Meeting Siri Hustvedt

Today was the day for authors. Literally. First one in the morning was Sara Paretsky, writer of the famous V.I. Warshawski detective series who stopped by the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore to sign copies of her new book, Bleeding Kansas. For more of the meeting with her, please see the RWB Blog (http://rwbooks.blogspot.com) .
The second one of the day was Siri Hustvedt whose new book The Sorrows of an American has just been published (for a review of the book, see the entry by Red Addict below). We were fortunate enough to attend a reading she was giving at the Village Voice bookstore. Ms. Hustvedt has already written a number of well regarded fiction works (one of which is the best selling novel “What I loved”) as well as poetry and nonfiction.
Ms. Hustvedt is a tall, elegant blonde with a disarming smile and long elegant fingers that move animatedly as she speaks. After a lengthy introduction, she began her reading by speaking about her father, whose memoirs she appropriated with his consent inorder to form part of her book. And how her newest book works much like a fugue. The reading itself was interesting with the audience listening in rapt attention. After the end of her reading, she was gracious enough to answer several questions from the audience. The audience was mainly interested in her writing process since two of her books are written from the male perspective. Interestingly enough, she told us that she has been writing from the male perspective for 10 years now but that her next book will be told from the female perspective. It is clear that the male/female dichotomy is something which interests her greatly. For our part, we wanted to know about the influence (if any) of her husband, Paul Auster over her writing. We learned that they’ve been married for 27 years and that they are each other’s first reader and critic. And that almost always, they take each other’s advice. To further illustrate her answer, she recounted that a character from one of her favorite novels, unknowingly influenced one of her own characters from the new book. Reflexively, she admitted that perhaps because she and Paul Auster have been reading each other so long, his voice has been “singing in her ear” while she was writing her book. Which, I suppose would explain any seeming influence or similarity between their works.
It was an altogether memorable evening with Siri Hustvedt.