IDENTITY IS NO WALK IN THE PARK: RETRACING AND RECLAIMING THE SELF IN ALFRED KAZIN’S A WALKER IN THE CITY
IDENTITY IS NO WALK IN THE PARK: RETRACING AND RECLAIMING THE SELF IN ALFRED KAZIN’S A WALKER IN THE CITY

Summary/Abstract: A prominent figure of the New York intellectual scene, Alfred Kazin delves into an innovating autobiographical journey of self-defining in his 1951 A Walker in the City, retracing the steps that led him to adulthood. Unlike traditional coming-of-age memorialistic writing, Walker abides by no rigors of time or space, allowing the elasticity the genre inherently presupposed to carry the narrative in a fluid motion through a montage of sentimental, poetic snippets. The hybridity of the writing style, which defies the theoretical strictures meant to endow this highly subjective and personal genre with apparent canonical authority, mirrors the quest for reconciling and redefining the individual’s hybrid identity, away from imposed dicta, and into the new realm of hyphenation. While the child is marked by the pressure to conform and adapt, leading him away from Brownsville, seen as a hurdle to overcome in his process of fulfilling the American Dream for himself, but especially for his forerunners, the adult returns from “beyond” the borders of the neighborhood, retracing his steps, with the realization that discarding the past has left behind holes and gashes which stand in the way of self-actualization.

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