Although I'm not a New Yorker, I used to visit every year in the 1980s and early 1990s, for the Dance Critics Conference, where I met Deborah Jowitt and other leading critics (although not Arlene Croce, whose writing I also loved). I agreed with most of your remarks in this piece, until your uncalled-for swipe at Sally Rooney. Have you actually read any of her novels? I've read them all and know hers to be one of the strong, thoughtful, idiosyncratic new voices coming out of Ireland, a worthy "descendant" of the great Edna O'Brien, whose biography I've written (it comes out later this year). I have found contemporary Irish literature to be superior to the American variety, largely because a sense of tragedy is ever-present and a love of language, as well.
I doubt if Elizabeth Hardwick would have liked Rooney's novels, but frankly, I am not in thrall to her unforgiving taste. I was taken aback at the way several reviews of my biography treated EH as an unblemished literary goddess whose Kentucky origins and troubled personal life were unworthy of being discussed at length. Much as I admire many of the people you cite, I am not a worshipper at the shrine. In the end, they are all, however clever and original as thinkers and creators, fellow human beings with blind spots and other failings. Incidentally, Rooney's most recent novel, Intermezzo, is by far her best.
Although I'm not a New Yorker, I used to visit every year in the 1980s and early 1990s, for the Dance Critics Conference, where I met Deborah Jowitt and other leading critics (although not Arlene Croce, whose writing I also loved). I agreed with most of your remarks in this piece, until your uncalled-for swipe at Sally Rooney. Have you actually read any of her novels? I've read them all and know hers to be one of the strong, thoughtful, idiosyncratic new voices coming out of Ireland, a worthy "descendant" of the great Edna O'Brien, whose biography I've written (it comes out later this year). I have found contemporary Irish literature to be superior to the American variety, largely because a sense of tragedy is ever-present and a love of language, as well.
Thank you for this. Yes, I have read Sally Rooney's first two novels. I found them skillful and intelligent but very far from the kind of ambitious, complex fiction that has set the standard for my taste. I've also read your Elizabeth Hardwick biography (you can see my piece on her here: libertiesjournal.com/articles/the-quality-to-be-tragic/). It's possible she would've liked her; it's also possible that she would have demolished her, as the great Becca Rothfeld did, twice: thepointmag.com/criticism/normal-novels/, libertiesjournal.com/articles/sanctimony-literature/.
Life in a bubble…
I doubt if Elizabeth Hardwick would have liked Rooney's novels, but frankly, I am not in thrall to her unforgiving taste. I was taken aback at the way several reviews of my biography treated EH as an unblemished literary goddess whose Kentucky origins and troubled personal life were unworthy of being discussed at length. Much as I admire many of the people you cite, I am not a worshipper at the shrine. In the end, they are all, however clever and original as thinkers and creators, fellow human beings with blind spots and other failings. Incidentally, Rooney's most recent novel, Intermezzo, is by far her best.