Word: hardwicke
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays By Elizabeth Hardwick Random House...
...DIFFICULT to read Elizabeth Hardwick's third book of essays. "Bartleby in Manhattan", without a growing sense of irritation and dismay. Hardwick is a wordsmith who cannot, apparently, control her craft; her essays meander and bring one at long last to a denouement of sorts, without ever really engaging one's interest. She writes with constant reference to pundits both past and present, but without really linking her own criticisms and those she cites to form a coherent whole. A Columbia English professor, Hardwick is strongest with literary criticism, but weaker on popular issues. All too often she writes cryptically...
...Hardwick is often unenlightening just when she claims to be at her most revealing. Having savaged Lee Harvey Oswald as an unappealing holdover from the Depression years, she caps her appraisal with reference to his sex life...
More often Hardwick turns her ideas into parlor tricks, lessons in obfuscation...
...freeing of form continued, until Lowell had freed his writing even from the conventions of approach which prohibited the use of personal detail as subject matter. The Dolphin (1973) drew heavily from his breakup with Hardwick and aroused critical furor. Lifelong friends of Lowell's--Elizabeth Bishop included--advised him not to publish the manuscript. He went ahead anyway and wound up pioneering a new poetry; it was confessional, elevated to art and updated by the new approaches to the 20th century...