Title: Writing Was Everything (Repr of 1995 Ed)
First published: April 1, 1999
Description: A deft blend of autobiography, history, and criticism that moves from New York in the 1930s to wartime England to the postwar South, Writing Was Everything emerges as a reaffirmation of literature in an age of deconstruction and critical dogma. In his encounters with books, Kazin shows us how great writing matters and how it involves us morally, socially, and personally on the deepest level.

Whether reflecting on modernism, southern fiction, or black, Jewish, and New Yorker writing, or sharing anecdotes about Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, and John Cheever, he gives a penetrating, moving account of literature observed and lived. In his life as a critic, Kazin personifies the lesson that living and writing are necessarily intimate.
Subjects: United states, civilization, New York Times reviewed, Criticism, Theory, Critics, Intellectual life, History and criticism, American literature, Biography, History, United states, intellectual life, Criticism, united states, American literature, history and criticism
Places: United States
People: Alfred Kazin (1915-)
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS29.K38 A3 1995