"What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life?"
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic whose essays and reviews appeared in leading U.S. publications. He is especially known for memoirs and criticism focused on American and immigrant literary experience. He was born on June 5, 1915, and died on June 5, 1998.