God and the American Writer

The famous American critic, Alfred Kazin, explores in this book various ideas of God and religion in the works of major American writers. The book is not limited to novelists but includes considerations of poets, essayists, philosophers, and Presidents as well. The book begins with the Puritan period of Jonathan Edwards and Anne Bradstreet and concludes with a glance at Thomas Pynchon and John Updike. There are chapters on Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Melville Whitman, Lincoln, Dickinson, William James, Mark Twain, T.S. Elliot, Frost, and Faulkner.Although the book describes many American approaches to religion, it is not until near its end that Kazin offers something of a definition of what he thinks the search is about. Kazin writes (p. 236) "I think of religion as the most intimate expression of the human heart, as the most secret of personal confessions, where we admit to ourselves alone our fears and our losses, our sense of holy dread and our awe before the unflagging power of a universe that regards us as indeed of 'no account'". It is not surprising, given both the nature of his subject matter and Kazin's own understanding of it, that the book invites us to see religion in personal, noninstitutional terms. We are also warned away (see p. 141) from an "American Civil Religion" in which Americans worship their own culture and history as evidenced by a smug materialism.There is a great emphasis in the book, as there should be, on slavery, the Civil War and continuing issues of race in America. Here Kazin gives Abraham Lincoln the strongest word, as a leader, a writer, and a religious thinker. Lincoln was a nonchurchgoer and was not religious in any traditional sense. He indeed exemplified a theme that appears to run through this book -- that in the United States people are encouraged to find religion and meaning for themselves outside the bounds of formal creed. Yet, in the Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln gave us a profound meditiation both on Divine Justice and on Divine Inscrutability and on the related, even though conflicting, themes of retribution and forgiveness.Most of the book covers familar authors and familiar books. I enjoyed in particular reading Kazin's discussion of Melville because it focuses on Melville's little-known epic poem Clarel. This poem is based on Melville's own trip to what was then Palestine and it explores Melville's tortured thought on the relationship between religion and secularism.This book is a valuable study both of American literature and American religious thought with an emphasis on the effect of freedom and secularism on the nature of religion in the United States. It may encourage the reader to explore, or to think about anew, the nature of American literature and to rethink for him or herself the nature of religious ideals and practices.

A lot of what I have read about Kazin the man, especially since his 1999 death, conveys that he could be a very difficult man to be around for any period of time. Still that doesn't detract from the fact that he was one of our finest writers during the 20th century who just happened to love literature like life. In this book, his last major undertaking, he fittingly relates the writings of his favorite Americans to God and depicts so much of the drama of their struggles- whether it be the 2 James brothers confronting their own diverging realities, or Abe Lincoln leading this country through the most evil period of its then short history. It was an immensely pleasurable and illuminating reading experience and a book, like the other Kazins on my shelves, that I shall return to.

Kazin was an insightful critic of American literature, but his knowledge of American religious history and theology is deficient. A better title for this book would be: "Musings on Selected American Authors."

What do such diverse writers as Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Lincoln, Eliot, William James, Twain, Frost, and Faulkner have in common? Alfred Kazin maintains that it is a creativity born of each writer's inner turmoil over the issue of slavery. Whether God has anything to do with it is debatable, unless, of course, one is satisfied with understanding God as merely a synonym for the individual moral conscience. I'm not. But this does seem to be the underlying assumption of Kazin's book.Anyway, Kazin's point is taken. And it is left for the reader to decide if he's right.