What I Loved is a complex, beautifully written book. Viewed from the outside, it’s tale about friendship told through the point of view of Leo. Leo is an art historian. He befriended an artist, Bill, back in the 1970s in New York. Their friendship, or relationship, spans 25 years and involves their wives and children. We learn about the relationships and how they have developed.

All this sounds pretty simple and straightforward. Only it isn’t. For the characters are New York academics and intellectuals. And anything but simple and straightforward. They inhabit a strange, alien and somewhat elevated world of universities and art galleries. And their lives are not only slightly on the complex side, but also – of course – constantly and forever subject to analyses, interpretations, commentaries and the oh so unavoidable re-interpretations. The characters are at times so busy interpreting that you wonder how they manage to live their lives – and truth be told; they seem at times to live less than they could, as there is a real trade-off involved.

So the book is much more than a tale about relationships of different types. It is also a very clever and intelligent book about the layers our lives are laid out in – of the inner relationships between the personal and that which is shared; between that which seemingly are personality traits and those parts of “us” that are fluid and ever changing with time, situations and lived experiences. To me it is also a tale about the somewhat silly and here quite excessive style of living where interpretation is everything – and where questions about the real (whatever that is) and issues of impression management and presentation of self lurk behind the seeming intellectual discussions, more or less well-disguised among the various arrangements and rearrangements of events.

Then tragedy strikes – a death. And now the novel changes from a chronicle of relationships to something which feels almost like a psychological thriller. Now grief – a real feeling, calling for real understanding, as opposed to posturing and over-intellectualization – enters the scene. Now there is a real, existential need to understand and make sense of. And the intellectualization of the world all of a sudden meets with wild and raw feelings in need of expression too. And where do normal grief stop and hysteria of madness begin? What is normal now?

This layered, experimental novel, with all its ambition and richness, is very fascinating. It can be read as a commentary on intellectualism, an exploration of identity, a study of events and meanings, and many other things. It deserves to be read and re-read, to be interpreted and re-interpreted. As a novel should, it raises more questions than it answers; as a piece of art it lays the world open for new interpretations. What I Loved is smart, sensitive, full of restrained intensity and insights, creative and engaging.

Hustvedt’s real achievement is to push the boundaries of the novel further – Julie Myerson, The Guardian

Links to books by Siri Hustvedt at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fda1L11lP0

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

In an interview Siri Hustvedt was asked “What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?”

Her answer was interesting and also quite clear:

My first piece of advice is read, read, read, and keep reading. Nobody becomes a writer without loving books. My other tip to young writers is: write only what you must write, not what you think you should write. People who simply want to turn out a poem, a story, or a novel end up writing badly and their prose resembles the prose of other mediocre books. Good books are a product of necessity, a burning need to say something. They have an urgency that the reader can feel from the start.

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

The Sorrows of an American is interesting for a number of reasons. One reason is that Siri Hustvedt’s main character is a male. This is a first in her novels, but I think she pulls it off nicely. A second reason is the many personal and to some extent distasteful things that are exposed in the novel. Given that the novel seems to draw heavily on the author’s personal history, I guess readers will forever wonder what is Siri Hustvedt or her family, and what is pure fiction among these exposures.

The novel begins with Erik Davidsen, a New York psychoanalyst and the narrator in the book, and his sister Inga. They are taking care of their father’s belongings in Minnesota after his death. While doing this, they find a partially-written memoir along with a very strange letter. The letter indicates unknown secrets in their father’s past.

Having returned to post 9/11 New York – a city with much grief – Erik and Inga try to learn more about the mystery of their father’s past. Erik is a recently divorced psychoanalyst, lonely and a little depressed. Inga and her daughter grieve over her husband’s (Max, a famous novelist) death and the trauma of witnessing the 9/11 attacks. They both live complicated big city lives. And, to complicate matters further, they both become involved in the lives of new lovers. Inga becomes intimately involved with the man writing Max’s biography, and Erik increasingly becomes obsessed with one of his tenants, a woman named Miranda, a Jamaican artist.

To a large extent The Sorrows of an American is a novel about identity, change and redefinition. The main characters find, to their surprise, that those they loved were not quite the people they thought they were. Their histories as individuals change. How does this affect them? And, of course, the more sorrows and unknowns they uncover in their father’s past, the more they have to face and deal with in their own lives.

There are many extremely witty and interesting observations in this book, for example, when Erik discusses his problems with the world of psychiatry with Inga. He feels it is sad that patients in institutions are now referred to as ‘customers’. ‘That’s revolting,’ says Inga. ‘That’s America,’ replies Erik.

Siri Hustvedt has a way with words and language. The book is written with what a reviewer called “spare Scandinavian elegance”. She is a pleasure to read. However, this is a complicated and intelligent novel. There are many things to keep track of, and much that needs pondering even in the smallest details. As well, the novel moves back and forth in time, and sometimes digresses. Thus it is not an easy novel to read.

The story is evocative, multi-dimensional and as complex as life itself. Her examination of the role of personal fictions is intriguing. The Sorrows of an American is a “smart” book that provokes thinking. To my mind a great but demanding read!

It is a rare writer who can both rouse the mind and grip the heart, and all the while provide the sensuous delights of image and language — Lisa Appignanesi, The Independent

[Hustvedt] takes unapologetic delight in intellectual characters who understand their lives through far-ranging reading and lively conversation — Sylvia Brownrigg, New York times Book Review

.. a masterful semi-self-portrait by turns abstract and realistic, intimate and alienating, effulgent and bleak, concise and blurry, straightforward and elusive — Sarah Emily Miano, Times

Links to books by Siri Hustvedt at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

In some of the interviews with her, Siri Hustvedt has been asked questions about unimportant details (to the outsider, that is) about her life. To some extent trivia are bit of   obscure and useless knowledge, but to some extent is may also be interesting and perhaps also a tiny bit important in understanding a person. So here are some of the things Siri Hustvedt has told us over the years:

About home and family life

“I enjoy domestic life. Cooking gives me great pleasure, especially if I can chop vegetables slowly and think about what I’m doing and dream a little about this and that. I always have flowers in my house and it makes me happy to arrange them and then look at them when I walk into a room.

“My greatest pleasure is spending time with my family: my husband and daughter, but also my mother, my three sisters and their families. My father died this year, and I have a growing need to enjoy the people I love most as much as possible.”

What is your  favourite form of procrastination?

Folding laundry.

How do you relax?

I garden. It’s very relaxing to me.

Interested in fashion

“I must say that I also like clothes and always have. When I was younger, I paid more attention to the quirks of fashion. Now I like well-made clothes that suit me and will last beyond a season.”

Likes movies, but not most mass culture

“American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me. I like to watch movies on DVD but on the whole stay away from television and big Hollywood movies, although occasionally something good comes along and I go to see it. I liked both Groundhog Day and The Sixth Sense, for example.”

What sort of books would be your guilty pleasure?

Not books but fashion magazines such as Vogue.

Volunteer work

Hustvedt works as a volunteer, teaching writing to inpatients at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a job she first began in order to research a psychiatric unit for the purposes of her novel, but which she now does for love.

The 21st century

What book would you give to someone who had time-travelled from another era, to paint a picture of the 21st century?

Don DeLillo’s Underworld. He has a tremendous gift for insight into contemporary western culture.

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

Background

Hustvedt was born in Northfield, Minnesota in 1955 and lived in Minnesota prior to moving to New York. Her father, Lloyd Hustvedt, a professor of Scandinavian literature, came from a Norwegian immigrant family. Her mother, Ester Vegan, whom her father met in Oslo after the war, emigrated to the US at 30. ‘I did not grow up in a family with much money’, Siri Hustvedt has stated later.

‘It was a very rural, immigrant community. We were snowbound during the winter, and most of the old people spoke Norwegian. My father spoke with a Norwegian accent until the day he died. We took the school bus every day. It was smalltown America. I always had fantasies of leaving: grandiose fantasies. The fact my mother came from far away played a role. This was not her world. She came to it. She had a divided sensibility. I’m much more American, but I’m close to her, and I feel closer to things European than most Americans.’

Siri Hustvedt holds a B.A. in history from St. Olaf College. In 1978, she left for Columbia, in New York, to begin her PhD.

‘A huge thing. It was terribly exciting but a little… I’d only been to New York once, I didn’t know a single human being there. I had a little room, with a thin little bed, and for the first three days I re-read Crime and Punishment.’

She got her Ph.D in English (1986) from Columbia University; her thesis on Charles Dickens was entitled Figures of dust: A Reading of Our Mutual Friend.

And she still lives in New York, in Brooklyn, with her husband, the writer Paul Auster, and their daughter, singer and actress Sophie Auster.

Writing

Hustvedt has mainly made her name as a novelist, but she has also produced a book of poetry, and has had short stories and essays on various subjects published in (among others) The Art of the Essay, 1999, The Best American Short Stories, 1990 and 1991, The Paris Review, Yale Review and Modern Painters.

Her books include: The Blindfold 1992, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl 1996, What I Loved 2003, The Sorrows of an American 2008.

When did she know that she wanted to write?

‘It happened at 13, in Reykjavik. My father was studying the sagas. There were English books in the public library: David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. I read compulsively that summer.’

‘It was after I had been reading those English novels that I—I actually announced it in the local newspaper.’

I had great reading experiences as a very young person. At eleven, my mother gave me Emily Dickinson’s poems and [William] Blake and I loved those poems. I didn’t understand what the poets were saying, certainly not in every line. And there were some poems I didn’t understand at all. But I read the poems over and over and over to myself, and I had an experience of awe. I loved those poems. And then when I was thirteen, again my mother—who was a very big reader and a big reader of English novels—gave me David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. At the same time I read lesser works like Hawaii by James Michener and Gone with the Wind. But those books had a huge effect on me. I ended up writing my dissertation on Charles Dickens.

I wrote poetry all through high school, during my year in gymnasium in Bergen, through college, and into my years as a graduate student at Columbia University. I always hoped to be able to write a novel, but didn’t understand how to do it, and I loved poetry. A moment came in graduate school when I got stuck. I had already published a poem I liked in The Paris Review, but somehow everything I was writing after that was very stilted and bad. A professor of mine, David Shapiro, who is also a wonderful poet, recommended that I do automatic writing like the Surrealists just to loosen myself up. I followed his advice and wrote thirty pages of prose in a sitting. I liked what came out. The next three months were spent editing those pages, which became a prose poem called “Squares.” I never wrote anything in lines again. I seemed to have found a form for myself.

Meeting Paul Auster

She met Paul Auster at a poetry reading, and they married in 1981.

‘I thought he was the cutest thing I ever saw. He was introduced to me as a poet, and I thought: “Oh, my God, a beautiful poet.” It was very fast.’

Writing style

Like her husband, Paul Auster, Hustvedt employs a use of repetitive themes or symbols throughout her work. Most notably the use of certain types of voyeurism, often linking objects of the dead to characters who are relative strangers to the deceased characters (most notable in various facets in her novels The Blindfold and The Enchantment of Lily Dahl), and the exploration of identity.
She has also written essays on art history and theory and painting and painters often appear in her fiction, most notably, perhaps, in her novel, What I Loved. She often uses art more or less as a vehicle for exploration in her writings.

A novel takes a long time to gestate inside me, and between books, I’ve discovered the immense pleasure of writing essays. The form, which is infinitely elastic, has provided me with a way of searching for answers to ultimate questions, which usually go unanswered, but which give me a chance to flex my thoughts.

Her only writing ritual is that

‘I must do a little walking while I write. The act of walking seems to jog loose sentences that have defied me.’

Life in a two-writer family

Paul and I met twenty-one years ago and we were both completely unknowns. He was then writing The Invention of Solitude, the second part. He had finished the first part when we met. And I was continuing to write poems and beginning to work on my dissertation. So we’ve shared his whole prose career. He had written poems and essays before that. His whole prose career really corresponds with our marriage. And I suffered through the 17 rejections that City of Glass got from New York publishers —a book which, just to brag, is now in 40 languages…

My main editor is my husband. I only show him complete drafts. And a year or two can go between the drafts. It’s not on a daily basis.

He’s more generous than I am. He likes to hear my feedback. And he’s a more efficient writer. He can do several books in his head at once—writing one book and thinking about the next—which I can’t do. I can have little seeds, little thoughts, but I’m just not good at that. He has much more finished versions to share with me than I do with him. So he’s really my first editor. Very brutal. That’s the pact.

(This short biography is based on published interviews with Siri Hustvedt, from various sources.)

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë because it is a brilliantly written book about the mysteries of human passion.
• Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, a writer who articulates subtle truths about human psychology that I recognized only once I had read him.
• Crime and Punishment is probably Fodor Dostoevsky’s most perfect book in terms of structure, and its portrait of the lonely, perverse, and impoverished student, Raskolnikov, continues to make my heart ache.
• I love George Eliot’s Middlemarch for its expansive intelligence and delicate depictions of relations among people.
• Henry James’s ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, is diabolical, clever, and terrifying because its phantoms conjure hidden human appetites and formless desires.
• Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is the best of Dickens — funny, deep, complex, and written in a prose as vigorous and original as anything in English.
• Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the whole novel and all its possibilities in a single volume.
• I read The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson over and over because nobody ever used the English language as she did, and every time I read her, I feel very alive to the world.
• Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams made a lasting impression on me as a great work of art and a glimpse into a rigorous and skeptical mind.
• Finally, I have read The Great Gatsby four times, and every time I read it, it gets better. To my mind, it is one of the best books about American banality, a banality made grand by the sympathetic voice of its narrator who penetrates the beauty of all human longing.

(From an interview with Siri Hustvedt)

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

Siri Hustvedt talks about What I Loved on Eye on Books (date unknown)

Interview at nettbibloteket.no (in English) (date unknown)

Interview by Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com (2003)

Interview at Barnes & Noble’s Meet the Writers (2004)

Interview at epiphanyzine.com (2004)

Interview by Rachel Cooke in Guardian (2008)

Siri Hustvedt interview on radio, 2008

Interview by Anne Metcalfe in Financial Times (2008)

Interview on themonthly.com.au (video) (2008)

Interview at St.Francis College (video)(2008)

Interview on norway.com (2009)

Prague Writers Festival Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt in conversation with Michael March (2010)

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.

Novels

• The Blindfold (1992)
• The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996)
• What I Loved (2003)
• The Sorrows of an American (2008)
• The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (forthcoming, 2010)

Poetry

• Reading to You (1983)

Essay collections

• Yonder (1998)
• Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting (2005)
• A Plea for Eros (2005)

Siri Hustvedt is mainly known to the public as a novelist. Her poetry is less known. Also, in addition to what appears in the list here, Siri Hustvedt has had short stories and essays on a number of subjects published in The Art of the Essay, 1999, The Best American Short Stories 1990 and 1991, as well as The Paris Review, Yale Review, and Modern Painters.

One of the questions that seems to be central to Siri Hustvedt – as I guess it is to many of us – is “why do we become who we are?” Read an interview with Siri Hustvedt at indentitytheory.com on this issue, as well as about her books!

Siri Hustvedt’s books:

©2010 Siri Hustvedt. All Rights Reserved.