James Tait Black Memorial Prizes
Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan
Darryl Pinckney reflects on the literary world of 1970s New York through his friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick and Barbara Epstein. The result is both a record of personal formation and a portrait of a cultural and intellectual community.
Work Information
Literary education and urban memory come alive in an intimate act of recollection.
Against the backdrop of Hardwick, Epstein, and the intellectual climate of 1970s New York, Pinckney looks back on how he became a writer. The book presents literary mentorship and urban culture with both wit and emotional seriousness.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Published
- 2022-10-25
- Pages
- 464 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.38 x 3.56 x 23.62 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780374126650
- ISBN-10
- 0374126658
- Price
- 10601 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Biographies & Memoirs/Historical
Critic and writer Darryl Pinckney recalls his friendship and apprenticeship with Elizabeth Hardwick and Barbara Epstein and the introduction they offered him to the New York literary world. Darryl Pinckney arrived at Columbia University in New York City in the early 1970s and had the opportunity to enroll in Elizabeth Hardwick’s creative writing class at Barnard. It changed his life. When the semester was over, he continued to visit her, and he became close to both Hardwick and Barbara Epstein, Hardwick’s best friend and neighbor and a fellow founder of The New York Review of Books . Pinckney was drawn into a New York literary world where he encountered some of the fascinating contributors to the Review , among them Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, and Mary McCarthy. Yet the intellectual and artistic freedom that Pinckney observed on West Sixty-seventh Street could conflict with the demands of his politically minded family and their sense of the unavoidable lessons of black history. Pinckney’s education in Hardwick’s orbit took place in the context of the cultural movements then sweeping New York. In addition, through his peers and former classmates—such as Felice Rosser, Jim Jarmusch, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lucy Sante, Howard Brookner, and Nan Goldin—Pinckney witnessed the coming together of the New Wave scene in the East Village. He experienced the avant-garde life at the same time as he was discovering the sexual freedom brought by gay liberation. It was his time for hope. In Come Back in September , Pinckney recalls his introduction to New York and to the writing life. The critic and novelist intimately captures this revolutionary, brilliant, and troubled period in American letters. Elizabeth Hardwick was not only his link to the intellectual heart of New York but also a source of continuous support and of inspiration—in the way she worked, her artistry, the beauty of her voice. Through his memories of the city and of Hardwick, we see the emergence and evolution of Pinckney himself as a writer.
Darryl Pinckney is the author of the novels Black Deutschland and High Cotton and the nonfiction works Busted in New York and Other Essays , Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy , and Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature.
Reviews
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It’s hard—perhaps impossible—to describe this book, but it’s worth one’s while to read it and decide for oneself. An established 20th century writer and literary critic (straight white middle aged woman) mentors an aspiring writer (young gay black man) in pre-AIDS bohemian NYC. The action bounces between the by-then-establishment Partisan Review crowd and the then-emerging punk(ish) club scene. We know, and therefore can see, it’s all taking place in a “Last Days of Pompeii” atmosphere and are, in fact, often reminded AIDS was lurking just up the street. It’s neither a “dark side” expose or a “warts and all” realist narrative, but rather a “slice of life”—sometimes rough and raw, sometimes varnished, sometimes gilded and ruffled into a baroque masquerade. There’s lots of conflict, lots of joy and sorrow, lots and lots and lots of gossip (whispered and shouted) and in the end it turns out to be possible to love everyone while hating some (many) of the things they say or do wrongly believe. Finally, as “In Search of Lost Time” finished, everyone’s older and there’s a party.
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Interesting in parts, but unbearably pretentious. The author clearly has no interest in his readers - it’s a vain stream of consciousness that is designed to show how many famous people he has interacted with - but it zigs and zags so much that keeping track of who these people are is nigh on impossible. Will no doubt be loved by a certain crowd, but if you - as I did - think “this is an interesting time, place and group of people I’d like to know more about” forget it.
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As much a history of a small but important part of NYC literary life in the 70's and 80's as a memoir. Written in a very readable "personable" style. I hope he does another, maybe an extension into the 90's and the 21st Century.
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I find biographical novels compelling. More people need to learn about this amazing woman
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positive experience