A Man Looking at A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, A Review — Part 8
8. Hustvedt on the process of storytelling. The brain as a collector of memories undergirded by feelings. My book in terms of undergirded observation.
Hustvedt said, “The dialectical shiftings between me and you, the storytelling, the associative leaps, the descriptions of dramas, and the intense listening that occur in the analytic space are Freud’s greatest legacy, … a codification of a particular kind of dialogue” (Hustvedt, p. 120). In terms of my book A Man Looking… there are no “shiftings,” per se, the storytelling, associative leaps, dramas, and intense listening are projections of the self observing a form and conjuring a dialog that is receptive to the attraction I feel for the person observed. It is a one-way communication with the hope that the other person is as sexually interested. It is a male fantasy, a fiction, a mere man looking out at nature and sensing her glorious form, but not knowing anything about her.
Hustvedt said, “Feeling undergirds all memory, whether or not the memories are correct. …the same systems of the brain are at work in both remembering and imagining, in not only recollecting the self but projecting it into the future. …memories are often fictions” (Hustvedt, p. 121). Feelings too undergird the observation, in terms of my book A Man Looking at… but there are no memories, per se, because the observations become nothing more than the gaze itself as time is frozen and the story becomes the documentation of what the observer sees. The observer remembers the form and imagines a conversation that never takes place.
“In one of my novels,” Hustvedt said, “The Summer Without Men, my character Mia says, I’ll write myself elsewhere. This is the motion of the imagination. I won’t stay here. I’ll move away in my mind, become someone else, enter another story. This is the work of conscious memory, too. I recollect my old self in the past and shape the story for her. I imagine myself in the future and have a story for that projected self too,” (Hustvedt, p. 122).
I have taken an observation in A Man Looking at… and I have written myself as the observer in each of the vignettes. I become the man, who seduces and pleases the woman under inspection. The observational stance is taken then, now, and in the future. Yet, in my awareness of the unwelcome stare, I may learn to refrain and speak when spoken to and not look for as not to create discomfort.
“When I’m stuck in a book,” Hustvedt said, “the feeling is similar. I ask myself what is supposed to happen now. Why is this wrong? Why is what I am writing about this character a lie? How is it possible to lie in fiction? Believe me, it is. When I find the truth I know it. What does that knowing? It is not theoretical. It is emotional,” (Hustvedt, p. 122).
To this, Pombo i Sallés explains: “Fiction allows lying. Yes, I agree with Hustvedt and with you. The male protagonist of A Man Looking at Women is somehow lying to himself. As you say. ‘I am not looking at a real person, but a picture. Nothing has ever transpired between us, she the stranger, and I the stranger to her.’ However, I would disagree with you here: such behavior is not “wrong” per se as long as the ‘predator’ does not physically predate a woman who does not want it. And I think it is precisely this play between reality and fantasy what makes your book beautiful and enjoyable. The reader is left in suspense many times thinking: Is this real or imagined? And remember we, women, also objectify men. This is a general human characteristic. As I said earlier: Objectification is necessary and valuable as long as it is not excessive and harms human beings. So, where do we set the border between the first and the second? The #MeToo movement runs the risk of falling into the other extreme. That must be avoided at any cost. We must keep holding onto Simone de Beauvoir’s feminism and not seek any form of revenge. As you expressed earlier in this paper: ‘the abused abuse.’ I have felt abused many a time (bullying in school, mobbing at work, despised and threatened by the Spanish state because I am a Catalan who wants independence, etc.), but I know seeking revenge is the wrong way. The right way to fight any kind of power abuse in this world is through NDA (Non violent Direct Action, as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Rosa Parks and a long etc of both famous and unknown people have practiced and are practicing).”
I, as the observer, am stuck in I A Man Looking at Women, and I ask myself what is supposed to happen and I know nothing can because I am not looking at a real person, but a picture. Nothing has ever transpired between us, she the stranger, and I the stranger to her. I am the person casting unwanted glances because I am no longer just another person, but a predator. Why is it wrong? It is wrong because how she feels about me is not present in the monologue. I am lying because I do not include her, except as object. This is the truth of the relationship. There is none.
“The sentence on the page feels right because it answers of feeling in me,” Hustvedt said, “…that feeling is a form of remembering,” (Hustvedt, p. 122).
The sentences in my book speak of true feelings. The question was always about mutual feelings and not to greet hostility. I don’t know why two people hostile to themselves would even bother to communicate. I wish there were a universal sign indicating, “No, I am not interested,” and then leave it at that. I would be interested in that, like Darwin’s Mate Selection criteria, there would be an abundance, just as there is now, of cliques broken down by attractive to least attractive forms.
My book does not deal with the imaginative except as a monologue of the inspired.
