Keith Gessen writes:

Richard Cook’s very thorough biography of Kazin is a tale told in book reviews. In some sense it’s a warning against writing too many of them: we learn from Cook of Kazin’s perennial frustration at his inability to complete longer works while eking out a living reviewing anything that moved for the New Republic, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times Book Review, then Commentary, the New Yorker, the American Scholar, and on and on. The book review turns out to be the family business: Kazin’s sister Pearl also became a notable reviewer. There is a very funny description, in Starting Out, of sitting on the ‘mourner’s bench’ at the New Republic offices on West 21st Street, with the other freelancers, all of them lean and hungry – it was the Depression – waiting for Malcolm Cowley, the literary editor, to come along and hand out some books for review. Perhaps Kazin’s inability to turn down an assignment was a legacy of this Depression-era experience: economic life was precarious, and you never knew if they’d ask again.

(LRB 19 June 2008)

Yale | hardback 452 pp. |ISBN: 9780300115055