Elizabeth Hardwick

[rm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/obituaries/04cnd-hardwick.html

Even while still at Columbia, Ms. Hardwick slipped into a Bohemian life — sharing a hotel apartment for a time with a young gay man, Greer Johnson; joining him in nightly searches for good jazz in the clubs on West 52nd Street, where she got to know, among others, Billie Holiday; scraping by on fellowships and family help — a life, as she later wrote in her semi-autobiographical novel “Sleepless Nights,” signified by “love and alcohol and the clothes on the floor.”

So much of NYC is now like a college theme-park cleaned up safe fantasy ride of this thing. It's what makes the Village often feel too hollow and too bright these days.

Thanks to sdn for the headsup.

Comments

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

God, lower Broadway feels like a mall these days. I miss the grittier days. And I wish I had been around for the truly bohemian ones.

[magnetgirl.livejournal.com]

SO, so true.

But y'know what? I'd still rather pick through NYC's sanitized trash for real, greasy bits of the refuse of yesteryear than in a garbage can in any other city. At least for the long-term. Short term I'd live in garbage cans in many other locales.

What a strange analogy.