A classic interpretation of literature from America's golden age-including the work of Howells, Wharton, Lewis, Cather, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner. New Preface by the Author; Index.
Alfred Kazin Books
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic whose work often depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth-century America. His essays stemmed from a deep knowledge of history, literature, politics, and culture, expressed with great passion or disgust for what he was reading. Considered one of the "New York Intellectuals," Kazin held more moderate political views than many of his peers. His writing is characterized by a fervent engagement with the literary world and its societal implications.
Alfred Kazin's America
- 592 pages
- 21 hours of reading
“Alfred Kazin chose America as his subject, and his intellectual awakening is itself something of an American legend. . . . Ted Solotaroff’s selection of his work is a fitting tribute, a book that will be a starting point for further reading, both of Kazin and of the native writers to whom he devoted himself” — The New Yorker Over the course of 60 years, Alfred Kazin’s writings confronted virtually all of our major imaginative writers, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson to James Wright and Joyce Carol Oates and including such unexpected figures as Abraham Lincoln, William James and Thorstein Veblen. It is fair to say that he succeeded Edmund Wilson as the secretary of American letters. At the same time this son of immigrant Russian Jews wrote out of the tensions of the outsider and the astute, outspoken leftist. Editor Ted Solotaroff has selected material from Kazin’s three classic memoirs to accompany these critical writings. The excerpts include sharply etched portraits of the Brownsville, Greenwich Village, Upper West Side, and Cape Cod literary milieus and of such figures as Saul Bellow, Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson, and Hannah Arendt. Alfred Kazin's America provides an ongoing example of the spiritual freedom, individualism, and democratic contentiousness that he regarded as his heritage and endeavored to pass on.
Selected Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne
- 254 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Presents a selection of fifteen short fiction stories by nineteenth-century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did this novel receive the recognition it deserves―--and still enjoys. Having sold-to-date millions of copies worldwide, Call It Sleep is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the "dangerously imaginative" child coming of age in the slums of New York.
During his service in the Civil War a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.
Theodore Dreiser's first and perhaps most accessible novel, Sister Carrie is an epic of urban life - the story of an innocent heroine adrift in an indifferent city. When small-town girl Carrie Meeber sets out for Chicago, she is equipped with nothing but a few dollars, a certain unspoiled beauty and charm, and a pitiful lack of preparation for the complex moral choices she will face.
Un paseante en Nueva York
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Un niño, hijo de modestos trabajadores emigrantes ruso-judíos, camina por su barrio antes de cruzar el puente de Brooklyn hacia la Nueva York de los años veinte. Este viaje se convierte en un pasaje hacia el conocimiento durante su infancia y adolescencia, un tiempo propicio para los grandes descubrimientos. Kazin, crítico literario y historiador de la cultura, observa la pérdida de una voz narrativa propia del patrimonio literario judío, que, como señala su amigo Yaron Ezrahi, cultiva la soledad y la autobiografía. Retomando esta tradición, Kazin nos presenta su barrio, Brownsville, y el camino que tuvo que recorrer en solitario hacia el conocimiento: libros, lengua, literatura, música, metafísica, política, la ciudad y el mundo. Carson McCullers reconoció la obra como una maestra. Kazin, nacido en Brooklyn en 1915, estudió en el City College de Nueva York y en la Universidad de Columbia. Su carrera abarcó clases en Harvard y Berkeley, así como numerosos artículos y libros de crítica literaria y autobiográficos. Asociado a los New York Intellectuals, mantuvo una larga amistad con Hannah Arendt. Tras cinco años de investigación, escribió "On Native Grounds", el primer estudio serio de la literatura americana de 1890 a 1940. Recibió el premio Truman Capote en 1996 por su labor crítica.
