Siri Hustvedt

I also found it, you know, I started thinking about it, I don't really mention it in the book, that after Paul's father died,

that's what unleashed prose and the invention of solitude and the first part of that portrait of an invisible man is about his father and i do think that uh you know death and as you said certain traumatic events they have to be worked through and for writers

that becomes the form.

I think other people do it in different ways.

Art, music, whatever you're doing or, you know, and then

Other people have other methods.

But grief and also trauma, you know, in Salman's case, because Paul and I have known him for many years, and that was, you know, horrible.

I mention it in the book too.

Well, this is actually something that I've been thinking about for a very long time through various disciplines in philosophy.

This, you know, the idea of intersubjectivity, right?

What, how, and also development, you know, how are we formed?

I think we are made in the eyes of

The other right and that's how we grow and develop So When Paul died this became or Martin Buber another one the suspicion the between he thinks of it as a third reality a third being that can be made between people

I don't know if I would go that far, but I definitely felt that it wasn't just the disappearance of this human being, but it was the disappearance of what was between us.

And that of course included jokes and the personal mythology, the way he looked at me and that feeling

of radiance that it gave me, you know, as I say at one point in his eyes, I was better than I am, but not better than I want to be.

And I think that that's extremely difficult to give up, right?

We form a relation that is dynamic.

It kept changing over the 43 years, but, um,

But that intimacy, you know, in German, there's a word that actually a doctor that I had met in Tübingen sent me a note, a condolence note.