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.
