What I Loved

the apocryphal story of Descartes's automaton. He was also kind enough to let me peek into several rare volumes in his private library that contained medical reports on the status of people who purported to subsist on nothing but air and odors.
    I am also indebted to Dr. Finn Skarderud, both for his books and for his conversations with me about contemporary culture and eating disorders. The references in the novel to J. M. Barrie and Lord Byron, as well as the story of the bulimic patient who vomited into plastic bags and left them hidden in her mother's house, come from him. His books include: Sultekutistemere (Hunger Artists), Sterk Svak: Handboken om spise for-styrrelser (Strong Weak: A Handbook on Eating Disorders), and Uro: En reise i det moderne selvet (Unrest: A Journey in the Modern Self).
    Last, I am deeply grateful to my sister, Asti Hustvedt, for her original research and thoughts on hysteria. The ideas in Violet's dissertation closely resemble those in Asti's unpublished Ph.D. thesis, "Science Fictions: Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's L'eve future and Late-Nineteenth-Century Medical Constructions of Femininity" (New York University, 1996). I benefited too from the research she has done in the Salpêtrière Hospital archives for her forthcoming book, Living Dolls, to be published by Norton. I also want to thank her for her close reading of the novel and its references to hysteria and for her ongoing conversations with me about the mysteries of culture, medicine, and illness.