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Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan
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 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.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2022
67 people are currently reading
1533 people want to read
About the author
Darryl Pinckney
31 books63 followersDarryl Pinckney is an American novelist, playwright, and essayist.
Pinckney grew up in a middle-class African-American family in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended local public schools. He was educated at Columbia University in New York.
Pinckney grew up in a middle-class African-American family in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended local public schools. He was educated at Columbia University in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
September 7, 2022
This is an absolutely delightful book for anyone interested in writers who were active in the 1970s forward. Darryl Pinckney is a Black gay man, author and poet, who was Elizabeth Hardwick’s student in creative writing back in 1973. She mentored him without a trace of condescension toward his youthful earnestness and he went from student to assistant to friend. Hardwick was married to Robert Lowell, and between the two of them they knew everyone in New York and the UK (plus everywhere else) who ever picked up a pen ...not all successful writers but all sincere lovers of the word. And Pinckney was a guest at twenty years of Hardwick’s get-togethers.
To spend time with “Lizzie” Hardwick alone is worth the price of this book. She was a co-founder of The New York Review of Books, charismatic teacher, brilliant author, and she was even kind to Lillian Hellman. Elizabeth Bishop (who also required patience from friends), Susan Sontag, Zora Neal Hurston, Mary McCarthy, and so many other geniuses were her friends. Pinckney mocks his young self for the pretentiousness that came from his passion to learn everything about literature before the age of nineteen. He is lovable and very witty. A line I love dates to his taking an “incomplete” in science at the very end of his final semester at Columbia. After his parents had made the futile trip from Indiana for his commencement, Pinckney’s mother told him that no one in their family had neglected to graduate from college since slavery.
There are sad times in this book and a few obnoxious people but, oh, is it worth the ride!
To spend time with “Lizzie” Hardwick alone is worth the price of this book. She was a co-founder of The New York Review of Books, charismatic teacher, brilliant author, and she was even kind to Lillian Hellman. Elizabeth Bishop (who also required patience from friends), Susan Sontag, Zora Neal Hurston, Mary McCarthy, and so many other geniuses were her friends. Pinckney mocks his young self for the pretentiousness that came from his passion to learn everything about literature before the age of nineteen. He is lovable and very witty. A line I love dates to his taking an “incomplete” in science at the very end of his final semester at Columbia. After his parents had made the futile trip from Indiana for his commencement, Pinckney’s mother told him that no one in their family had neglected to graduate from college since slavery.
There are sad times in this book and a few obnoxious people but, oh, is it worth the ride!
December 15, 2022
Fascinating if you're literary and especially if you, like me, are an NYRB afficiando. But despite all the name dropping -- Sontag, Mailer, Basqiuat, June Jordan, Virgil Thomson, Robert Lowell, Mary McCarthy, the B52s, and of course Elizabeth Hardwick -- it is too long by about 200 pages.
October 27, 2022
There is a photo, dated 1986, taken in the Manhattan apartment of Elizabeth Hardwick. She is seated on her red sofa next to Susan Sontag and Peter Schneider. At her end of the sofa, standing behind her is Darryl Pinckney. The closeness of their relationship, of which this book describes in length, is conveyed by their postures, Pinckney’s hands on Hardwick’s elbow and upper arm, a caress of a dear caring friend who is very relaxed.
More than twenty years before the photo was taken, the young Pinckney arrived, like many young men and women before him, in New York City, seeking success as a writer. Fortune favored him, the sister of Pinckney’s college roommate was the best friend of Hardwick’s daughter, Harriet, a connection that landed the young man a spot in Hardwick’s creative writing class at Barnard. He would become a frequent visitor to her apartment on west 67th Street, her assistant, young friend, and employee in the mailroom of the New York review of books, co-founded by Hardwick and her friends, including her good friend, Barbara Epstein. He gained first-hand information of the current literary scene dominated by men and some women of an earlier generation that he would not get at Columbia, or anywhere else, and access to Hardwick’s floor to ceiling library, books on top shelves reached by rolling ladder.
His education as a literary black man, indirectly and directly, owes much to Elizabeth Hardwick. Her suggestion that he drop his early efforts at writing about gay life and write about his family, their NAACP affiliations brought them in contact with the old guard luminaries like Bayard Rustin and Ralph Ellison. The bounded archives of the New York review of books, made available to him, contained articles by Hardwick and an intellectual who’s who of her friends, written about the racial injustices of the late 1950s and early 60s, including Hardwick’s reports from the south and watts after the riots.
Books were only part of his education. Invitations to black writers’ literary conferences were passed along to him. Dropped in a conversation about the novelist, Gayl Jones, is the unknown role Hardwick played in the young woman’s life. Anecdotes and personal literary gossip of literary luminaries, acquaintances of Hardwick’s circle of women writers—even love affairs Hardwick had with a couple of black men of letters—were mentioned.
On the red sofa, Pinckney would meet Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy and Barbara Epstein, read their works and occasionally openly share his thoughts to the intellectual and literary talk without fearing condescension from his elders. It was a space he could freely point out, conversationally, racist tropes in the pages of American literature.
Pinckney is writing a few years after the stonewall riots in lower Manhattan. He arrived in New York, at a time openly gay young men, holding hands, strolled up and down the streets of Greenwich Village. The art and literary scenes downtown were different from what he experienced uptown, the emphasis downtown on the club scene, music, drugs and sex. Pinckney clubbed with his own circle, becoming acquainted with William Burroughs and Basquiat. The old European gay world, part of his reading books on Hardwick’s shelves and conversations of brit and German letters, Auden, Isherwood, Wilde, members of the Bloomsbury Group and Rupert Brooke, Berryman on homosexuality allusions among the Elizabethan dramatists, formed his gay cultural background. He ‘was into Weimar.’
The final memoir pages, written from Berlin, in 1989, entries from Pinckney’s journal, show him running out money, pondering an essay he is working on about Ishmael Reed, and reading letters from his friends back home. 1987 saw the death of James Baldwin, most of the writer’s books, Pinckney reports, out of print and pulped, and in 1989, the deaths of sterling brown and Mary McCarthy, one of the rare white writers who mentioned, outside of a review or activism, James Baldwin as an extremely well-read author and intellectual who frequented parties in the upper New York social world, in a work of prose, her Birds of America. In contrast to Baldwin, when black literary writers are mentioned in conversation and listed in memoirs and literary criticism by black authors, Darryl Pinckney’s name is, far too often, absent, nor is he a favorite of black readers, ironic given the number of black Americans and other black literary writers from African countries, major European cities, and islands in the indies, about who he has seriously written. Granted, there are jabs taken by him at sterling brown, one of Pinckney’s distant relatives, and off-handed remarks by the young writer, in general, against the old guard, but Baldwin himself wasn’t above, as a literary son, slaying fathers. It is sharing his personal literary and cultural memories as a young man, honestly, the good and the bad, which makes this book, lived on several levels, felt as a living, breathing testimony.
I thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy.
More than twenty years before the photo was taken, the young Pinckney arrived, like many young men and women before him, in New York City, seeking success as a writer. Fortune favored him, the sister of Pinckney’s college roommate was the best friend of Hardwick’s daughter, Harriet, a connection that landed the young man a spot in Hardwick’s creative writing class at Barnard. He would become a frequent visitor to her apartment on west 67th Street, her assistant, young friend, and employee in the mailroom of the New York review of books, co-founded by Hardwick and her friends, including her good friend, Barbara Epstein. He gained first-hand information of the current literary scene dominated by men and some women of an earlier generation that he would not get at Columbia, or anywhere else, and access to Hardwick’s floor to ceiling library, books on top shelves reached by rolling ladder.
His education as a literary black man, indirectly and directly, owes much to Elizabeth Hardwick. Her suggestion that he drop his early efforts at writing about gay life and write about his family, their NAACP affiliations brought them in contact with the old guard luminaries like Bayard Rustin and Ralph Ellison. The bounded archives of the New York review of books, made available to him, contained articles by Hardwick and an intellectual who’s who of her friends, written about the racial injustices of the late 1950s and early 60s, including Hardwick’s reports from the south and watts after the riots.
Books were only part of his education. Invitations to black writers’ literary conferences were passed along to him. Dropped in a conversation about the novelist, Gayl Jones, is the unknown role Hardwick played in the young woman’s life. Anecdotes and personal literary gossip of literary luminaries, acquaintances of Hardwick’s circle of women writers—even love affairs Hardwick had with a couple of black men of letters—were mentioned.
On the red sofa, Pinckney would meet Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy and Barbara Epstein, read their works and occasionally openly share his thoughts to the intellectual and literary talk without fearing condescension from his elders. It was a space he could freely point out, conversationally, racist tropes in the pages of American literature.
Pinckney is writing a few years after the stonewall riots in lower Manhattan. He arrived in New York, at a time openly gay young men, holding hands, strolled up and down the streets of Greenwich Village. The art and literary scenes downtown were different from what he experienced uptown, the emphasis downtown on the club scene, music, drugs and sex. Pinckney clubbed with his own circle, becoming acquainted with William Burroughs and Basquiat. The old European gay world, part of his reading books on Hardwick’s shelves and conversations of brit and German letters, Auden, Isherwood, Wilde, members of the Bloomsbury Group and Rupert Brooke, Berryman on homosexuality allusions among the Elizabethan dramatists, formed his gay cultural background. He ‘was into Weimar.’
The final memoir pages, written from Berlin, in 1989, entries from Pinckney’s journal, show him running out money, pondering an essay he is working on about Ishmael Reed, and reading letters from his friends back home. 1987 saw the death of James Baldwin, most of the writer’s books, Pinckney reports, out of print and pulped, and in 1989, the deaths of sterling brown and Mary McCarthy, one of the rare white writers who mentioned, outside of a review or activism, James Baldwin as an extremely well-read author and intellectual who frequented parties in the upper New York social world, in a work of prose, her Birds of America. In contrast to Baldwin, when black literary writers are mentioned in conversation and listed in memoirs and literary criticism by black authors, Darryl Pinckney’s name is, far too often, absent, nor is he a favorite of black readers, ironic given the number of black Americans and other black literary writers from African countries, major European cities, and islands in the indies, about who he has seriously written. Granted, there are jabs taken by him at sterling brown, one of Pinckney’s distant relatives, and off-handed remarks by the young writer, in general, against the old guard, but Baldwin himself wasn’t above, as a literary son, slaying fathers. It is sharing his personal literary and cultural memories as a young man, honestly, the good and the bad, which makes this book, lived on several levels, felt as a living, breathing testimony.
I thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy.
June 30, 2023
Pinckney fell into Hardwick's orbit after enrolling in her class at Barnard in 1973. For the following decade, she was his professor, mentor, employer, advocate, confidant. This hybrid memoir/biography winds through the years, as Pinckney developed his literary and cultural taste in large part through his proximity to her--he was a fly in on the wall in her Upper West Side apartment, listening to her as she hosted many of the giants of New York's literary culture (and particularly the women). The influence was considerable. From a 1989 letter--there are only a few letters included in this book--Hardwick addresses Pinckney affectionately as her "little protégé of yore." He was teased at one point by his dad for only relaying Hardwick's opinions of literature, never seeming to have his own.
The book needs to be read in tandem with Hardwick's writings and a fondness of the milieu, particularly The New York Review and Partisan Review (to a lesser extent). I turned repeatedly to The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick and The New York Stories while reading (both of which include introductions from Pinckney). It's infectious, hearing Hardwick's arresting voice whether through her typewriter or recorded by Pinckney.
Pinckney plays with verisimilitude by stacking contemporaneous accounts with memory and fact-checking. Meanwhile, he's quite clear about what was hidden away from him at the time, the shards he's receiving of Robert Lowell and Barbara Epstein and all of the others. Hardwick intimated that she would not share things with Pinckney ("don't discuss someone you know well with someone who knows that person less well"), and he discerned later how his access to her world was occluded by her partial candor. The journals that Pinckney used in writing this book were badly burned in a fire--large portions scorched beyond legibility. That, itself, a metonymy for the project.
The welcoming nature of Hardwick's circle is offset by an alienating irony. Pinckney had to endure diminishing slights as a black gay man. Pinckney was the only black student in Columbia's English program at the time, for instance, and you can see how exasperating it would be to be the ambassador of Harlem or to face the way that racism in prose was used as "local color." Later, when writing for The New York Review: "I do sometimes get irritated that when I'm writing about Afro-American literature, I have to explain everything, place the writers in context, and they don't when it's Waugh."
Some reviewers decry the book for indulging in gossip or name-dropping. I don't see that. Pinckney was intoxicated with the culture, nearly delirious with it, and it feels natural as James Baldwin, Basquiat, Nan Goldin, and so many others slide into fragmentary reminiscence built on mini-portraiture. Still, this line from Hardwick as the cf: "Gossip is just analysis of the absent person, Barbara and I always say. Then we let the absent person have it." And, call this gossip if you must, but consider just one revealing anecdote. Sontag shared with Pinckney how Robert Lowell made a pass on her in 1962 while also snidely dismissing Hardwick: "one can't have one's wife writing Madame Bovary in the kitchen." Sontag told Pinckney that she hadn't shared the story with anyone, but now Pinckney puts it down on the page because he kept a diary and "it seemed like the right time to tell someone." Yes, certainly.
The AIDS crisis emerges in the final 100 pages, particularly through an account of the people that were dying, a reminder that this is Pinckney's story, not Hardwick's. The uplifting exploration of Pinckney's 70s is met with the destruction he witnessed in the 80s. This has a double effect as the book becomes elegiac, a twilight of Hardwick's late career.
The book needs to be read in tandem with Hardwick's writings and a fondness of the milieu, particularly The New York Review and Partisan Review (to a lesser extent). I turned repeatedly to The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick and The New York Stories while reading (both of which include introductions from Pinckney). It's infectious, hearing Hardwick's arresting voice whether through her typewriter or recorded by Pinckney.
Pinckney plays with verisimilitude by stacking contemporaneous accounts with memory and fact-checking. Meanwhile, he's quite clear about what was hidden away from him at the time, the shards he's receiving of Robert Lowell and Barbara Epstein and all of the others. Hardwick intimated that she would not share things with Pinckney ("don't discuss someone you know well with someone who knows that person less well"), and he discerned later how his access to her world was occluded by her partial candor. The journals that Pinckney used in writing this book were badly burned in a fire--large portions scorched beyond legibility. That, itself, a metonymy for the project.
The welcoming nature of Hardwick's circle is offset by an alienating irony. Pinckney had to endure diminishing slights as a black gay man. Pinckney was the only black student in Columbia's English program at the time, for instance, and you can see how exasperating it would be to be the ambassador of Harlem or to face the way that racism in prose was used as "local color." Later, when writing for The New York Review: "I do sometimes get irritated that when I'm writing about Afro-American literature, I have to explain everything, place the writers in context, and they don't when it's Waugh."
Some reviewers decry the book for indulging in gossip or name-dropping. I don't see that. Pinckney was intoxicated with the culture, nearly delirious with it, and it feels natural as James Baldwin, Basquiat, Nan Goldin, and so many others slide into fragmentary reminiscence built on mini-portraiture. Still, this line from Hardwick as the cf: "Gossip is just analysis of the absent person, Barbara and I always say. Then we let the absent person have it." And, call this gossip if you must, but consider just one revealing anecdote. Sontag shared with Pinckney how Robert Lowell made a pass on her in 1962 while also snidely dismissing Hardwick: "one can't have one's wife writing Madame Bovary in the kitchen." Sontag told Pinckney that she hadn't shared the story with anyone, but now Pinckney puts it down on the page because he kept a diary and "it seemed like the right time to tell someone." Yes, certainly.
The AIDS crisis emerges in the final 100 pages, particularly through an account of the people that were dying, a reminder that this is Pinckney's story, not Hardwick's. The uplifting exploration of Pinckney's 70s is met with the destruction he witnessed in the 80s. This has a double effect as the book becomes elegiac, a twilight of Hardwick's late career.
February 7, 2023
Lengthy good gossipy memoir of Hardwick and other founders of the New York Review of Books; combined with Pinckney’s unstructured memories (with asides from his partner, James Fenton) and historical info on the NAACP, Harlem Renaissance, though I longed for an index.
January 6, 2026
An intriguing and truly singular memoir onNew York’s literary lions of the mid-late 1900s.
Though this is technically Darryl Pinckney‘a book, it’s really Elizabeth Hardwick’s memoir. Pinckney is our narrator, our filter, and our lens, but he’s de-centered himself from the story to focus on providing an homage to his friend and mentor Hardwick.
This is a lot of Writers on Writing and Writers on Other Writers, some of it riveting and some of it a bit dull. If there’s a critique of this book it’s that it’s too long and contains a good amount of somewhat repetitive content. I could have done with more of Hardwick’s glib comments on Henry James and more like “there was no deer,” and less lamentation over Lowell and back and forth on the insufferable Lillian Hellman.
I also would have preferred that most of the Mary McCarthy content be chopped. There’s a lot of it, it’s all deadly boring, and far less interesting than what we get on Hardwick, Barbara Epstein, Pinckney himself, and some of the other more secondary characters in their story.
Pinckney is remarkably honest about Hardwick, a woman he clearly loves dearly and admires greatly, but a flawed person in some respects. She’s certainly comes off as far less likable than Pinckney or even Barbara Epstein, and despite her claims to the same northeastern moderate liberalism that I ascribe to, she clearly held on to some distressingly ugly bits of her native southern white value system.
All the name dropping didn’t bother me as much as it seems to have bothered some reviewers, as I think most of it was deployed as necessary to the story. Perhaps a bit of editing down on mentions of writers who have not withstood the test of time might have been helpful, but mostly this is a cast you want to engage with. And it’s notable how good Pinckney is at selecting anecdotes that tell much about the subject without ever feeling like the kind of icky tell-all content that puts me off most memoirs.
Though this is technically Darryl Pinckney‘a book, it’s really Elizabeth Hardwick’s memoir. Pinckney is our narrator, our filter, and our lens, but he’s de-centered himself from the story to focus on providing an homage to his friend and mentor Hardwick.
This is a lot of Writers on Writing and Writers on Other Writers, some of it riveting and some of it a bit dull. If there’s a critique of this book it’s that it’s too long and contains a good amount of somewhat repetitive content. I could have done with more of Hardwick’s glib comments on Henry James and more like “there was no deer,” and less lamentation over Lowell and back and forth on the insufferable Lillian Hellman.
I also would have preferred that most of the Mary McCarthy content be chopped. There’s a lot of it, it’s all deadly boring, and far less interesting than what we get on Hardwick, Barbara Epstein, Pinckney himself, and some of the other more secondary characters in their story.
Pinckney is remarkably honest about Hardwick, a woman he clearly loves dearly and admires greatly, but a flawed person in some respects. She’s certainly comes off as far less likable than Pinckney or even Barbara Epstein, and despite her claims to the same northeastern moderate liberalism that I ascribe to, she clearly held on to some distressingly ugly bits of her native southern white value system.
All the name dropping didn’t bother me as much as it seems to have bothered some reviewers, as I think most of it was deployed as necessary to the story. Perhaps a bit of editing down on mentions of writers who have not withstood the test of time might have been helpful, but mostly this is a cast you want to engage with. And it’s notable how good Pinckney is at selecting anecdotes that tell much about the subject without ever feeling like the kind of icky tell-all content that puts me off most memoirs.
Read
January 6, 2023"Ultimately, this is not only a book about the drama of these deep, lifelong relationships. What Pinckney seems to want to elevate is their best elements: enthusiasm, forgiveness, support, continuity. Time trudges on, and from afar, Pinckney receives word of friends and colleagues who have passed away." – Lauren LeBlanc
June 4, 2023
Picked this up on a whim and an excerpt and was utterly delighted. A one-of-a-kind mishmash of memoir, old literary gossip, and lucid, sometimes devastating observation. Wonderful book.
December 24, 2022
I had to give up on reading this. It's very stream of consciousness and that isn't a style that I enjoy most of the time. But even more than that was the barrage of names. If I don't know a name, I like to stop and look it up and figure out why the author is mentioning them. It would take me hours to get through just the first twenty pages! So, I think that this book is not for me, BUT to someone who knows this literary world of New York City, I am sure it would be fascinating and well worth reading. Or if you like this kind of writing style. I hope that this book finds the right readers!
May 1, 2024
I enjoyed the content of this book enormously, but the writing style, not so much. It was written in a stream of consciousness or diary-style manner, which made it really hard to follow. And, the last section of the book contains transcriptions of Elizabeth's letters to Darryl, and then Darryl's actual corresponding diary entries about what was going on during that time. I wonder what Darryl and Lizzie's relationship was after 1989 (when the book ended) up through her death in 2007; he made no mention of those later years.
I have a particular knowledge of the "players" that Darryl writes about here: their social circle, the NYRB crowd and their books, and what was going on in the NY literary scene in general. But even in spite of my familiarity, I had trouble following the flow of his narrative. Again, since this was diary style, it gave him creative license to not explain who everyone was and the connections between people in the group, or even what they were well-known for writing. That said: I really enjoyed understanding the connection between the younger generation of NYRB writers: for example, at one point of the book Darryl explains that Susan Sontag's son, David Rieff, was friends with Jamaica Kincaid, who was married to Allen Shawn, who was the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn. That connection brought a whole new layer of my understanding of how insular this group was.
Since Lizzie was close friends with Mary McCarthy, it was also super interesting to hear Darryl's opinions about Mary after her popularity had passed, later in her life. It was clear that he was not a fan of hers, but she features prominently in the book because of the Lizzie friendship. The last pages of the book, in fact, describe Mary's death (from lung cancer in 1989) and he uses that episode to segue to a conclusion for the memoir. I laughed at the memory of Darryl meeting Mary at Lizzie's for dinner: "thank you for introducing me to Mary McCarthy, but that was not the Mary McCarthy I'd been expecting." Enjoyed reading about his experience with her, filtered through the friendship with Lizzie.
On the positive side: Darryl and Lizzie's friendship was truly delightful to learn about. I loved seeing her letters to him at the end of the book. I loved hearing about their dinners and their conversations. There was also a nice juxtaposition between her uptown world on 67th street, with the doorman and the janitor in the epic CPW apartment, and his youthful downtown world of going to clubs and bars. They were oddly in sync about so many issues that the differences of their generations and their life experiences seem to surprise both of them, when those differences arose.
I have a particular knowledge of the "players" that Darryl writes about here: their social circle, the NYRB crowd and their books, and what was going on in the NY literary scene in general. But even in spite of my familiarity, I had trouble following the flow of his narrative. Again, since this was diary style, it gave him creative license to not explain who everyone was and the connections between people in the group, or even what they were well-known for writing. That said: I really enjoyed understanding the connection between the younger generation of NYRB writers: for example, at one point of the book Darryl explains that Susan Sontag's son, David Rieff, was friends with Jamaica Kincaid, who was married to Allen Shawn, who was the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn. That connection brought a whole new layer of my understanding of how insular this group was.
Since Lizzie was close friends with Mary McCarthy, it was also super interesting to hear Darryl's opinions about Mary after her popularity had passed, later in her life. It was clear that he was not a fan of hers, but she features prominently in the book because of the Lizzie friendship. The last pages of the book, in fact, describe Mary's death (from lung cancer in 1989) and he uses that episode to segue to a conclusion for the memoir. I laughed at the memory of Darryl meeting Mary at Lizzie's for dinner: "thank you for introducing me to Mary McCarthy, but that was not the Mary McCarthy I'd been expecting." Enjoyed reading about his experience with her, filtered through the friendship with Lizzie.
On the positive side: Darryl and Lizzie's friendship was truly delightful to learn about. I loved seeing her letters to him at the end of the book. I loved hearing about their dinners and their conversations. There was also a nice juxtaposition between her uptown world on 67th street, with the doorman and the janitor in the epic CPW apartment, and his youthful downtown world of going to clubs and bars. They were oddly in sync about so many issues that the differences of their generations and their life experiences seem to surprise both of them, when those differences arose.
May 19, 2024
Darryl Pinckeny’s desire to be a part of the established NY literary scene of the 1970’s is painfully obvious in this memoir of his relationship with his mentor, Elizabeth Hardwick. Her groups’ frequent genteel hostility to blacks and homosexuals (why is he always doing Hardwick’s dishes?) is at times stunning. His recollections of Mary McCarthy, Robert Lowell, Susan Sontag, and Norman Mailer, as well as editors Bob Silvers and Barbara Epstein, provide a meaty slice of NY’s late ’70’s/early 80’s literary scene, centered on the NY Review of Books. But while Pinckeny had one foot in that world, he also had a foot in the downtown art/music/writing scene: Jim Jarmusch, Nan Goldin, Luc(y) Sante, Keith Haring, Basquiat, William Burroughs, and Alan Ginsberg—to most modern readers a group much more interesting and worthy of chronicling. AIDS and drugs begin to devastate this crowd and there seems an urgency that just doesn’t exist in the old crowd who get frailer, drink too much and sue each other. His writing is often jarring—too many people identified only by first name, uncredited quotes from off stage, snippets of poems from who knows who, and stories that sometime run squarely into brick walls. I never did figure out why he chose to end the book with letters from 10 years after most of the action. Still there are enough bitchfests and bon mots in this lengthy reflection to keep most people entertained.
December 22, 2022
I agree it is fascinating and well written, and if you are a literary nerd, you'll love some of the asides (Julia, by Lillian Hellman was prolly made up, I read that short story that led to the movie, one of my faves) and that Auden's Lullaby? I think it's called was to a 15 year old lover. Lowell appears via Hardwick's pov mostly/I still say he was trouble and troubled, so it seemed like for Hardwick almost better when she is um widowed/divorced (I think she divorced him and he then remarried and dies)
but I also will say, only a poet or literary nerd would CARE about these people and it is as another said about 200 pages too long. Less in more and the author, of all people, being a student of Hardwick, should know that!
but I also will say, only a poet or literary nerd would CARE about these people and it is as another said about 200 pages too long. Less in more and the author, of all people, being a student of Hardwick, should know that!
November 18, 2022
A wonderfully anecdotal and gossipy memoir from writer and critic Darryl Pinkney in which he recalls his writing teacher and mentor Elizabeth Hardwick, with whom he formed a deep and long-lasting friendship, and the heady and vibrant New York intellectual world in which they lived and worked. Pinckney kept detailed journals so that he has been able to re-create meetings and conversations to great effect, painting a portrait of the era and its characters which feels authentic, and is compelling and endlessly fascinating. I was carried along with the meandering and wide-ranging narrative and thoroughly enjoyed it.
April 22, 2023
Another Booktube Prize book that is utterly not for me. If you know who's who in the New York literary scene circa 1970 you'll have a grand old time, but the sea of names with precious little context, not to mention the stream of consciousness style, left me adrift.
Also, I'm mad that he deadnames a trans person throughout the entire book. There's no malice that I can detect - I think he's trying to be true to his memory of the person, as their transition is fairly recent - but still, you're deadnaming and misgendering a transperson over hundreds of pages. No, thank you.
More thoughts in this Booktube Prize vlog.
Also, I'm mad that he deadnames a trans person throughout the entire book. There's no malice that I can detect - I think he's trying to be true to his memory of the person, as their transition is fairly recent - but still, you're deadnaming and misgendering a transperson over hundreds of pages. No, thank you.
More thoughts in this Booktube Prize vlog.
May 4, 2024
Our book club selected this title with great expectation and now hardly anyone is showing up for the meeting because of the general disappointment. I found the stream of consciousness meanderings, the gossiping, and the name dropping were all very tiresome and wondered if I had misread the reviews. I went back and reread the professional reviews and they hardly match my and my fellow book club members experience of the book.
Several others said it was “tedious” and I agree.
Several others said it was “tedious” and I agree.
February 13, 2023
3.5 I learned quite a bit about Elizabeth Hardwick and the author through this hard to define memoir/ biography / history of the Manhattan literary scene of the 70s and early 80s and the generation that proceeded it. I feel like it could have been a bit more condense and focused, but overall I love books that point me towards other books, artists, and films and this one did just that.
November 10, 2023
reading this cracked open the 70s in new york and left me with an infinite list of writers, films, artists, publications, etc. i want to know. it is not only an intimate portal into the lives of writers but also the craft of writing itself. sometimes a strenuous read, but i found every page worthwhile.
May 3, 2025
Did not finish. I had just read Pinckney’s “Mary Said What She Said”which is brilliant, so perhaps I was hoping for too much here. I was.
This claims to introduce us to the literary world of Hardwick and Sontag and Lowell. But it is insider gossip, so inside that it is inside out. Unless you already know everything that is in this book, it is unreadable. Go read the other one.
This claims to introduce us to the literary world of Hardwick and Sontag and Lowell. But it is insider gossip, so inside that it is inside out. Unless you already know everything that is in this book, it is unreadable. Go read the other one.
April 5, 2023
I liked this book but didn't finish because it was too long and episodic. It's very specific to these writers which I like - Hardwick, Lowell, Baldwin - and the intersection of race and the literary world, but the narrative was in and out too much to compel me to finish.
November 24, 2023
I feel strange claiming I have the right to rate an account of someone’s life. It was just not my cup of tea, I guess. Many of the literary references got lost on me, but I think most people can find something that resonates with them in this memoir. A worthy read, but a difficult one.
Want to read
June 16, 2024Note to self: Make sure you get a hardcover cuz, pictures, including two photographs of the dramatic two-story living room on the back cover. Novelist Elizabeth Hardwick lived in a top-floor duplex at 15 West Sixty-Seventh Street in Manhattan, from 1961 until her death in 2007.
December 6, 2022
Gossipy & Romantic.
Read
January 4, 2023DNF… I may pick it up again later.
February 28, 2023
This is literary nerd catnip and will send you down several rabbit holes.
Read
March 25, 2023An English teacher’s dream. Fascinating.
January 5, 2024
This book needed an index.
August 28, 2024
I was fascinated by this look at Elizabeth Hardwick, and even more, the era in which she lived and the people in her circle. Pinckney had a birds-eye view, going on to become a great author himself.
November 23, 2023
Extremely enjoyable and a literary education for me as well. One of my favorite reads this year.
November 9, 2025
“Stay ahead of the reader…” Elizabeth Hardwick tells Darryl Pinckney and he has mastered it. Reading this book, my mind scrambled to keep up, make leaps, connect dots, place names. But because Pinckney never over explains, I found this book immersive. I loved the atmosphere he creates and feeling what he himself seems to have felt, inexperienced, eager and in love with this world of literature and writing.
In addition to the thrill of life in the literary world, Come Back in September brings the poignance of hindsight. Pinckney includes parenthetical notes that alert us to the looming AIDS crisis which will doom so many of his friends. He tells us his sisters' stories will get sadder as time passes, as if to prove out “the ‘terrible point’ of Hardwick’s novel [Sleepless Nights], that ‘life ends badly.'" But he also weaves in conversations he has with his partner James while he's writing the book and past interactions with the famous writers and artists that made up his friend group in his youth.
It's a beautiful work that demonstrates what Hardwick once told him, "you write with all of your experience alive within you."
In addition to the thrill of life in the literary world, Come Back in September brings the poignance of hindsight. Pinckney includes parenthetical notes that alert us to the looming AIDS crisis which will doom so many of his friends. He tells us his sisters' stories will get sadder as time passes, as if to prove out “the ‘terrible point’ of Hardwick’s novel [Sleepless Nights], that ‘life ends badly.'" But he also weaves in conversations he has with his partner James while he's writing the book and past interactions with the famous writers and artists that made up his friend group in his youth.
It's a beautiful work that demonstrates what Hardwick once told him, "you write with all of your experience alive within you."
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