Bartleby in Manhattan

Selma, Martin Luther King, the pitiful biography of Lee Harvey Oswald open this collection of thoughtful and timeless essays. In "Domestic Manners" Hardwick notes that in the 60's the temptations of self-destruction were everywhere. John Reed, she reports, was a charming American enthusiast of revolution. As a journalist he was able to seize upon the revolutionary moment. (This observation, it strikes me, is ironic.) He was a radical idealist, in short, having been a treasured child of the bourgeoisie. Reed met Bill Haywood in 1913. Haywood had outstanding courage and revolutionary politics. Reed was noticeable and he was vivid. His uniqueness was precisely fulfilled in his prose. For Reed the October Revolution was pageantry. Louise Bryant met Reed when he was visiting his family in Portland. Reed was a morally attractive man. He was not deep and reflective.The power of terror speaks most clearly to those who have used it Hardwick states in considering a Lincoln Center production of the play DANTON'S DEATH. The playwright is notable for his existentialism and his alienation. THE INVESTIGATION is taken from the 1946 testimony of SS men attached to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The stage is a bare courtroom. A trial is inevitably a case history. Peter Weiss's play is a dream, a sublimation. Hardwick states the New York production of it was not good. Self-loving earnestness is an American curse in her estimation. Shakespeare's TIMON OF ATHENS is about the philanthropy the rich confer upon each other. In distress Timon's servants are loyal but his friends are not. Simone Weil died of voluntary starvation according to the coroner. For her, willed deprivation was not new. She did not undergo deprivation for a pay-off. She sought to share in the misery of mankind. Her reading of history and culture was enormous. She was inclined to look upon history as alive. She wrote a moving literary essay on the ILLIAD. In the piece on Thomas Mann Hardwick says that he was never young. The achievement of his youth was BUDDENBROOKS. As an artist Mann was steady. All his life Mann studied to understand the great artist. Mann had the rare gift of creating characters out of ideas. Homoerotic currents are strong in his writing. In the title essay Hardwick points to Bartleby's reduction of language to essence. Melville's brothers were lawyers in the vicinity of Wall Street. Bartleby is found to be living in the office day and night. Hardwick's writing is so clear and so forceful she makes ideas previously considered exciting once again. I cannot think of a better essayist.