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69
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
62/100Critics
77/100Scholars
Author:
Elizabeth Hardwick
Publisher:
NYRB Classics
Date:
May 24, 2022
In the thirty-five essays Alex Andriess has gathered here, 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.
What The Reviewers Say
... the late author compares writing an essay to catching a fish with your hands. Her own are so strange, surprising, slippery and beautiful that we can see how this might be true.
... makes a fine companion to her Collected Essays, selected by Darryl Pinckney and published in 2017.
I cannot see The Hardwick Sentence as anything but a spiritual leap toward fuller expression, perfection not applicable. Hardwick took a Biblical position on syntax, pointing her clauses at thoughts several lines back, or at some larger idea implied by the second of eight clauses. When she got it right, there was a care and moral weight to her prose that few could even abut.
The clever observations of critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) shine in this sharp collection.
