By Corey Dahl
What's Sleepless Nights, you ask? Good question.
The book's author, Elizabeth Hardwick, called it an "autobiographical novel," though it's anyone's guess what's fiction and what's real. Hardwick told the Paris Review, "I wrote it in the first person and used my own name, Elizabeth. Not very confessional, however. And not entirely taken from life, rather less than the reader might think."
Amazon and Goodreads list it as a "lyrical book," noting its blend of prose and poetry, its lack of a distinct plot. Joan Didion saw the book as a sort of women's fiction. "The meticulously transcribed histories begin to yield a terrible point, although not one that would astonish our mothers and grandmothers," she wrote in her review of the novel. "In the culture under study, life ends badly. Disease is authentic. The freedom to live untied to others, however desired that freedom may be, is hard on men and hard on children and hardest of all on women."
Sleepless Nights is the kind of book that can't be pinned down, but that doesn't stop people from trying, In fact, we'll discuss the book, along with Jackson Pollock's Summertime, at this month's Art + Lit on May 19, featuring guest speakers Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum, and Lighthouse instructor Nicky Beer.
Ahead of her talk, Beer answered a few questions about Sleepless Nights, its genre-free benefits, and the unique talents of Hardwick herself.
What did you find most surprising about Sleepless Nights?
How brutally witty Elizabeth Hardwick is! She’s able to expose and dismantle pretension with surgical precision—including that of her narrator. I would have given anything to sit next to her at a dinner party and confer with her in conspiratorial tones over a martini or three.
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Elizabeth Hardwick[/caption]
What’s unique about Hardwick’s writing? Is there a technique/skill of hers that you wish you could steal?
Like many poets I know, I secretly yearn to make more excursions into prose. What I love about Sleepless Nights is how blithely unconcerned Hardwick appears to be with whether it’s a work of fiction or a work of memoir. She called it an “autobiographical novel,” which is a neatly evasive way of splitting the difference. As much as discussing the distinctions between literary genres can have value, as writers, when we’re creating, I think we can risk becoming too inhibited by the niceties of keeping our genres distinct. So I’m hoping I can think of her when I start working on something new and not waste too much time on wondering whether it’s a story, poem, essay, manifesto, shopping list, etc.
Why do you think the book resonates with readers? What stuck with you?
That’s a tough question because I think books resonate with different readers for different reasons, and I think one’s age and the specific circumstances of one’s life have a great influence on the kind of impact a book can have. I find myself admiring how Sleepless Nights is incredibly nostalgic but resolutely unsentimental. As I lumber into middle age, I’m especially attentive to art that can look to the past without idealizing or romanticizing it.
To RSVP for Art + Lit, click here. Tickets are available in advance through Art Students League Denver's website.
