An American Procession
Published on 1. March 1996
Book
Paperback/Softback
420 pages
978-0-674-03143-2 (ISBN)
Description
In this illuminating study of the "crucial century" (1830-1930), Alfred Kazin views the major figures in American writing, beginning in the 1830s when Ralph Waldo Emerson founded a national literature on the basis of a religious revolution, and ending on the eve of the 1930s with modernism-Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, Fitzgerald-and with the revelation of the "postponed power" of those who had been modern before their time-Henry Adams, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.
Reviews / Votes
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 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-03143-2 (9780674031432)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author and editor of many books, including A Writer's America: Landscape in American Literature.