Mothers, Fathers, and Others

Novelist Hustvedt (The Blazing World) discusses family, literature, and feminist theory in this collection of new and previously published essays. The book begins with a series of vignettes focused on Hustvedt’s heritage that paint vivid portraits of her mother and grandparents, including paternal grandmother Tillie Underdahl Hustvedt, a Minnesotan raised by Norwegian immigrants. Hustvedt makes clear that parents and grandparents shaped by “Norwegian mountains” and “Minnesota woods” molded her in turn. The familial fortitude came in handy when she pursued a PhD in English at Columbia in the late 1970s, where she describes enduring the kind of sexism that’s common in academia. She confronted male professors who were dismissive of her work and ideas and treated her like an imposter; she’s also been condescendingly compared to her husband, the novelist Paul Auster. In many of these essays, Hustvedt is occupied by literature—writing it; interpreting it; teaching it; concerns about its future as an art form that can convey “emotional truth.” Readers are also treated to a discourse on Wuthering Heights that makes one want to revisit the novel.