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View of My Own: Essays in Literature and Society
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About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. This text has been digitally restored from a historical edition. Some errors may persist, however we consider it worth publishing due to the work's historical value.
The digital edition of all books may be viewed on our website before purchase.
226 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1955
5 people are currently reading
261 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Hardwick
53 books200 followersElizabeth Hardwick was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.
Hardwick graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. She was the author of three novels: The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), and Sleepless Nights (1979). A collection of her short fiction, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, will be published in 2010. She also published four books of criticism: A View of My Own (1962), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), Bartleby in Manhattan (1983), and Sight-Readings (1998). In 1961 she edited The Selected Letters of William James and in 2000 she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series..
In 1959, Hardwick published in Harper's, "The Decline of Book Reviewing," a generally harsh and even scathing critique of book reviews published in American periodicals of the time. The 1962 New York City newspaper strike helped inspire Hardwick, Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers to establish The New York Review of Books, a publication that became as much a habit for many readers as The New York Times Book Review, which Hardwick had eviscerated in her 1959 essay.
In the '70s and early '80s, Hardwick taught writing seminars at Barnard College and Columbia University's School of the Arts, Writing Division. She gave forthright critiques of student writing and was a mentor to students she considered promising.
From 1949 to 1972 she was married to the poet Robert Lowell; their daughter is Harriet Lowell.
In 2008, The Library of America selected Hardwick's account of the Caryl Chessman murders for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.
Hardwick graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. She was the author of three novels: The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), and Sleepless Nights (1979). A collection of her short fiction, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, will be published in 2010. She also published four books of criticism: A View of My Own (1962), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), Bartleby in Manhattan (1983), and Sight-Readings (1998). In 1961 she edited The Selected Letters of William James and in 2000 she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series..
In 1959, Hardwick published in Harper's, "The Decline of Book Reviewing," a generally harsh and even scathing critique of book reviews published in American periodicals of the time. The 1962 New York City newspaper strike helped inspire Hardwick, Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers to establish The New York Review of Books, a publication that became as much a habit for many readers as The New York Times Book Review, which Hardwick had eviscerated in her 1959 essay.
In the '70s and early '80s, Hardwick taught writing seminars at Barnard College and Columbia University's School of the Arts, Writing Division. She gave forthright critiques of student writing and was a mentor to students she considered promising.
From 1949 to 1972 she was married to the poet Robert Lowell; their daughter is Harriet Lowell.
In 2008, The Library of America selected Hardwick's account of the Caryl Chessman murders for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 29, 2013
This review contains spoilers.
I originally picked this book up for two reasons: it is a Virago Modern Classics edition which I’ve heard many good things about from several people, and Susan Sontag listed Elizabeth Hardwick as one of her favorite contemporary writers a number of times in interviews. Unfortunately, I didn’t think this novel lived up to either of these recommendations.
It tells the story of two people – Joseph Parks, a well-to-do student from New York who has come to Iowa to study, and Anita Mitchell, the wife of a boring chemistry professor at the same university. These two characters who would otherwise have nothing to do with one another are brought together by the local sensationalized murder trial of Rudy Peck, another local student, who is accused of killing his girlfriend. Even though it seems very clear that Rudy has actually killed her, both Joseph and Anita are rabid partisans in defending him – Joseph for reasons he describes as “Dreiserian” (Peck as a latter-day American Tragedy, a kind of male Jenny Gerhardt) and Anita for more vaguely Freudian reasons which Hardwick never fully fleshes out.
Much of the novel consists of either courtroom testimony which is all rather uninspired and extended dialogues between Anita and Joseph which try to exculpate him or explain away his possible involvement in the murder. The possibility of riveting testimony could have salvaged this somehow by turning it into a “true crime” kind of novel along the along the lines of “In Cold Blood,” but even these parts fall completely flat and lifeless onto the page. In the end, Rudy is found not guilty, which brings out the most repulsive snobbery in Anita. She wonders how these simple Iowa farmer-hicks could possibly have so much empathy and understanding to see that Rudy might be anything other than guilty. Apparently the whole time she was thinking that they were a band of knuckle-dragging, trident-wielding witch-burners. One person echoes Anita’s bewilderment: “It is really unnerving to live in a world where everyone, just anybody, takes as complicated a view as the most clever people! … There’s no one to uphold common sense.” I finished the novel wondering if people could really be so ignorant. But of course, the unpleasant fact of the matter is they can be – and perhaps that’s Hardwick’s point.
There are fundamental questions that are never answered in the book. For example, why were Anita and Joseph interested in Peck’s trial beyond the simple, flashy headlines? What drew them to him as a person more than anyone else? Something posing as a “novel of ideas,” which this most certainly is, needs to answer these questions but they remain not even tangentially addressed making their dogged attention to the trial seem random and somewhat silly, like impish schoolchildren who have nothing better to occupy their time. Joseph and Anita are badly drawn characters; they never manage to fully become people, but instead remain contrivances to push Hardwick’s plodding, empty story along.
Ironically, there is remarkably bright and insightful afterward to the novel in this edition written in 1987, some thirty years after it was originally published. It intelligently and clearly explains what she was trying to do with the book. If only she could have written the whole thing as well as she did the afterward!
I originally picked this book up for two reasons: it is a Virago Modern Classics edition which I’ve heard many good things about from several people, and Susan Sontag listed Elizabeth Hardwick as one of her favorite contemporary writers a number of times in interviews. Unfortunately, I didn’t think this novel lived up to either of these recommendations.
It tells the story of two people – Joseph Parks, a well-to-do student from New York who has come to Iowa to study, and Anita Mitchell, the wife of a boring chemistry professor at the same university. These two characters who would otherwise have nothing to do with one another are brought together by the local sensationalized murder trial of Rudy Peck, another local student, who is accused of killing his girlfriend. Even though it seems very clear that Rudy has actually killed her, both Joseph and Anita are rabid partisans in defending him – Joseph for reasons he describes as “Dreiserian” (Peck as a latter-day American Tragedy, a kind of male Jenny Gerhardt) and Anita for more vaguely Freudian reasons which Hardwick never fully fleshes out.
Much of the novel consists of either courtroom testimony which is all rather uninspired and extended dialogues between Anita and Joseph which try to exculpate him or explain away his possible involvement in the murder. The possibility of riveting testimony could have salvaged this somehow by turning it into a “true crime” kind of novel along the along the lines of “In Cold Blood,” but even these parts fall completely flat and lifeless onto the page. In the end, Rudy is found not guilty, which brings out the most repulsive snobbery in Anita. She wonders how these simple Iowa farmer-hicks could possibly have so much empathy and understanding to see that Rudy might be anything other than guilty. Apparently the whole time she was thinking that they were a band of knuckle-dragging, trident-wielding witch-burners. One person echoes Anita’s bewilderment: “It is really unnerving to live in a world where everyone, just anybody, takes as complicated a view as the most clever people! … There’s no one to uphold common sense.” I finished the novel wondering if people could really be so ignorant. But of course, the unpleasant fact of the matter is they can be – and perhaps that’s Hardwick’s point.
There are fundamental questions that are never answered in the book. For example, why were Anita and Joseph interested in Peck’s trial beyond the simple, flashy headlines? What drew them to him as a person more than anyone else? Something posing as a “novel of ideas,” which this most certainly is, needs to answer these questions but they remain not even tangentially addressed making their dogged attention to the trial seem random and somewhat silly, like impish schoolchildren who have nothing better to occupy their time. Joseph and Anita are badly drawn characters; they never manage to fully become people, but instead remain contrivances to push Hardwick’s plodding, empty story along.
Ironically, there is remarkably bright and insightful afterward to the novel in this edition written in 1987, some thirty years after it was originally published. It intelligently and clearly explains what she was trying to do with the book. If only she could have written the whole thing as well as she did the afterward!
March 15, 2024
This novel has some issues but I still enjoyed reading it.
July 31, 2009
Late Hardwick is not as good as early Hardwick. By the turn of the century she had developed this brief, choppy, almost telegraphic style that can be dismaying to read. On the other hand, she was pretty much the sharpest knife in the drawer. So sharp, I'm glad I never met her, since she would dice up a trifler like me in a New York minute (see the Vachel Lindsay description below -- that could be me!). Here are two of my favorite quotes:
“Poets can, of course, write prose. They can write it as well or as ill as they write verse, although I think certain slothful and not very intelligent poets are more daring in mediocrity when they write prose, the prose of a review for instance. Sometimes these items on the passing scene show a distraction about word and idea more suitable to the shooing away of the family dog than to a compositional task. Still, when the habit of poetry exists, it will usually invade the poet’s prose with a natural suffusion of its peculiar ways.” (“The Magical Prose of Poets: Elizabeth Bishop”) p. 245
“(Vachel) Lindsay was one of those too friendly boosters with their often strange imperviousness and faltering sense of the appropriate.” “Wind from the Prairie” p. 184
“Poets can, of course, write prose. They can write it as well or as ill as they write verse, although I think certain slothful and not very intelligent poets are more daring in mediocrity when they write prose, the prose of a review for instance. Sometimes these items on the passing scene show a distraction about word and idea more suitable to the shooing away of the family dog than to a compositional task. Still, when the habit of poetry exists, it will usually invade the poet’s prose with a natural suffusion of its peculiar ways.” (“The Magical Prose of Poets: Elizabeth Bishop”) p. 245
“(Vachel) Lindsay was one of those too friendly boosters with their often strange imperviousness and faltering sense of the appropriate.” “Wind from the Prairie” p. 184
November 7, 2007
Some good insight; very good writing; many essays are dated now, simply because they were so timely when she wrote them.
December 15, 2021
Wow! If your brain needs a good workout, I highly recommend this collection of essays by the brilliant - if sometimes prickly - Elizabeth Hardwick. Written between 1951 and 1962, the essays are hardly dated, vibrant, and great reads today. My Tante S (my mother's best friend of 80+ years and a reader of only capital L Literature) gave me this book before she died. I have long treasured her reading advice and she never steered me wrong. I enjoyed the mental gymnastics of reading A View of My Own and learned much about high level literary criticism. It was a pleasure to read and be prompted to think about many literary titans (Crane, George Eliot, Graham Greene, O'Neill, Dylan Thomas, etc.) in a new way. Her pieces on locations transported me to Boston, Florence and elsewhere.
Two essays, The Subjection of Women and Books About Poverty, need to be read through a time capsule lens. They resonate today and reflect the views of the Fifties and Sixties about the role of women (by reviewing The Second Sex) and poverty. Not cringe-worthy exactly, but definitely of their time.
Review of new biography of Hardwick if you're interested: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
Two essays, The Subjection of Women and Books About Poverty, need to be read through a time capsule lens. They resonate today and reflect the views of the Fifties and Sixties about the role of women (by reviewing The Second Sex) and poverty. Not cringe-worthy exactly, but definitely of their time.
Review of new biography of Hardwick if you're interested: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
April 18, 2024
Well, maybe I’m just too dumb for all this.
Hardwick’s book would, on its face, appear tailor-made for me. It covers some of my all time favorite writers (Djuna Barnes, Joan Didion, and Carl Sandburg), as well as some writers who I’ve had the pleasure of reading for the first time over the past six months (Edith Wharton, Truman Capote, Henry James, and Mary McCarthy). While a good critic can get you to care regardless of whether you’ve read the author at the center of a piece, it helps if you’re invested in the writer already. And yet, I found this book disappointing.
I feel bad that this was my first introduction to Hardwick as she is among the most venerated critics of the 20th century and clearly a talented writer. But — and maybe this is a hot take — she seems to lapse into a cardinal sin of writing that 10th graders are warned against: summarizing too much. I found this to be the case especially in the first few essays of the book. The essays on the work of Wharton, Fuller, James and to a lesser degree Stein and Barnes really did not do much for me. So Wharton was unhappy in her romances and wrote about unhappy romances; and? I was also honestly offended by how much she assumed the reader would care about the intricacies of Boston Brahmin families or old New York, for example. It all just felt a little bogged down. The James essay truly had me asking why I was reading this book as opposed to ‘Washington Square’ because Hardwick spent most of the piece summarizing to the novel to just come to the conclusion that the text is good. I read this book while also reading a seminal work of critique on James, “Turning the Screw of Interpretation” by Shoshana Felman. I know the comparison is a little unfair, but having all the substance of Felman and then turning to the tedium of Hardwick’s writing on James really put into perspective for me what I didn’t enjoy about this book.
That said, Hardwick does have some pieces in here I found truly interesting. When she stops focusing on the life of a writer and instead looks deeply at threads connecting texts is where she shines. My favorite essay was maybe ‘Winds from the Plains’ or her writing on Cheever and Updike — though this may stem from me wanting to read their work and thus being less tired by the summarizing. ‘Winds from the Plains’ achieves what she sets out to do in earlier essays but fails; that is, it successfully connects the lives of writers to their works in a way that feels like it substantively adds to the analysis of their works. She critiques, presumably with not just a little self-awareness, the folly of trying to create a truly ‘American’ fiction in ‘Winds from the Plains.’ I think she starts to touch on interesting subjects in her essays on Mailer and Capote, but they end up being a little contradictory and pretty much walking around a subject that seems to occupy many writers today: who owns a story.
In all, the book was a mixed bag. Hardwick’s writing is clear, incisive, and deft. But some of these essays were so slow moving and pointless I had a hard time getting through them. I heard good things about ‘Sleepless Nights’ by Hardwick so perhaps I’ll try that next. Evidently, I am not entirely turned off to the idea of her as a writer — until we meet again, Elizabeth…
Hardwick’s book would, on its face, appear tailor-made for me. It covers some of my all time favorite writers (Djuna Barnes, Joan Didion, and Carl Sandburg), as well as some writers who I’ve had the pleasure of reading for the first time over the past six months (Edith Wharton, Truman Capote, Henry James, and Mary McCarthy). While a good critic can get you to care regardless of whether you’ve read the author at the center of a piece, it helps if you’re invested in the writer already. And yet, I found this book disappointing.
I feel bad that this was my first introduction to Hardwick as she is among the most venerated critics of the 20th century and clearly a talented writer. But — and maybe this is a hot take — she seems to lapse into a cardinal sin of writing that 10th graders are warned against: summarizing too much. I found this to be the case especially in the first few essays of the book. The essays on the work of Wharton, Fuller, James and to a lesser degree Stein and Barnes really did not do much for me. So Wharton was unhappy in her romances and wrote about unhappy romances; and? I was also honestly offended by how much she assumed the reader would care about the intricacies of Boston Brahmin families or old New York, for example. It all just felt a little bogged down. The James essay truly had me asking why I was reading this book as opposed to ‘Washington Square’ because Hardwick spent most of the piece summarizing to the novel to just come to the conclusion that the text is good. I read this book while also reading a seminal work of critique on James, “Turning the Screw of Interpretation” by Shoshana Felman. I know the comparison is a little unfair, but having all the substance of Felman and then turning to the tedium of Hardwick’s writing on James really put into perspective for me what I didn’t enjoy about this book.
That said, Hardwick does have some pieces in here I found truly interesting. When she stops focusing on the life of a writer and instead looks deeply at threads connecting texts is where she shines. My favorite essay was maybe ‘Winds from the Plains’ or her writing on Cheever and Updike — though this may stem from me wanting to read their work and thus being less tired by the summarizing. ‘Winds from the Plains’ achieves what she sets out to do in earlier essays but fails; that is, it successfully connects the lives of writers to their works in a way that feels like it substantively adds to the analysis of their works. She critiques, presumably with not just a little self-awareness, the folly of trying to create a truly ‘American’ fiction in ‘Winds from the Plains.’ I think she starts to touch on interesting subjects in her essays on Mailer and Capote, but they end up being a little contradictory and pretty much walking around a subject that seems to occupy many writers today: who owns a story.
In all, the book was a mixed bag. Hardwick’s writing is clear, incisive, and deft. But some of these essays were so slow moving and pointless I had a hard time getting through them. I heard good things about ‘Sleepless Nights’ by Hardwick so perhaps I’ll try that next. Evidently, I am not entirely turned off to the idea of her as a writer — until we meet again, Elizabeth…
July 1, 2012
Is the truth ever simple? Or is it fraught with each individual’s collective interpretation of a lie? In this novel, Elizabeth Hardwick turns a penetrating gaze into the microcosm of a non-descript small Iowa town (…but I can't believe anything has happened here, New York, maybe, but not here!). She gives a cold recital of events, then provides a masterful interpretation of its going-ons. The unexpected has happened – Rudy Peck, the boy-next-door, is put on trial for the murder of a cookie-cutter college girl. The town is divided into those who prefer to ignore seamy disarray, and those like Joseph Parks and Anita Mitchell – an unlikely pair who pay such electrifying scrutiny to the trial, they abandon their otherwise mundane lives.
Joseph and Anita intensely compete for who experiences Rudy's fate more. Joseph seeks orchestrated brushes with those intimate with Rudy, while Anita holds a physical distance, as she nurtures a cerebral connection rooted in crime psychology. The trial comes to its anti-climatic resolution, and this is when we taste their desperation; their fervid desire to rise above the uniform, gruel-like consistency imposed upon by life in a small town.
Elizabeth Hardwick has a very quiet, unobstrusive style, which unfortunately did not make this an engrossing experience. I ought to like this novel more, and it is certainly deserving of more than 2 stars. Still, a worthy find from Virago Modern Classics, with cover–art showing detail from Edward Hopper's "Sunlight in a Cafeteria" – there is no doubt he is the ultimate artist to depict a slice of the common American life.
Joseph and Anita intensely compete for who experiences Rudy's fate more. Joseph seeks orchestrated brushes with those intimate with Rudy, while Anita holds a physical distance, as she nurtures a cerebral connection rooted in crime psychology. The trial comes to its anti-climatic resolution, and this is when we taste their desperation; their fervid desire to rise above the uniform, gruel-like consistency imposed upon by life in a small town.
Elizabeth Hardwick has a very quiet, unobstrusive style, which unfortunately did not make this an engrossing experience. I ought to like this novel more, and it is certainly deserving of more than 2 stars. Still, a worthy find from Virago Modern Classics, with cover–art showing detail from Edward Hopper's "Sunlight in a Cafeteria" – there is no doubt he is the ultimate artist to depict a slice of the common American life.
Want to read
December 6, 2007Haven't read this book since it came out, but my great reverence for Elizabeth Hardwick was only fueled by reading these collected essays. Her death this past weekend has reminded me to go back and wrap myself up in her great mind for a while.
I'd recommend this book to lovers of literature, ideas, and great writing; to women writers/thinkers wanting an inspiring and elegant role model; to those interested in the epicenter of mid-twentieth century New York intelligentsia.
I'd actually recommend ANY of her collected essays (I think there are four volumes). Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote a wonderful obituary in the New York Times.
I'd recommend this book to lovers of literature, ideas, and great writing; to women writers/thinkers wanting an inspiring and elegant role model; to those interested in the epicenter of mid-twentieth century New York intelligentsia.
I'd actually recommend ANY of her collected essays (I think there are four volumes). Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote a wonderful obituary in the New York Times.
November 26, 2016
Hardwick has a lovely voice and an impressive amount of knowledge about her subjects. I probably would have enjoyed this volume more if I'd read more of the authors she was reading about, but she is certainly a great essayist, and I enjoyed her insights and readings of Wharton and Elizabeth Bishop, particularly.
June 26, 2014
Very elegant writing. Reminded me of an old movie. (Book was written in the 50s).
November 8, 2020
An overly verbose and lifeless novel of an otherwise impressive writer.
Want to read
March 26, 2018Dewey 820.4
BPL Dewey 810.4
BPL Dewey 810.4
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews