A Walker in the City Re-visited

One of my favorite books about NYC (and the inspiration for the title of this blog) is A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin. Kazin was one of the 20th century's great critics of American literature and he continued to write essays and memoirs until his death in 1998. This memoir of his childhood and adolescence in Brooklyn's Brownsville was first published as a series of New Yorker pieces and then put out as a collection in 1951.
Here's what I love about this book: Kazin has a way of putting you in a place - through the images, sounds, even the smells - that is so vivid and sensual. He is an excellent listener and captures his characters' eccentricities. For example, he describes how Communists and Socialists pronounce the word "Negro" differently - with the Communists showing a pride of ownership of the term, because they have made the Negro part of their cause. That is a very subtle distinction.
Kazin loves his parents very much - his often unemployed house painter father and his dressmaking mother are very sympathetically presented. Despite their struggle for money (much of the book takes place during the Great Depression) they are able to put out a very good Sabbath dinner. It is rare for an author to admit he actually cares for his parents. He also loves Brownsville, although he is learning how much more there is to the world than his familiar tenements and pushcarts.
The most lyrical part of the book comes at the end - when Kazin walks across his neighborhood to visit a nearby library. Finally, he escorts a girl to a park that overlooks distant Manhattan. You know that that is where his future lies, but you sense his ambivalence at leaving the Brownsville he has chronicled so completely and beautifully.