A Plea for Eros
Essays
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the international bestseller What I Loved, a provocative collection of autobiographical and critical essays about writing and writers.
Whether her subject is growing up in Minnesota, cross-dressing, or the novel, Hustvedt's nonfiction, like her fiction, defies easy categorization, elegantly combining intellect, emotion, wit, and passion. With a light touch and consummate clarity, she undresses the cultural prejudices that veil both literature and life and explores the multiple personalities that inevitably inhabit a writer's mind. Is it possible for a woman in the twentieth century to endorse the corset, and at the same time approach with authority what it is like to be a man? Hustvedt does. Writing with rigorous honesty about her own divided self, and how this has shaped her as a writer, she also approaches the works of others--Fitzgerald, Dickens, and Henry James--with revelatory insight, and a practitioner's understanding of their art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title essay of Hustvedt's collection gets at the heart of what is best about these writings: it's a plea not just for the mysteries of sexual longing but for sensual engagement with life. Themes of memory, defining the self, attachment to place and family, violence and detachment wind through the essays. Novelist Hustvedt (What I Loved) is most interesting when she starts with her body rather than her head but since even her memories have a physicality that gives them substance, this allows her great scope. Her clear, elegant writing is particularly effective in the opening essay, which movingly evokes a variety of formative experiences, including the echoes of Norway in her family. Her reflections on how we attach images to narrative, on the first anniversary of 9/11, on the onset of migraines likewise open up personal experience with thoughtful insight. Less effective are her literary essays: while a discussion of Gatsby provides subtle analysis with a light touch, essays on James and Dickens may be rough going for readers without significant academic training and a deep familiarity with the authors. Despite these few disappointments, readers will find both emotional and intellectual resonance in Hustvedt's deeply personal essays.
