Books: Author Unstoned

CONTEMPORARIES (513 pp.)—Alfred Kazin—Atlantic-Liftle, Brown ($7.50).

A SAD HEART AT THE SUPERMARKET (211 pp.)—Randall Jarrell—Atheneum ($4.50).

Regret is the modish literary emotion this spring; rue is back in fashion; hope's hemline has been let down to fit the century's middle age. So it seems, at any rate, on the evidence of two collections of criticism published this week.

It is the U.S. cult and culture of the consumer that saddens Poet-Professor Jarrell, and in several speeches to academic audiences (the book is a sheaf of speeches and book introductions—the sort of collection that writers publish when they haven't written anything), he makes most of...

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