A Man Looking At A Woman Looking At Men Looking At Women, A Review
Edited by Marta Pombo i Sallés
1. Introduction: my purpose for writing this paper, page 1.
2. Siri Hustvedt’s main achievement in this collection of essays: creating a bridge of comprehension between scientists and literary intellectuals. Hustvedt’s critique of Capitalist patriarchy and its gender biases. My personal reflections about the impact of the #MeToo! Movement in current women-men relationships at all levels, page 3.
3. The honest male perspective in my book A Man Looking At Women vs. Hustvedt’s female gaze on women objectification. Hustvedt’s reflections on particular artists with personal biases that affect art, literature, and world judgements, page 5.
4. Hustvedt’s grayness of the truth. Her analysis of the works of personalities like Kiefer, Picasso, Heidegger, Mapplethorpe and Almodovar. My reflections on Hustvedt’s arguments and on the purpose of the different arts and photography, page 13.
5. Hustvedt on Wim Wenders and more reflections on art, women objectification and gender biases. My counter-arguments, page 20.
6. My defense of paraphrasing. An example of a poem in my book: “Embroidery (Homage to Yehuda Amichai),” page 25.
7. Hustvedt’s reflections on diseases through her experience with depressed patients. Ideas, theories and need for intellectualization as human defense, page 26.
9. Hustvedt on the process of storytelling. The brain as a collector of memories undergirded by feelings. My book in terms of undergirded observation, page 27.
10. Hustvedt on Freud and my counter-arguments. The concept of adaptive grandiosity in female artists and writers. The example of poet Emily Dickinson, page 29.
11. Final conclusions and language as a way of communicating existential phenomena, page 31.
1. Introduction: my purpose for writing this paper
One Way To Read This Piece: Because I have chosen Medium to publish it, Medium allows for comments and highlighting and, in effect, almost creating a two-way communication between writer and reader. I am however going to propose that I will include comments by immersing them in the body of the text and I may even address them there, as I am able, upon receipt, and will provide your names if I find your comments constructive and reasonable. I will assume I have your permission because you elected to include them as response(s) in public, on Medium? Other comments will remain as per the standard. They are usually at the end of the works as “responses.”
I want to try this new method, because part of the point in my writing the book A Man Looking at Women was to tell women what I thought men were thinking as they looked at them because I believed that it was fairly innocent. Women are lovely and amazing to men. The piece was conceived and written before the #MeToo! movement. Attitudes have changed because women have spoken up about their experiences and feelings. Those feelings may not be considered at points in this piece and I welcome knee-jerk responses and clarity. I think in listening and working through those feelings, we are going to get somewhere. I hope that is forward. I published A Man Looking At Women in early 2011. The writing of this piece followed publication of Hustvedt’s publication in late 2016. I was simply intrigued by a book that was so similarly named and so obviously a statement about men looking at women that I was very curious to read it.
Marta Pombo i Sallés asked what is the difference between A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt and my book A Man Looking At Women. That question is what underlies this piece. It is a survey of the book by Siri Hustvedt called A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women.
“What a page before a woman is suddenly a breast, and then a nipple, then a little ring of risen flesh, a pacifier, water bottle, rubber cushion. Without plan or purpose we slide from substance to sensation, fact to feeling, all out becomes in, and we hear only exclamation of suspicious satisfaction: the ums, the ohs, the ahs.” — William Gass, On Being Blue, p. 17, 1975.
“Some readers will no doubt be irritated; others will be disappointed that I am not spending more time defending a ‘positive’ proposal. I’m not sure I have one of those. If I do, it’s that we philosophers ask ourselves at ever turn what we are doing with our words — and why,” — Nancy Bauer, How To Do Things With Pornography, preface, p. xiv, 2015.
Part 2 to come…
