On The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt

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Fiction - Novel, Siri Hustvedt

What to say about The Summer without Men, favorite author Siri Hustvedt’s latest? For one, it’s unlike any other novel of hers I’ve read. In fact, although I love this novel, if you’d taped over her name on the cover, I wouldn’t have known this was a Hustvedt book. That’s a compliment, I guess, yes—although obviously drawn from bewilderment, yes? It’s just so different. And not just with its central preoccupation.

It’s so insular, so concentrated, so rooted in one individual—no matter the range of issues that character manages to tackle in so few pages. The sensuality I’ve come to love about Hustvedt’s writing is still there, but it’s more chill with the fact that it can be volatile, that it can lull you one moment and swipe at you with claws the next. The seduction is not a high point—and I’ve always felt that Hustved’t work is out to seduce me. The darkness too, has toned down—so when it makes itself known, you can’t help but squirm.

The novel centers on Mia, Mia who’d just been left by her husband for a much younger woman. Mia spends a summer without men—what men do appear within the narrative do so in flashbacks, and remotely: telephones, overheard voices, letters. Although much grief is caused by them—grief the characters are still coming to grips with, the men aren’t necessarily villains here; instead, their absence is a reprieve. Or, well, they’re simply not necessary.

I’ve come to realize that at its heart, this novel is about need: You feel that Mia needed to write this record. There’s an urgency in the telling, in its tone, in the overall mood of the piece. Here is a woman sorting herself out. She’s confused, a little manic, a little hysterical in the process and in the revelations, a little angry. Yes, actually, the voice has this desperate and disparate, near-hysterical quality—and Hustvedt’s skill is at work here, since it’s all still so tempered. It ought to sound fragmented, or family girl-crisis-y. But it’s not. It only feels authentic. And it’s eerie, dammit.

Why does it work? Why do I like it so much?

My enchantment with Siri Hustvedt

Tags

Excerpts, Fiction - Novel, Siri Hustvedt

What follows is my history with Siri Hustvedt’s fiction: I chanced upon her first novel, The Blindfold, a few days after discussing with a friend her and her marriage with Paul Auster. The Blindfold was a terrific read, about a young heroine named Iris Vegan, traversing life and all its accompanying hauntings and disconcertions. A few months later, I read what is widely deemed as her masterpiece – What I Loved. It’s beyond words have delicious that book is, how exhilarating and inebriating the experience was for me.

Looking back, I realize that novel might have spoiled me for the rest of her fiction. When I read The Sorrows of an American, the novel she released following What I Loved, I loathed it. I loathed it so much I couldn’t talk about it then. There were virtually no characters. Instead, stand-ins and mouthpieces for psychological and philosophical ideas. The cerebral-ness went too far. It was, frankly, too Auster for me.

Here, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, her second novel — sandwiched between The Blindfold and What I Loved. It was clear to me, the transitional feel of this novel. It had the young heroine in a scary small town — involving herself with the shadiest characters — murders and suicides, stalkers and doppelgangers. Although not quite whole, for some reason. Not as vibrant as I’ve come to expect from Hustvedt.

And yet, here were the beginnings of the dark sensuality of Hustvedt’s more powerful fiction. In one scene, the beautiful Lily Dahl puts on a dead woman’s pair of high heels, goes to her window, and strips for the man in the building across the street, the man she’s been watching for a long time.

Here, too, were the wisps of the central themes of What I Loved: beauty, obsession, art. The man across the street is Edward Shapiro, a painter, and Hustvedt’s descriptions of his art is as faultless as ever. Lily Dahl is hounded — by wordplay [as odd as that may seem], by the infatuation of the men around her, by the death of people she never knew.

These are the foundations of Siri Hustvedt. And, though a part of me feels bad about saying this: these are the foundations of What I Loved. These are the foundations of what I have come to love about Hustvedt’s writing — and I’m always waiting for lightning to strike as potently for the second time.

This March, she’s coming out with a new novel: The Summer Without Men. Ye Book Gods, grant me this book in the form of a parcel around that time, please?

A call for an “abiding uncertainty” — On A Plea for Eros by Siri Hustvedt

Tags

Books About Books, Essays, Excerpts, Siri Hustvedt

Where does the need to write come from? What is it? It is a need, not a choice — it’s giving way and a giving up.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I have reunited with Siri Hustvedt, c/o her collection of essays, A Plea for Eros. Another favorite writer — I’ve read all of her novels [her What I Loved still blows me away whenever I think about it] except one, and this is my first foray into her nonfiction [I’m particularly hungering for her essays on art, Mysteries of the Rectangle, which I can’t find locally].

I am, quite obviously, a fan. Know, too, that I might just name a [theoretical] daughter Siri. It’s that bad.

In A Plea for Eros, Hustvedt gives [me] twelve essays on life, love, literature, womanhood, family, childhood, reading, writing, and everything else in between. About all things Hustvedt, apparently, delivered through that uncanny Hustvedt world-view: penetrating, eerily intelligent, just the right bit of sensuality. Here, an essay about wearing a corset, there she writes about inhabiting a man’s soul while writing. She writes about 9/11 and the year after. She writes about “a divided self,” how she became a writer – she writes about her favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Charles Dickens.

These essays are very rarely formal, but not quite conversational. I’m aware that it might not work for everyone — there’s a familiar aspect to it all. It’s best to go to this book when you’re already head over heels in love with Hustvedt. They’re not mediocre essays, no. I guess I’m just worried that the first-time reader of Hustvedt would mumble, “What’s all the fuss about?”

The pieces are reflections on a wide variety of subjects, and the personal-ness is the driving force. Yeah, that’s the word – reflections. In Hustvedt’s characteristically quiet and charged, still yet voluptuous voice that I’ve known and long loved. It’s like sitting down for a cup of coffee and listen to one of your idols ramble and rave and rant and brood and celebrate. And argue! And reason against the more mundane complexities of the universe.

I’m not making sense, haha. Anyhoo. For posterity’s sake, I shall write about only two of my favorites. >> The first one is the title essay, “A Plea for Eros” — which begins with a little flashback of a discussion on the Antioch Ruling, a law enacted at Antioch College, which essentially made every stage of a sexual encounter on campus legal only by verbal consent. My friend paused, smiled, and replied [to a question raised by a member of the audience], ‘It’s wonderful. I love it. Just think of the erotic possibilities: “May I touch your right breast? May I touch your left breast?”’

Hustvedt uses this as a jump-off to her central thesis, her plea for eros. Sharing narratives to exemplify manifestations of eros in love and romance, flirtation and commitment, she leads us to what she thinks is an erosion of eros, with little nuggets like, “Erotic pleasure, denied from the most intimate physical contact, thrives on the paradox that only by keeping alive the strangeness of that other person can eroticism last.”

This is my call for eros, a plea that we not forget ambiguity and mystery, that in matters of the heart we acknowledge an abiding uncertainty.

It’s rich, and it’s got the sensuality of prose that I have come to expect from Hustvedt. And it’s all very personal too — among discussions about the repression of eros, and her reasonings against this, Hustvedt gives little details about her past loves, and of her life with Paul Auster too.

>> Here, from “Extracts from a Story of the Wounded Self” — a fragmented-y autobiography. It’s about everything. Small doses of nearly everything in Siri Hustvedt’s life, and there are constant echoes and cross-references. And yet, as fragmented as I’m making it seem [hee], I never felt as though I were missing something. I never felt cheated of details, or bogged down by them. I respected the author’s decision of how to manipulate the format to make way for the content.

I am afraid of writing, too, because when I write I am always moving toward the unarticulated, the dangerous, the place where the walls don’t hold. I don’t know what’s there, but I’m pulled toward it. Is the wounded self the writing self? Perhaps that is more accurate. The wound is static, a given. The writing self is multiple and elastic, and it circles the wound. Over time, I have become more aware of the fact that I must try not to cover that speechless, hurt love, that I must fight my dread of the mess and violence that are also there. I have to write the fear. The writing self is restless and searching, and it listens for voices. Where do they come from, these chatterers who talk to me before I fall asleep? My characters. I am making them and not making them, like people in my dreams. They discuss, fight, laugh, yell, and weep. I was very young when I first heard the story of the exorcism Jesus performs on a possessed man. When Jesus talks to the demon inside the man and asks for his name, the words he cries out both scared and thrilled me. The demon says: “My name is Legion.” That is my name, too.

It’s a book of a very particular world view — that of the author’s. Hustvedt longs to live in “a story of exciting thresholds and irrational feeling,” “a secret place we make between us, a place where the real and unreal commingle,” “a realm of the imagination and of memory, where lovers are alone speaking to each other, saying yes or no or ‘perhaps tomorrow,’ where they play at who they are, inventing and reinventing themselves as subjects and objects.”

And I, for one, am glad that she let me in that secret place. Nothing like creeping about a favorite author’s head, for seriously.

Some choice certainties about good books, ineloquence in the face of said good books, and me having read — and still reading — some good books lately

Tags

Alain de Botton, Books About Books, Essays, Excerpts, Fiction - Novel, Jude Deveraux, Siri Hustvedt

Have reunited with Siri Hustvedt, and it feels so good. I’m running out of her novels to read [I have one left on my shelves], and I’m branching out to her nonfiction. Here’s a passage, from “Being A Man,” from her book of essays A Plea of Eros:

As a reader of books, I’m convinced that words have an altogether magical power to generate, not only more words but fleeting images, emotions, and memories. Certain novels and poems have had a power to unearth raw and unknown parts of myself, have been like mirrors I never knew existed.

I agree. And, mm-hmm, most especially when it comes to good books. I have no idea how to even begin defining what good is — I don’t know how to offer a general definition [which, then again, I think would be lame], but I’m almost always certain of what is good for me. And goodness, for me, is almost always a visceral thing. I can, under duress, articulate why the crafting is good, why the elements of literature fall in the most perfect way [like when I had to pretend I was smart enough to talk about du Maurier's short stories, even if they scared the bejeebies out of me].

But most days, with good books, a Post-it with  Yes scrawled all over it would be enough for me. Most days, I’d much rather daydream about how my heart hammered inside my chest at a pivotal scene, declare that it was the right book to read at the right time, feel in my bones that a book was written for me, or just launch into an as earnest-as-I-could-manage blathering love letter to the text [and the author].

It’s the books that rob me of speech that I love best. It’s the books that translate this critical ineloquence to things much more important in life — loving, my own fictions, battle-cries — that I turn to over and over, that fill me with so much wonder and gratitude that, at the very least, I get to read books.

But there’s a need to give tribute to such books. And that’s where the trouble starts. Yes, as a reading journal, this blog is a depository of all things squeal-worthy in my reading adventures. But sometimes it’s just so goddamned hard to talk about these books. It’s constantly empowering and humbling at the same time, to have read a book that has touched you greatly, and facing the fact that, well, there is no way you can talk about it oh-so-calmly. I can be earnest, I can write love letters, I can say Yes over and over again, but a part of me demands that I write a fitting tribute. Hell.

Last night, I finished rereading the first romance novel I ever read: The Duchess by Jude Deveraux. I am, as usual, having difficulty trying to articulate why it’s good to me, why it has remained so good after all this years. The homecoming aspect is a part of it, yes, but I want to elaborate. I want to tell you all how the heart-thudding is so different when you’re 21 as opposed to reading it for the first time on the sly at 9. I want to tell you all that this is still one of the best exultations of love that I have ever read, regardless of its flaws. I want to tell you all that I was absolutely certain I would be feeling this way even as I began the book — hell, even when I picked up the book from the bookstore.

Like one of the books on my Currently Reading stack, On Love by Alain de Botton. I began this book on the tenth floor of a Medical Arts Tower, me sitting beside a four-year-old adorable stranger who later introduced herself — “I’m Lexine. I can do cartwheels.” Odd place, but today was an odd day. Anyhoo. So. The novel began — its first chapter, “Romantic Fatalism” — thus:

The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams? Can we not be excused a certain superstitious faith in a creature who will prove the solution to our relentless yearnings? And though our prayers may never be answered, though there may be no end to the dismal cycle of mutual incomprehension, if the heavens should come to take pity on us, then can we really be expected to attribute the encounter with this prince or princess to mere coincidence? Or can we not for once escape rational censure and read it as nothing other than an inevitable part of our romantic destiny?

I’m seeing it as a merging of a thesis on love and romance [if I were feeling catty, I'd put on my glasses and intone, Romantic Idealism and the Amorous Object] and an actual relationship. Of the ideas of love and romance applied to, or used as an elaboration, of this actuality of love and romance between two people. Or vice versa. It’s a love story, but it’s also a philosophical text. Whatever it is, I am swooning.

I just began this novel — I’m at p.26 as of this post — but I am absolutely sure that I’ll really like it. That I’ll be charmed beyond sense, that I’ll invest in these characters, and write all over the margins. That I’ll keep on swooning. And that, when the time comes, I will be struck dumb, right in front of this laptop, trying to think of all the other ways to say, “Good God, this book was AwesomeSauce.”

Why, yes, I’m back to square one. Aherm. Good night from my part of the world, kids. I’m off to bed with de Botton.

Sasha might be enjoying reading the “About the Author” pages a smidge too much –

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Books About Books, Caroline Blackwood, Elizabeth Hardwick, Jean Stafford, Lydia Davis, Paul Auster, Robert Lowell, Siri Hustvedt

[This is all obviously off the top of my head. Hello, lazy weekend.] [And thanks to The Boyfriend for letting me borrow his Robert Lowell poetry books for yet another fuzzy book pictorial.]

You know the whole la-dee-dah about letting the text speak for itself, the author being dead and all that jazz, the Not Looking Three Seats to Your Left when a particular piece is being workshopped. Well. Hee. Although I tend to ascribe to these, I still can’t tamp down the fascination I have for author’s lives. [I remember last year: My brain exploded when I learned that romance novelist Eloisa James was the poet Robert Bly's daughter -- it was like two ends of my shelves collided into a flurry of man-poetry and petticoats. Awesome.] It’s these connections that thrill me to no end.

You have all been witness to my obsession over the Paul Auster – Siri Hustvedt – Lydia Davis connection. Si Sasha, literary intrigera. [I don't know how to explain this fascination. Or maybe I do, and I don't really want to, haha. I know I'll implicate myself.] I am thankful though: It was precisely the knowing a portion of the behind-the-scenes of Auster’s life that I ended up discovering Hustvedt and Davis. And, well, Hustvedt is now one of my favorite novelists — one of the authors I’m so thankful to have chanced upon this year.

I guess you can see where I’m going. Last month, I read my first Jean Stafford, The Mountain Lion. And then, in the introduction, I read about her marriage to Robert Lowell. I did that Huh thing, and moved on. Last week, I read The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, loved it, and was informed by the introduction [that I tend to read midway through books, haha] that Elizabeth Hardwick was married to Robert Lowell a year after he left Jean Stafford. There is something wrong with me, because I squealed.

[And with a little Wikipedia-hunting, I found out that Lowell then moved on to Lady Caroline Blackwood, also a writer, moonlighting as a muse -- and Blackwood was married to Lucian Freud way before she met Lowell -- and Lucian Freud is one of my favorite painters ever. My brain, still exploding. And guess what? Two of Blackwood's novels are available from NYRB Classics too -- Corrigan and Great Granny Webster. Hee. I am so reading you, Miss Blackwood. And dude. Wiki tells me: Lowell died clutching one of Freud’s portraits of Blackwood in the back seat of a New York cab, on his way back to his second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Good lord, my heart. These are stories in themselves!]

Introduction-trolling or Google-fu-ing antics aside, I do try to not let this fascination get in the way of enjoying the text itself, though. These connections might thrill me, but literature will always be the highest priority. I mean, come on, I admit that reading someone’s fiction because she was someone’s third wife is a weird way to find a book to read — but letting that information cloud one’s judgment, in whatever manner, is just, well, not for me. I don’t think I can ever go so far as having the author’s lives stand as substitutes for the work that they do. They’ll always be wonderful supplementary material, or a parallel read.

Then again, sometimes, the author’s lives are way better reads for me than the things they write. Then then again, someone’s fiction could — BAH. I’ll stop generalizing here, because I am bad at it. Usually if it applies to flaky ol’ me.

So. Where was I? O ya, reading. Back to your weekends, kids.

Three Different Books, Three Different Kinds of Silences I Need to Break

Tags

Fiction - Novel, Lionel Shriver, Richard Yates, Siri Hustvedt

Because sometimes, I don’t have the words. And sometimes, what words I have are inadequate. And sometimes, I just want to keep on lying down, with a look of horror / loneliness / disappointment on my face, intent on just letting it all soak in. I like these books, for different reasons — the emotional turmoil I went through; the quiet despair that leeched into me at the book’s close the implicit trust I have for the author, no matter the flaws I find in the text.

I’ve made notes, though most of them are bewildered — either by the sheer genius of the work, or the let-down that I didn’t want it to be. The pages are littered with Post-It flags. And, well. I’ll keep them inside me for a little while longer. [Oh, you can ask questions -- In fact, I welcome them: that'll put some semblance of order to my frazzled nerves. Because I do want to talk about these books, but I don't really know where to start. Never mind the Hows of it. Anyway.] Here they are:

* * *

We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver. Read 09 June.

The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates. Read 24 July.

The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt. Read 18 August.

---

Reading begets reading:

• I have a copy of Hustvedt’s The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. The last unread Hustvedt on my shelves. I’m trying not to touch it, because I’ve run out of her books to read.  Because I am poor. Amen.
• As with Hustvedt, I have one last Richard Yates novel in my possession: A Special Providence. I have decided to read all of his work [as with Hustvedt's too, actually]. I have a way to go, and a lot of books I still need to get hold of. But the more of his works I read, the more I’m excited to reread Revolutionary Road. Am I weird?
• I’ll most definitely reread Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World. [My first reading here.] [Have three copies of that book. Hm.] It has become relevant once again. Don’t judge me.