Allende’s world
Linda RICHARDS
Though she claims to find interviews somewhat irksome and
interruptive -- they keep her from the important work of writing, after
all -- Isabel Allende proves to be a great interview. Disarmingly
candid, Allende answers the briefest questions at length, considering
each word carefully. She seems to weigh her sentences with a writer's
scale: each word measured for impact, clarity and cadence. In fact, she
is so clear when interviewed in English -- so well and carefully spoken
-- that it's sometimes difficult to remember that Allende writes only in
Spanish. Her work is then translated into almost as many languages as
exist on the planet.
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Isabel
Allende |
Since Allende's first book, The House of the Spirits, was published
in Spain in 1982, her work has received international recognition. Born
in Peru in 1942, Allende has been named author of the year or had one of
her works named book of the year in Germany, Chile, Switzerland and
Mexico. Allende herself has received honorary doctorates from Bates
College, Dominican College, New York State University and Columbia
College. She is a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in
France and was named Feminist of the Year by the Feminist Majority
Foundation in 1994. I won't go on: suffice it to say that Allende must
have a small room stuffed with trophies and certificates at the home she
shares with her husband Willie in Marin County, California. And all of
them written in a different language, or seeming to be.
This international celebrity is all a very long haul for the
journalist daughter of a politically connected house. Allende was the
niece of Salvador Allende, the Chilean president whose radical socialist
reform brought Chile to a revolution that resulted in a military coup
where President Allende lost his life: some say by his own hand.
Allende was a journalist at the time of the coup. "I wasn't a very
good journalist," Allende says now. "Really, I was a lousy journalist."
But, as a journalist, she found it impossible to fade quietly into the
background: she'd seen too much. "I was threatened and I left in 24
hours."
At the time, Allende believed that her flight from Chile to Venezuela
would be a temporary exile. "We thought -- my husband and I -- that I
could spend a couple of months away and then return quietly." Allende
found, however, that this was not to be. "Once you're on a list then
they can get you anytime. So eventually my husband left too with the two
kids and we reunited in Venezuela. Never thinking that we would spend 13
years in Venezuela. We always thought that a dictatorship in Chile would
not last [in] a country that had such a long and strong democratic
tradition, so we thought, 'This can't happen.' But it lasted for 17
years."
With this sort of history, it's perhaps not surprising that all of
Allende's novels are peopled with exiles: "marginals," as she herself
calls them. "Even if they're not exiles in the sense that they have to
leave the country. They are exiled from the big umbrella of the
establishment. I like people who stand on the edge and therefore are not
sheltered."
Like herself, perhaps. As well as Eliza, the protagonist in her
latest novel, Daughter of Fortune. Set mainly in and around San
Francisco during the gold rush of 1849, Eliza is strong, intelligent,
fearless and utterly enchanting. Released in English in October of 1999,
the book quickly gained bestseller status in both Canada and the United
States.
Allende is the author of six other novels and one work of
non-fiction: Aphrodite: Recipes, Stories and other Aphrodisiacs, a work
that she assigned herself when suffering writer's block after the novel
she wrote about the death of her daughter, Paula. It is because of
Aphrodite that Allende is perhaps most often linked with strong, sensual
pleasures: food, love and the things that bind them.
January Magazine: If you weren't writing, would you be cooking?
Isabel Allende: No. I'd be making love or doing something that
doesn't mean washing dishes. I'd be playing with my grandchildren. I
would buy myself a dog.
I love to write. I love the process. And I never think of the
outcome. I just love the time I spend alone in a room adding words one
by one to create a universe that is mine. And that is what I like. Then
after the book is published all this craziness starts. My books are
published in many languages and each publisher wants the author there to
sell the books one by one and it's impossible because there's no time
for writing.
Writing requires... it is as though you have some reservoir inside
[and] you have to have it filled in order to be able to write. When you
go around on a book tour you give away everything and you end up empty.
It's a very strange feeling of exposure, of talking too much: talking
too much about oneself.
Trying to explain what is unexplainable. Because, why do we write?
Who knows why do we write? Usually the explanation that the reviewers or
the professors have for the book have nothing to do with why somebody
writes.
Your work is frequently compared to Diane Ackerman's. Or maybe, her
work is compared to yours. Is that something that you're aware of?
I think she hates me.
Really?
Isn't she the one who wrote the story of the senses?
Yes.
Well, she wrote a terrible review of Aphrodite. She didn't like
anything about the book.
Well, we won't pursue that then. But it's funny, because quite often
in reviews of her books, your name will come up. And in reviews of her
books, yours will.
I thought her book was great. And I really used her book for the
research of Aphrodite. I think it was a beautifully written book. I
really liked it. But she obviously hated mine.
What's your favorite of your own books so far?
I don't have a favorite book because I don't think of the book as a
product. It's almost like an ongoing experience. It has an echo of
something that has happened in my own life. But I would say that the
most important book in my life is and will be Paula. Because it saved me
from suicide. It saved Paula from oblivion. In a way, it's a celebration
of life. A celebration of the things I care for: family, life, love.
It's not about death, really.
Do you have a character that still lives with you that you engage
with?
I have certain characters that creep in different books. Not all the
books, but different books. And I don't know where that character comes
from. In Eva Luna he was an Arab merchant. In Daughter of Fortune it's
Tao Chi'en. It's a character that is a sort of father or older brother
figure that can become a lover or not. And it's always a savior. Someone
who is defeated by compassion. A person who will do anything to help
somebody else. Now, where do I get that? I think it comes from an uncle
that I had when I was growing up. My Uncle Pablo, who was like that.
He's a doctor in House of the Spirits and he keeps coming back as these
sorts of saviors.
One of the things that I found striking in Daughter of Fortune was
that I've read a lot about that period of history: the gold rush and the
49ers. But I'd never seen it written from a non-American perspective.
And that was so cool. That was so fun. Because it's so often
glamorized...
... always a white male perspective.
Yes.
If you read history of Africa written by the white scholars it has a
totally different angle than the real things that happened there. And
the same in the gold rush. First of all you have to know it was Mexican
territory until nine days after they discovered gold. People spoke
Spanish there: it was a place that was totally Hispanic until Mexico
lost the war against the United States and lost Texas, Arizona, Utah,
half of Colorado, New Mexico and California. So, at the beginning, in
1848, it was mainly people of color who were mining. And then the 49ers
came and they took over and it became an American territory.
I have a grandchild in fourth grade and he's studying the gold rush.
The teacher read my book and she asked me to come to the school and talk
to the school. So I went and they had from third grade up: everybody
there. Because the teacher said that they had never read the story from
the perspective of the immigrant and the people of color. The losers.
Not the people who conquered and took over. But the ones who had been
there and lost everything. And there were a lot of Chileans and
Peruvians. The whites made many rules against the people of color.
Especially against the Chinese. The worst abuses were against the
Chinese.
And where did I research all that? Well, half of it in Chile. Because
the Chilean miners who came to the gold rush, after the first year they
were kicked out. The mines were taken away from them and the gold was
taken away. So they returned. But they wrote letters home and they kept
journals.
And one of them wrote a book. So researching from that perspective is
very interesting. Also the letters of miners who went to the gold rush
and wrote home. That is very interesting too because there you discover
that a glass of milk was more precious and more expensive than a bottle
of Champagne because liquor was all over but there was no one to milk
the cows. A loaf of bread was the most precious thing because there was
nobody to bake.
What sent you on the journey of this book?
I moved to the United States in 1987 because I fell in love with a
guy and I thought I would get him out of my system in a week. Well, that
was 12 years ago and five books ago. So there.
Life has a way of doing that.
Yes. I wrote a book about this guy's life and I had to research
because I knew nothing about California when I moved to California. Then
I discovered that San Francisco is only 150 years old. And I thought,
how come this very sophisticated, elegant society -- so complex and
contradictory in many ways -- could just come out of nothing in 150
years? I realized it was the gold rush that brought people from all over
the world there. And then, at the very beginning, it already had the
same diversity and was as cosmopolitan as it is today.
You are one of the most celebrated authors in the world.
Thank you. My mother should hear that.
How does that feel?
My books are called long sellers. They're all in print and they're
required reading in high schools and colleges and universities all over
so that keeps them going. I've been very lucky in that sense. I remember
when I wrote The House of the Spirits everybody was talking about the
book. And my agent said, "Don't get any ideas. It's only time that
decides if something is good or not. The fact that it's selling now and
everybody wants to read it doesn't mean anything, because in a year or
so it could be totally forgotten." So it's time that really determines
if something will be transcendent or not.
Was it a surprise to you?
It has surprised me because I was not expecting anything. I didn't
know if my book was ever going to be published. When I wrote The House
of the Spirits I didn't know what it was. I had written something, but I
didn't dare call it a novel. And then my mother said, "You know, I think
this might be a novel."
She offered it to a few friends who were publishers and editors in
Latin America. Nobody wanted to read it and it was rejected everywhere
until the receptionist in a publishing house called me and said, "I took
the manuscript home and I read it and I don't know anything about
literature but one thing I know is that this book is not going to be
published here. Why don't you find an agent?" And I said: What? I didn't
know there were agents for literature. Januarymagazine.com
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