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Colleagues, family recall life of N.Y. writer Kazin
SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - In his last weeks of life, Alfred Kazin was still reading with passion, discussing books with friends who'd visit in the hospital, thinking about the book he still wanted to write. The author of "A Walker in the City," a keen observer of New York, could no longer walk, but this mind was ever curious.
The author of 13 non-fiction books and editor of 10 literary collections, Kazin died of cancer on June 5, his 83rd birthday, in his Upper West Side apartment. Born to Russian immigrant parents - his father was a house painter and his mother a dressmaker - in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the distinguished literary critic had a career spanning more than 60 years.
In 1934, while a student at City College, Kazin began writing for The New York Times Book Review. His first book, "On Native Grounds," about American literature, was published in 1942 and remains in print. Other books include works of criticism like "An American Procession" and memoirs "Starting Out in the 30's" and "New York Jew." His latest book, "God and the American Writer" was published last year.
While writing, he taught at many universities here and abroad. Since 1973, he has been a distinguished professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "He was a unique figure among New York Jewish intellectuals," Morris Dickstein, a critic and colleague at the Graduate Center, comments. "Early on, he was strongly interested in American culture when others were more interested in Europe, and he was interested in his Jewish background when other intellectuals looked toward the mainstream."
Kazin's daughter Cathrael, a lawyer and former professor of English who moved to Jerusalem two years ago, describes him as "the last of this great line of men of letters. There is no one with his hugeness of vision."
Michael Kazin, the writer's son who is an author and professor of history at American University, notes that his father's "great gift was to write about novelists with the lyricism of a novelist."
Kazin's sister Pearl Bell, also a writer and literary critic, says that he was never close to Judaism as a religion, but long interested in Jewish culture.
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