Does anyone remember Minnie Minoso? I do, barely. Minoso was a supremely talented outfielder who started in the Negro Leagues, moved on to the major leagues in 1949 after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, and played his last game in 1980. He was the first player to play in five different decades (1940s-1980s), even though his career was “only” 31 years long. (He played two token games in 1980 to qualify for the distinction.)
Elizabeth Hardwick was kind of like that with The New Yorker. Or at least The Complete New Yorker. See, the DVDs in the set are divided up by years. Her first piece in the magazine was a short story called “A Season’s Romance,” in the March 10, 1956 issue. Her last piece was a TOTT in the December 21, 1998 issue. 1956 is the last year of Disc 6, and 1998 is the first year of Disc 1 (the set is numbered in reverse order), so her time spent as a contributor to The New Yorker spans six discs. (I won’t tell, if you won’t, that she doesn’t appear on Disc 4 at all.)
Over nearly the entire Shawn tenure (Shawn took over as editor in 1951), she wrote only fiction in The New Yorker, six stories over twenty-five years. After Tina Brown arrived, Hardwick started off with a short story and then moved to nonfiction—a review of an Edmund Wilson biography, a teeny thing on grits soufflé, and that last TOTT, on Christmas records, for David Remnick.
Hilton Als wrote a very entertaining article about her in the July 13, 1998 issue. Definitely worth a read. There’s a very nice photo of her in the original piece, by Max Vadukul, but it’s quite distorted in the CNY. Best to seek out the print version for that.
By the bye, I will send anyone who can produce a photograph of this “Elizabeth Hardwick Loves Me” T-shirt at Amazon a free copy of any book on this list.
Let’s end on this observation by Als:
Until someone has the temerity to write a biography of Elizabeth Hardwick, we will have to rely on her work for its powerful evocation of the life of the mind, and on hearsay from friends and acquaintances for the details of the life itself. And until someone has the wit to compile an “Elizabeth Hardwick Reader,” we will have to rely on past issues of magazines and periodicals and the largesse of secondhand bookstores.
No “Reader” yet, although New York Review Books has at least put two of her books back into print since Als wrote that. Thank goodness for that. —Martin Schneider
Update: Don’t miss this lovely reminiscence on Als’s New Yorker blog. —MCS