Siri Hustvedt
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Siri, welcome to Waterstones, first of all.
Thank you for having me.
It is really great to have a chance to speak to you about this book, Ghost Stories, which is an incredible read, a sort of patchwork of a book made up of lots of different elements. To start off with, if it's okay, I wondered whether you would be happy to sort of share the story of meeting Paul for the first time, because it's such a lovely part of the book.
Yes, so... It was four days after my 26th birthday. I was living in New York. I was a graduate student at Columbia. And I went to a poetry reading to hear a poet, Anne Lauterbach, a poet I admire, still admire. And I went with a friend. After the reading, we left the 92nd Street Y, and right inside the exit, I see this absolutely beautiful man leaning against the wall, a little hunched over in a leather jacket with either a little cigar or a cigarette between his fingers. I can't remember.
How did Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster first meet?
And I said to my friend, do you you don't know who that is do you and he said yes that's Paul Auster the poet and I thought poet oh my god even better not only is he great to look at but he's a poet and I was writing poetry at the time and you know in graduate school and I said introduce us right now and he did and we all took a cab downtown to some literary party after the reading, and I just stuck to him. Basically, I just imposed myself on this very handsome man. And we talked, and then we kept talking. We went out. It was into the night. And I did have, certainly those first hours, I thought, this guy is just not interested in me.
Really?
I worked my butt off to impress him. We talked a lot about books and I do not remember what books. I think it must have been a lot of poetry. But anyway, late in the evening, we were sitting across from each other And I looked at his face and I thought, yep, I've talked some interest into this man. And I took him home that night. So it was a big first meeting.
It was an immediate connection, wasn't it? Yes.
Well, as I say, the joke and, you know, the private marital joke was that I was in love in 30 seconds and it took him several hours.
He got there in the end.
He did. He did.
Do you mind talking about because quite soon after you, I suppose, got together, you sort of thought you'd lost him. There's a very, very traumatic episode of part of the book where he out of nowhere leaves, leaves you and goes back to his ex-wife.
And so that was so we met on February 23rd and we had a, you know, passionate affair, I guess is what you'd call it at the time. And then in May. He basically got up from bed and said, you know, he was going back to his old life. Now, he had been separated for two years. And I had asked him very pointedly, you know, if you're still inside this marriage, I want to get out now. That was early on. And no, he just left. He didn't really explain anything. I walked him to the subway. He vanished. I went back to the apartment where he had been staying. And I thought, are you okay? Are you okay? You know, really, because I was very much in love. And I realized I was kind of okay. And then I saw my typewriter. That's back in the days of typewriters.
And I thought, well, you have nothing to lose. Right. So I wrote him a letter saying, kind of love letter. I hadn't declared my love, and neither had Paul. So I did it, and with a lot of what I thought were amusing
asides kind of some humor and then um you know he didn't answer so i wrote a second letter and they're they're both reproduced in the book and he did come back they are incredible letters as you say they are you can see them in the book i suppose the same tenacity that you used when you were talking to him for the first time you you used your words in the writing too and i wondered whether that first letter when you sent it and as you say you got no reply yeah what the sort of, I suppose, the spark was to write a second letter? Because some people would give up then, but are you just a person who would not have given up in that situation no matter what happened?
That's right.
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