Living, Thinking, Looking

Siri Hustvedt is best known as a novelist and here she discusses some of the ideas with which she also engages in her fiction. The title reflects the three sections of the book drawing on her own life, discussing memory, emotion and imagination, and finally writing about visual art. The width of reference is very considerable and she discusses many implications of the ideas she raises. Two of my favourite essays were one on reading, and another on embodied visions, asking what it means to look at a work of art. In both cases there is an interaction with the product of another mind and an acute analysis of the process. Rereading books elicits new insights that depend on the growing maturity and experience of the reader, and in both cases it is important to be open, to be willing to the changed by what we read or see. They are then woven into the tapestry of our life experience. In art, there is a mirroring and recognition - here she brings in research on mirror neurons as well as the thought of Friedrich Schelling and discussions of intentionality and phenomenology leading to interpretation of meaning - but also freeing us up to play.