Saturday, October 15, 2011

Alfred Kazin--Still Unruly and Pompous and Aggressive--and Never a Real Scholar

TLS 7 October 2011

My diaries are indeed devoid of respect for Kazin, who pontificated about poetry being only a sideline of Melville's and something he was not very good at. I may transcribe the notes I made then, in 1997.



7 October 2011


In the next week's TLS Robert Alter takes issue with what Leader says about his role in a passage in Kazin's journals.

2 comments:

  1. From diary: Kazin = like . . . become senile--knows a little rumor & thinks it is truth--contemptuous of M's "sideline" of poetry--So I had to straighten him out. Paul was fine . . . . Paul brought up Weaver's record of his mother's bad breath and I confessed that in 1967 I had suppressed that bit.

    FOR WHAT I QUOTED FROM KAZIN IN "MELVILLE: THE MAKING OF THE POET" I GOT A VIDEOTYPE AND TRANSCRIBED EXACTLY.

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  2. http://blithespirit.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/todays-chuckle/#comment-9024

    Here is Jim Bowman's sweet comment on this piece.

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