Although he was considered during his lifetime to be a profoundly radical thinker, Emerson, the Transcendentalist chief, after his death, was soon reinterpreted as a bland Bostonian Brahmin, a mystic anarchist who was only brave on paper. It cannot be denied that his philosophy of a joyful and affirmationist acceptance of life, and of nature, his anti-slavery activities, his attacks on the state and on the sensualism of bourgeois society, could have easily provided the formula for a complete overthrow of the moral order of his time. His libertarian thrust, his serene integrity, his indefatiguable optimism and common sense, however, will continue to find admirers, notwithstanding the fact that political identifications have changed and emphases have shifted, or otherwise one can simply enjoy the polished beauty of his prose style. Though by no means a deep thinker, Emerson's brilliantly epigrammatic, allusive, declamatory, pithy style provides instances where the reader may extrapolate a number of meanings from even the shortest utterances, and it is due to this quality, perhaps, that the Emerson enigma came into being, enabling him to appeal to such numerous and diverse temperaments. His best essays include "The Over-Soul", "Compensation", "Self-Reliance" and "Manners", in which he preaches, in the rhetorical manner reminiscent of his background as a Unitarian minister, his ideals of contenment, joy, independence and self-confidence -- tonics of the soul.

If I could create my ideal afterlife or heaven, I would wish to be forever cradled in the gentle arms and soothing prose of Emerson. Who needs prozac or any psychiatry for that matter when we have access to such beautiful writing?

If ever there was a man fit to work a suicide hotline, it is Ralph Waldo Emerson. If ever an author is to have a positive effect on one's life, this man is certainly the foremost candidate. Emerson's essays radiate optimism and preach self-confidence; his works contain some of the best lessons one could ever hope to learn and, at the same time, are some of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. Like Tombstone's Doc Holiday, every sentence Emerson offers is quotable. Make no mistake, though, Emerson's words are of a completely different brand than those echoing quotes that decorate hollow speeches; an Emerson quote has meat. In every sentence one can find his complete philosophy, much like, as he writes in The Over-Soul, "One blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless circulation through all." One's memory of Emerson's entire teachings can be refreshed in a single phrase, but one can never see the genius in his writing without having grasped it in the first place. That is precisely why I would consider offering a Cliff's Notes-type summary of any of Emerson's works one of the gravest literary crimes. Apart from the impossibility of the task, any so-called shortcut would rob the reader of those self-revelations - which are the essence of the Emerson experience - that can only be reached by trudging alone through the depths of the material. The reading is challenging. Each sentence takes on a different meaning upon re-examinations, be they consecutive or periodic. In the first reading, one may be struck by a certain passage's theme or imagery. Upon reading over it seconds later, one may discover a subtle metaphor, and a third reading my suggest another, even-deeper meaning, all of which may be replaced by the impressions of a fourth glance some two or three weeks later. The material is timeless, accommodating the evolving individual as well as the ever-changing human race. We must be careful, though, not to be lulled into the cult-mentality of using Emerson's writings as an instruction manual for our own lives. To do so would be to undermine his entire message. The fruit of the Emerson experience is gaining the self-trust, or Self-Reliance, necessary to follow our own hearts, make our own decisions, and say, with confidence, "Hey, I know what I'm doing."

"Jews without money" seems to me far more remarkable for its political positions than for its writing. Gold is, to put it bluntly, not a particularly skilled wordsmith. His limitations are obvious from the first page. Nevertheless this novel/memoir makes for fascinating reading. The book consists of a series of loosely connected vignettes from the life of a child growing up in the Lower East Side at the turn of the century. Gold wants to capture the sights and smells and sensations of that world, and while his prose is not quite up to the task, the reader still comes away powerfully moved.

What seems to be unique about Gold's account is his political bent. Rather than softening or sentimentalizing his experiences, he picks at scabs and pulls back the curtain to reveal horrors to his readers. As a devoted socialist, he wants to expose the evils of unrestrained capitalism. What that means for him is, rather than denying anti-Semitic stereotypes, he revels in them. Gold he wants the reader to understand that they are the result, not of Jewish culture, but of the effects of American ghetto poverty upon the Jews of his neighborhood. Povery, he aruges, turns potential into corruption. His is a world in which people will do anything for a few pennies, often all that stands between them and starvation. On the other hand, his world is also populated by characters who remain strong despite their suffering: his mother, who would rather go hungry than see a stranger starve; the foolish store-owner, who loses her livelihood because she cannot stand to turn away the poor. There are also desperate prostitutes, rapacious pawn brokers, crooked businessmen, and dreamers and schemers of all sorts.

This book lacks the literary ambition of Henry Roth's "Call it Sleep" or the narrative power of Abraham Cahan's "Rise of David Levinsky" (in my opinion, the finest novel ever about the Jewish immigrant experience). This is a political tract, and sometimes its dogma is rather irritating, even offensive. Nevertheless, it is a significant and important document of early 20th-century Jewish culture, and deserves to be read.

This is a masterpiece that has lost none of its power since it was first published 70 years ago. The book hooks you from the first paragraph and never lets go.

The only thing marring this important work is the introduction by Alfred Kazin which maligns the novel and Michael Gold and leaves the reader wondering if the publisher is really trying to promote the book. The introduction probably is the result of old grudges from bygone politically motivated "cultural wars" between Jewish writers. The author's widow was deeply upset by the underhanded and cowardly introduction.

Originally a series of three lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 1994, divided as before.during/after the war (WWII), this book covers a lot of ground in 152 small pages. He mixes his own life from being a scrambling book reviewer during the Depression, to being some kind of cultural attaché to the US military machine in England during and immediately after World War II, to being a literature professor at various Eastern Seaboard Universities after it with analyses of many writers., many of whom he knew, and about whom he supplies insightful recollections .

Although it sounds patently implausible, Kazin has interesting things to say about Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Hart Crane, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Czeslaw Milosz, Edwin Muir, Flannery O'Connor, George Orwell, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry Roth, Delmore Schwartz, Allen Tate, Simone Weil, Edmund Wilson, Richard Wright and/or their writings in this short space (originally, short time), along with apposite quotations from Flaubert and Proust, and reflections on Mark Rothko.

The vignettes and condensed analyses are pithy, but I don't really understand how Kazin supposed they cohered, or what their cumulative point is. I think that the past tense of the title contrasts with more recent worship of theory and political correctness instead of contemplating the universes written in what was the canon of the 1950s (with Eliot expelled, Wright and Milosz added). Kazin was an engaging mandarin, judging by his performance here, as well as from his longer books.

I can only add my voice to the words of the previous reviewer; I think this wonderful book endears itself immediately to most readers simply by being so humble. Kazin mourns the current state of literary academia, in which it seems that criticism can exist only as a political philosophy or as an elitist game of celebrity-making. Rather, Kazin aspires to (and fondly remembers) literary criticism as a effort of love by one writer for another. As he says in this book, "what brings us closer to a work of art is not instruction, but another work of art."

If you love books, and especially if you dislike the elitism of the academic establishment, you will love Kazin. "Writing Was Everything" is also a great introduction to Kazin. It is very slim--I read it in one sitting--and is very readable, as it is as much autobiography as academic cri de coeur. Even this short work is peppered with pithy insights, and is helpful in understanding a number of the important novelists and poets of our time. "Writing Was Everything" is well worth the few hours it takes to read, and will likely be your invitation to reading others of Kazin's works.

Alfred Kazin's death last year robbed America of a rare character in the world of arts and letters: a humble critic. WRITING WAS EVERYTHING offers the reader a glimpse of that wonderful mind that spoke to the reader, not to the theorist. Kazin mourned the days when litersture "was held sacred". This delightful little book is the perfect summation of a near perfect observer of American writing.

I initially read the entire trilogy, U. S. A. by John Dos Passos, as a soldier in Vietnam, in June and July of 1969. Reading the two earlier volumes on America's lofty aims and actual experiences in World War One and the economic boom which followed it in the United States helped me try to imagine what my life would be like, as I faced growing old in a country which increasingly depended upon its global dominance for its style of life. Volume 3, THE BIG MONEY, ended this gigantic series with a political point of view that stuck with me more than any of the fictional parts of this novel. A look at the Contents in the sample pages gives some indication of the other tidbits in this trilogy, Newsreels, popular songs, and short bioographies, which make the composition of this trilogy unique.

Of the biographies, I would consider "The Bitter Drink" on Veblen the most intellectual item in THE BIG MONEY, and my best introduction to how Socrates ended up drinking the hemlock. Most biographies were about people who were so famous that they might still be remembered. "Tin Lizzie" is a life of Henry Ford. "Poor Little Rich Boy" was William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner whose father died in Washington, a senator, but who was only elected to the House of Representatives, where he justified his politics with, "you know where I stand on personal fortunes, but isn't it better that I should represent in this country the dissatisfied than have somebody else do it who might not have the same real property relations that I have?" However familiar this might sound today, Dos Passos wrote that "his affairs were in such a scramble he had trouble borrowing a million dollars, and politically he was ratpoison." The biography of Hearst is at page 375 in the paperback which is currently available, a few pages after "The Camera Eye (50) they have clubbed us off the streets" (p. 371) which says:

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants

they have built the electricchair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

The final nonfiction biography in THE BIG MONEY is called "Power Superpower" on page 420. Samuel Insull had been learning shorthand "and jotting down the speeches in PARLIAMENT for the papers" before he came to American in 1881 to be Edison's personal secretary. As president of Chicago Edison Company after 1892, "If anybody didn't like what Samuel Insull did he was a traitor." The part I liked best was after the stockmarket crash, when there were accounting problems involving a number of companies. "He held directorates in eightyfive companies, he was chairman of sixtyfive, president of eleven: it took him three hours to sign his resignations." When "Revolt against the moneymanipulators was in the air," he ran off and extradition proceedings involved at least four countries to bring him back to Chicago for a trial. So, "With voices choked with emotion headliners of Chicago business told from the witnessstand how much Insull had done for business in Chicago. There wasn't a dry eye in the jury." The result was different from the trial of Socrates in Athens a few thousand years earlier, and I think Insull had a better retirement than Socrates asked his friends to provide if they had to pay a fine for him. Maybe we are better off than some people. Read this book anyway.

The Big Money is a great work that exposes the American Dream as a destructive race towards an explosive jumping off point. Whichever way we make the money, it will end in devouring the part of us that was never mercenary. I'm a big fan of John Dos Passos, but I have to admit that if you aren't the type of reader who likes to visualize written images, his writing would be pretty wasted on you.

This book is just perfect. It's very well written. Conrad shows an understanding of the predicament of women of his time. Conrad advances the plot though the voice of the characters, who tell a story, which involves another character telling a story, etc. At one point the tale is six levels deep; but such is the skill of Conrad that you do not notice and are never lost. One of Conrad's two or three best. A book I was sad to end because I was enjoying it so much.

I cannot believe that there are no customer reviews already for this spectacular novel - full of intruiging situations and wonderful characters - certainly the best Conrad female character I have read. Conrad is a wonderful writer in style and the manner in which he tells a yarn - how then has this novel become so 'lost'? It has wonderful lines ('Don't be in a hurry to thank me,' says he. 'The voyage isn't finished yet.' p22 Oxford World Classics), great insights (women respond to the smallest things, which immediately had me nodding in agreement from my own experience), spectacular descriptions ('Yes, I gave up the walk [along a cliff top with the intention of killing herself],' she said slowly before raising her downcast eyes. When she did so it was with an extraordinary effect. It was like catching sight of a piece of clear blue sky, of a stretch of open water. And for a moment I understood the desire of that man to whom the sea ans sky of his solitary life had appeared suddenly incomplete without that glance which seemed to belong to both of them. p231). The characters are admirable in behaviour sometimes, victims sometimes, regrettable in behaviour sometimes, or just plain confused - just like real people. But one thing I really like is the way the narrator of the story is an observer, barely a participant of the events being described.

This may not be the perfect novel, but I urge you not to miss it. The chapter 'On the Pavement' by itself is worth the read!

Heine has been sadly neglected over the years in favor of more "modern" poets Holderlin and Rilke, even though in many ways Heine is as modern as either. He may be the greatest German prose stylist (as Nietszche thought), and his poetry though very lyrical is never banal or lacking in profundity. This edition in Continuum's German series is excellent, with a sampling of Heine's broad poetic output - with, of course, some omissions, most notably 'Songs of Creation' and 'Morphine.' Also included are Heine's unique satires of travelogue, 'The Harz Journey' and 'Ideas - Book Le Grand,' which consist of poetic interludes, many comic episodes, but also some truly beautiful passages concerning the nature of human existence. Finally, one of Heine's most masterful poems, the epic 'Germany: A Winter's Tale', is also included, rounding out this well-selected anthology of one of the essential German - and world - writers.

Heinrich Heine is one of the most lovable writers in European literature. A German of Jewish origin who lived from 1797 to 1856, he regarded himself as the last romantic writer. That shows in his poetry: Very often they begin like usual romantic poems, describing a woman watching the sunset by the seaside for example; but then Heine comes up with a bitterly ironic twist, telling the said lady not to worry as there is nothing unusual about the sunset, the sun always disappears over there and comes back from the other side... Heine is passionately in love with romanticism, Germany and Judaism, but that doesn't keep him from seeing the objects of his love as they really are, he manages to be enchanted by illusion and disillusioned at the same time. That's what makes him such fun to read. His work is somewhat uneven (so it's best to start with a selection like this one), but I always felt that he is the kind of person I would love to be my friend. Heine is never boring. - Apart from that he is second only to Goethe among the best of German poets.

This book without a doubt is the best book I have read ever.
Its clear and simple english make it a breath of freshair
to read.

Lets just look at one sentence:
"Everytime I go back to brownsville its as if I had never
been away"

One of the most respected literary critics this country has produced, Kazin made a significant contribution to the literature of the American immigrant with "Walker in the City." This demanding autobiography of his youth in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn vividly recreates the life of pre-Depression and Depression Jews for whom Manhattan, though just miles away, represented a faraway land filled with mystery and fear.

It is the world outside of Brownsville that looms over the book and the spirit of its narrator. Kazin successfully captures the yearning for new experiences that filled his heart as he grew up in the streets. It was that yearning that led him to the public library and ultimately across the bridges and out of the Brooklyn borough. It was also that yearning that made him wonder about a world that was not filled with Jews.

The mystery of the lands that lay beyond Brownsville's streets fills the book with a sense of tension. We can almost feel the young Kazin's heart burst as he begins to sense the vastness of the world. "Beyond! Beyond!" the narrator shouts, and prose turns into poetry in many passages of the book as he seeks to express the mixture of fear and exhiliration stirring within him.

One chapter, "The Kitchen," has been frequently anthologized, and rightfully so. It is a meditation on the room in which his mother spent much of her time working on the sewing she took in to make extra money. In the end, his mother's constant pounding on the foot treadle of the sewing machine comes to the author to represent the fire burning within her -- to achieve, to make a better life for her son, to survive in a strange new land where this exiled Jewish woman is once again a stranger.

This is a great book that deserves a vast readership. Though not a novel, it takes its place next to "The Rise of David Levinsky" and "Call It Sleep" as a masterpiece of immigrant and Jewish/American literature.

Have you ever driven down a back road and noticed one of those old shifting-to-the-side-run-down houses? Have you wondered about the folks whose footfalls used to creak the floors, whose faces used to be framed inside the now windowless panes? Jeanne Robert Foster's stories and poems, while written about the people, poverty, and places of the remote Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, give voice to themes which are universal and timeless. Jeanne's own story began in 1879 in the Great North Woods. She became a model for Charles Dana Gibson and Harrison Fisher, an art agent for John Quinn who was the promoter of the famous Armory Show of 1913, a writer/editor for Albert Shaw, as well an advocate for housing for the poor and elderly. She was a woman who touched many lives including that of the editor of ADIRONDACK PORTRAITS: A Piece of Time, Noel Reidinger Johnson whose labor of love made this volume possible. For more information about Foster, watch for future publication of her biography by Janice Huddleston Londraville.

This is an excellent review of the literature of the late 19th century up until the first third or so of the 20th. It is written with the purpose of finding a higher meaning to the changes undergoing literature during this time period, and Kazin does a remarkable job of keeping this long book interesting. The book helped me understand how many of my favorite authors fit into the 'grand scheme of literature' as well as how authors and individual books fit into political and social history. It was also useful for discovering new authors that I may like to read someday. I would recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in literature.

The best of William Blake (and then some!), taken off the shelf, dusted off and propped up for the rest of eternity to consider. From the aphorisms of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (required reading) to the later prophetic books, it's Blake in all of his...Blakeness. And let's give a hand to Kazin for his fantastic Introduction to one of the heavy-hitters of the Western tradition.