With An American Procession, Alfred Kazin confirms a reservation in the front tier of the reviewing stand, next to his eminent predecessors Van Wyck Brooks and Edmund Wilson. I have nothing but praise for An American Procession. Alfred Kazin himself can write brilliantly, catching the ‘very essence’ of an author in an epithet or a phrase… He is a first-rate comprehender, explainer, and savorer. The power of his book lies, in the last analysis, in Mr. Kazin’s profound instinct for style.
-- Marcus Cunliffe New York Times Book Review
The Procession is wonderfully exciting to read… An authentic entrance, as Whitman called the self, to all facts.
-- Richard Howard New Republic
A sense of caring intimacy lifts Kazin’s survey above the usual inventory of masterworks… An American Procession is a refresher in the best sense… It vivaciously refreshes our awareness.
-- New Yorker
Kazin is one of the most seasoned and subtle critics of American literature. He has always balanced an awareness of the pressure of external circumstances with a sense that books are also a series of private meetings between authors and ink bottles. He sees writers as at once facing the world and facing their desks.
-- Richard Ellmann The Atlantic