facts.
--Richard Howard (New Republic )

A sense of caring intimacy lifts Kazin's survey above the usual inventory of masterworks...An American Procession is a refresher in the best sense...It vivaciously refreshes our awareness. (New Yorker )

Kazin is one of the most seasoned and subtle critics of American literature. He has always balanced an awareness of the pressure of external circumstances with a sense that books are also a series of private meetings between authors and ink bottles. He sees writers as at once facing the world and facing their desks.
--Richard Ellmann (The Atlantic )

About the Author

Alfred Kazin is Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author and editor of many books, including, most recently, A Writer's America: Landscape in American Literature.

Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674031431
• ISBN-13: 978-0674031432
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,976,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Major American Writers from 1850 to 1930, March 7, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: An American Procession (Paperback)

Kazin writes about what he calls the crucial century of American Literature from 1850 to 1930. He starts off with Emerson and writes about Thoreau, Hawthorne and Poe, Whitman, Lincoln, Melville, Twain, James, Dreiser, Adams , Crane ,Eliot, Pound, Faulkner and Hemingway.

It does not seem to me that he breaks major critical new ground in this work, but rather provides informative readings of each individual writer.

A few samples follow in order to provide a sense of how the work truly reads.

"Emerson with his invincible belief that the universe is on man's side and that there is " compensation" for our losses, remained lofty spiritual in his tastes." p.29

"Each sentence is, as usual with Thoreau, an absolute in itself, each is a distillation of the most powerful feelings." p. 77

About Hawthorne reflecting on himself. "So much solitude lived in anxious self- confrontation and self- study meant a totally inferior life."

About Melville. " Vehement in thought he had to go to the limit in book after book, pitting himself against ' the fates.'His first and lasting image of the self was heroic, scornfully independent of the suffering that came with his sense of constant struggle. His life was as tumultuously up and down as his work."

For lovers of American literature this book is a must read.