American Fictions (Modern Library Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Elizabeth Hardwick (Author)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library Paperbacks | Publication Date: November 2, 1999

"Just as Edwin Denby, Clement Greenburg, and Pauline Kael transformed the nature of criticism in the fields of dance, art, and film, respectively, Hardwick has redefined the possibilities of the literary essay."
--The New Yorker

A brilliant tour of a century American writers, from the novels of Melville, Wharton and James to the fictions of Margaret Fuller, Sylvia Plath and Norman Mailer.  Twenty-five years ago, Elizabeth Hardwick's now classic essay "Seduction and Betrayal" helped  pioneer the study of women in fiction, both as writers and as characters.  American Fictions gathers fro the first time Hardwick's portraits of America's greatest writers.  Many of these pieces double as individual reminiscences about close friends, including Mary McCarthy, Katherine Anne Porter and Edmund Wilson.  Hardwick has achieved a permanent place in American letters for her sharp and elegant style.  Her essays are themselves a work of literature.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The landscapes of fiction: houses and the things therein, nation-states and states of the union, oceans, backland; winter nights and the old horse pulling the sledge through a driving snow, summer heat and the arrival of smothering love affairs," Hardwick writes in her introduction, indicating not only her wide-ranging definition of the concept of landscape but also the proud lyricism with which she analyzes many of America's greatest writers. Divided into eight sections, this collection of essays opens with discussions of Melville and Edith Wharton and ends with thoughts on Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. Between the bookends, Hardwick casts her deft eye on, among others, Nabokov, whose "novels very often end, and no matter what the plot, in a rhapsodic call to literature itself," and Katherine Anne Porter, who, "did not always conduct herself with generosity or moral refinement." Part of what makes these essays so engaging is their mix of biography and criticism, and the freedom with which Hardwick moves between the two. She often intertwines elegant intellectual arguments with details of her subjects' lives, as with Sylvia Plath ("both heroine and author; when the curtain goes down, it is her own dead body there on the stage, sacrificed to her plot"). The ultimate achievement of this energetic book is that Hardwick's smart, eloquent discussions of important works of American fiction bear little resemblance to the normally arid field of literary criticism. Indeed, these fine essays are often as satisfying as the works and authors inspiring them. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Award-winning critic and novelist Hardwick has been one of the more important voices in American letters for half a century. This new edition of her work gathers a selection of her previously published critical essays (mostly from now unavailable collections) on American writers and poets from Herman Melville and Edith Wharton to Eugene O'Neill and Elizabeth Bishop to Joan Didion and Richard Ford. Clustered loosely around geographical locations (old New York, the prairie) or themes ("Victims and Victors"), the essays combine literary criticism with biography in astute, informative, and engaging narratives. The collection as a whole will serve as an introduction to American literature of the last century and bring Hardwick's elegant criticism to a new generation of students and readers. Recommended for public and academic libraries.AJulia Burch, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Modern Library paperback ed edition (November 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375754822
• ISBN-13: 978-0375754821
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,024,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful and difficult..., September 15, 2000

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Stephen Armstrong (Hadley, Ma USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Fictions (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This book contains 27 of Hardwick's literary critical essays--and they are gems. The essays are arranged in themes (e.g., "Old New York," "Victims and Victors") around particular authors (e.g., Edith Wharton, Henry James, the Prairie poets, and so forth). Her essays concern novelists and short-story writers, but she has several essays on those who come from poetry, drama, and non-fiction prose. Her introductory essay, "Locations," is worth the price of the book alone.

Elizabeth Hardwick writes so fluently that you find her drawing imaginative comparisons, remarkable analogies, and passionate connections. She strikes me as forgiving the personal foibles and erratic paths of some writers, while she searches for how these informed the writings.

My favorite essay was her commentary on the American novelist Joan Didion ("In the Wasteland"), whose "unconsoling" work is "a carefully designed frieze on the fracture and splinter of her characters' comprehension of the world," marked by a peculiar unease and restlessness. Yet she also considers "older" American novelists (Melville, even has comments on Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Wharton). Her essays about more modern writers (the loss of bearing, from Fitzgerald's Gatsby to Capote's murderers, to Mailer's squalid "real" life) are also remarkable.

I am puzzled that Hardwick has no essays about American protest literature, or any reformulation images. She does not write about any African-American writer, and I wonder about this omission. Is she saying implicitly that these writers have no location in American literature?

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review, July 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: American Fictions (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

How seldom one finds readable, perceptive criticism that does what it's supposed to: enhance one's pleasure and understanding of the original work. The New Yorker comparison to Kael is apt; Hardwick's criticism is itself high art. These are collections of previous essays. The very best are those on "Bartleby", "Washington Square" and "House of Mirth". Excellent!