Status
Checked out
Genres
Publication
New York : New York Review Books, c2001.
Description
Sleepless Nights is a scrapbook of memories: the first pangs of sexual longing, Billie Holiday holding forth in a cheap hotel, and the swagger and heartbreak of New York City.
Media reviews
User reviews
LibraryThing member Liz1564
This slim volume is described as a novel, but it is really a series of prose pictures. In the opening pages the narrator is musing about memory and the remainder of the book is a collection of memories which creates a kaleidoscope of the author's life. There is absolutely no plot or any attempt at
And, I think, picture is the correct word to describe these vignettes. Hardwick, in almost painfully lovely words, had written something so visual that I could clearly see a scene as if I were in an art gallery and viewing it as a painting. There are cleaning ladies serving the Fifth Avenue clients and the laundress wringing out the sheets of the privileged of Back Bay; the amorous doctor in Amsterdam juggling a wife and two mistresses; the lover who was perfect, except he wasn't; the characters from the Blue Grass part of Kentucky. And, in the most famous of the ten chapters, Hardwicks's devastating and alluring portrait of Billie Holiday.
Earlier this year, I saw a play called The Hopper Project. In an intimate space, the audience faced an eye level stage set depicting a New York street. Each tenement room, doorway, office, or porch was an exact replica of a Hopper painting. The corner was the cafe from Nighthawks. In the play, the frozen people came alive to reenact their stories. The prostitute putting on her stockings while her client adjusts his tie before leaving; the woman playing the piano to the annoyance of her husband.
Thie book reminded me of the play. (Not for nothing is a Hopper painting often used as the cover illustration for Sleepless Nights). I could see Hardwick's New York City people painted by Hopper; her southern family and friends drawn in the deep, sharp lines of Thomas Hart Benton; Amsterdam and Vienna and Russia distorted and clarified by Munch.
There is no real way I can really review the contents of this book except to say that it is beautiful. Don't try to analyze, just enjoy.
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chronological order, just vivid narratives of people and places .And, I think, picture is the correct word to describe these vignettes. Hardwick, in almost painfully lovely words, had written something so visual that I could clearly see a scene as if I were in an art gallery and viewing it as a painting. There are cleaning ladies serving the Fifth Avenue clients and the laundress wringing out the sheets of the privileged of Back Bay; the amorous doctor in Amsterdam juggling a wife and two mistresses; the lover who was perfect, except he wasn't; the characters from the Blue Grass part of Kentucky. And, in the most famous of the ten chapters, Hardwicks's devastating and alluring portrait of Billie Holiday.
Earlier this year, I saw a play called The Hopper Project. In an intimate space, the audience faced an eye level stage set depicting a New York street. Each tenement room, doorway, office, or porch was an exact replica of a Hopper painting. The corner was the cafe from Nighthawks. In the play, the frozen people came alive to reenact their stories. The prostitute putting on her stockings while her client adjusts his tie before leaving; the woman playing the piano to the annoyance of her husband.
Thie book reminded me of the play. (Not for nothing is a Hopper painting often used as the cover illustration for Sleepless Nights). I could see Hardwick's New York City people painted by Hopper; her southern family and friends drawn in the deep, sharp lines of Thomas Hart Benton; Amsterdam and Vienna and Russia distorted and clarified by Munch.
There is no real way I can really review the contents of this book except to say that it is beautiful. Don't try to analyze, just enjoy.
Show Less
LibraryThing member browner56
Maybe I’m just old school, but when I think of what a novel should be there is a standard list of things I look for: a narrative based on fictional events, a well-defined plot with action and resolution, fully conceived characters, identifiable central themes, etc. However, when I also think
An elderly woman named Elizabeth (not coincidentally the author’s name) living in a nursing home looks back at the events and relationships that shaped her life (many of which are, not coincidentally, similar to events in the author’s life) in a decidedly haphazard and non-linear way. She was once married, although memories of her husband are surprisingly absent from the detailed, if fragmentary, sketches she offers of the people from her past. Instead, we learn of her interactions with a diverse group that includes her parents, platonic friends, occasional lovers, housemaids, spinster neighbors, and even the singer Billie Holiday.
The reader quickly realizes that, regardless of how it is labeled, Sleepless Nights is not a book defined by its plot. Rather, it is all about the tapestry of beautiful words and images that Hardwick uses while constructing a compelling portrait of a thoughtful person who has engaged fully with life. By the end of this slim but densely packed volume, we have gained considerable insight into the main character—who the author claimed in a separate interview to be less about herself than we might think—while also realizing that there is so much of her past that she has not shared. This book helped me to rethink the limits of what good fiction can be and I am certainly glad for that experience.
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about some of the best and most imaginative books I’ve read over the years—like Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler or David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas—I realize that many were missing at least some of those elements. And so it is with Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth Hardwick’s ostensibly autobiographical tale that seems to be a cross between a post-modern fictional account, a personal history and memoir, and a pastiche of prose poetry.An elderly woman named Elizabeth (not coincidentally the author’s name) living in a nursing home looks back at the events and relationships that shaped her life (many of which are, not coincidentally, similar to events in the author’s life) in a decidedly haphazard and non-linear way. She was once married, although memories of her husband are surprisingly absent from the detailed, if fragmentary, sketches she offers of the people from her past. Instead, we learn of her interactions with a diverse group that includes her parents, platonic friends, occasional lovers, housemaids, spinster neighbors, and even the singer Billie Holiday.
The reader quickly realizes that, regardless of how it is labeled, Sleepless Nights is not a book defined by its plot. Rather, it is all about the tapestry of beautiful words and images that Hardwick uses while constructing a compelling portrait of a thoughtful person who has engaged fully with life. By the end of this slim but densely packed volume, we have gained considerable insight into the main character—who the author claimed in a separate interview to be less about herself than we might think—while also realizing that there is so much of her past that she has not shared. This book helped me to rethink the limits of what good fiction can be and I am certainly glad for that experience.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JimmyChanga
A serious, melancholy book about memories, of people and places passing through the night. Sad lives. Excellent language, at times a little on the cerebral side, sounding almost like a series of prose poems, or personal essays.
LibraryThing member flydodofly
Seemingly random and yet interconnected view of characters, situations, destinies, relationships, passions and drabness. Life as it truly is - unsorted and always filtered through our very own views and opinions. There is nothing larger than life here, the scale is dis-comfortably real and right
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and we feel this and subsequently do not feel quite safe. Still we carry on reading, fascinated by Elizabeth Hardwick's wonderful, painfully beautiful writing. This is a kind of book one returns to; it is like a window upon human existence, a scrapbook of samples which show the usual and the unusual next to each other, and therefore somehow made equally important. Show Less
LibraryThing member lisapeet
It's been a while since I read this (I'm finally finishing up my import from Goodreads that I started ages ago). Not much stuck with me, but I remember it as uneven—parts were brilliant and others self-indulgently writerly. Maybe I'll revisit at some point, because there's always the chance I
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wasn't quite ready for it at the time. Show Less
LibraryThing member jostie13
Yeah, this is really beautiful.
LibraryThing member c.archer
Incredibly beautiful words that flow and captivate imagination and interest. I truly enjoyed reading this series of delightful essays with an exquisite almost magical take on ordinary people and scenes. A joy for the senses of a reader!
LibraryThing member sirk.bronstad
To be plunged into again. Heard distantly of hardwick before but didn’t really know about her. The Kentucky grounding was a nice surprise.
Subjects
Awards
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1979)
Clifton Fadiman Medal (2000)
Language
Original publication date
1979
Physical description
xi, 128 p.; 21 cm
ISBN
9780940322721
Local notes
Fiction