Before reading Sleepless Nights, I was expecting that it would be a largely introspective piece that would teach us about writing because that is what reviews of the book put forth. So I went into the book reading for the deeper meaning, reading for what the narrator and the author were trying to make the audience understand about ourselves. However since I was reading with those intentions, I had a guard up against what the book was trying to do. I didn’t let myself be vulnerable to the book because I was aware of the intentions of the author. Prior to reading Sleepless Nights I read primarily for entertainment, but with this book, I find myself reading for its truth, which means I might have missed a lot when I read it– I was fighting back against the text.
Below is a value graph of pages 28 to 30, where Elizabeth, the narrator, introduces Billie Holiday:
When describing Billie, Elizabeth says,
And yet the heart always drew back from the power of her will and its engagement with disaster. An inclination bred from punishing experiences compelled her to live gregariously and without affections (30).
This is negatively charged because it explains how Billie was living within the world, surrounded by others, but with no real connections. Billie had no real relationships, she was merely passing through life. She lived in sheer loneliness.
However, we then see that it wasn’t always so lonely, or so negative. Elizabeth explains that,
Only a fool imagined that it was necessary to love a man, to love anyone, to love life. Her own people, those around her, feared her (30).
This is positively charged because Billie while she was just gliding through her life, she did it gracefully, and she wanted that independence and solitude that she had. She was empowered, in charge of her own life, and those around her knew it and respected her for that.
The controlling value’s context at play here seems to be that too much solitude and independence can become awfully lonely and even depressing. The purpose is that past experience and trauma leads to a tendency toward independence and solitude. The opposing controlling value’s purpose is that associating with others can relieve our loneliness, and the context is that those people can cause even more pain.
Those ideas are portrayed by the life of Billie Holiday. Billie never felt that she need a man or anyone in her life, but then she was ashamed by her tendency to push people away and to never allow anyone to get really close to her.
And perhaps even she was often ashamed of the heavy weight of her own spirit, one never tempted to the relief of sentimentality (30).
Billie was aware that she may have been intimidating to some, and sometimes it may have been overwhelming to even her, but for the most part, she was grateful for her solitude and independence, even if it meant sacrificing her ability to form meaningful relationships. We later see these ideas come to the surface again in the lives of other characters and in Elizabeth herself.
While Sleepless Nights is mostly a plotless book, we come across a section of the book where the narrator reminisces on her past relationship with the singer, Billie Holiday. She paints a picture of the singer, in all of her tragic beauty, and recounts the events of the singer’s life and when they knew one another. Elizabeth, the narrator, uses her accounts of Billie Holiday to show the reader something– that the mind cannot be trusted. This leads the reader to believe that perhaps Elizabeth’s recalling of her past with Billie is not wholly accurate. The narrator says, “Then, showing our fidelity, it seemed that a sort of motif would reveal itself, that under the glaze ancient patterns from a lost world were to be discovered. The mind strains to recover the blank spaces in history” (30). Elizabeth tells us that perhaps we cannot trust her story and her memories because she has filled in the gaps with things that are untrue. But we, as the readers, also fill in the gaps with our own projects, which makes us miss what is on the page.
Book Reader's Web 
Overall, I agree with your blog post. I went into the book completely blind and I did not know what to expect from the reading. At a first impression standpoint, I found the text to be confusing and frustrating to understand at times. Upon closer reading of the text, I can definitely see how one could say that the controlling value would be the narrator’s past experience and trauma. A lot of what the narrator discusses happens in the past and how those events of trauma have affected her life in the present. This can be seen in the letters that are sent between the narrator and the various recipients of the letters. In these letters, Elizabeth mostly writes about how these past events cause her to become the person she is currently. In addition, the idea that being too independent can cause a person to become lonely, makes sense as an opposing idea because Elizabeth tries to distance herself from others in an attempt to figure things out herself. This creates a distance between Elizabeth and the other characters. While this is pretty noticeable early on in the text, it might become more substantial in the duration of the book.
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I totally related to what you said in the beginning of your post about having a guard up and looking for a deeper meaning when reading the story. In my own opinion I cannot do that anymore if I am reading or watching something for the first time. For the first time I need to shut my brain off and just enjoy it and fall for everything! Then the second time around look between the lines. In reference to the blog post I would say that the trauma and odd life Elizabeth has made her reflect on it all and that would be the controlling value present. The loneliness and reflection.
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I find the idea of surrendering yourself to the text, as proposed in your first paragraph, extremely interesting. I also found myself initially fighting against the text, wanting to read the book on my own terms. Within the first ten pages I realized that this tactic would not work, as I was comprehending and processing little to nothing that I was reading. By “breaking” a reader in this way, Hardwick forces the reader to accept the book on her terms rather than their own. I found your use of Billie Holiday to highlight the controlling value was effective. However, I might suggest rethinking the controlling value as one of “intimacy” rather than one of solitude and introspection. By this I mean that the narrator is constantly assessing her own need for love and acceptance, pitted against her insistence on being independent to the point of solitude. I think this dynamic is present in almost every memory the narrator describes, and can be used to unpack these memories and recollections.
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