... 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.

More essays from a master of the form.