Sleepless Nights. The title of this book of memories. And that’s exactly what it is, memories. Memories from the narrator’s life told in a chaotic melting pot. There really is no plot in this reflection book, more of stories of old that she already knows the outcome of and is sharing it with the reader. The reader is listening to everything the narrator is telling them because the narrator is the voice and they are the audience so everything must be true, right? Where does fact and fiction cross in these stories? The book is implied to be an autobiography of sorts of the real life author Elizabeth Hardwick. We will probably never know what stories or details in this book really happened or exaggerated or made up completely.
Sleepless Nights. This title is perfect because it truly does feel like the book was written during sleepless nights when Hardwick could not sleep because so many life memories were invading her counting of sheep jumping the fence. Waking up in the middle of the night only to write these memories down just so she could sleep. These sleepless nights are the kind of nights when you let anyone in and do not care; let it all out and let the world know your stories because it is the dead of night and the mind works differently in those hours.
Now this becomes an entirely different story. We are given an edited look into the life of the author while also keeping up with the narrator telling us the stories. The narrator tells us the ups and downs of our main character and how lonely and insane life can be. But now the author is involved and we see instead of a light read about a fictitious woman and her woes, we now see a real living person and many stories of a interesting life and wonder many things about this woman. I would say we care more so now then if we were told this is purely fiction.
The works at play are now a narrator telling the audience a story of a woman. “Herself”
The woman behind the narrator IS the woman the narrator pretends to be. “The Real”
Then the Audience takes in two stories, the book they are reading about herself and their own assumptions and guessing about the real.
The first story told by the narrator is for entertainment maybe.
The underlying story is that this is all real and the reader muses about that on their own.
Elizabeth Hardwick puts all the cards on the table by making the story about her, but not about her. Is it an illusion or cowardice to not take full responsibility of the stories if they are in fact true. If she was insecure about one specific story she could respond saying “That one is made up”. The text is almost a mask, when she puts on the mask she can become herself in disguise and her real face is the real mask. But then again memory is not perfect and when recollecting a story of old from all those years ago one must fill the gaps and make jumps through history to tell the story and keep the reader engaged.
“The torment of personal relations. Nothing new there except in the disguise, and in the escape on the wings of adjectives. Sweet to be pierced by daggers at the end of paragraphs.”
The fact that the text is shown in strange fashion (letters, two sentence text, full paragraphs, jumping from past to future quickly) shows the mind of the author trying to remember a lifetime of stories all at once. This once again shows another side for the character/narrator of the story being sporadic and thorough in her reflection. Is the text this way because of a zany character or is it the author’s sporadic memory. We don’t know and that is probably the most engaging part of these two stories in one book. The mystery of it all. Fact or fiction. It makes you think about what stories you have told in your Sleepless Nights.
Book Reader's Web 
Before reading your blog post, I never really put a lot of thought into the meaning of the title. The title, Sleepless Nights, has a lot more meaning to it then I previously realized, you bring up in your blog post. There are two opposing values that are in the title, sleep vs sleeplessness (or consciousness verses unconsciousness) and night vs day, both of which relate to the symbolic code. As mentioned in class, there is an additional level conflicting idea involving the fact that nights are meant for sleeping. This proves to a a structure to the given conflict. Even through the book itself is plotless, there still are conflicts the take place between the narrator and the various characters, which are due to the opposing values.
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I am guilty of repeatedly calling the book “plotless,” but I let my projections get the best of me. Now I understand that, while yes, the book does not have an overarching plot that consumes us and our attention, it does consist of many little plot events that serve to resolve the narrator’s conflict (although that conflict is entirely inner conflict). I would argue that the presentation and reflection are the plot for this story. They are just an untraditional plot. We see that every memory tells it’s own story, complete with character, conflict, resolution, and all typical elements we look for in relation to plot. These memories comprise the plot. I wonder if perhaps the mystery of the plot is the hermeneutic code? We continuously wonder if the story has plot and deny that it does, until we realize that yes, it indeed does!
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Because I had difficulty when first trying to grasp this novel, I was interested to see how you would discuss its form, and how that impacts a reader’s understanding of the book. You seem to touch on the concept of an unreliable narrator, which certainly plays a role in the development of this story. I think that it might be useful to find an instance early in the book where you may have first suspected that the narrator was being less than truthful, and use it to more closely define the relationship between narrator and reader. As Maddie pointed out in her reply, the stories and reflections from the narrator serve as the plot in this novel, and it is the “job” of the reader to construct some sort of meaning out of their juxtaposition and placement.
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