• D, la Repubblica delle Donne •
By Giuliano Aluffi
1) Do you think that we should try as much as we can to understand the truth about us, as Miranda Romanac does, or we shouldn't ask to ourselves too many questions about ourselves, as the answers can be terrible?
When I was a teacher, one of the discussions I always had with the students was this: I brought a hand mirror to class and said to the kids, "Pretend this is a truth mirror. f you look into it, you will see the absolute truth about yourselves-- good and bad. If you don't like what you see, you can change some of it if you work hard on your character. You might also be surprised to see there are all kinds of good things about yourself you never imagined but you will see them for the first time looking in here, etcetera. However you might also be absolutely horrifed when you see the truth about yourself. Then I asked the kids how many of you want to look into the truth mirror? Always, very few raised their hands. It led to interesting discussions about our willingness to discover who we really are and then whether we want to change once we do make that discovery. I think it is a double-edged blade. In certain ways, knowing who you are can be both enlightening and liberating. On the other hand of course it can destroy you. I guess it's a question of how much courage an individual has.
2) I had the impression that both the first part and the second part of the book have its own "magic", although of a different kind. In the first part you let the dialogue do the "fireworks", while the action is not supernatural. In the second part we see magic in action and dialogue can relax from the "virtuoso" role that it sustained in the first part. Is this an interpretation that you find realistic? Or you feel artistic homogeneity all over the book?
I think it's a valid interpretation. Often in my books they begin realistically and then lift off into something more fanciful and fantastic. I often compare it to the moment in an airplane when you are moving down the runway and then you suddenly feel the machine lift into the air. I love that moment in a book where the ground beneath your feet literally disappears and you suddenly find yourself in a whole new world, a whole new dimension. In THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS the moment comes (I think) when Miranda sees her dead boyfriend across a busy street. If I am successful, the reader goes "What?!?" and pays a lot more attention to what they are reading because of what just happened. The negative side of that of course is people who like realistic novels have been known to throw my books into the trash at that point because of all that new strange non-sense.
3) In music, the main thing that composers do with our perceptions is: first they introduce us the "motive" of the composition, then they willingly avoid repeating it and they go for variations for the body of the composition, building up on ur expectancies, to concede us in the final the reprise of the motive, so that we are satisfied. Do you do something similar in "The marriage of the sticks"?
No, not really. I think there are essentially two kinds of writers-- those who begin knowing everything they want to write in the story, and those who begin knowing nothing and find their way as the story progresses. I am a member of the second "club" in that I know nothing when I begin a novel. Usually only the title or the first sentence. I began STICKS with the idea of an old woman looking back on her life and trying to come to some kind of valid conclusions. Then a few pages into it, I realized I wanted to write both a story of self discovery and a love story that went back many years. So unlike the musician who begins with a solid theme or motive and then does variations on it, I often don't know what the theme of a novel is until I am very far into it.
4) You are among the most imaginative writers ever. Don't you find every day real-life reality dull and monotonous, if confronted with what you can invent?
There's a wonderful quote from Flaubert that goes something like, "Be regular and orderly in your every day life so that you can be wild and imaginative in your work." I agree with that completely. My every day life is happily boring. My dreams at night are as dull as a dead man's. I walk the dog three times a day, drink coffee at the same cafe, etcetera but then I sit down at the desk and go nuts-- sometimes successfully, sometimes not so (depending on which critic or reader you talk to!)
5) You couple rhythm/pace with literary preciousness (choice of words, construction of phrases, etc). Is there a big effort (as drafts, writings and rewritings) behind the final result, or you find pretty natural to write in this way?
Everyone who knows me thinks my way of writing is insane. I begin by typing very quickly on a computer to get my ideas down as fast as I can. Then I copy this text by hand two times into Moleskine notebooks, changing things as I go along. After I write the text the second time, I go back to the computer, make whatever corrections are necessary, and then I am finished. I find that the physical act of slowing down is very good for me because I can think hard about whether or not what I'm writing is exactly what I want. The problem with a computer is the work looks finished as soon as you do it. When you write by hand, it only looks like part of the process rather than the process completed. As a result, you make more corrections and think more carefully about what you are writing.
6) Do you have an anecdote regarding the ideation, the writing or the after-publishing life of "The marriage of sticks" which you would like to share with us?
The story at the beginning of THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS about the main character going back to her high school reunion and discovering her great love in high school was dead is based almost entirely on a story that was told to me by a close friend years ago. They couldn't wait to attend their ten year class reunion. Although they had a good life and were married to someone they loved very much, they were always a little haunted by their high school love and wondered of course what had happened to that person. Almost as soon as they got to the reunion they learned that their love had died many years before in a car accident. As soon as I heard the story I knew I wanted to use it in a book somewhere.
7) The "fantastic" you disclose in "The marriage of sticks" is not "theological", but "human-centered", as it is based on human values as "what we do to other people", "which is the deeper tradeoff of our choices", and so on. Being like this, could we say that you have a moral message (human, secular moral) for your readers, as you deal with topics which "touch" all of us?
I think it goes back to your question about self-evaluation. There's this big discusssion now about our carbon footprint. IE how much we are polluting the world around us without knowing it by such things as using too much gasoline in our cars, wasting water when we wash the boat, throwing trash out the window, etcetera. We don't mean to hurt the world but we do with our small and large acts, some of them conscious, some of them not.Transfer that idea to our dealings with each other-- how much do we affect the people we deal with every day-- both those we are close to and strangers. If we were to be made aware of our "carbon footprint" in our relations with others, I think we would find out some very interesting and enlightening things about ourselves and how selfish/selflesss we are.
8) In an interview you lamented that adults lose their sense of wonder. What can we do, other than reading your books, in order to regain some of that sense?
I think that is one of the main purposes of life and completely dependent on the individual. In my new novel that will be published in the US this fall, entitled THE GHOST IN LOVE that is one of the primary questions I try to address in the story: how do we re-ignite our lives and make them wonderful again, especially after we reach a certain age and rarely do things like laugh out loud, or shout with delight.
9) I have read that you appreciate a lot Federico Fellini's art. Which aspect in particular of Fellini's art has the bigger appeal for you?
The humanity, the small but brilliant observations of every day life, the laughter rubbing up against the most heartbreakingly sad things imaginable. Fellini is the only artist I know who can literally make you laugh and cry at the same time about one thing. It is the most astonishing act of soul juggling I have ever seen.
10) As greatly visionary writer, what do you think of C.S. Lewis famous quote "To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much"?
I prefer Lewis's line about what kind of books does he write. He said, "I write the kind of books I would like to read." And although that sounds vain, I think what he was saying is you are the harshest critic of both your work and someone else's. You know what you like and what excites you when you read. Therefore if you can honestly write something that satisfies both the reader and writer in you, then you are on the right path. It reminds me of that line from Saul Bellow "A man is only as good as what he loves."