Lady of Sorrows

It can’t be easy for any novelist to be married to a man widely regarded as one of contemporary literature’s leading lights. But if Siri Hustvedt has yet to achieve the international prominence of Paul Auster, it’s certainly not because she lacks the talent. Hustvedt’s latest novel The Sorrows Of An American is a rich and impressive work of great subtlety and skill.

The Sorrows Of An American is nominally the story of Erik Davidsen, a lonely middle-aged New York psychoanalyst, who has developed an unrequited passion for his lodger, a beautiful young artist named Miranda. When Erik’s father passes away, he finds a letter dated 1937 amongst his papers – “Dear Lars, I know you will never ever say nothing about what happened. We swore it on the Bible. It can’t matter now she’s in heaven or to the ones here on earth.”
The note, and the identity of its author Lisa, acts as the central mystery to the novel, but it’s not the only one. Hustvedt co-opts some of the conventions of the mystery plot, which is used to underscore her real concerns – our inability to genuinely know our loved ones; and the elusiveness of truth and its relation to the creation of narrative.
“It’s interesting because the idea of a secret is something that plots often hinge on, especially nineteenth century narratives where there is some secret. That’s how the novel presents itself, but the genuine secrets in the novel have very little to do with the unfolding of these overt secrets or plot stories.”
While the novel’s overt mysteries get resolved, the real mysteries at the heart of The Sorrows Of An American are left open-ended.
“I’m subverting the plot story by placing the genuine secret elsewhere. I think those genuine secrets – who Erik’s father actually was, or why he was tormented in some way are never fully understood, probably because we can’t fully understand those deeper emotional secrets of other people. I think the novel is promoting some idea of ambiguity – we can’t tell – but there is a desire in our culture to always have complete answers.”
In The Sorrows Of An American, Hustvedt draws on her own personal history to blend fact and fiction. Like Hustvedt, the Davidsen family are Norwegian American; like Hustvedt, Erik and his sister Inga grew up in rural Minnesota; and like Hustvedt, Inga is a writer, the wife and now widow of Max, a critically-acclaimed novelist and filmmaker. Perhaps most strikingly, Lars Davidsen’s memoirs are actually those of Hustvedt’s father.
“Those extracts that I’ve put in italics are taken directly from my father’s memoir. I always changed the names and there were some very minute editorial changes, but hardly anything. So that’s my father’s voice speaking inside this work of fiction.
“I started the book before my father died but I knew he was dying. I didn’t think it through entirely but I think that the deep impulse was to save something of my father after he was dead – to put this voice inside this text, to preserve it in some way. There are a lot of ghosts that are speaking in the book already and in a sense this is a genuine ghost, the ghost of my father.”
The Sorrows Of An American is a story about the creation of stories, how we create narratives for ourselves. Memory, literature, art, photography and psychoanalysis with its exploration of personal history and subconscious motivations are seen as forms of narrative, which can serve to elucidate or obscure some form of elusive truth.
All this may make the novel sound like a difficult highbrow read, but Hustvedt’s style has a lightness of touch, and The Sorrows Of An American is full of insightful aphorisms and genuine empathy.
Hustvedt’s next book, however, promises to be a very different kind of story and fans can get a sneak preview at Dun Laoighaire’s inaugural Mountains To Sea book festival this September when Hustvedt and Auster will both be reading from their works-in-progress.
“It’s called The Summer Without Men, and as the title suggests all the leading characters who actually enter the book are women. It’s a comic novel, if you can believe that I’m writing a comic novel. It’s a novel that I’m finding so funny that I’m laughing out loud as I read it. Who knows if other people will share my amusement, but I’m having a great time doing it!
“I’m always writing against myself,” Hustvedt continues. “I spent ten years writing as a man and I decided it was definitely time to go back to women and have a female narrator. There are serious themes in the book, it’s not a laugh-a-minute, there is a darkness in it, but I’m having a very nice time writing it.”
Trying out an unfinished novel on an audience has got to be a tricky proposition.
“I hope it goes well,” she acknowledges. “I guess we’ll see if anyone laughs!”