Siri Hustvedt on Djuna Barnes and Nightwood

American novelist and essayist acknowledges the influences of Barnes and her work

Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes

From NPR (thanks to Cathryn Setz for the link):

The spring after I turned 24, I discovered Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, a slender, dense novel that I read with the aching intensity of a person possessed.

It wasn't about my world — I had grown up in a small town in Minnesota and then moved to New York City. Nightwood is set mostly in a Paris Barnes knew intimately in the 1920s, a city inhabited by ex-pats, drifters and poseurs. And yet, the story of passion and grief, of exile and loneliness, spoke directly to me, a young woman who, for some reason, had never felt she quite belonged anywhere.

I carried the book around with me, reread passages, pondered their meanings, and suffered with Nora Flood, whose liaison with the wild, amoral Robin Vote, becomes her abiding anguish. And I pored over the speeches delivered by my favorite character, the novel's bombastic but tender bard, Dr. Matthew O'Connor — a cross-dresser, petty thief, inveterate liar and tragic anti-hero.

One afternoon, that same spring, I found myself sitting next to an elderly woman on the subway. She looked down at the volume in my lap, and said, "Oh, Djuna Barnes. I know her. Would you like to write to her?" She gave me the author's address, and I sat down to write a page-long testament to the power of Nightwood.

A year and a half later, I received a reply: "Your letter," Barnes wrote, "has given me great difficulty."

That was all. A couple of months later, I read in the newspaper that the 90-year-old Barnes was dead. I realized that her letter to me must have been one of the last things she wrote. [Read More]

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Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• David Cronenberg's Literary Influences
• Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men
• Writers' Rooms: Siri Hustvedt

Paul Auster, Winter Journal

Auster to release second memoir

Paul Auster

The Bookseller is reporting that Paul Auster is to publish a second memoir: 'In Auster's début work The Invention of Solitude, first published in 1982, he wrote about his late father. By contrast, Winter Journal will concentrate on Auster's mother, including her struggle as a single mother after divorce, the short-lived love she found late in life, her troubled later years, and the anxiety attacks Auster suffered in the face of her death. / The memoir will also include a random series of memories from Auster's own life grasped from the point of view of his life now, including taking part in the anti-Vietnam demonstrations at Columbia University, almost killing his second wife—novelist Siri Hustvedt—and their child in a car accident, as well as falling in and out of love with his first wife, writer Lydia Davis.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Paul Auster

Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men

On the experiences that influenced her new novel

In an interview with the New York Post, American writer Siri Husvedt talks about single life, mental illness and her new novel, The Summer Without Men: '"For about two and a half years I worked as a volunteer writing teacher in the psychiatric ward at Payne Whitney," says Hustvedt, "and so over that period I found myself very close to people suffering from all kinds of psychiatric disorders."' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers' Rooms: Siri Hustvedt

Auster: 'You write sentences, and you cross out sentences.'

American novelist Paul Auster on Sunset Park, influences and writing habits

Paul Auster at his home in Brooklyn, New York

Literary website Goodreads.com interviews Paul Auster about writing habits, his new novel Sunset Park, and the influence of his wife, Siri Hustvedt:

Goodreads: Now for a few questions from our community. Goodreads member Kirstie Shanley would like to hear your favorite story about another author.

Paul Auster: I do have a beloved story about another author that I believe is true, and I hope is true, because of how I feel about that author. I used the story in my novel Brooklyn Follies. It is, I believe, a true story: Kafka and his last lover, Dora, were walking in a Berlin park together and came upon a little girl crying because she had lost her doll. Kafka told her that he knew for a fact that the doll was fine, because he had had a letter from her. When the girl asked to see it, he told her he had not brought it with him but would return the next day with the letter. Thus began a series of elaborate letters from the doll posted from various locations. It's a wonderful story, not least because it shows such compassion on Kafka's part.

Goodreads: Goodreads member Anton Roe wonders how much you are influenced by your wife, the novelist Siri Hustvedt (and in turn, how you influence her). How much do you share during the writing process?

Paul Auster: Siri and I have been together for 30 years and have shared our work with each other from the very beginning. As I write my books I'm reading them out loud, carrying pages home, eagerly awaiting her comments. She's brilliant. I don't think there's a comment she's made that I haven't taken to heart over those years. Conversely, I read everything she writes, in her finished draft.

I think in order to do this kind of thing, number one you have to have total faith in the other person—believe in that person's project, and be completely honest. You can't just pat the other on the back. We do our thing separately but we share it.

Goodreads: Describe a typical day spent writing. Do you have any unusual writing habits? Goodreads member Susan recalls that you've said you always write in notebooks. She asks, "Can you talk a little more about your writing process and your notebook collection?"

Paul Auster: There was a Monty Python sketch that showed Thomas Hardy writing in front of a live audience, and when he'd finish a sentence, they'd all cheer. Then he'd cross out a sentence, and they'd all boo or sigh. That's about as exciting a life as it is for a writer: You write sentences, and you cross out sentences.

My day begins as all days begin for every human being. You wake up—if you're alive, you wake up—pot of tea, read the paper, then walk to the little apartment three blocks away where I have my separate writing spot. It's very Spartan here, nothing to do but work. I spend as much time as I can writing each day, which usually means from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.—basically a 9-5 schedule. Some days one has more stamina, you're more on fire, it's a marathon so you have to pace yourself.

I do have a few unusual writing habits—I'm a dinosaur now. I write everything by hand and type it up on an old manual typewriter, an Olympia 1961. The one time any serious damage was done to it was when my now-33-year-old son was two, and he snapped off the return arm. I had to take it to a shop that was very much like the Hospital of Broken Objects in Sunset Park.

I can say this, I've never been able to compose on a keyboard. I need a pen or a pencil in my hand, feel that it's a very physical activity. When I write, words are literally coming out of my body.

I'm very particular about my notebooks, and 95 percent of the time they are the same kind of notebook: They're made in France and are very tall—Clairefontaine brand, 24 x 32 centimeters. They're filled with pages of graph paper, which I like, as my handwriting is rather small.

I tend to buy notebooks whenever I travel. I have Norwegian notebooks, Japanese notebooks, Australian notebooks. I write with a fountain pen, and over the years I've experimented with many different kinds of fountain pens, but for the past decade or so I've been using an Italian brand called Aurora. I do write with pencils, too, and those are always Pentel mechanical pencils with 0.5 leads. I told you I have small handwriting! [Read more]

Bethanne Patrick, 'Interview with Paul Auster'

Goodreads, November 2010

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Paul Auster
• Paul Auster: Sunset Park Excerpt
• Paul Auster reads Sunset Park

Writers' Rooms: Siri Hustvedt

American writer Siri Hustvedt talks about her study at home in Brooklyn, New York

A room to write in isn't like other rooms, because most of the time the person in it doesn't see it. My attention is on the page in front of me, on what the people in the book are doing or saying, and my awareness of the things near me is muted, part of the vague sensual information that comes and goes as I mull over the next sentence. I do feel the light in my room, however. My study is on the top floor of our house, which has four storeys, and the windows face south, so the sunshine streams through the panes, and even on a bleak winter day my workplace is luminous.

I usually sit down at my desk around eight o'clock in the morning and write until my brain begins to dim - around two o'clock. My morning mind is far better than the blearier one that arrives in the afternoon so I take advantage of the early hours. I have lots of reference books near me, various kinds of dictionaries - bilingual, medical and psychiatric, 34 volumes of the Grove Dictionary of Art, style manuals and handbooks, the Bible, Gray's Anatomy, some poetry anthologies, and when I'm deep in a project there are often piles of books on the floor to which I refer when needed. [Read the article]

'Writers' rooms: Siri Hustvedt'

guardian.co.uk, 26 October 2007

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Daily Routines of Writers and Philosophers