A Walker in the City

Alfred Kazin

Nov 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Steven Jay Cohen

About this audiobook

A literary icon's "singular and beautiful" memoir of growing up as a first-generation Jewish American in Brownsville, Brooklyn (The New Yorker). A classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century, A Walker in the City is a tour of tenements, subways, and synagogues-but also a universal story of the desires and fears we experience as we try to leave our small, familiar neighborhoods for something new. With vivid imagery and sensual detail-the smell of half-sour pickles, the dry rattle of newspapers, the women in their shapeless flowered housedresses-Alfred Kazin recounts his boyhood walks through this working-class community, and his eventual foray across the river to "the city," the mysterious, compelling Manhattan, where treasures like the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum beckoned. Eventually, he would travel even farther, building a life around books and language and literature and exploring all that the world had to offer.

About the author

Alfred Kazin, the author of numerous books of criticism, taught at Harvard and Smith College.

Steven Jay Cohen has been telling stories his whole life, and has worked professionally as a storyteller since 1991. A classically trained actor, he has worked both on stage and behind the microphone for most of his career. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Steven now resides in scenic western Massachusetts.