Alfred Kazin

Alfred Kazin (June 5, 1915 – June 5, 1998) was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America.

Like many of the other New York Intellectuals, Alfred Kazin was the son of Jewish immigrants, born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and a graduate of the City College of New York. However, his politics were more moderate than most of the New York Intellectuals, many of whom were socialists.

Kazin was deeply affected by his peers' subsequent disillusion with liberalism. Adam Kirsch writes in The New Republic that "having invested his romantic self-image in liberalism, Kazin perceived abandonment of liberalism by his peers as an attack on his identity".

He wrote out of a great passion—or great disgust—for what he was reading and embedded his opinions in a deep knowledge of history, both literary history and politics and culture. In 1996 he was awarded the first Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award in Literary Criticism, which carries a cash reward of $100,000. The only other person to have won the award is George Steiner.

Kazin was friends with Hannah Arendt.

His son is historian and Dissent co-editor Michael Kazin. His daughter is Cathrael Kazin, Chief Academic Officer of College for America at Southern New Hampshire University. Kazin was married four times and is survived by his widow, the writer Judith Dunford.

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