Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays · Siri Hustvedt

A new collection of essays, Mothers, Fathers and Others, by Siri Hustvedt was recently published by Simon & Schuster. On Hustvedt's website it is thus described: 'Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in this new essay collection from an exploration of the shifting borders that define human experience, including boundaries we usually take for granted which turn out to be far less stable than we imagine.'

This morning I listened to editor Sam Leith of The Spectator Book Club in interesting conversations with Hustvedt about the book.

Cover image: Louise Bourgeois, Self Portrait, 1994
Photo: Christopher Burke

Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays
By Siri Hustvedt
Hardcover, 304 pages
ISBN: 9781982176396
Simon & Schuster

Virginia Woolf – ‘darling dangerous woman‘

Last year I fell for this cover of Mrs Dalloway you can see in the picture. So much so that I ordered a used copy that looked like new, which never arrived. To make up for it, I decided to buy a new copy for myself as a Christmas present, but I couldn't bring myself to gift wrap it, even though I had already read the book. Instead, Virginia Woolf's novel became my second lockdown book, with Iris Murdoch's Letters.

It so happens that Murdoch mentions Woolf in a letter she writes on Christmas Eve in 1941:

The trouble is, I have been reading Virginia Woolf, the darling dangerous woman, and am in a state of extremely nervous self-consciousness. The most selfish of all states to be in.

‘Darling dangerous woman‘ – love this description.

Each time I reread Woolf it comes more apparent to me how talented she was. The details in her writing, the way she observes people and their behaviour, are extraordinary. I enjoy reading her diaries and often reach for the volumes on my shelves. In her diary, 19 June 1923, Woolf has this to say about the writing of Mrs Dalloway (its working title was The Hours):

But now what do I feel about my writing?—this book, that is, The Hours, if thats its name? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoevsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do? No I think not. In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life & death, sanity & insanity; I want to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense— But here I may be posing.

Yesterday I shared the pic on Instagram with a similar caption but I wanted to keep these quotes on the blog as well. We are still in lockdown which is supposed to end on the 17th of December. Yesterday, other Austrian states lifted most restrictions but this latest wave was severer in Upper Austria and we knew that our lockdown would last longer.

image mine, appeared on Instagram 12/12/21