The Inmost Leaf

by Alfred Kazin

Book Overview

One of America's foremost literary critics presents twenty-eight essays on American and European writers, including Joyce, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Faulkner.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156443988
• ISBN13: 9780156443982
• Release Date: November 1979
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Criticism as History

Judging from the few limp volumes representing Literary Criticism I find in most brick and mortar stores, booksellers have written off the field as unprofitable. It is true that occasionally well-known critics will have their articles from 'American Scholar' and 'Harper's Magazine' reprinted and bundled together - but those quickly make their way to the bargain bin. Apparently the LitCrit crowd isn't numerous enough to support even this meager output, and modern recreational readers evidently see little in the field to which they can relate. If the world is disinterested in Literary Criticism today (and it was probably never best-seller material), then what could a collection of critical essays dating from the Forties and Fifties have to recommend it? One answer, of course, would be that the critic had provided such a thorough exegesis of an author's work that he transcends eras - that his commentary is as pertinent today as it was sixty years ago. In Alfred Kazin's, 'The Inmost Leaf', there is at least one example of such a 'timeless' essay, "An Introduction to William Blake", which is still included in The Portable William Blake (Viking Portable Library), and which has encouraged me to seek out more of that author's poetry. But aside from Blake, most of the essays in 'The Inmost Leaf', aren't overviews of any particular author's output - instead they are critical reviews of ancillary works; of published journals, collections of letters, literary biographies, critical studies and even, in the case of Faulkner, comments during a Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Within these short reviews, Kazin contextualizes the new publication with the corresponding author's life and perhaps their more famous works, often taking the biographer or critic to task for forcing their subject to conform to new theories, or for bringing axes to grind. I found these reviews fascinating in their own right, regardless of when they were written, and would recommend them to anyone who is interested in literature and criticism. However, these essays also had a cumulative effect apart from the subject and even apart from literary criticism. To me, 'The Inmost Leaf' is also a record of its time - from a participant, rather than a historian. Too often, it's my impression (and I stress that this is my impression only) that much modern criticism, looking backward, is fixated on bending past literature into convenient forms that dovetail with current, politically correct theories; or else maligns authors for not adequately portraying its characters in a gender neutral, multi-culturally friendly manner. In his essay, 'Melville as Scripture', Mr. Kazin pointed out an early example of the first kind of dogmatic realignment, and called the author out for it. And it is the complete lack of the second sort in Mr. Kazin's writing that calls attention to its infiltration in our time. It is difficult to step outside of one's own cultural and societal norms and look at th