SOURCE: A review of A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment, in America, Vol. 174, No. 9, March 16, 1996, pp. 19-20.

[In the following excerpt, Samwa applauds A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment.]

[I]n A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment, Alfred Kazin uses many lenses to record the events of his life in the journals he kept 1915, the son of Russian immigrants, Kazin is known both for his literary and critical books, notably On Native Grounds (1942) and A Walker in the City (1951), and his editions of works of William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anne Frank, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman. Kazin's honest voice, its exquisite timbre and richness, becomes a remarkable guide, and though we might feel dislocated, we are always amazed by what we see and learn, whether it be a symphony hall in postwar Germany, where Kazin, just after visiting a camp for displaced persons, once listened to a...