Appetites and resentments

According to Richard M. Cook, who is Alfred Kazin’s biographer as well as the editor of his journals, the nearly 600 pages of entries assembled in this book represent only one sixth of the total mass Kazin deposited in the archives of the New York Public Library.

According to Richard M. Cook, who is Alfred Kazin’s biographer as well as the editor of his journals, the nearly 600 pages of entries assembled in this book represent only one sixth of the total mass Kazin deposited in the archives of the New York Public Library. Kazin himself hoped to bring forth an edition of the journals, evidence of the pride he took in the observations, impressions, enthusiasms, speculations, sexual conquests and competitive urges he recorded several mornings a week, scribbling in bed as well as ‘on the subway, the train, and the plane’, with the gusto of one convinced that ‘the pouring river of all [my] associations’ formed the true record not only of his life but also of his life’s work.