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A Plea for Eros
A stunning collection of essays by the author of WHAT I LOVED, in which she addresses many of the themes explored in her novels - identity, sexual attraction, relationships, family, mental illness, the power of the imagination, a sense of belonging and mortality. In three cases, she focuses on the novels of other writers - Dickens, James and Fitzgerald. She also refers to her own novels, affording an unusual insight into their creation. Whatever her topic, her approach is unaffected, intimate and conversational, inviting us both to share her thoughts and reflect on our own views and ideas.
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Siri Hustvedt
67 books2,327 followersHustvedt 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
July 18, 2020
Another fine collection of essays from one of my favourite novelists. This one is less academic than her more recent A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind, and is a lot more revealing about herself and what drives her writing. There is also some literary criticism, with essays on Henry James, F Scott Fitzgerald and Charles Dickens. A surprisingly accessible collection and a very enjoyable read.
November 15, 2018
4.5*
Whether she talks about memory, the self, passions, feelings or words, Siri’s essays from this volume really hit home with me. I could not help but highlight lots and lots of fragments from this book because they could mirror ideas that have been fleeting through my mind at times, ideas that I never could quite grasp.
She talks about places that live in our mind once we have left them in the essay/short story called “Yonder” which is my favorite from the collection. She talks about how we imagine them before we arrive and how “they are seemingly called out of nothing to illustrate a thought or a story”. She talks about things that stop being random objects once they are connected to a story, a person or a feeling. She talks about disparate memories that are very vivid in her mind while other more significant details are totally left out, making me wonder what the mind’s criteria of selection for remembering things are. She talks about her grandparents and her parents, about memories and time, about reading and seeing.
I really liked the last essay where she talks about how she met Paul Auster and fell for him and about how she would spend hours and hours in the library (I probably really liked this essay because this also really hit home with me).
Whether she talks about memory, the self, passions, feelings or words, Siri’s essays from this volume really hit home with me. I could not help but highlight lots and lots of fragments from this book because they could mirror ideas that have been fleeting through my mind at times, ideas that I never could quite grasp.
She talks about places that live in our mind once we have left them in the essay/short story called “Yonder” which is my favorite from the collection. She talks about how we imagine them before we arrive and how “they are seemingly called out of nothing to illustrate a thought or a story”. She talks about things that stop being random objects once they are connected to a story, a person or a feeling. She talks about disparate memories that are very vivid in her mind while other more significant details are totally left out, making me wonder what the mind’s criteria of selection for remembering things are. She talks about her grandparents and her parents, about memories and time, about reading and seeing.
“The place of reading is a kind of yonder world, a place that is not here nor there, but made up of the bits and pieces of experience in every sense, both real and fictional, two categories that become harder to separate the more you think about them.”In “A Plea for Eros”, she explores what makes us fall in love with some particular persons and not with others. And what exactly creates attraction.
“A combination of biology, personal history, and a cultural miasma of ideas creates attraction. The fantasy lover is always hovering above or behind or in front of the real lover, and you need both of them.”
In one of the essays she analyzes the subtle connection between words, memory and the self by applying her knowledge from psychology and neurology on Dickens’ characters that seem mad or seem to have a shattered inner world. “This story we call the self and articulate as I, Dickens tells us, is fraught and fragile, and we must fight to keep it together.”I thought that her way of applying concepts from science on characters from fiction was brilliant.
“As the connective tissue of time, memory is certainly essential to the internal narrative we create for ourselves.”The essays about Great Gatsby and Henry James’s The Bostonians did not resonate much with me, the former because I am not a fan of Great Gatsby and the latter because I have not read the book, but I still could extract some really good ideas from them.
I really liked the last essay where she talks about how she met Paul Auster and fell for him and about how she would spend hours and hours in the library (I probably really liked this essay because this also really hit home with me).
“In college I retreated to the library. I have always loved libraries – the quiet, the smell, the expectation of imminent discovery. In the next book I will find it – some unspeakable pleasure or startling revelation or extraordinary nuance I had never felt or thought of before.”“Some words, sentences, and phrases sit forever in the mind like brain tattoos.” And so do most of Siri’s ideas expressed in this book of essays.
June 12, 2021
A PLEA FOR EROS (2005) is a collection of essays written by novelist Siri Hustvedt during the years 1995 to 2004. Some of the pieces are autobiographical, others are critical essays about the works of Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens and Henry James. The three critical essays are simply brilliant.
Some of the themes explored in her novels are addressed in this collection: the nature of sexual attraction, relationships, parenting, the writing life. Others are more personal in nature: growing up in Minnesota, her own sense of a divided self or her moving memories of the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy, which I loved particularly.
Hustvedt is a thoughtful and accomplished writer who relies on her knowledge of psychology when she examines a subject. Morever, her love of language and theory shines through in every page. Perhaps some readers will find the theoretical baggage somewhat arid, however, the collection is readable, engaging and thought provoking.
Some of the themes explored in her novels are addressed in this collection: the nature of sexual attraction, relationships, parenting, the writing life. Others are more personal in nature: growing up in Minnesota, her own sense of a divided self or her moving memories of the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy, which I loved particularly.
Hustvedt is a thoughtful and accomplished writer who relies on her knowledge of psychology when she examines a subject. Morever, her love of language and theory shines through in every page. Perhaps some readers will find the theoretical baggage somewhat arid, however, the collection is readable, engaging and thought provoking.
June 11, 2020
Siri Hustvedt's Plea For Eros
"A Plea for Eros" is a rarely insightful and succinct title for an essay. It summarizes the subject matter and importance of what the essay itself has to say in many more words. The essay, "A Plea for Eros", gives its name and theme to this collection of twelve essays published as a book in 2006 by the American author Siri Hustvedt. I read the essay and the book of which it forms the key part after reading Hustvedt's novel, "What I Loved" (2003). My book group has just disscussed Hustvedt's novel. Hustvedt's essay on the importance, and frequent neglect, of eros captures for me a great deal of the theme of her difficult novel, as do other essays in the collection. I tried to use the essays to increase my understanding of the novel. While there are several other good and related essays in this collection, including "Being a Man" in which Hustvedt discusses her use of a male narrative voice in "What I Loved", I want to focus in this review on the title essay as it relates to the novel.
The climactic scene in "What I Loved" occurs near the end of the novel where the aging narrator, Leo, makes a strong romantic overture to a woman named Violet, the wife of a deceased close friend, Bill. Leo has loved Violet for many years. Violet strongly, and with unmeant cruelty, rejects Leo's love. It becomes clear that Leo and Violet had different views of the relationship between them that has developed over the years. Neither of the two characters, but particularly Violet, understands human sexuality and expression well. There is an irony in this lack of understanding in the context of the entire novel, as Violet's professional career involves writing on various expressions of female sexuality.
Hustvedt's essay "A Plea for Eros" first was published in 1995. The essay discusses the pervasive and ambiguous character of human passion, romance, and eroticism. Hustvedt describes how erotic passion tends to be unduly marginalized, rigidified, or even demonized. Much of the essay uses as a foil certain forms of American feminism and political correctness which Hustvedt describes (p.47) as having "a puritanical strain, an imposed blindness to erotic truth." She discusses the claim of some feminists that women are wrongfully seen as sex objects and works to the conclusion that "desire is always between a subject and an object" (p.49) "Women are sexual objects", Hustvedt writes, and "so are men." She continues "every person is keenly aware of the fact that sexual feeling is distinct from affection, even though they often conspire, but this fact runs against the grain of classic feminist arguments." (p. 47)
Hustvedt proceeds to illuminate her essay with stories drawn from her own experience. The most telling of these stories seems to me to illuminate both her understanding of erotic ambiguity and the climactic scene of "What I Loved." Hustvedt describes how, as a graduate student in her 20s, she met a fellow-student, a young man who shared many of her literary enthusiasms. At the time, Hustvedt was romantically involved with another man in a relationship that was not proving successful. Over the course of several months, she and the student began to socialize together, having coffee, reading books and poems, sharing Chinese dinners, and going to movies. The young man never made any sexual comments or made any romantic overtures towards Hustvedt; and she says in the essay that she never had sexual feelings for him.
Several months into the relationship, Hustvedt shared with her fellow student a poem she had written that described the sexual prowess of her boyfriend. The young man was hurt and crestfallen. "Perhaps never in my life have I so misinterpreted a relation with another person", Hustvedt writes. The young man had interpreted the time alone with Hustvedt, the dinners, movies, and conversations, as the opening stages of a possible romance or courtship, as these forms of activities have long been so understood in American life. Hustvedt had taken them more impersonally and less intimately. She viewed them simply as showing friendship, of the sort she had with many men and women, and which did not suggest any further closeness or sexual involvement. She had no sexual interest, she tells the reader, in the man. In the usual harsh euphemism for these matters, Hustvedt considered the young man as a friend.
This little story, expanded many times and writ large, forms the basis for the ultimate rejection in the relationship between the older and seemingly more experienced people, Leo and Violet, in "What I Loved." The story also makes the point that Hustvedt makes at the end of the essay. The essay form, of course, is a much more appropriate vehicle for drawing an explicit and abstract conclusion than is a novel. Hustvedt writes: "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. I honestly think that when we are possessed by erotic magic..... we are living a story of exciting thresholds and irrational feeling. We are living in a secret place we make between us, a place where the real and unreal commingle." (p. 60)
Hustvedt's essay and her novel describe the undercurrent of erotic passion which runs through human life and which all too often is deprecated, ignored, or misinterpreted. Readers with some sense of the ambiguities and mysteries of human passion may enjoy Hustvedt's novel, "What I Loved" , her essay, "A Plea for Eros" and the volume of which it is a part.
Robin Friedman
"A Plea for Eros" is a rarely insightful and succinct title for an essay. It summarizes the subject matter and importance of what the essay itself has to say in many more words. The essay, "A Plea for Eros", gives its name and theme to this collection of twelve essays published as a book in 2006 by the American author Siri Hustvedt. I read the essay and the book of which it forms the key part after reading Hustvedt's novel, "What I Loved" (2003). My book group has just disscussed Hustvedt's novel. Hustvedt's essay on the importance, and frequent neglect, of eros captures for me a great deal of the theme of her difficult novel, as do other essays in the collection. I tried to use the essays to increase my understanding of the novel. While there are several other good and related essays in this collection, including "Being a Man" in which Hustvedt discusses her use of a male narrative voice in "What I Loved", I want to focus in this review on the title essay as it relates to the novel.
The climactic scene in "What I Loved" occurs near the end of the novel where the aging narrator, Leo, makes a strong romantic overture to a woman named Violet, the wife of a deceased close friend, Bill. Leo has loved Violet for many years. Violet strongly, and with unmeant cruelty, rejects Leo's love. It becomes clear that Leo and Violet had different views of the relationship between them that has developed over the years. Neither of the two characters, but particularly Violet, understands human sexuality and expression well. There is an irony in this lack of understanding in the context of the entire novel, as Violet's professional career involves writing on various expressions of female sexuality.
Hustvedt's essay "A Plea for Eros" first was published in 1995. The essay discusses the pervasive and ambiguous character of human passion, romance, and eroticism. Hustvedt describes how erotic passion tends to be unduly marginalized, rigidified, or even demonized. Much of the essay uses as a foil certain forms of American feminism and political correctness which Hustvedt describes (p.47) as having "a puritanical strain, an imposed blindness to erotic truth." She discusses the claim of some feminists that women are wrongfully seen as sex objects and works to the conclusion that "desire is always between a subject and an object" (p.49) "Women are sexual objects", Hustvedt writes, and "so are men." She continues "every person is keenly aware of the fact that sexual feeling is distinct from affection, even though they often conspire, but this fact runs against the grain of classic feminist arguments." (p. 47)
Hustvedt proceeds to illuminate her essay with stories drawn from her own experience. The most telling of these stories seems to me to illuminate both her understanding of erotic ambiguity and the climactic scene of "What I Loved." Hustvedt describes how, as a graduate student in her 20s, she met a fellow-student, a young man who shared many of her literary enthusiasms. At the time, Hustvedt was romantically involved with another man in a relationship that was not proving successful. Over the course of several months, she and the student began to socialize together, having coffee, reading books and poems, sharing Chinese dinners, and going to movies. The young man never made any sexual comments or made any romantic overtures towards Hustvedt; and she says in the essay that she never had sexual feelings for him.
Several months into the relationship, Hustvedt shared with her fellow student a poem she had written that described the sexual prowess of her boyfriend. The young man was hurt and crestfallen. "Perhaps never in my life have I so misinterpreted a relation with another person", Hustvedt writes. The young man had interpreted the time alone with Hustvedt, the dinners, movies, and conversations, as the opening stages of a possible romance or courtship, as these forms of activities have long been so understood in American life. Hustvedt had taken them more impersonally and less intimately. She viewed them simply as showing friendship, of the sort she had with many men and women, and which did not suggest any further closeness or sexual involvement. She had no sexual interest, she tells the reader, in the man. In the usual harsh euphemism for these matters, Hustvedt considered the young man as a friend.
This little story, expanded many times and writ large, forms the basis for the ultimate rejection in the relationship between the older and seemingly more experienced people, Leo and Violet, in "What I Loved." The story also makes the point that Hustvedt makes at the end of the essay. The essay form, of course, is a much more appropriate vehicle for drawing an explicit and abstract conclusion than is a novel. Hustvedt writes: "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. I honestly think that when we are possessed by erotic magic..... we are living a story of exciting thresholds and irrational feeling. We are living in a secret place we make between us, a place where the real and unreal commingle." (p. 60)
Hustvedt's essay and her novel describe the undercurrent of erotic passion which runs through human life and which all too often is deprecated, ignored, or misinterpreted. Readers with some sense of the ambiguities and mysteries of human passion may enjoy Hustvedt's novel, "What I Loved" , her essay, "A Plea for Eros" and the volume of which it is a part.
Robin Friedman
May 14, 2018
I suppose I am drawn to Siri Hustvedt's writings, because I am interested in the same things she is: memory and place; the nature of art; Henry James; Our Mutual Friend; Dickens; and 19th-century English literature in general, all of which (and more) she addresses in this collection. I relate to her descriptions of her inner world, especially those from when she was a child and an adolescent. But Hustvedt is a lot smarter than I am, so I'm happy to have my outlook on these topics expanded by her.
When this book came out I was excited, because I love her earlier collection, Yonder: Essays. Upon opening this book, I was disappointed to see that the first three essays are repeats from the earlier book. I understand why her publisher reissued them, as the three 'reruns' are wonderful -- the essay titled "Yonder" is my favorite -- and I'm guessing the first collection is now officially out-of-print, plus she'd become more known since the publication of What I Loved.
When this book came out I was excited, because I love her earlier collection, Yonder: Essays. Upon opening this book, I was disappointed to see that the first three essays are repeats from the earlier book. I understand why her publisher reissued them, as the three 'reruns' are wonderful -- the essay titled "Yonder" is my favorite -- and I'm guessing the first collection is now officially out-of-print, plus she'd become more known since the publication of What I Loved.
February 26, 2017
After nearly two months of trying to get through this, I'm giving up. I love Hustvedt - three of her novels are among my all-time favourites - and it isn't even that I thought there was anything specific wrong with any of the essays I read (although none of them made much of an impression on me either), I just couldn't summon up any enthusiasm or motivation to finish reading this.
I did make a lot of notes on this when I first started it, so might write a longer review later.
---
From a Tumblr post, November 2014:
Siri Hustvedt has been near the top of my list of favourite novelists for quite a while, with three of her books among my all-time favourites. You might, therefore, assume (as I did myself) that I’d adore this collection of her essays, but you’d be wrong. I can’t remember the last time I had such a struggle attempting to finish a book. I dragged myself through eight of the twelve essays and finally abandoned the whole thing in the middle of the piece about 9/11.
It’s not at all that the book is bad or poorly written in any way, but I completely failed to get to grips with it or find anything about it that could sustain my interest. ‘Yonder’, which opens the book, I found interesting because it’s personal - it’s about Hustvedt’s family, linking parts of her own history with ruminations on how and what we remember, formative understandings of language, and the significance of certain stories - but it was also slow going. I found the base of 'A Plea for Eros’ (the essay) significantly underdeveloped; it basically says desire is complex and hard to understand or define in narrow terms, which is fine, and difficult to argue with, but I’d like to have seen further exploration of this idea. The anecdote that bookends this essay also seems trite at best, distasteful at worst. And apart from that, I can’t even remember any of the others I read. My overall feeling was that there were some really interesting ideas and themes here, but I much prefer Hustvedt’s exploration of them in fictional contexts to her essays.
Perhaps it’s an issue that some of the pieces are dated - many were originally published in the late 1990s, and a few address issues that have become widely discussed in recent years, making their scope seem very limited now. I wondered for a while if the problem lay somewhere between my own reading abilities and the book’s format, whether I’d just become so accustomed to only reading non-fiction in the form of online articles that I’d developed a faulty attention span. But I’ve recently read and enjoyed Roxane Gay’s essay collection Bad Feminist and Jamie Bartlett’s study of the internet, The Dark Net, so it would appear I am somewhat capable of reading longer volumes of non-fiction. Just not this one.
I did make a lot of notes on this when I first started it, so might write a longer review later.
---
From a Tumblr post, November 2014:
Siri Hustvedt has been near the top of my list of favourite novelists for quite a while, with three of her books among my all-time favourites. You might, therefore, assume (as I did myself) that I’d adore this collection of her essays, but you’d be wrong. I can’t remember the last time I had such a struggle attempting to finish a book. I dragged myself through eight of the twelve essays and finally abandoned the whole thing in the middle of the piece about 9/11.
It’s not at all that the book is bad or poorly written in any way, but I completely failed to get to grips with it or find anything about it that could sustain my interest. ‘Yonder’, which opens the book, I found interesting because it’s personal - it’s about Hustvedt’s family, linking parts of her own history with ruminations on how and what we remember, formative understandings of language, and the significance of certain stories - but it was also slow going. I found the base of 'A Plea for Eros’ (the essay) significantly underdeveloped; it basically says desire is complex and hard to understand or define in narrow terms, which is fine, and difficult to argue with, but I’d like to have seen further exploration of this idea. The anecdote that bookends this essay also seems trite at best, distasteful at worst. And apart from that, I can’t even remember any of the others I read. My overall feeling was that there were some really interesting ideas and themes here, but I much prefer Hustvedt’s exploration of them in fictional contexts to her essays.
Perhaps it’s an issue that some of the pieces are dated - many were originally published in the late 1990s, and a few address issues that have become widely discussed in recent years, making their scope seem very limited now. I wondered for a while if the problem lay somewhere between my own reading abilities and the book’s format, whether I’d just become so accustomed to only reading non-fiction in the form of online articles that I’d developed a faulty attention span. But I’ve recently read and enjoyed Roxane Gay’s essay collection Bad Feminist and Jamie Bartlett’s study of the internet, The Dark Net, so it would appear I am somewhat capable of reading longer volumes of non-fiction. Just not this one.
February 16, 2020
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt was a revelation for me. That's why I wanted to read this collection of earlier published essays. Hustvedt shows she is a very self-conscious observant of the world (cf the essay about New York, 1 year after Nine-Eleven), but foremost a gracious observer of herself.
I especially liked the opening essay "Yonder", about the unreachable space between here and there, that she relates to her migration background (Norwegian), but also to her literary work. The title essay "A Plea for Eros" is a well-thought-out warning at puritan feminism to not underestimate or neglect the fundamental ambiguity and ubiquity of sexual feelings. In the final essay, Hustvedt gives us a self-analysis that to my taste is a bit too exhibitionistic, and thus a rather uncomfortable read. I didn't read the literary essays that are included in this collection. (rating 2.5 stars)
I especially liked the opening essay "Yonder", about the unreachable space between here and there, that she relates to her migration background (Norwegian), but also to her literary work. The title essay "A Plea for Eros" is a well-thought-out warning at puritan feminism to not underestimate or neglect the fundamental ambiguity and ubiquity of sexual feelings. In the final essay, Hustvedt gives us a self-analysis that to my taste is a bit too exhibitionistic, and thus a rather uncomfortable read. I didn't read the literary essays that are included in this collection. (rating 2.5 stars)
February 14, 2021
Siri is one of the few authors that made me feel like I was sitting inside her brain while she explained how she sees the world and why she sees it that way. It's a weird way to describe how i felt but this is the closest thing i can come up with.. language isn't my best friend at times.
But this is truly an astounding experience, I enjoyed it a lot because I felt like i was getting to know her intimately through the topics she picked to write about, how she writes about, and what's behind her interest in various topics.. her essays were about her childhood, her parents, 9/11, living in New York, reading and writing, Charles Dickens... i can go on and on and on.. and i can't even begin to describe what they meant for me.
And the way she writes! Man I'm envious of how language seems to be her best friend, it's simple and elegant and deep and ...
I have seriously so much admiration for her. And I'm not even exaggerating when i say reading the rest of her work is one of the things I look forward to in my future.
But this is truly an astounding experience, I enjoyed it a lot because I felt like i was getting to know her intimately through the topics she picked to write about, how she writes about, and what's behind her interest in various topics.. her essays were about her childhood, her parents, 9/11, living in New York, reading and writing, Charles Dickens... i can go on and on and on.. and i can't even begin to describe what they meant for me.
And the way she writes! Man I'm envious of how language seems to be her best friend, it's simple and elegant and deep and ...
I have seriously so much admiration for her. And I'm not even exaggerating when i say reading the rest of her work is one of the things I look forward to in my future.
February 3, 2017
The earliest of Hustvedt's essay collections (2006). Cerebral but also extremely personal. Overarching themes include identity, family, memory, gender identity, personhood and the self - especially the boundaries/fluidity between idea of the self and perception of the Other.
March 18, 2022
Lot of thoughts on this one but Id like to start with the fact that this book SHOULD be titled “A Plea for Eros and other essays” because it is a collection of essays only one of which is about eros and that essay is titled as such and then nothing else in this book is relevant to that topic.
Now that that’s out of the way: I genuinely think that Siri Hustvedt is a genius. She is someone I’ve read for years and in college I remember her being a compass for me, pointing me towards the type of hot thoughtful adult woman I wanted to be. She is incredibly analytical and insightful at the same time and I think her power lies in her ability to marry emotion, memory, theory, fiction, psychology, and hard science like neurobiology all together into explorations that feel whole and round.
This collection has the typical Hustvedt moments that blew me away, but unfortunately they were balanced out with a handful of moments that felt like she was willfully missing the point, or indulging in shallow critique when I know she’s capable of so much more depth !!! maybe some of that was a product of these essays ranging in time from 1997-2004 and being consumed in 2022 there’s just more to some of these topics now.
She’s the only person who’s ever made me consider reading Charles Dickens so I’ll give her that.
In general I recommend Siri, but this wasn’t The One for me.
Now that that’s out of the way: I genuinely think that Siri Hustvedt is a genius. She is someone I’ve read for years and in college I remember her being a compass for me, pointing me towards the type of hot thoughtful adult woman I wanted to be. She is incredibly analytical and insightful at the same time and I think her power lies in her ability to marry emotion, memory, theory, fiction, psychology, and hard science like neurobiology all together into explorations that feel whole and round.
This collection has the typical Hustvedt moments that blew me away, but unfortunately they were balanced out with a handful of moments that felt like she was willfully missing the point, or indulging in shallow critique when I know she’s capable of so much more depth !!! maybe some of that was a product of these essays ranging in time from 1997-2004 and being consumed in 2022 there’s just more to some of these topics now.
She’s the only person who’s ever made me consider reading Charles Dickens so I’ll give her that.
In general I recommend Siri, but this wasn’t The One for me.
December 9, 2018
I got this book because several of my friends read and loved the blazing world. I think I will still read that, but I found this collection of essays hard to get through. I liked all the stuff about childhood and family, but I didn’t love the literary analysis stuff (I just don’t usually like reading things that remind me of having to write essays for school, although hers are obviously better and more insightful than anything I ever wrote). Basically, I think she’s brilliant and talented, but I couldn’t get into the book as a whole. Maybe it’s true that I was impressed by her writing but bored by the content?
May 26, 2011
The collection of essays is fascinating--the only one I didn't finish was "Charles Dicken and the Morbid Fragment," because I'm not into Dickens. I did skim it and was rewarded with some nuggets of psychological insight. I particularly enjoy Hustvedt's autobiographical writings. "9/11, of One Year Later" moved me to tears.
December 27, 2017
40% vildt inspirerende 60% kunstanalyse som jeg intet kender til og ingen holdning har til
February 13, 2016
Siri Hustvedt is such a beautiful and evocative writer. (Her first novel, The Blindfold, had a huge impact on me). This is a collection of 12 essays written from 1995 to 2004. I love the way she seamlessly weaves imagination with reality - for me there is exhilaration at discovering someone who captures the inner world so well (or at least mine!) My favorite essays were "Being A Man", "9/11 or One Year Later" and "Notes on a Wounded Self." I didn't enjoy her literary criticism as much, finding it a bit dry - I think she is best when she sticks to the personal. All in all, I'd highly recommend this book.
August 9, 2008
A great book to read after The Blindfold, it covers a range of topics, including the boundaries and puzzles necessary for eroticism to survive ("A Plea for Eros"), the mask one must put on to survive in a crowded city and the benefits of sometimes lifting that mask ("Living with Strangers"), and the ambiguity of the distinction between males and females and how this false dichotomy helps her as a writer and as a grown adult understanding her own family (>"Being a Man"). Perhaps not a great book to read in one sitting, but worth keeping around you. Beautifully expressed, as always.
October 26, 2016
5 stars for Yonder. The rest I enjoyed, but already they fade. Maybe since I read them while eavesdropping on a plane (half helplessly, half on purpose). Yonder I read on a beautiful morning, stretched in a shaft of sunlight, alone, on a bed with white sheets, a stack of books newly acquired, a french pastry on a little plate, and a juice my wife thoughtfully brought me before thoughtfully fucking off. It was exquisite. A perfect moment of glory.
May 8, 2012
I feel like the title and the essay it refers to are not really very emblematic of the whole collection. I really enjoyed this work-- from her tales of childhood to the later chapters which are pretty much lit crit infused with soul.
However, I did resent having it look like I was reading a bodice-ripper on the bus.
Good book
Bad cover.
Bad title.
However, I did resent having it look like I was reading a bodice-ripper on the bus.
Good book
Bad cover.
Bad title.
January 7, 2021
More of a series of articles than a book
I thought this book started well enough – the discussions in “Yonder” about how language influences how we feel about things and what it can express and its enormous value to humanity… all good stuff. But, even though it turned out to be my favourite essay – albeit in a book of essays that overall I found very disappointing – it still lacked cohesion for me, flitting around from one topic to another. Narrating her teenage experiences in Norway read less to me as evidence for anything she was saying, and more like, erm: ‘Hey look at me, I’m really European, not just the daughter of Europeans.’ (Which, as a European myself, don’t impress me much, though I am intrigued by the fact that so many North Americans still revere a continent that their recent ancestors left because it offered them nothing. I guess we all need roots…).
And then suddenly we were in New York and again, sorry, it was like: ‘Hey look at me, I was a country hick and I still managed to make a mark in the Big Apple.’ (Which, even though I know that can’t have been easy, and took talent, I just don’t need to read that from the author herself’s mouth...)
I skipped the literary crits because I hadn’t read the books she was criticising, so what was the point in that?
And the rest – well, like I say, I just don’t think she can put much of an argument together, or forward. She tends to go off on anecdotal tangents which, as I stated above, smack of self-obsessiveness really, or anxiety to impress. Which is a pity, because I don’t get that impression at all from her fiction, which I find extremely intelligent and cogent – though I think I’ve actually only read “What I Loved”, which I really loved.
I definitely won’t give up on her; but I will stick to her novels from now on...
July 22, 2021
I read this book with similar feelings to the ones I had when I read Hustvedt's novel What I loved: great expectations, admiration of her skill to dissect the small things of life and eventually a slight sense of disappointment. She’s too humorless, too fortunate and sheltered in her life, and therefore some of her recollections from her own life are boring. Yet at the same time she is a woman of great intellect and insight, when she gets philosophical it’s more exciting to read and I admire how she manages not to be smitten by various ideologies, how strong she is to resist them all.
February 17, 2022
"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."
Truly incredible. My first Hustvedt <33 and def. not my last.
Truly incredible. My first Hustvedt <33 and def. not my last.
May 27, 2019
I like her recurring theme of "wobble."
September 2, 2020
Siri siempre es un huracán que remueve donde toca
February 8, 2022
Voll entlarvender und äußerst agiler Argumente, diese Essays. Besonders lesenswert ist der letzte Text, Auszüge aus der Geschichte des verwundeten Selbst.
March 29, 2022
particularly good on the fragmented, wounded and wordless self
October 19, 2022
I liked the essays about herself far more than the writing about books. The first and last essays in particular. And the refreshing moderate liberal views.
July 18, 2023
dnf the essays were interesting but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish this 😭
January 21, 2024
outdated but kinda brilliant
May 13, 2024
“Some words, sentences, and phrases sit forever in the mind like brain tattoos.”
incredible stuff
incredible stuff
May 20, 2024
An interesting look at the use of language & how words can be used to manipulate or create. This is a great book for upcoming writers but quite heavy & is best read is short bursts.
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