The Lust of Seeing

The Lust of Seeing, which is the first book in English on Hernandez, is the product of four years of research and writing. Extended work in archival sources during a 1991 Fulbright residency in Montevideo, Uruguay, were complemented by constant, careful reading of Hernandez's fictions and by research in a vast interdisciplinary body of secondary literature. Works of theory, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and clinical psychology reinforce Frank Graziano's perceptive reading of Hernandez. His methodologically innovative exploration of themes such as narcissism, the mirror, projection, the double, ritualized sexuality, fragmentation, erotic and aggressive uses of the eye, Pygmalion poetics, and the maternal body situates Hernandez's fictions in the broad cultural context that affords them their most resonant meaning.