It seems to me that I didn’t enjoy Sleepless Nights quite the way other readers have, especially considering the novel includes Elizabeth Hardwick. And that key aspect alone makes me feel like I’m at fault. Hardwick is an American Virginia Woolf, a person preoccupies herself with making the boundaries nearer to central. The closest thing I have read to Sleepless Nights is the part in George’s diary. Part Nine particularly. With Josette and Ida and Angela, Hardwick’s as far as I can tell cleaners. And Woolf’s Diaries is one of my books that I fondly come back to.
Sleepless Nights has always struck me as an artificially knitted piece. Not all, I think, purposely so. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it has been broken to pieces, more like it has not been put together. If this does indeed qualify as a novel, it does not care for the step by step growth of a central character. It is rather a writer’s thoughts and actions captured while she writes. She looks well and she writes even better. And from her not much, she makes more than enough.
“Oh, M.. As I ponder over the individuals I have paid my respects to, both from the North and the South, I can’t help but feel a sense of brightness. After all, why is it that I cannot capture the hint of sarcasm and observe the recklessness from afar? The sentence in which I have excerpted for purpose of sarcasm is, many of those have to do with events, upheavals, destructions that made sob like a child.”
That is an examination provided by Hardwick, which appears closer to the end. Everything within the context of the book has, dare I say, a ring of carelessness that is extremely accurate. There are several sentences in the book where you just pause and think, “That simply cannot be bettered.” And that is a completely valid thought to have since they do not appear to have any relationship with what has previously been mentioned or what is next to come.
Some of these are deeply astonishing, and so does Part Three that speaks about Billie Hydre and happens to be one of the best written portrayals I’ve ever encountered.
“The sheer enormity of her vices. The sheer outrageousness of the grand destruction. For one must be worthy to require that. Her relentless talent and the obelisk of her destruction.” She was never at any hour of the day or night free of substances, never apart from when she was asleep. Except for when she was sleeping.
As often, Elizabeth Hardwick writes placing together endless lists of items or features. There was an artwork I once saw in the reception of Penguin Books. It was a single sheet of paper listing every noun in War and Peace along with pages upon pages of it. At some point the way Sleepless Nights does, adjective and attitude, makes me think of a Manhattan version of that.
If you want to place it as a work, (published 1979), you will need to know much more of the details about Elizabeth Hardwick’s life and influences. However, I neglected to find out anything regarding her life because I wanted to consider this book by itself. It is sad and fascinating, dull as well as brilliant. I’m certain it is better on the fifth reading than the first. I am however, uncertain about my conclusions, other than observation of life’s dissolution, and attempting to piece together the fragmented visuals of it into words.
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