March 12, 2004
Kazin on 1930s New York
This week I tore through a paperback copy of Alfred Kazin's Starting Out in the Thirties, the second volume of his memoirs. (The first was A Walker in the City.) It's an engaging read, set up as a series of portraits that more or less alternate between family, loved ones, and his peers in intellectual and literary circles. It is a selective account of the period, to be sure, but an entertaining one. Here's a nice passage, in the chapter devoted to 1936:
I had a lot of time to kill in those days, and vaguely looking for jobs, picking up books to review and manuscripts to rewrite, I wandered about the midtown streets, more and more fascinated with the great crowds adrift on Broadway all day long. In the unnatural blaze of lights over Times Square marquees at eight in the morning, there were already lines of men waiting outside the burlesque houses, and in the smoky balconies of Forty-second Street, where they specialized in triple features and where I often spent half the night, people sat glued together in a strange suspension, not exactly aware of each other, but depending on each other's presence.... I could feel myself just about ready to give up and let go. I could feel the pressure of all those crowds aimlessly filling up Times Square all day long. Everything was suddenly adrift.... I was still trying to fit things together in my own way...."
A fun fact I picked up from the book: The New Republic offices were at that time located in a building I now pass half a dozen times a week: 421 W. 21st St.