The Blazing World PDF
Preview The Blazing World
Siri Hustvedt’s intricately conceived, diabolical puzzle explores how prejudice, fame, money and desire influence our perceptions of each other. The Blazing World is a masterful novel about one woman’s struggle to be seen.
Artist Harriet Burden, consumed by fury at the lack of recognition she has received from the New York art establishment, embarks on an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts who exhibit her work as their own. And yet, even after she has unmasked herself, there are those who refuse to believe she is the woman behind the men. An intricately conceived, diabolical puzzle presented as a collection of texts, including Harriet’s journals, assembled after her death, this “glorious mashup of storytelling and scholarship” (San Francisco Chronicle) unfolds from multiple perspectives as Harriet’s critics, fans, family, and others offer their own conflicting opinions of where the truth lies.
"The Blazing World offers a spirited romp...constructed as a Nabokovian cat's cradle....Hustvedt's portrait of the artist as a middle-aged widow is searingly fresh. It's rare to encounter a female protagonist who throws her weight around quite so grandiloquently as Harriet Burden, a heroine who is—well, more like the hero of a Philip Roth or a Saul Bellow novel." – The New York Times Book Review
“Incandescent. . . . Hustvedt’s greatest triumph here is not the feminist argument she makes. It’s that we ache for her characters. This is a muscular book, and just enough of that muscle is heart.” – The Boston Globe
Siri Hustvedt looks beyond the traditional confines of fiction and has published papers in such peer journals as Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Seizure: European Journal of Epilepsy. The complexity of the human mind is at the heart of her work – which encompasses poetry, short stories and art history as well as the sciences. She holds a B.A. in history from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in Eng
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