Font and circumstance
Siri Hustvedt’s playful narrative spans four decades
If you’re looking for that perfect summer beach read — the kind of book you can read with minimal effort and thoroughly enjoy despite being partly distracted by the sun and waves, “Memories of the Future” by Siri Hustvedt is not that book.
However, if you want to explore a work of fiction that reminds you how compelling the act of reading can be and you are willing to recognize yourself as an integral part of the storytelling, perhaps even be a character yourself, then pick up this book. The life of the protagonist may depend on it.
Siri Hustvedt’s book opens with a simple declaration. The protagonist, S.H, is relocating from the “fields of rural Minnesota” to Manhattan in 1978, “looking for adventure.” Her move is about a great deal more than geography. S.H, like many recent college graduates, has dreams of building a life in the big city, of being a writer and of finding her hero.
The first few pages are a beautiful time capsule of Manhattan in 1978. The pages feel like a journal and guidebook all in one as the protagonist describes the sights and sounds of her new home while trying to find ways to pay the rent and be inspired.
The pages of that first chapter are also a moving tribute to literature’s great works as S.H explores writers from the New York School and works in quotes from Nietzsche and other writers and philosophers from her four years of study. She is, after all, a 23-year-old with a B.A in philosophy and English from one of those small liberal arts colleges. As an English major myself from a small liberal arts college, I was of course engrossed in those first few pages, connecting with S.H and her literary and geographical explorations.
But if you are starting to think this novel is a mere coming of age story, another English major figuring out what the heck to do with that B.A., don’t worry. Just when you think the plot is taking its time, the fonts start to change and you realize you are not reading one story, but three (possibly four).
S.H is speaking from her future self in the novel’s main story, a woman in her 60s reflecting on her 20s. However, with a change in font, you come across the journals of this 20-year-old, signaled by the heading “My dear Page.” The reader has the chance to see both sides of any event, the past S.H giving the visceral, stream of consciousness and the future S.H providing the wisdom and reflection of one who knows how it all plays out.
Meanwhile, the font changes again, so the reader can catch a glimpse of the novel S.H is trying to write. The book requires an engaged and active writer with each change in font, but it is entirely worth it as the reader may consider how these stories connect.
And just when you think you might be successfully piecing together the narrative, with all of its layers, S.H reminds you not to put too much trust in narratives or narrators. Throughout the book, S.H reminds the reader that memory is porous, that narrators can be unreliable, and the past can easily be turned into fantasy.
Even within the layers of stories, new stories unfold. Her younger self, while trying to write her fiction, is drawn into another story in her “real” life. Her neighbor Lucy Brite takes up her time and attention as S.H hears her cries through the thin walls of her Manhattan apartment. Lucy is an eccentric neighbor, keeping S.H awake with phone calls containing strange, fragmented words and even louder cries. However, the story of Lucy takes a more serious turn when S.H discovers that Lucy’s child died and S.H is haunted by the mystery of how that tragedy could have happened.
The wall that divides Lucy and S.H eventually comes down when S.H is confronted with a tragedy of her own, a tragedy that forces her to confront the past in ways she had not expected and she must find a way forward into the future.
With echoes of literary and philosophical giants filling its pages, “Memories of the Future” truly aims to capture the reader’s imagination even while the narrator confronts the existence of patriarchy in a political landscape mirroring our current realities.
The stories are also illustrated with drawings by Hustvedt herself that capture moments in the novel beautifully. In short, “Memories of the Future” is one of those books that reminds us why we love literature in the first place. Literature can draw so many worlds together, blurring the lines of past and present, memories and dreams, and when it is done with such a courageous narrator as S.H, it becomes a rather remarkable story.