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.

The Lust of Seeing is the most comprehensive work on Hernandez to date, elucidating aspects of Hernandez's life and writing that have remained untreated or undertreated by previous criticism. The book's theoretical and comparative discussions also make The Lust of Seeing relevant reading well beyond Hernandez studies, particularly for readers interested in psychoanalysis, myth and ritual, fantastic literature, women's studies, film studies, and textual theory.