Perspective

"Kafka Was the Rage - A Greenwich Village Memoir" is written in the first person narrative. It is the recollections of the author's life as a young man just returning from World War II and anxious to move into the Greenwich Village scene. The author, Anatole Broyard, in later years became a literary critic for The New York Times. The only bias that could be associated with this work is that the splendor and excitement of the Village was seen through the filter of an impressionable and idealistic young man.

That Broyard was enraptured with both the Village community and scene and the popular literature and authors of the day is obvious from his emphasis and focus on these two areas. Along with being a literary critic, Broyard also authored other works including "Aroused by Books," "Men, Women and Other Anticlimaxes," and Intoxicated by My Illness." The account...