{"id":993,"date":"2010-07-26T08:09:08","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T07:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=993"},"modified":"2016-01-23T19:44:12","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T18:44:12","slug":"the-new-york-stories-of-elizabeth-hardwick-elizabeth-hardwick-selected-and-edited-by-darryl-pinckney-new-york-review-books-classics-799","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Hardwick, <em>The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick<\/em> ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On this side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth Hardwick tends to live in the shadow of her husband, Robert Lowell.In America, however, she is seen as a major literary figure in her own right.Born in Kentucky, she decided early on that New York was the place to develop a career that encompassed the creation of the New York Review of Books, teaching at Columbia, and three novels, including the peerless, semi-autobiographical <em>Sleepless Nights. <\/em>Hardwick also published four collections of sometimes acerbic essays on literary topics as well as on people and places, including Lee Harvey Oswald\u2019s wife, Marina, and Mick Jagger at Altamont.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>She became part of the Manhattan glitterati and was described as \u2018a Blanche Dubois with a steely will\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Her marriage to Lowell seems to have reduced her need, or opportunity, to produce fiction, and there was a twenty-four gap between her second novel <em>The Simple Truth <\/em>and <em>Sleepless Nights <\/em>which was written after Lowell\u2019s death, in 1977.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>In this book there is a twenty-one year gap between \u2018The Purchase\u2019 published in 1959 and \u2018Cross-Town\u2019 published in 1980.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>Between the earlier and late fiction, the style changes from a stringent free indirect speech accompanied by piercingly precise description, to a much warmer style in which reflection is buoyed up in the syntax rather than meeting the reader on the surface of the writing.<\/p>\n<p>In the earlier stories, the characters can seem like birds fluttering in cages of their own making, displaced from their own experience; their \u2018too many inward, hypochodriacal reveries\u2019.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>In \u2018Yes or No\u2019, the female narrator reflects on her youthful relationship with Edgar who has adored her and been, damningly, \u2018kind, considerate and honest\u2019.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>We can see that the narrator\u2019s attempt at shrewdness about Edgar masks a deluded solipsism.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>The story is framed by her regret at the loss of Edgar, but the reader is left to wonder whether it was the young woman or Edgar who ended the relationship.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>Russell, in \u2018The Final Conflict\u2019, manages a dusty, disorderly antique shop and falls into a relationship with Marianne, who comes into the shop one day.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>Marianne is the first person Russell has ever met who has been successful;<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>she has won a scholarship to study fashion design, although she rather ambivalently views New York as the only destination for a fashion designer. As Marianne\u2019s attachment to Russell grows,<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>so his peevish, complacent distain grows too. \u2018The dreadful quiet, that was what Russell meant by hard work.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The later stories placed in the final third of the book take on a more post-modern hue; none more so than \u2018Cross-town\u2019 in which a series of seeming epiphanies coalesce oddly and magically around the decision of a couple to sell up and move to Manhattan.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>But character studies run through the heart of the book:<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>Roger, the eponymous \u2018Bookseller\u2019 drifts in relationships with women, and writes constantly rejected novels.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>At the same time, he keeps his shop going, amiably and unpretentiously with \u2018his great stars, Kafka, Beckett, Walter Benjamin, Joyce, Akhmatova \u2013 all of these shine on and on and on\u2019. The book ends with the marvellous \u2018Shot: A New York Story\u2019, in which the attachments a group of quite disparate people have to their cleaner, Zona\u2019, are revealed through pitch-perfect dialogue when Zona\u2019s nephew comes to collect money to have her body taken back to her home in the south:<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>Zona has been shot in a New York taxi.<span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth Hardwick tends to live in the shadow of her husband, Robert Lowell.In America, however, she is seen as a major literary figure in her own right.Born in Kentucky, she decided early on that New York was the place to develop a career that encompassed the creation of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[101,184],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99 - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99 - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On this side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth Hardwick tends to live in the shadow of her husband, Robert Lowell.In America, however, she is seen as a major literary figure in her own right.Born in Kentucky, she decided early on that New York was the place to develop a career that encompassed the creation of the [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-26T07:09:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-23T18:44:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993\",\"name\":\"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99 - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-07-26T07:09:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-23T18:44:12+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\",\"name\":\"Ian Pople\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Ian Pople\"},\"description\":\"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99 - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99 - The Manchester Review","og_description":"On this side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth Hardwick tends to live in the shadow of her husband, Robert Lowell.In America, however, she is seen as a major literary figure in her own right.Born in Kentucky, she decided early on that New York was the place to develop a career that encompassed the creation of the [&hellip;]","og_url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2010-07-26T07:09:08+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-01-23T18:44:12+00:00","author":"Ian Pople","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Ian Pople","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993","name":"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99 - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-07-26T07:09:08+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-23T18:44:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=993#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick ed. by Darryl Pinckney (NYRB) \u00a37.99"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/","name":"The Manchester Review","description":"The Manchester Review","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9","name":"Ian Pople","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","caption":"Ian Pople"},"description":"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-g1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=993"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5620,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions\/5620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}