This is a chat transcript.
Author Siri Hustvedt joined us for a chat after her appearance on MPR's Midmorning today April 24th. From the show description:
Siri Hustvedt talks about her new novel, The Sorrows of an American: A Novel. The American in the title is ostensibly her father, a Minnesotan who served in World War II and wrote a memoir. Passages of the memoir are in the book, but Hustvedt imagines a story in which a father leaves a diary to his children which contains a secret. The novel is about the unreliability of memory and the ways in which secrets affect our lives.
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Listen to the archived audio of Siri Hustvedt on Midmorning
This is a chat transcript.
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Julia Schrenkler
Interactive Producer
Minnesota Public Radio
American Public Media
Objects in Mirror
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Comments: 19
Right now Hustvedt is on the air talking about memoirs...
Siri Hustvedt will read an excerpt from her latest book in a moment (you can listen online)
Hi -- I found the "unreliability of memory" an intriguing concept and wonder, as a writer, how you feel this helps your creative process or challenges it when writing a novel? Does this thread in the book reflect your own feelings on writing, particularly with regard to memoir?
Siri replied: I think that memory and imagination are closely connected. Writing fiction is often like remembering something that never happened. Memory, too, can be reimagined.
I do think that if you write a memoir there is a contract between the writer and the reader that the author is telling the truth to the very best of his or her knowledge. In fiction free invention is allowed.
Siri, can you tell us how you manage the two-author household? Do you and Mr. Auster each have your own office? Write at different times? Share your work with each other?
Siri replied: Diana, Paul and I write at about the same time during the day and always meet for dinner! (laughs) I have a study at home, Paul works in a studio. We share and edit each others' work. And always take each others' advice.
Siri replied:
Writing is also a form of documentation, but it is different from visual images that are more universally understood. Language is by its very nature more abstract. But both writing and images are representations of the world, not the world itself. I think we need both forms but we can't believe that they are reality itself.
Siri replied:
Of course! These forms are inter-subjective as is every kind of communication. Without the other I don't think individual experiences exist in the same way. We need the recognition of others to be human.
Siri replied:
Because German was also the language of the Nazi murder machine, Celan had to find a way to write German that wasn't contaminated by the death camps. I think he did that, but he drown himself in the Seine and suffered from bi-polar disorder. Nevertheless, one of the great poets.
There are a number of good translations of Celan and it's interesting to compare them, so if you don't read German you can get a good feeling of the power of his language.
Siri replied:
I think open response is a very good form for not only psychiatric patients but all writers. This is not the same as free writing. It is addressing something about a great text that moves or interests the reader/writer. There is no "becoming a writer" without voracious reading.
It can be interesting to take a great text and imitate its form exactly; replacing every noun, preposition, verb etc. with your own. Also, I think all budding writers benefit from working in very strict forms; sonnets, villanelles, heroic couplets, even if you don't aspire to writing poetry but prose. The discipline can result in very interesting flights. Later, a writer goes his or her own way and there are absolutely no rules about anything.
Siri: In writing your book did you come across things in your family history that made you uncomfortable and what lessons did you learn from that history?
Siri replied:
I think what I gained from studying my father's memoir was a tremendous sympathy for the early pains he suffered. I think when writing fiction I never want to turn away from emotional truths. This means that I had to tolerate both discomfort and fear. That is part of the experience, not only with the characters who are based on real people but those who are entirely invented. They are part of my internal geography as well.
I enjoyed the conversation and would like to read Siri's book. I also enjoyed Sohie's music played during the hour. Can you give me the her complete name and title of the album or CD and where it may be purchased?
Siri replied:
Sophie Auster, her album is called "Sophie Auster" it's on iTunes and her new album not yet released is called "Broken Down Cabaret"
-signed, Proud Mother