Siri Hustvedt: "Trump has borrowed the rhetoric from Hitler's speeches"

Siri Hustvedt's (Northfield, 1955) hands punctuate her speech, as serene as it is firm. They become calmer when she remembers her husband, the writer Paul Auster, who died in April 2024 and is the subject of her next book, Ghost stories, "one collage documentary" that has given her peace in her grief. But they stir strongly when she talks about the rise of the far right, the Trump administration, and the genocide in Gaza: they intertwine and rise like those of an orchestra conductor underlining her indignation. Hustvedt, novelist, Llessat de Llesa 2019, visits Mallorca as part of the Magaluf Expanded Literature Festival (FLEM). At the end of the meeting with journalists and ARA Baleares, she smiles and thanks them for their questions.

— I grew up in a very small town in Minnesota, and having books in the house made all the difference. I could take my dad's, and my mom would give me novels. I spent that summer in Iceland reading Dickens, Austen, Dumas—all my mom's recommendations. Once you acquire the habit and the need to read, you don't stop. I was lucky with my parents. Now, there are poets and writers who grew up in homes without books, without parents, and who grew up to be amazing, creative human beings. So it doesn't always have to be that way; it doesn't have to be, but I think it helped.

Many of your books explore memory, grief, and identity. Do you think writing can be a form of mourning or even resistance?

— Yes, I do. I've reflected on this a lot. When I was a volunteer writing teacher for psychiatric patients, we would write the word 'I' and do exercises about writing memories. Seeing this 'I' on the page isn't the embodied, breathing, beating 'I'. It's what I call the alien familiar. Alienation in writing allows for a necessary distance between the body and that symbol on the page that has therapeutic value. And I didn't know this before teaching. I was very struck by the fact that patients felt better leaving the class than when they entered. And it was, at least in part, due to writing something that won't change if you don't modify it. This has healing potential. Right after finishing Ghost stories, I felt that writing had been a stabilizing force in my grief.

— Every morning I woke up and knew I had the book to evoke this man and our relationship.

It will turn pain into literature.

— Yes, and it served the breathing, walking self—my incarnated self. It gave me strength during that first year of extreme pain. When Paul died, I lost my everyday life.

He was her life partner, but she has also lost her first reader.

— Yes, that book will be the first book I publish that he hasn't read. It's strange. I read his last book, BaumgartnerAs I was writing it, I kept saying, "I don't know what I'm doing. I can't go on until you tell me I can go on." I did that because I didn't have much to say. I thought it was wonderful.

Now you have the opportunity to honor this relationship Ghost Stories.

— Yes, it is a kind of collage documentary, which includes letters from the beginning of our relationship and my reflections on the process and the time. One of the surprising things about writing it is looking back at a previous self. We were together for 43 years, and neither he nor I were the same person as when we met. I hope the book conveys this evolving relationship and captures something of the man I loved so much, without it being a hagiography. It was beneficial, surprising, and exciting for both of us to always read aloud to each other what we were writing. Besides, as writers, we don't really know what we're doing. There are hidden aspects of the self that emerge in writing in ways that don't appear anywhere else. This created an excitement in our relationship that never left.

Do you think feminism today needs to redefine its voice in an increasingly polarized global context that is hostile to social rights?

— Yes, but there will probably never be a univocal voice in feminism. It's essential to me that it recognizes the rights and transgender reality of people who suffer prejudice and horror. It's strange to realize that something called "radical feminism" has been anti-trans. The secret is to be deeply aware of all the differences in the human experience while also forging real connections.

You've denounced the double standards with which women writers' work is judged. Do you feel these labels still prevail in the literary world?

— It took me a long time to understand that misogyny and sexism in the arts aren't personal. Once, a journalist in Germany told me that my husband must have written my first novel. And I thought, "What?" Unbelievable. I see it as part of a long, systemic history, and it takes a certain weight off your shoulders. But it's certainly unfair. At times, I suffered from sexism from the outside world. Never, in my marriage. Never.

What do you think about cultural trivialization and political polarization?

— The MAGA [Make America Great Again] movement, like the Soviet Union or the Nazis, creates a sealed universe. Trump couldn't lose the election because his cosmology demands that he be some kind of superhuman, untouchable winner. Fascism in Spain, in Italy, Nazism, and MAGA are not united by ideology but by the search for scapegoats. They need an enemy. Or several. The left, migrants, Jews. Goebbels expresses exactly what MAGA does. Donald Trump's genius—and I use this word carefully—is a rhetorical genius that he has taken directly from Hitler's speeches. An immovable superbody from which nothing enters or leaves. You can't engage in dialogue with this. It's impossible. There are historical precedents for what is happening now in the United States. Many say, "Well, it will pass," which is exactly what many Germans said about Hitler.

He has said that MAGA is a movement based on old concepts.

— It's based on misogyny, xenophobia, and racism, and we're seeing it all over the world. The media in the United States keeps calling the Trump administration conservative. Conservative means conserving what you have, and what they're doing is reactionary, neo-fascist politics. It doesn't conserve anything. It's a radical transformation and a reaction against feminism, anti-racism, and migration. The only thing we can do is collective resistance. What scares me about the United States is how quickly people are giving up, from universities to people in technology. Ideology feels like a fad and not a true belief, a moral identity. This scares me to no end. It's a relief to be in Spain. You feel like Europe is still there. I try to do what I can, but it's terrifying. I'm scared.

What do you think about the semantic dispute over the genocide in Gaza?

— I was married to a Jew, and my daughter's half-Jewish identity is very important to me. David Grossman, a wonderful Israeli writer, has said that, of course, this is genocide. As for the legal definition, I don't think there's any doubt—and there is no doubt for many Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere either—that the Israeli government perpetrated genocide in Gaza. It's painful for many in the United States that the US government is, to a large extent, responsible for arming the Israeli military unconditionally. There are Democrats moving away from unconditional support for Israel. That's a hopeful sign.

Is there anyone capable of standing up to Trump in the Democratic Party?

— Not right now. I think the United States is experiencing a cold civil war because of the immense power of the Trump administration. It controls all branches of government, and Democrats have a hard time countering that power. At the same time, they've been cowardly. There's resistance across the country, but it's not being counted. It's as if it doesn't exist. But it exists. And it must be collective.

As a writer, you've reflected a lot on aging. How have your literary voice and interests changed over time?

— We're old. My mother once told me, "Actually, getting older is wonderful. The only problem is that your body sags." These words of wisdom stay with me. I don't have the same energy I had when I was young, but I do have a wealth of experiences that allow me to be more flexible as long as I have the ability to remember them. Over time, all these voices that inhabit you affect your own voice and turn it into a plural reality. The expansion of the self is achieved through dialogue with others, both living and dead. And the only way to speak to the dead is to read them.