SOURCE: "The Great Reminiscer," in New York Times Book Review, September 3, 1995, pp. 6-7.

[Atlas is an American editor and author of Delmore Schwartz: The Life of An American Poet. In the following review, he offers a generally favorable assessment of Writing Was Everything.]

Alfred Kazin is our grand old man of letters, supreme keeper of the now-flickering literary flame. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in June, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York devoted a whole day to well-attended lectures and tributes celebrating his contribution to American letters, concluding with a spirited address by the guest of honor.

Prolific, indefatigable, ambitious on a scale that seems quaint in this day of academic specialization, Mr. Kazin has never been one to bore his readers with detail. He prefers the sprawling canvas, the hard-to-categorize narrative that mingles scholarship and reminiscence, polemic and personal history. He...