№ 23 reading list: The Dolphin Letters

I cannot remember when I first heard of Elizabeth Hardwick - it must have been in relation to her essay collection Seduction and Betrayal (1974) - but it wasn't until 2018 that I read her work. Last year I was excited about the publication of The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979, a collection of letters exchanged between Hardwick and her ex, poet Robert Lowell (d. 1977), and their friends. To give you a little backstory: The title refers to Lowell's poem collection that earned him his second Pulitzer Prize in 1974. What made it controversial was that Lowell not only used Hardwick's letters, written to him in a state of emotional distress, but also changed them to fit his narrative. I thought it would take a few weeks to read through 500 pages of correspondence but found myself unable to put the book down and finished it in a few days. When I was done I went back to page 1 and started all over again, reading one or two letters before bedtime.

№ 23 reading list:

1  Sleepless Nights · Elizabeth Hardwick
2  The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert

Lowell, and Their Circle  edited by Saskia Hamilton

3  How to Write an Autobiographical Novel · Alexander Chee
4  A Tale of Love and Darkness · Amos Oz
5  Mislæg gatnamót · Þórdís Gísladóttir [Icelandic poetry]
6  To Kill a Mockingbird · Harper Lee [rereading]
7  Museums as Cultures of Copies  edited by Brita Brenna, Hans

Dam Christensen and Olav Hamran

Translated by: 4) A Tale of Love and Darkness: Nicholas de Lange

I would like to thank Routledge for the museum studies textbook on the list, which consists of 17 chapters by leading scholars in the field. It will enable me to keep up with my studies this summer without any deadlines.

Back to The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: If you already know the backstory and are intrigued then you may want to watch writer and critic Hilton Als in conversation with Saskia Hamilton, who edited the letter collection and added useful footnotes. What made this event even more memorable is actress Kathleen Chalfant's citation of three letters by Hardwick. In my copy I have marked many sections, one where Hardwick describes a certain mood in a letter to Lowell on January 13, 1976, when they were back on friendly terms:

... and strangely enough I do feel like writing just now and have fallen into a mood of reading books, thinking, idling about–all that puts one into the frame that makes writing possible and the life of literature beautiful and thrilling.

On the reading list is also Hardwick's Sleepless Nights (1979), a slim novel, partly autofiction, which I have also finished. I think I benefited from reading it after her personal letters, in which one learns about its writing process.

James & Nora · Edna O'Brien

Out today in paperback is James & Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage by Irish writer Edna O‘Brien, published by W&N. This is a reissue of a slim book, originally published in the US in 1981, with O'Brien‘s portrait of Irish writer James Joyce and Nora Barnacle‘s marriage. The timing of its release is no coincidence, just in time for Bloomsday on June 16, celebrated by many fans of Joyce. It's named after the protagonist Leopold Bloom in his work Ulysses, which takes place on that day in 1904.

Cover image: Nora Barnacle and James Joyce by artist John Nolan

Edna O'Brien was awarded the prestigious David Cohen Prize in 2019, given to British or Irish writers for a lifetime achievement in literature. Her first novel was The Country Girls, published in 1960. It caused a scandal in Ireland and was both banned and burned. O‘Brien's large body of work consists of novels, short stories, plays, poems, non-fiction, and her memoir Country Girl.

James & Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage
By Edna O'Brien
Paperback, 80 pages
ISBN: 9781474616812
Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Reading journal: Beauvoir & Kafka

I thought it best to sneak in a reading journal entry before sharing more book covers. The book cover entries are tempting because I don’t have to grab my camera and I would like to have some covers on the blog for future reference. If you were worried about the coronavirus pandemic preventing the publication of books, I think you can breathe calmly. Plenty of books are about to hit the shelves and let's hope the content is as promising as the covers.

Reading journal, № 14 reading list, 2 of 7:

· Letters to Friends, Family & Editors by Franz Kafka. This is the first collection of letters by Kafka that I read and own. I was in no hurry to finish it so once I had read enough letters to get a feel for his voice, I read a letter or two in bed. The letters show the reader different sides of Kafka, from his student years in Prague in the early 1900s to his final months at a sanatorium near Vienna in 1924, where he died from tuberculosis. In letters to friends, he is less formal, of course, especially when writing to Max Brod who collected Kafka’s letters after his death, and it is through these personal letters that we see his health deteriorating. A more formal tone characterises the letters to his editors where he discusses manuscripts and even book design and fonts before publication. Perhaps those are more appealing to scholars.

The women in his life, Felice Bauer, Milena Jesenská-Polak, Julie Wohryzek, and Dora Dymant, appear on the pages, but the letters to Felice and Milena are available in separate editions: Letters to Felice (I recently shared the book cover) and Letters to Milena. The one thing that bothered me during the reading relates to the book's layout: The notes are at the back instead of appearing in footnotes, which would have been more convenient for the reader. This was especially annoying when reading many letters in a setting and constantly having to look up the notes. [Schocken; translated by Richard and Clara Winston]

· The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir – autobiography, 2nd vol. It's been a while since I finished this one, which covers the years 1929 to 1944, and lately I have been gliding over sections where I had left a mark on the margin. I liked this volume more than the first but have to add that in the first chapters Beauvoir was sometimes too keen on sharing details: It sometimes felt as if she had to mention and describe every person that crossed her path. It happened less as the story progressed and the second world war drew nearer.

On three pages (319-321) spanning the period from 1937 to 1938, war is coming and clearly, the situation has started to affect her mental well-being:

Indeed, I now passed through one of the most depressing periods of my whole life. I refused to admit that war was even possible, let alone imminent. But it was no use my playing the ostrich; the growing perils all around crushed me beneath their weight.

If the Spanish tragedy dismayed us, events in Germany scared us stiff. In September, at Nuremberg, before an audience of 300,000 Nazis and something like a million visitors, Hitler delivered his most aggressive speech yet.

For my own part I was still trying to delude myself, and refusing to face the facts. But the future had begun to open up under my very feet, and produced in me a sick feeling akin to real anguish. No doubt that is why I retain only a misty recollection of this entire year. Nor can I remember anything of outstanding interest in my private life.

When the Germans invade Poland, on 1 September 1939, her narrative becomes a diary that ends on 14 July 1940. On 14 September, for example, she goes to the cinema and reads Portrait of a Lady by Henry James in bed. She doesn’t write daily and nothing at all after the fall of Paris, on 14 June 1940. Despite the war, there is no shortage of discussion of literature and philosophy on the pages, and it should be noted that the book is dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre, who was her soulmate. It's truly interesting to read about life in France, about Paris in wartime; about visits to Café de Flore, on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Benoît, which she and Sartre frequented ('It was our own special resort. We felt at home there; it sheltered us from the outside world.'). In this volume the reader witnesses the birth of the author, but in 1943 her first novel, She Came to Stay (original title L’Invitée) was published. During the war, she also worked on other books such as the philosophical essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas and two novels: The Blood of Others (Le Sang des autres) and All Men Are Mortal (Tous les hommes sont mortels). [Penguin; translated by Peter Green]

It is worth noting that some of Beauvoir's letters, published later, contradict the narrative of her autobiography. Finally, a few words about my copy which I hold dear. It was bought used, released in 1976, and is now so worn that it is falling apart. Gracing its cover is one of artist Matisse's blue cut-outs, Blue Nude with Flowing Hair, 1952.

images by me, appeared on Instagram 08/03/2018 and 11/07/2017