 1951 cover | |
| Author | Alfred Kazin |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Harcourt |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 9780156941761 |
A Walker in the City is the 1951 memoir by New York intellectual, writer and literary critic, Alfred Kazin. Kazin writes about his childhood in the then-Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville in Brooklyn. It was followed by the memoirs, Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978).
It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1952. [1] The New York Times book reviewer, Orville Prescott, praised the book: "As a work of descriptive, emotional, lyrical writing, "A Walker in the City" is good. Mr. Kazin has recorded the sordid and unpleasant as well as the colorful and touching. He makes you feel the summer heat and taste the Jewish foods and smell the odors of Brownsville in the Nineteen Twenties and the first year or two of the depression." [2] Canadian Jewish writer, Mordecai Richler was also complimentary, describing it as "splendid... a book I still cherish." [3]
David Daiches also published a favorable review in Commentary : "Its relish of sensation projects the very quality of living in that way at that time in that atmosphere, and the underlying theme of the development of a boy’s sensitivity—of his responses to his neighborhood, to his city, to his country, as well as to his Jewishness and his Jewish past—enriches the narrative so that it becomes more than a sociological picture and more than a study in mood: it becomes a contribution both to Americana and to Judaica." [4]
In 2013 it was included in Tablet magazine's "101 Great Jewish Books" list. [5]
Saul Bellow was a Canadian–American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.
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Brownsville is a residential neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn in New York City. The neighborhood is generally bordered by Crown Heights to the northwest; Bedford–Stuyvesant and Cypress Hills to the north; East New York to the east; Canarsie to the south; and East Flatbush to the west.
Fredrick Newton Arvin was an American literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors.
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic. He wrote often about the immigrant experience in early twentieth-century America. He published a series of memoirs, including A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978).
Call It Sleep is a 1934 novel by Henry Roth. The book is about a young boy growing up in the Jewish immigrant ghetto of New York's Lower East Side in the early 20th century.
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