Mothers, Fathers, and Others

by Siri Hustvedt

Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in this new essay collection from Siri Hustvedt, an exploration of the shifting borders that define human experience, including boundaries we usually take for granted—between ourselves and others, nature and nurture, viewer and artwork—which turn out to be far less stable than we imagine.

Described as “a 21st-century Virginia Woolf” in the Literary Review (UK), Man Booker longlisted Hustvedt displays her expansive intellect and interdisciplinary knowledge in this collection that moves effortlessly between stories of her mother, grandmother, and daughter to artistic mothers, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, and Lousie Bourgeois, to the broader meanings of maternal in a culture shaped by misogyny and fantasies of paternal authority. Mothers, Fathers, and Others is a polymath’s journey into urgent questions about familial love and hate, human prejudice and cruelty, and the transformative power of art.

This moving, fierce, and often funny book is finally about the fact that being alive means being in states of constant, dynamic exchange with what is around us, and that the impulse to draw hard and fast conceptual borders where none exist carries serious theoretical and political dangers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Memoir, Short Stories, Biography, 21st Century

285 pages, Hardcover

First published December 2, 2021

About the author

Hustvedt was born in Northfield, Minnesota. Her father Lloyd Hustvedt was a professor of Scandinavian literature, and her mother Ester Vegan emigrated from Norway at the age of thirty. She holds a B.A. in history from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University; her thesis on Charles Dickens was entitled Figures of Dust: A Reading of Our Mutual Friend.

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.

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 facits 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 (see "Essay collections") and painting and painters often appear in her fiction, most notably, perhaps, in her novel, What I Loved.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, writer Paul Auster, and their daughter, singer and actress Sophie Auster.

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A literary group of essays that cover various topics. I've been reading one a day for the last few weeks as there is much contained within each essay. Not something one can just race through if one is interested enough in what was written. I was though I enjoyed some more than others. The essays begin with some thoughts, words on her personal connections, I for one didn't know she was married to Paul Auster. My favorites concern reading, why we read fiction, what we expect from this genre and goes on from there to Jane Austen's Persuasion. It continues with Wuthering Heights, and again I never knew that this book was vehemently disliked by some when published.

From there it covers art in various forms, those I read with varying degrees of interest. On to misogyny, and this one I found very interesting as she also covers historical ground on this subject. The last was the hardest to read as it involved a case that was utterly horrendous.

I like the way this author writes, thinks and though I have read a few books that she has written, I intend to read several more.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long admired Siri Hustvedt….American novelist and essayist…
(3 years younger than me)…

I haven’t read every book Siri has written (I own a couple unread books > feeling that ‘to-read-them-soon’ inspiration percolating)….but two books (one fiction: “The Blazing World” and one non-fiction: “A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women”), left a profound impact on me.
Ha….
perhaps because I also worked my ass off reading them….
especially in “A Woman Looking at Men looking at Women”…..a book packed filled with names I was looking up — giving myself a Cliff notes education about artists and philosophers I knew zilch.
But…with each book ….my admiration for Siri Hustvedt went up.

The collection of ‘these’ essays > ….”Mothers, Fathers, and Others”….
were considerably readily more comprehensible/easily accessible to read than her WOMAN/MEN collection of essays…..
(easier for my type of mind)….
meaning they felt more personal and tangible rather than educational.

I admit to being a magnet toward stories about motherhood - grandmothers, fathers, children, reading styles and book chatter,
more than facts about unknown philosophers, or the study of cognitive science and neuroscientist——[not that these topics aren’t indeed vital to helping us understand the world and human nature]….
but — family experiences are a more natural draw to me.

I enjoyed simple things shared in these essays ….
like being a young girl playing (with siblings), out in the woods….
There is something that feels so nice reading about young girls playing outside - getting muddy ….. exploring the outdoors.

But interesting…..
overall…..
I wasn’t ‘as’ crazy about these essays as I was in her other books where I had to work harder to digest-and understand. But they were good — I’m just not certain these essays will have any lasting power —-
whereas her other books ‘did’ - does - still have lasting powers.

I didn’t share all the same metaphoric descriptions to ‘explain’ the realm of motherhood…..( perhaps it was a language barrier/discrepancy) …..but by observing the ‘good mother’ as that to being in a straitjacket felt more like a play on words than a more ‘straight- direct -authentic discussion about the complexities of motherhood….(to me)….

These essays include background stories about Siri’s grandmother, (a Norwegian immigrant) father, (intellectual memories that shaped her own intellectual Quest-for-Knowledge ), her own mother Esther, , (who served time in prison during the Nazi occupation),
And….stories about traveling during summers….
Special mother/daughter/sibling memories….

She also had a few essays devoted to ‘reading-books-genres > books topics we choose - and why….
I found her ‘book’ essays most stimulating….
“If you are at home, and have enough to eat, do you read toward or away from fear? Reading for comfort and escape is readily desirable….
But why (say as during the Pandemic), do we enjoy weeping over the sorrows through our books… When devastating current events, violence, death, illness, injustice, is factual news in our every day lives?
Philosophers have studied for years why people take a weird interest in devastating events….
I found the ‘book’ essays interesting - (fiction or non-fiction > books about hope, fantasies, and our future).

She wrote thoughts about the classics: Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Louise Bourgeois…..and her book club discussion about Wuthering Heights Heights (which wasn’t even one of the books chosen)….yet I enjoyed the emotional diversity from the book club members.

Siri wrote about moods, death, marriage, art, living in Minnesota, her 50th Birthday celebration—(where her 82-year-old mother gave a speech about being pregnant with Siri)….etc.

These stories were interesting but they didn’t ‘wow’ me -
At the same time these essays invite self-inventory assessments.

Siri Hustvedt’s power, seduction, breath, and radiance still shines — she hasn’t lost her touch….
but what happened to me is I asked to myself….
“Why haven’t I read the novel “What I Loved” yet? …..

About 3.5 rating…..rating up.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less than halfway through this collection of essays, I was ready to describe it as 'lightweight,' but I was wrong. My casually thrown-off descriptor might be true in comparison to one or two of Hustvedt’s other collections, but that would be doing this one a disservice. The beginning is Hustvedt revving up her engine.

Though I appreciate what she's doing in “The Sinbad Variations: An Essay on Style,” which is smack-dab in the middle, I was bored with it until its brilliant end. I thoroughly enjoyed the short essay on Persuasion that follows. From then on I was as engrossed as I’ve been in any of Hustvedt’s works. A lengthy essay, “Both-And,” on the artist Louise Bourgeois is illuminating, as is “What Does a Man Want?”, which tackles the roots of misogyny and the urge for masculine control of reproduction, from the lack of depictions of birth in the early Western 'canon' of art to the false binary of nature/nurture.

The last piece “Scapegoat” sensitively explores a specific case of horror perpetrated on a young girl, with comparisons to more widely known cases of violence committed by a 'mob' with a guiding ‘spirit’ at its helm. The essay ends with four sentences that read as pure Shirley Jackson. Shirley knew. Siri knows.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of essays is further proof of the seemingly limitless reach of Siri Hustvedt's brilliance. I particularly liked the early ones, more biographical than the others, that concerned her life and family, her history, her grandmother's life in Minnesota. Her mother's life in Nazi occupied Norway. Many of these works which could comprise an in-depth study of art and feminism, were fascinating in their attention to detail particularly with regard to iconic examples of literature, and the chapter on Wuthering Heights could be the cornerstone for an entire symposium. Hustvedt's range of knowledge is not limited to art and literature, but she has presented papers on neuroscience, and has been described by her husband, Paul Auster, as the "intellectual of the family." This in defense of her own work which critics have tended to credit to her husband since men are viewed as being the more fiercely brilliant. Whether it's novels, in which work by women authors is approached differently than those of men, or art installations, women are expected to produce works of domesticity while men, works of intellect. She proves this an erroneous concept. I am fascinated by her range of knowledge and expression. The only one that I really couldn't read was the final piece that dealt with a notorious murder of a young woman in 1965 by some kids and a hellish woman. I remember that case when it broke, and couldn't read about it then either. But then Hustvedt was making a point about crowd mentality, so it is valid.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

اودیوبوک کتاب رو‌ گوش دادم و جالب بود. فصل های اولش رو بیشتر از آخراش دوست داشتم.
یه سری بحث ها و مثال های خیلی خوب بودن، یه سریش خیلی شخص به شخصی بودن.
به طور کلی راجع به ارتباطات انسانی، خانوادگی و در نهایت مشکلات برخوردی و برداشتی راجع به خانم تا داشت می‌گفت.

در ادامه یه سری از هایلایت های کتاب برا خودم رو میارم:

▪ The unknown is as important as the known because it prevents the certainty that can become dogma.

▪ We tell ourselves stories about ourselves to make sense of ourselves.

▪ We like to separate syndromes, conditions, and illnesses from persons, as if they belong to no one, but this is a false way to think about sickness. Sickness is part of us, and sickness that ends in death varies from person to person.

▪ Every human being is a complex amalgam of features we recognize only because they are repeated in time.

یه سری کوئت ها و حرف ها از آدم ها داشت چه موافق حرف هایی که میزد چه مخالفشون:
▪ Cusk quotes a reviewer in her Guardian article: “If you had a baby, you did so because you wanted one. If you are suffering sleep deprivation so severe you’re hallucinating, that was your choice.”

▪ “Islam is a creeping mold infestation. Islam is a virus. It is a deadly virus spreading throughout Europe and the West.” (Neal Boortz, U.S. syndicated radio host, 2006.)


یه بخش کامل رو به داستان هم اختصاص داده بود، نه داستان اون مدلی، بلکه این شکلی:
▪ The plot of a life moves in one direction or another, and one event is viewed as determining the next. There are many ways to tell the same story, however. Narratives always leave out as much as they put in. But without memory, we could not tell ourselves any stories about the past. We could not fantasize about the future, or write novels about imaginary lives

چرا به داستان تخیلی و فیکشن نیاز داریم و چرا خوش میگذره؟
▪ But what is fiction for? Why do people like reading stories that never happened featuring characters we will never meet off the page? We are the only animals on earth who have built libraries, study literature, and proclaim books good, bad, and mediocre. Why do writers write what they write? How does an author know how a novel’s plot should develop? Where do fictional characters come from? They must come from life. That is all we have. The genesis of a work of fiction is often a mystery to the person who writes it.
▪ In fiction, all the possibilities are open.
▪ Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

و چرا یه سری کتاب ابلهانه از بین نمیرن؟
▪ The future of literature depends on readers and writers.
▪ Stupid literature, whether it’s eighteenth-century anti-clerical French pornography or contemporary romance novels featuring young women and billionaires or self-help books that endlessly remind readers to love themselves, think positively, and work at their relationships or mediocre novels championed as works of genius by reviewers who are intimidated by any work they don’t understand or think that writing fiction should follow a rule book, will not disappear. Nor should we fall prey to the idea that great literature lasts, that it floats to the top like a drowned corpse.

▪ Sometimes we resist books because they require reorientation. They make us uncomfortable and confused. What is to be done? Let down your defenses. Breathe deeply. Be open to what might happen.

اینم از حرفاش اینجا باشه:
▪ Reading a novel is an intimate experience, which may be another reason why some men who proudly announce they don’t read fiction are in fact frightened by it. There have been, are, and will be readers who find themselves enchanted and changed by a truth discovered inside a book of fiction, inside a book that doesn’t simply repeat cultural platitudes. There were, are, and will be people who open a book, read it, and by the time they reach the last page discover that they are no longer who they were when they began. And the book will live on in the reader’s memory, not word for word, not exactly as it was written. It will mutate and change inside the person who read it, as all memories do, but its emotional power will remain, and it may shape her or his imagination for years to come. It may change the reader’s ideas and feelings about how the world works and how she or he chooses to live in it.

حالا که بحث کتاب و فیکشنش رو داریم میگیم یه چیز بامزه راجع به ترجمه گفت:
▪ A German friend of mine once commented that I was lucky to have read the famously difficult philosopher Edmund Husserl in English rather than in the original. When I expressed surprise, he looked at me and said, “The translator had to make a decision.”

یه سری چیزای خانوادگیش تجربه شخصی بودند ولی خب برا همه حرفی برا گفتن داشتن:
▪ As her daughters grew older, my mother was wary of intruding on our privacy. She believed in knocking on doors, not barging through them. She never forced conversations. When we talked, she listened to me carefully, her eyes returning to mine throughout our dialogue. When I was a teenager, she was especially careful, aware no doubt that I boiled with thoughts and feelings and secrets. “Don’t do anything you don’t really want to do,” she told me.

البته خودش میگه که
My experience with my daughter is my own—it is not intended to stand in for universal motherhood. That may be the crux of the matter. Motherhood has been and is drowned in so much sentimental nonsense with so many punitive rules for how to act and feel that it remains a cultural straitjacket, even today.

فصل ها هر چی به آخر می‌رفت بحث هاش محدود تر میشد به مورد های خاصی مثل فرزند آوری یا فمنیتی:
▪ Freud remains an innovative and brilliant thinker, but his obsession with sons and fathers in Oedipal conflict, male genitalia as norm and female genitalia as the image of castration, coupled with what was probably an unrecognized fear of maternal power, creates a ragged blind spot in his thought. It is a blind spot hardly unique to him.

▪ What exactly is femininity? Is it a performance, as Judith Butler argued? Surely much of what we do unconsciously and consciously is an embodiment of gender. I cross my legs on the subway or keep them squeezed tightly together, but when I’m home, I happily sit with my legs apart. My folded legs are a defensive womanly posture, a learned code of behavior I rarely think about.
▪ In the original division between sex and gender, sex stood in for body and nature and gender for mind and nurture. The nature-body half is biological and is supposed to represent a fixed, unchanging division of male versus female while gender is a social construct. But an examination of the “nature” half of this equation reveals that human development, even before birth, is variable and dependent on many factors during the months of gestation

البته تو این فصل ها یه چیز دیگه گفت که اونم خوب بود، می‌گفت یه چیزی رو قبول نداری احترام بهش نمی‌ذاری، باشه قبول؛ ولی یه سری عوامل فرهنگی تکاملی و محیطی دارن روی این تاثیر میذارن و این تبدیل به تنفر و آزار میشه برا گروه مقابل و این بده.

[Anastasiia Mozghova · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very exciting and educational discovery. Hustvedt has deeply touched me with her personal essays just as much as she has impressed me with the ones about feminism and literature. i cannot wait to read her other works!

[Jorge García · Rating 3 out of 5]

La incombustible Siri Hustvedt reúne aquí algunos de sus recuerdos y reflexiones familiares (si escogiste el libro esperando leer algún cotilleo o confidencia sobre Paul Auster, su marido, hiciste mal), además de algunas de las vivencias de la pandemia de Covid-19 y el confinamiento en 2020, y otros ensayos variados, donde el feminismo ocupa un lugar destacado en su mirada incisiva desde varias vertientes y disciplinas (la familiar o personal, la literatura, el arte, la ciencia).

La parte familiar es la más interesante para mi gusto. En cuanto a la parte más ensayística... a ver, Hustvedt es brillante e inteligentísima, además de buena conversadora y generosa compartiendo su saber, pero toca tantos temas (ciencia y neurociencia, arte moderno, hasta una inquietante crónica criminal al final) que a veces puede aturdir. En todo caso, es una de las pensadoras feministas más lúcidas que he leído. Una voz pública fundamental para los hombres y mujeres que quieran cuestionar sus roles sociales, o liberarse de prejuicios, estereotipos y patrones de dominación/sumisión arraigados. Recomiendo especialmente su ensayo "¿Qué quiere un hombre?", con sus profundas implicaciones de la idea del gen y el ADN que fomenta la ciencia y la sociedad.

Uno de los aspectos más interesantes del feminismo de Hustvedt es que, al igual que otras pensadoras como Rebeca Solnit, otorga al cuerpo un lugar importante en la narración (el cuerpo de la mujer, con toda su potencialidades y metamorfosis -la mujer que menstrúa, gesta, amamanta o envejece, o bien la mujer que descubre su sexualidad o que simplemente ocupa un espacio entre otros cuerpos). Es interesante en la misma medida de su omisión en el centro de un relato tradicionalmente masculino (omisión o tergiversación bajo tantos estereotipos -la reprimida, la furcia, la santurrona, la ajada o lo que se nos ocurra). Reflexionar desde el feminismo sobre el cuerpo es, de alguna manera, tansferir el concepto de mujer como institución o el de mujer-arquetipo (bajo la mirada y designación masculina) al de mujer-cuerpo. Bueno, Solnit o Hustvedt lo van a explicar mejor que yo. Leedlas.

[nele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Konnte nur dank Bookbeat die letzten zwei Essays beenden.
Insgesamt eine gute Sammlung. Um ehrlich zu sein, muss man nicht mehr als eine Essaysammlung von Hustvedt lesen. Die Themen, manchmal mehr manchmal weniger persönlich, sind sehr relevant aber ich verstehe nicht ganz warum einige dieser Essays es nicht in die Sammlung von "Frauen schauen auf Männer, die auf Frauen schauen" geschafft haben.
Mein lieblings Essay war definitiv "Warum wir Romane lesen" obwohl das eins mit den "leichteren Themen" war.

Ich war positiv schockiert ( geht das?) als ich den deutschen Titel herausgefunden habe.
Mütter, Väter und Täter ist definitiv dramatischer aber passt einfach sehr gut auf den Großteil des Inhalts

[jrendocrine at least reading is good · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I do not aspire to read short stories (loving the long form), so my coming to a book of essays needs some explanation. My mother had died, and a very old friend of mine thought I would like reading Siri Hustvedt’s thoughts on her mother. Thus I have made my way through this book.

The essays are not all of a theme, and I like some of them more than others, but Siri Hustvedt, author of the excoriating “Blazing World” clearly is possessed of a brilliant and questing intelligence.

I was impressed with her discussion of genes and epigenetics in the essay “What does a man want” – and in the end this chapter is a better review of women in the workplace/ misogyny than all of Sheryl Sanberg’s Lean In (which, truth be told, was pretty great, and yes, I’ve read Careless People). Here’s a quote, it’s so true it’s painful:

“When a woman claims authority for herself…then she risks punishment. Her authority is better tolerated if she shows communality, if she softens her knowledge with smiles, deferent, pleasing looks, or, even better, gives lots of credit to others for her work or declares herself really, really lucky.”

Most of the essays bring feminism into them – noting that “people” devalue books written by women – even though we are the largest reading group !! And of course: “As soon as women enter a field in large numbers, its status plummets.”

Most of all, considering my missing my own mother, I loved reading Siri’s writing about hers:
“It is strange to lose a person who only wanted the best for you.”

The essay that almost made me give up, The Enigma of Reading, is about Wuthering Heights. I’ve never been a fan of that book, but I had it set up to reread at this later time in my life to maybe understand why everyone loves it so much (clearly Hustvedt does!). I guess I owe Siri one, because I took it off my list and will leave it be.

These essays cover a lot. I read them over a long period of months. I mostly can’t remember what I read, but I know that Hustvedt is an intellect of the highest order.

[Eliana Sofía · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paso por alto dos artículos aburridos, sosos y de frente le pongo 5 estrellas por la brillantez demostrada en los dos últimos ensayos en torno a la misoginia y a la violencia sexual. Sus conocimientos trascienden el ámbito literario y su entendimiento transdisciplinario va de la mano de su capacidad para transmitir temas complejísimos con lenguaje, ritmo, cadencia y empatía. Renuevo mi carnet de fan de Siri Hustvedt.

[Gina Mølnvik · Rating 4 out of 5]

bra feministisk argumentasjon å slå i bordet med og uvant hyllest av gørret

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm leaving this collection of essays with a to-do list of things I'm excited to look up, do further research on, and think more deeply about. Which is a good feeling to leave a book with.

The first half of the essays felt a bit slow to me but... I really really loved the essay on Louise Bourgeois. I find I'm drawn to Siri Hustvedt's propensity for weaving together matter-of-fact memoir with psychoanalysis when rendering a profile of someone. Her essay on Wuthering Heights and the last one, Scapegoat, also stood out to me because of this.

I found a lot of pleasure in imagining Hustvedt (as myself..) paying a visit to St. Francis in Ecstasy at the Frick on the UES. She reminded me of the complex dynamic between art and viewer. What a treat to know a place but be reminded of it through someone else's writing. It's like experiencing something familiar anew. !!!!!

[Bonnie Lechner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mothers, Fathers, and Others is a collection of essays focusing on the connections we have, both consciously and unconsciously, with the world around us. Hustvedt explores everything from our families to society to true crime.

I found these essays really interesting. Instead of just exploring the effect of our immediate surroundings on our ideologies, Hustvedt looks further and draws us into realms we never would have thought of on our own.

My only wish is that the essays would have been tied together better. A few of the entries felt more like tangents that were unconnected to the overall message.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for the ARC!

[Mimmi Kass · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una recopilación de ensayos de los últimos 10 años de la escritora. Algunos son oro puro, como el análisis de Cumbres borrascosas o el de la obra de Louise Bourgeois (la escultura arácnida del Guggenheim de Bilbao es suya, y se llama Mamá), otros te hacen reflexionar sobre el feminismo y el rol de la mujer actual (está casada con Paul Auster y eso le ha costado cientos de situaciones machistas, injustas y muy embarazosas), y con otros, simplemente disfrutas de una mente brillante que a veces se atraganta un poco por su alto nivel intelectual.

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit challenging this latest collection of essays, sometimes extremely personal, sometimes funny like the various versions of Simbad, and sometimes upsetting like the last one. Other than that, the topics are the usual and the reflections on literature and teachers in my opinion are the best.

Un po' ostica questa ultima raccolta di saggi, a volte estremamente personali, a volte divertenti come le varie versioni di Simbad e a volte sconvolgenti come l'ultimo. A parte questo, gli argomenti sono i soliti e le riflessioni sulla letteratura e sugli insegnati secondo me sono le migliori.

[Michael Bohli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wenn Siri Hustvedt Essays schreibt, dann zeigt sie sich als interdisziplinäre Intellektuelle ohne Furcht. Ihre eigene Biografie, das Konstrukt der Familie, gesellschaftliche Probleme, Misogynie und die Kunst der Literatur finden in "Mütter, Väter und Täter" zusammen und bieten viel Stoff für Überlegungen und Diskussionen.

Wie immer bei Hustvedt kann ich den Band nur empfehlen, auch wenn mich nicht alles so stark packen konnte, wie bei bisherigen Veröffentlichungen.

[Sohra · Rating 4 out of 5]


Eine der großen Denkerinnen und Intellektuellen unser Zeit sammelt ihre persönlichen Essay in diesem Band und denkt und schreibt darüber, was uns als Menschen zusammenhält. Scheinbar Privates lässt sich auch universell denken: Hustvedts Themen sind Feminismus, Psychoanalyse, Neurowissenschaften, Natur, die Kunst, das Denken und das Schreiben. Sie verbindet private Familiengeschichte und Lebenserfahrung und macht zeigt „wie porös die Grenzen zwischen uns und den anderen, zwischen Kunst und Betrachter, zwischen dem Ich und der Welt sind“ (rowohlt.de).

[Lore · Rating 4 out of 5]

toch maar 3.5 uiteindelijk hoor

[Clara Louden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me over 2 years to read and I’m glad I returned to it.

[Sarah Llanes · Rating 5 out of 5]

thoughtful and engaging, I appreciated the perspectives shared in the essays and it inspired me to write some of my own. Not super gripping but interesting enough to keep picking back up.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve admired her novels for years. This collection of essays makes me appreciate her brilliance even more. It is amazing to get a sense of what she thinks about and how her mind works. I’d like very much to be friends with her. Conversations would be stimulating.

[Justina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was absolutely amazing. I want to read it again. And again. Brilliant.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’autrice dimostra in questa raccolta di saggi una raffinata penna e ed un ancor più acuto intelletto. L’unica mia perplessità è di tipo compositivo nella scelta del montaggio degli scritti che ad un certo punto sembrano semplicemente giustapposti.

[Helena Wilde]

!!!

[Ida Cannegieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

mocht 285 bladzijdes lang een kijkje nemen in Siri hustvedts hoofd #blessed. deze vrouw is zoooo mega slim, lijkt over alles wel wat te weten en schrijft ook echt prachtig. ben benieuwd naar haar andere boeken!

[Mai Ly · Rating 3 out of 5]

interessante gedanken größtenteils aber stellenweise anstregend zu lesen. essays die sich mit themen beschäftigten mit denen ich vorher nichts zu tun hatte waren besonders dragging. loved the first half and pushed through the second…

[Franziska · Rating 5 out of 5]

I soaked in and enjoyed every essay of this collection.

[Violely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Los textos de Siri Husvedt son de largo aliento, no tanto por la extensión como por todos los contenidos e información que entretejen y no aceptan una lectura al pasar. Tenés que concentrarte y estar atenta si querés captar el entramado que va desarrollando en cada texto y en la totalidad que se va armando.

Este libro incluye 20 ensayos que van de la filosofía feminista a la historia familiar, pasando por el arte visual, la escritura, la lectura, las neurociencias, la vida en pandemia. Siri es vasta!, contiene mundos y son maravillosos. Sus textos son lúcidos, llenos de contenidos en los que habita y se mueve con una soltura admirable, baila con los sentidos de lo escrito, los hace girar ante tus ojos, te los da vueltas y te muestra nuevas relaciones que nunca habías creído posibles. Siri expande mi mundo. (Ya sé que soy una desubicada por tratar a los autores por su nombre, lo tengo aceptado, jajaja).

Terminé este libro hace bastante así que no tengo toda la información fresca, pero sí, uno de los textos me viene dando vueltas desde que lo leí, así que lo voy a dejar por aquí también como parte de la exploración que le vengo haciendo. Es como una pieza antigua que encontraste y a la que seguís dando vueltas, analizando recovecos, mirando terminaciones, admirando, repreguntándote sentidos.

El texto se llama “¿Qué quiere un hombre?” y hace un análisis del concepto de misoginia, de las razones que generan ese odio hacia las mujeres. “La misoginia está aumentando en todo el mundo. Favorecida por la tecnología y el clima político cambiante, ha hallado su voz en las injurias por internet, y su imagen escabrosa, en las decapitaciones, desmembramientos y violaciones difundidos también por internet, y en la violencia real del mundo”, dice Siri. Esas mujeres que a lo largo de la historia concentraron y fueron las responsables de todos los males del mundo, arrancando por Eva, Pandora, Eco, Lilith. “El sueño de una herencia puramente paterna nunca dejó de perseguir la imaginación griega”, dice el antropólogo Jean Pierre Vernant (siempre estos griegos che!). Si los hombres pudieran reproducirse por sí solos, se eliminarían muchos tormentos de la vida, agrega Siri. Y partiendo de esta última frase desarrolla un análisis que le da un giro a la lectura psicoanalítica de la supuesta envidia de la mujer al pene que dio lugar a tanta tinta gastada, para concentrarse en la que analiza la imposibilidad de la creación de la vida, justo ellos que son los creadores del mundo. Y todavía ahora pretendemos elegir nosotras sobre nuestros cuerpos, faltaba más. Y no sigo agregando al tema porque Siri lo dice más lindo, leanlá!

[Maddie Magner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Siri and her style of writing. This collection of essays started really strong, but admittedly lost me toward the end. Worth reading if you need to light a lil fire in your feminist belly I guess

[Lyubina Litsova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siri Hustvedt is a talented writer and a brilliant mind. She's erudite, someone whom you'd eagerly listen to for hours if you were to meet her in person. Her essays on parenting, misogyny, feminism, art, books, and reading are insightful, thought-provoking, and at times, quite disturbing.

Quotes:
"She loved to walk—in the Minnesota woods, the Norwegian mountains, on beaches everywhere—and she walked hard and long every day until a spate of illnesses slowed her down at the age of ninety. She walked for pleasure. She walked to feel the wind, sun, snow, or rain in her face and to discover marvels along the way—wild flowers, tall grasses, sea glass made round by the surf, stones in surprising colors, fallen bark, and gnarled branches.

There is no acknowledgment that children are a shared responsibility, not only in a family but in a society. There is no acknowledgment either that a woman who desperately needs sleep might not be in the best position to care for a child. Parents who care for children in societies that care about children, that offer paid parental leave, healthcare, childcare, and early education have it much easier than parents in the UK and the United States. Both countries consistently rank at the bottom in UNICEF’s annual Child Well-Being in Rich Countries Report Card.

One has only to remember how many children were born to slave women raped by their masters. The imagination is powerful. Imagine those mothers. I think all experience must be part of our understanding of motherhood. It must be expansive and complex, not narrow and simple.

Many women fall in love with their children, and they do so under highly various circumstances, including terrible hardship. Love takes different forms and families are organized in different ways. Every child is drawn into the vicissitudes of a life with others who must care for her if she is going to live and thrive, and every person attaches herself to important others for better and for worse. If I had not been born from my mother, our intimacy would not have been as profound. If she had not always been there in my life until just last year, it would have been different. Surely ideas about mothers and daughters and families that circulated in our culture—a mixture of Norwegian and American conventions and dos and don’ts—were part of our relationship too. And yet, our love was also forged over time and through our mutual idiosyncratic experience. I knew she wanted for me what I really wanted for myself, even if her desires were not identical to my own. When her own mother died, she said to me, “It is strange to lose a person who only wanted the best for you.” This only-wanting-the-best is empathy. Empathy is not being the other person.It is feeling into the other person. The philosopher Edith Stein called empathy “a foreign experience.” Empathy recognizes difference. I feel the loss of my mother’s empathy. My loss also includes a sense of bewilderment that I have never felt before after someone I love has died. It has been hard to understand how it is possible that my mother is nowhere.

Reading is a form of traveling and the literate are granted an unusual gift. We are allowed to move into rooms and walk down streets and listen to the stories and thoughts of people who died long ago.

And this is where the irony becomes most acute. The political rhetoric of closed borders and impenetrable walls, of “lock her up” and “send her back,” of shutting down and shutting out, of purity and impurity, of us versus them, this language of hubris, isolation, and distrust in the midst of a public health emergency, is killing people.

A poem is made only of words, but the reading of a poem is not made only of words—reading is an embodied act of felt rhythms and sounds and meanings in a person who lives in and is of a culture. That culture, of course, is not outside or inside the person but both at once. Habits and gestures vary from place to place, but they are embodied in cultural actors. And language is an expression of culture and of person in dialects and idiolects, in platitudes and original phrases. There is no private language. The other inhabits every word we think or speak. And language itself is translating experience into words for another, even when that other is one’s self. After seeing Richter’s October paintings, I had to try to translate what happened to me in front of them into a language my English reader could understand in the form of an essay. While translating Cecilie Løveid’s poem, I was also trying to feel an experience embedded in her Norwegian words and convey it in English.

King James translation of the Bible, that translation by a committee—forty-seven scholars, according to those in the know. Many of its decisions, accurate or not, have become rooted in English and marked us who speak the language forever. I have always loved the passage from Exodus, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.” Writers, readers, and translators have all made that trip in one way or another. We have all been strangers in many strange lands.

There is no story when the seas are calm, no story when the marriage goes smoothly, when life moves along day to day.

Besides, all stories are voyeuristic. That’s the pleasure of them, isn’t it? The listener or reader experiences danger, misery, and passion from a safe distance.

“And the king agrees to listen to her. She begins her story, and what she tells is a story about story-telling, a story within which are several stories, each one, in itself, about story-telling—by means of which a man is saved from death.” Who wrote that? A: Paul Auster. The Invention of Solitude.

Reading is a strange business, after all. Whether the text in question is a science paper or a novel, it is, rather like a virus, dead until animated by the body of a host and, although the words of a book or paper are always the same, the bodies, situations, experiences, and biases of its readers vary.

Reading is a form of ordinary possession of one person by another. While it is being read, the story is infused with the traces of another living human being, who is not there physically, but the author’s breath and being are present in the rhythms and meanings of the words on the page, which are literally embodied in the reader—incorporated into his biological being—a mixing of the two. John Dewey had a beautiful expression for this, “organic clicks.” Books register not only as articulate thoughts in the reader but as excitement, shock, sorrow, surprise, pleasure, relief. Not until the reader returns the book to the shelf does it regain its status as a mere thing, and even then the story may live on in him as a memory, recalled not as a long recitation of serial sentences, one after the other, but as images and feelings the work has left behind it. A beloved book remains in the reader as a ghost, with both conscious and unconscious resonances.

Raising children is vital work, but unlike gestation and birth, it is not just women’s work. In her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur, published in 1976, the psychologist Dorothy Dinnerstein proposed that by rearranging child-rearing practices, we could change the story of misogyny. The middle-class model of mother as lone caretaker and the father as breadwinner had distorted familial relations. Dinnerstein was rightly criticized for universalizing this model. Fathering has changed. Holding, rocking, singing, kissing, hugging fathers are far more visible in the United States now than when I was a girl. Sexual equality laws and paternal leave in Nordic countries have had positive effects on family life, but misogyny has not disappeared from that part of the world. In fact, these countries have a higher level of intimate partner violence when compared to other countries in Europe. Some have suggested this is because reporting is higher there, but others insist the numbers are sound. The irony may be that calls for greater equality create greater levels of moral outrage and backlash.

Unconscious imitation begins early before a child speaks. Mothers and infants coordinate heartbeat rates. They are attuned, a unit of reciprocal, mirroring gestures and feelings and sounds and glances."