Elizabeth Hardwick writing to Robert Lowell in April 1979 about their political situation and ours. From the new book The Dolphin Letters, 1970 – 1979.
No mail of any interest. The political scene is very dark and mysterious here. It will just be luck if we come out of it without too much damage to the country. I do believe that, powerless as they are, they have profoundly shaped the course of the country by their hysterical “revolutionary” games… The poor astronauts in the lunar nodule with failing oxygen—aren’t they the symbol? How I wish I liked nature and simplicity and isolation better than I do. That would be an escape from the low-oxygen nodule, but I love the hard pavements, the killing noise. There’s so much I want to talk to you about.
April 14, 1970
