IN DEFENSE
OF HENRY ADAMS
In a recent essay, critic Alfred Kazin praised Henry Adams for
possessing a "a mind so fine that no 'practical' ideas about any-
thing could violate it." But when similar judgments were voiced
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by Adams's contemporaries, they were not intended as compli- ments. Judged by the pragmatic standards of the 1890s, Adams, the descendant of American presidents, appeared to be a failure. And in some of his own writings, this troubled Bostonian criti- cized himself...