The Author (Alfred Kazin)

The book's author, the "walker" of the title, never describes either his present day self, or how he actually left the community where he grew up (Brownsville - see "Objects / Places"), a place that, as he himself suggests, everyone who lived there wanted to leave. Instead, he concentrates his attention on his reactions and experiences upon going back (something he apparently does repeatedly), experiences which, perhaps strangely, seem anchored in a certain sense of loss and longing, of nostalgia and of sadness. Specifically, the author's descriptions of his youth and experiences convey the impression that while his adult self has gained distance from, and perspective on, the physical, emotional and spiritual circumstances of his youth, there is something about those circumstances, and the resultant life he lived, that he, as an adult, regrets leaving behind.

This sense of loss gives the memoir, as uplifting and...