The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick

by Elizabeth Hardwick, Alex Andriesse (Editor), Alex Andriesse (Introduction)

Overview

Essays on music, art, pop culture, literature, and politics by the renowned essayist and observer of contemporary life, now collected together for the first time.

The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick is a companion collection to The Collected Essays, a book that proved a revelation of what, for many, had been an open secret: that Elizabeth Hardwick was one of the great American literary critics, and an extraordinary stylist in her own right. The thirty-five pieces that Alex Andriesse has gathered here—none previously featured in volumes of Hardwick’s work—make it clear that her powers extended far beyond literary criticism, encompassing a vast range of subjects, from New York City to Faye Dunaway, from Wagner’s Parsifal to Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions, and from the pleasures of summertime to grits soufflé. In these often surprising, always well-wrought essays, we see Hardwick’s passion for people and places, her politics, her thoughts on feminism, and her ability, especially from the 1970s on, to write well about seemingly anything.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681376233
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	408,503
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and educated at the University of Kentucky and Columbia University. A recipient of a Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is the author of three novels, a biography of Herman Melville, and four collections of essays. She was a co-founder and advisory editor of The New York Review of Books and contributed more than one hundred reviews, articles, reflections, and letters to the magazine. NYRB Classics publishes Sleepless Nights, a novel; Seduction and Betrayal, a study of women in literature; and The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick.

Alex Andriesse was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1985. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Granta, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Prodigal, and Literary Imagination. He has translated several works from Italian and French, including Roberto Bazlen’s Notes Without a Text and Other Writings and François-René de Chateaubriand’s Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768–1800 (an NYRB Classic). He lives in the Netherlands.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

The Art of the Essay 1

Places, People, Things

New York City: Crash Course 13

Lexington, Kentucky 24

Puritanical Pleasures 37

The Émigré 47

Balanchine 54

Faye Dunaway 59

Knowing Sontag 65

Katherine Anne 68

Things 77

Piety and Politics

Elections 87

Mr. America 90

Piety and Politics 97

The Kennedy Scandals 106

The Menendez Show 122

Family Values 139

Head Over Heels 155

On Behalf of the Unborn 167

Feminine Principle

The American Woman as Snow Queen 171

The Feminine Principle 180

Women Re Women 189

The Ties Women Cannot Shake, and Have 196

Is the "Equal" Woman More Vulnerable? 200

Suicide and Women 206

When to Cast Out, Give Up, Let Go 213

Readings

On Reading the Writings of Women 223

Reading 229

Southern Literature: The Cultural Assumptions of Regionalism 236

Musings

Basic Englishing 251

Parsifal 255

The Eternal Heartbreak 257

The Heart of the Seasons 263

Notes on Leonardo and the Future of the Past 270

Grits Soufflé 276

Christmas Past 278

Acknowledgments 280

Sources 281

Editorial Reviews

01/24/2022

The clever observations of critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) shine in this sharp collection. The essays range from lyrical musings on places Hardwick lived—Kentucky, Maine, and New York—to insights on literature and thoughts on celebrities. In “Piety and Politics,” she writes of the Carter family, who “astonish by their sunny intrepidity,” and reflects on the time when Jimmy Carter’s evangelism seemed to inspire hope—he was a “mysterious figure, charismatic in his ascent rather than in his person,” she writes. “Faye Dunaway: The Face in the Dark” sees Hardwick consider the power of film stars and the “electricity” of Dunaway’s charm, while in “Women Re Women” she posits that “what seems to be ahead is that the women will have the new problems created by the new problems men have.” Hardwick’s takes are reliably witty, and her prose is always a pleasure: in “New York City: Crash Course,” she describes Manhattan on a “gray Sunday afternoon, smoky light, and a sanctified drowsing... quiet except for the sacrificial athleticism of the joggers... preparing to run in the park, as a rabbit out of its hutch will surely hop off.” This is a rousing testament to Hardwick’s enduring vision. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"An exhilarating book of. . . adventurously chosen pieces. To me, right now, no writer feels more joyously quotable. Witty, acerbic, original, true. Maybe Coleridge, whom I haven’t read." —Michael Hofmann, Australian Book Review

“As always, Hardwick is elegant, sharp-witted, eccentric, exacting, dreamy. . . . Her prose has an entrancing power of description, a formidable prettiness combined with razor precision.” —Katie Roiphe, The New York Times Book Review

“I cannot see The Hardwick Sentence as anything but a spiritual leap toward fuller expression. . . . When she got it right, there was a care and moral weight to her prose that few could even abut.” —Sasha Frere-Jones, 4Columns

“[Hardwick’s] stylish, gutting one-liners are present. . . . I was struck by the prescience of the collection’s strongest inclusions.” —Erin Schwartz, Vulture

“Another compendium of greatness. . . . Of the great stylists with whom she is often grouped like Sontag, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Cynthia Ozick, Renata Adler—all of them women alive at midcentury, who lived in New York, and published both essays and fiction, or something in between—none is more strange than Hardwick.” —Zachary Fine, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Andriesse’s collection of 35 previously uncollected essays . . . is well timed. In the first piece, Hardwick writes that a ‘collection of essays is a collection of variations,’ and these pieces showcase her own range of interests. . . . This judicious gathering is a fine place to sample Hardwick’s work.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The clever observations of critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick shine in this sharp collection. The essays range from lyrical musings on places Hardwick lived—Kentucky, Maine, and New York—to insights on literature and thoughts on celebrities. . . . This is a rousing testament to Hardwick’s enduring vision.” —Publishers Weekly

“Elizabeth Hardwick once said that she became a writer because she loved to read. For her, language was experience, and in her essays she gave her all, no matter the occasion. She had heartbreaking discipline, an open, skeptical mind, and an unfailing beauty of voice.” —Darryl Pinckney

“Hardwick wrote when she had something to say, and she took her time; the impression of ease is owing strictly to her style. Not a poet, she produced a poet’s prose.” —Linda Hall

From the Publisher

2022-01-25
More essays from a master of the form.

Hardwick’s essays have been getting a new look thanks to Cathy Curtis’ recent bio, A Splendid Intelligence, so editor Andriesse’s collection of 35 previously uncollected essays—published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New York Review of Books, and other publications—is well timed. In the first piece, Hardwick writes that a “collection of essays is a collection of variations,” and these pieces showcase her own range of interests and what Andriesse calls “the poise of her prose.” In the first section, “Places, People, Things,” Hardwick begins with personal reminiscences, writing about her beloved, “graceful” hometown, Lexington, Kentucky, and Maine, one of her favorite summer spots, which always “takes me by surprise.” Then there are profiles, of Balanchine, friends Susan Sontag (“all ideas”) and the “greatly gifted” Katherine Anne Porter, and Faye Dunaway. The section titled “Piety and Politics” shows Hardwick taking on current affairs, including incisive discussions of elections, scandals, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Kennedys, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton (“shallow, reckless”). Particularly scathing is “On Behalf of the Unborn: A Celibacy Amendment,” a brief 1996 essay on Republican politics and abortion. As Andriesse writes, the writing in the section “Feminine Principle” shows that for Hardwick, “if liberation was a sign of social progress, it was also, frequently, a source of personal pain.” In 1971, she looked “at little girls with wonder and with anxiety. I do not know whether they will be free—the only certainty is that many will be adrift.” In “On Reading the Writings of Women,” Hardwick confesses to a “nearly unaccountable attraction and hostility to the work of other women writers,” and she goes on to berate and praise a few. An essay on Southern literature is a tour de force of breadth, economy, and insight. In the miscellaneous “Musings” section, the author’s examination of Leonardo da Vinci thoroughly captivates, while “Grits Soufflé” enchants.

This judicious gathering is a fine place to sample Hardwick’s work.

Kirkus Reviews