Skip to main content

Review: The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick


Pages: 224
Original date of publication: 1940s-1990s
My edition: 2010 (NYRB Classics)
Why I decided to read:
How I acquired my copy: The Strand, NYC, July 2011

The New York Stories is a collection of stories that Elizabeth Hardwick published between 1946 and 1993—years that spanned nearly her entire career as a writer. Hardwick grew up in Kentucky and lived for many years in New York City, working as an essayist for the New York Review of Books. She was married briefly to the poet Robert Lowell, who after their divorce married Caroline Blackwood, leading Hardwick to quip, “he never married a bad writer.” She was also friends for many years with the writer Mary McCarthy and lampooned her 1963 novel The Group.

There is a theme to these stories; all of them deal to some extent with the idea of escape, whether a character escapes from New York back to her Kentucky childhood home or escapes a sour relationship. Although Hardwick claimed that she couldn’t write much about what she knew, this is a theme from her life that appears over and over again in these stories. Hardwick herself did a fair amount of escaping—escape from small-town life in Kentucky to go to New York.

The stories are arranged in order of publication date, and they show Hardwick’s evolution as a writer. That’s why a story about (somewhat pretentious) young intellectual women coincide with a story about an antique shop worker who disappoints his desperate girlfriend. I like the eclectic combination; there is always something new in every story. The essence of New York is very strong in these stories; and, because these stories were written over a period of nearly 50 years, it’s interesting to watch the city develop.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars

Six Degrees of Barbara Pym's Novels

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress. Some Tame Gazelle (1950): Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance. Excellent Women (1952): Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs