In Passing

New York

Elizabeth Hardwick, critic, essayist

Elizabeth Hardwick, a critic, essayist and fiction writer whose wry, poetic and sometimes acerbic style helped set the tone for the New York Review of Books, the literary magazine she co-founded, has died. She was 91.

Hardwick, whose best-known novel is the autobiographical “Sleepless Nights,” died Dec. 2 at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. She had been hospitalized for a minor infection.

“Elizabeth Hardwick was one of the finest writers of prose in postwar America,” said Robert S. Silvers, editor of the New York Review. “Subtle, uncompromising, original in her insights, she was the conscience of the paper.”

Hardwick co-founded the book review in 1963 with poet Robert Lowell, who was her husband at the time, Jason Epstein and his wife, Barbara Epstein.

Hardwick was as outspoken and opinionated as any of the early contributors, including Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. Her themes, however, were close to those of novelist Mary McCarthy, another early contributor to the New York Review.

Her writings won numerous awards, including the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism. She also won the Gold Medal for criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in 1993. She was presented with a lifetime achievement award in publishing by the National Book Critics Circle in 1995.

Kuerten, Germany

K. Stockhausen, composer

Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the most important and controversial postwar composers who helped shape a new understanding of sound through electronic compositions, died at his home in western Germany. He was 79.

Stockhausen, who gained fame through his avant-garde works in the 1960s and ‘70s and later composed works for huge theaters and other projects, died in the town of Kuerten on Wednesday. No cause of death was given.

At La Scala, the famed Milan opera house, conductor Daniel Barenboim said Stockhausen “will have an influence on music history.”

“The force of his music will be very much missed,” Barenboim said.

Stockhausen’s electronic compositions were a radical departure from tradition and incorporated influences as varied as psychology, the visual arts and the acoustics of a particular concert hall.

He was considered by some an eccentric member of the European musical elite and by others a courageous pioneer in the field of new music. Rock and pop musicians such as John Lennon, Frank Zappa and David Bowie have cited him as an influence, and he is also credited with having influenced techno music.

Birmingham, England

Peter Houghton, heart recipient

Peter Houghton, the world’s longest-surviving recipient of an artificial heart, died Nov. 25 at a hospital in his home city of Birmingham, England. He was 68.

The cause of death was multiple organ failure, but physicians had to disconnect the battery on the artificial heart before he could be declared dead.

Houghton received the Jarvik 2000 artificial heart in June 2000, three years after he had suffered a massive heart attack caused by viral flu. The pump was implanted by Dr. Stephen Westaby at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford – the first time the pump developed by Dr. Robert Jarvik had been tested in a human.

The Jarvik pump is designed to support the body’s blood circulation until a donor heart becomes available for a transplant, but Houghton’s age and medical condition ruled him out as a transplant recipient.

He was active in charity work during the seven extra years of life he received, participating in a 90-mile charity walk, hiking the Alps, traveling to support heart research, writing two books and raising millions of dollars for other victims of heart attacks.