A Walker in the City

I didn't exactly enjoy "A Walker in the City" but I'm glad that it exists. If nothing else, it effectively preserves the author's memories of growing up in the poor Jewish section of Brownsville, Brooklyn in the twenties and thirties, and that's not nothing. Kazin writes both vividly and sentimentally, if not particularly economically, and the book might be called, in a narrow way, a success. Readers interested in the works of say, Mailer, Roth and Bellow might find something of interest here, although it should be noted that Kazin seems to have grown up significantly poorer than most of their characters -- middle-class Jews lived about a neighborhood away from his family. Kazin's a bit unlike them in temperament, too, resembling -- as show more another reviewer has noted -- nobody so much as the shy, sensitive narrator of Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep." This, and the highly constricted artistic elitism that Kazin grows into as a teenager may not endear him to every reader. Nor will his penchant for nostalgia, which seems to have formed early -- many of these walks around New York were made while looking for the vanished, grimy, gas-lit New York of an earlier era. In truth, "A Walker in the City" works best as a collection of lovely images and sentences. There's a bit of Joycean rapture here, but little narrative push. Still, I hardly minded, even though the book put me to sleep on more than one occasion. Certain audiences, though, may really like this one more than I did. show less

A quick read, filled with longing reminiscences and elegant prose, A WALKER IN THE CITY has been on my long-range to-read list for probably fifty years, ever since I heard it lavishly praised by some of my favorite profs in grad school. And now, after waiting so long, the actual reading seems a bit anticlimactic, as some of Kazin's memories seem only 'quaint,' by today's standards. But Alfred Kazin's memories of growing up poor, and a stutterer, in Brooklyn's Jewish ghetto of Brownsville, are still pretty darned interesting, conveying all the sights, sounds and smells of the tenements, the markets, the street vendors and the old wooden synagogue.

Kazin's memories range from his childhood through adolescence, when sex, he learned -

"... show more in the 'Coney Island' dives, outside the school, was like going to the toilet ... Sex was a grim test where sooner or later you would have to prove yourself doing things to women."

Kazin's stories almost immediately reminded me of Henry Roth's classic novel of that same era, CALL IT SLEEP, which I did read during grad school, as well as some of Philip Roth's early works, especially his coming-of-age novel, LETTING GO.

I especially enjoyed the final piece where Alfred ventured out of Brownsville, discovered a much larger public library, and began devouring books by Blake, Whitman, Hemingway, O'Neill and countless other great writers that I would be discovering myself 30-40 years later.

A very good book that has stayed in print for nearly 70 years now. I'm glad I finally read it. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Hailed by people whose opinion I respect as one of the greatest of all memoirs; I'm not in a position to judge, since I probably haven't read as many as those who confidently make such pronouncements. But I'm glad they pointed me toward this; it is very, very good.

From another time and place, but still relevant for understanding NYC, Brooklyn and the immigrant experience in the early part of the 20th Century. History, commentary, almost a stream of consciousness.

Not bad; a well-told tale of childhood in a particular place and time and culture.

After 38 pages, I gave up on this classic memoir of the author's Brownsville (Brooklyn) childhood. Just couldn't get into it.