Creative Process Tags Used in Events

You watched the show last night first?

[Inaudible]

Things I did, too.

Such as what?

Michael's reaction to the Shakespeare, to Shakespeare used as a crucifix. Reaction shots of you, yeah, were suddenly very funny.

I'd like to talk to you about that sometime. Mike is an old, old friend. An actor, sort of an uneven development, but incredible. Difficult, the two of us together are difficult.

Maybe that's why it's so funny. There was a real antagonistic thing set up, which is so funny.

I just got a wonderful letter from him which sort of laid to rest a lot of tension, with some reflection. We just... thought differently of things, but... Different people in watching him, some of them just get it, just the right strokes. They had seen the other guy do it, but some poeple... it's almost a litmus test or something, you know some taste sour and some taste sweet or bitter, but very pronouncedly.

What did you think of his performance? Just off the cuff without any...

I was starting to feel my disattention of guilt and complexity of feeling. Because a lot of what he does is only... He can only be as good as the writing is. And I did most of the writing, and built everything around myself and created his persona in order to bounce off a little. It sort of troubles me a little.

I think it's quite good, and it set up that whole sort of threat which you need. You really felt that it was in fact a chase, which is why, for example, one thing that I did again last night is---is that trampoline going, it's not there, it's not in the way. A gag obviously didn't set up, but still, because of the good build-up---

The chase is really real with Michael chasing, I'll tell you. I'll tell you from my point of view, even watching it, there's a really ferocity there. It's like we worked on, it's a hard thing to do. But often what starts happening is people indicate, whcih totally falsifies the chase when he's running. It's, to me, like I better keep going.

So it's really there, which is why when you hide behind the piano that again it's a strong laugh, it's a hiding sanctuary.

Exactly. And Doug's sort of going out on a limb and then later...

Yeah, sure. Actually, that's something we all laughed at. A new and maybe stronger than I ever laughed at.

It's all a trick.

Don't come to this baby.

I'm trying to steal a few of George Carle's moves. I was going to call him today. I want to make sure he's going to be there for a while.

Have you met him at all?

Yeah. He shot the shit with me a couple times. Interesting little guy, and in some ways, he's a little self-conscious with each other, we don't have a whole lot to say, but... he's a really interesting character. A very good man. Probably be around, you'll want to see him.

Yeah, you should. I want to mention him to Pat.

How did your thing with Pat go?

He was a very nice, very gracious, very charming man. He was, to my relief, kept very general. Kathy's right on. Dark-haired older man, not gray.

He struck me as possibly sandy-haired.

Sandy-haired possibly.

George works with a hat like this and he does great things with it, I haven't been able to really make one of these behave properly. *inauduible* for me is something that is funny, but it's not behavioral in the way that a hat like that is. Although actually his does not look like this grotesque. His is... Larry Kazomi works with a hat, the same design but it's a different shape, it's more---it's shallower. Very much in shape. Not like mine. I'll just backtrack. But my head's the wrong shape.

Turn your head.

Well, the hat has to be round. And my head's oblong. But George and Larry have to sort of cover their heads so that, uh, there's this, I don't know, it's more likely to fall right on the head.

Weight in it makes it much more regular.

Oh, it's heavy.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's big too.

It is big. I mean, it's big probably. Maybe it's too big. But the little thing that Larry does with this hat is that he and I used to do versions of an act together---tossing it like this like a Frisbee and then catching it.

It's nice, isn't it? It's a nice effect. He used to catch and throw four of them to me. He did this whole, from the top of the show, with his little red hat of my design. He came out in the middle of the show, "I can't find my red hat," and I'd be out in the audience and [loud clapping sound] It was great. So we did this whole long-distance dialogue, like, "C'mon brother, give me my red hat," and I said, "Well, try one of these," and I'd throw him three others. On a good day, with the wind permitting and the proper altitude, he'd catch all three. Red hat! On occassion, it's a very nice night, I tried to hit a better shot.

One of the things that seemed to, seemed to get better and better as I watched is the marionette that went across.

You know, that did get a lot better. In fact, it wasn't marionette. It wasn't marionette when I first did it.

Uh huh.

Fine. I'd like to find something somewhere between this hat and that. This one is just too flimsy.

Flimsy.

There is really a nice height here, and there are a lot of stages, but there is a lot of height---and I think what's nice about this is you throw it up, and you pretty much know when it can come down and it gives you lots of time to do something. I'm working on something else that I can't get anywhere. Suspender gets stuck somewhere over the trousers. Throw the hat up, way up, fix the trousers just in time to catch it.

Jacket.

Oh yeah, the arm is caught in the jacket. Oh, shoot.

Oh, shoot.

I gotta get down to the basics. That's what I want to do in the workshop. I spend a lot more time, really discreetly, working with isolation. Isolating movement in different places.

You know, It was good enough to think, maybe it's about time I sat down and wrote about that.

[Laughs]

But now it's been done. It can't be done.

Oh, everybody can do it.

What made you finally do it?

What made me finally do it. Well, I didn't set out to do it. I didn't do- I didn't have the idea that I would do a book. But I had the idea I wanted to do the first piece. Because my parents' decline and dying had gone on for so long, for five years. And I, all the time, because it was my habit to do so, I made notes. And I put the notes away. I put them in a drawer and forgot about them after. And then about two and a half years later, I came across them. And I started looking at them. And I thought, oh, you know, maybe it was an impulsive thrift - "don't throw anything away".

[laughing] Thrift? Thirft thrift

Thrift thrift, yeah - well, I've got this stuff. I've got to do something with it. But I still had, I think at that time, even two and a half years, three years later, I still had, I still was full of the feeling I had while they were still alive. I mean, now it's eight years, nine years since they died. And that's abated somewhat. But I did have this strong, strong feeling that was with me all the time, every day. And then I had these notes. And I decided I would try and give them some form and order.

It's been a long time between books.

Yeah, it's a long time. I don't get very many ideas. [Laughs]

There were several that I wrote down [indiscernible]

Notes about your parents or about the rest of the family?

About my parents -- No, no. Nothing about the rest of my family. Just about what happened during the last five years of my parents' lives, yeah.

Juliet Stuart Poyntz.

Oh, yeah! Juliet Stuart Poyntz.

Dolores…

Faconti?

So I made some- I wanted to make order out of them. Out of total chaos.

Faconti.

Yeah. Oh. Juliet Stuart Poyntz. That's another very interesting story. Except the material isn't available. I have a lot of material. Juliet Stuart Poyntz was an early member of the American Communist Party. And she was the kind of party member they liked a lot. American-born, no foreign history, from the Midwest. I wrote a piece about her when Ben had Grand Street. I consolidated everything I knew about her from the Tresca book and put it in a piece in Grand Street. She disappeared. She was a party member. She was working for... She had been... She was recruited to do special work, as they call it. Recruited for the Russian intelligence, military intelligence, and worked for them for a number of years. And recruited, in fact, Elizabeth Bentley. And she disappeared in... And she went to... She was... Recalled... She was called to Moscow in 1937. And was not... Disappeared there. But did come back and came back quite upset. And dropped out of the party. Dropped out of the special work. And disappeared from her hotel room in... On 57th Street, the American Women's Association. West 57th Street. Sometime in 1938. Just disappeared. Never heard of again. Bowl of Jell-O on the table. Everything. Her passport, everything. Disappeared. It's a mystery. I thought I would do... Another mystery. Tresca's was a mystery. Tresca's death was a mystery. I like doing mysteries. Mysteries are terrific structures. And you can put anything in there. You can put everything in there in the frame of a mystery. But I... And I got a lot of material from everything that... From the FBI, from what was in the American archives. But then Soviet Union collapsed. And the file... And material began to be available in Russia. And I knew that what I needed to know was there. I couldn't get it. Her files are in military intelligence sections. And those files... Those Russian files have never been opened. I tried to get them. I tried to get people there to look. I can't get them. And since the Soviet Union collapsed, you can't do a book anymore without knowing what's in their files. So I didn't have enough.

Do you think you wrote it differently now than you would have if you had written it when they were alive, or -?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I don't think I could write, at least the first story, I couldn't write again anymore. Because that emotion has abated. I mean, grief has lessened. Anger has lessened. So I couldn't do it again that way, anyway.

And the story about the story of the family, had you made notes on that?

Well, the stories about the family I had never, never written anything about. And never thought of writing anything about.

[to server?] Yeah. I'm too young! [laughs]

Close the bar.

Don't have my card.

I never thought of it, really, of doing any more.

It was Ben who said, you know, "you've got more stories. You've got another story." And I did another story. And Dick Poirier, who was editing Raritan at the time, was very interested in them. He published the first one. He published two more-- I think he published three in all.

First three in the book, actually?

I think it was the first three in the book, yeah. And by the time I'd done three, I, you know, I knew I could do a book.

Dolores Faconti is another story.

She...

How much of this do you want to know?

xI want to hear it.

Dolores Faconti was a U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. She was a girlfriend of a Mafia figure, Frank Garofalo. And he is connected with the murder of Tresca. When I was doing the Tresca book, I tried to get to her. She was still alive and living in New Jersey. And I tried many routes to get to her. She was... Through many people... I couldn't. She wouldn't respond. Yeah. She refused to respond. But she was always an extremely attractive figure. Literarily. And I... But... She's dead now, I'm sure.

Well, here you're thinking about dealing with… I'm still again with these...

Yeah.

Melodramatic figures in the world scene. Melodramatic figures in the world scene. And now you do... just this family?

Just family. Yeah. Well, it was the origin of... Of everything. And at a certain... I mean... Doesn't everybody... When everybody... When all those large figures in your life are gone. And you're the one who's standing at the abyss. You're the generation of the abyss now. I mean... You... Everybody... Everybody... Who writes must have that impulse. In fact, they do. Bookstores are full of them.

But he was terrific. I mean, he really liked the book, and he really stood up for it, and he really tried to push it and promote it.

But, but, but the book grew. I mean, you didn't sit down and say "I'm going to write a lot of stories, and it'll all fit together, and it'll deal with my entire family, and this is gonna be a good one" -

No, it went story by story. They just came, once I started, you know, I thought I don't remember anything.But once you start typing, then it all, then it comes back.

Yeah. Which is one discouragement from doing it. That I've always felt

But listen...

Who wants another memoir? Who wants another--

Well, did you have to gather lots of, I mean, you do say you're quoting from that one.

Exactly. That's what I thought too. I said, who wants another memoir? And... What happened was... That I found a voice to do it in. The first... The first piece in the book which was... I wrote... I wrote... Three or four times. And each time it was about 150 pages. I didn't have the voice to do it in. I found the voice finally. I found the voice for anger, for love, for... That gave me the right distance. That... And then... Everything came. So... People do want another memoir. If you know... If you can figure out how to do it.

I had very little material. I had a couple of letters. I had my mother's letter to her typing teacher, and I had my cousin Meyer's autobiography.

Did that really exist?

That really exists.

I wondered whether you made that up, or -

No. it exists, it's a 90-page piece of work.

Not published -- turned down by Rob Gottlieb

Oh [laughs] probably.

It was 90, 100 pages, and I had read it at the time he did it, which is probably about 15, 20 years ago, and I put it away, too. I just had it in my, and then I came on it again, and I thought, my God, I can boil this down and boil it down and really have a something, and it's all, I mean, it's his, I added a few things here and a few things there to round it out, but it's all his.

And your father saved your mother from drowning?

Yes. He did.

[singing] One good deed.

[laughs] I'm sure he-

He's watching up there.

What do you think, in the end, the book is saying about your family?

[laughing] I know it.

You think he was sorry about… You know…

I don't know. That was much earlier. You mean, you think he's sorry now?

I don't know. I hope it's saying that they were, I mean, everybody is mythological in it to me. I mean, they were my gods when I was growing up, and I hope it's saying they were brave, they were quarrelsome, they were spectacular people, part of a spectacular generation. I hope it's saying I loved them, because I did. I loved them very much.

Well… I just think that one never really knows one's parents.

I really don't know them. I don't know what their private relation was. Even now. I really have no idea. I know that my mother loved my father. I don't know why. I don't know what they were like together alone. When all the doors were closed and the lights were off. No idea.

Would you have felt more freedom if it were a novel?

No. I don't know how to write fiction. No. No. But you know... It felt like fiction. Even though it wasn't. I mean once I found... Once... I heard the voice in my head... That told me how to tell the story. Then it was like fiction. Even though it wasn't.

I always remember one thing Vincent said when he began writing novels. He said what a relief it was. Because he didn't have to tell the truth anymore. When he was reviewing a movie it had to be factually correct. Where in a novel he could invent not just characters but rivers and countries if he felt like it.

I don't think I could invent. I don't think I could invent whole cloth. No. I don't have that kind of imagination.

All true.

Yeah. All true. It's all true.

Did you read the Tresca book?

Some of it. I haven't finished it yet I read at it, I confess. I read the first and last chapters and then I was going into the middle of it. I felt it would make a great movie, is what I thought.

Anyway, when that came out, I guess you said that- in little piece in The Times, "Biography is a near-perfect form." You said, "biography allows you to draw close to a subject and also back away for an overview of his time, meaning Tresca.

Did I say that?

You said that in a m--

That's good.

mini-interview with The Times. It's good. But I was wondering: how about autobiography, and how that applies to it? "Biography allows you to draw close to a subject and also back away for an overview of his time." Now this is- I said biography, but it is Autobiography. Could you compare the two? How it-

Well, I think that what I... Strove for was the kind of attachment that I brought to a biography.

Attachment?

Detachment. Detachment, yeah. I wanted for my own family what I could do as a scholar, what I could do for a historical figure. I wanted to do the same thing. So you weren't researching it in the same way at all? No, it wasn't research, it was distance. It was the... In photography, I used to do a lot of photography. Oh, okay. And you talk about focusing on the middle distance or the far distance or the near distance. And I think I strove through the middle distance to get far enough away from the overwhelming effect of family. Just far enough away so that I could see them clearly. The kind of distance that history gives you. That time passing gives you. And have them in the focus. Have them... Yeah. Have them in the focus that you get in the middle distance. When the background is clear, the subject is clear, and the foreground is clear as well. I used to... I loved photography. I used to... I loved to be in the darkroom, and I loved... I loved walking around with a camera, because it gave you an aim when you were walking around. It was like, oh, there's a picture, there's a picture, there's a picture. It was a great pleasure to me, and I loved it, and I loved the actual development. And I... And I... And distance was everything. Up close was one thing. Middle distance, far distance, you... I mean, the things you could do were astonishingly different with the same piece of equipment.

True story?

True story. True story. I, before my time. But I, I was told, all of these things are things I was told about.

Told in the family.

Told in the family. Yeah. They were family stories. Except for the times when I was present. Later on, when I got a little older, everything is, is hearsay.

Well, this is a question, though.

Is it true?

What?

I mean, it's true as far as you know, but are all stories true as, as told by families?

Oh, not literally, perhaps, true, but, but in their essence, I think, true. People embroider, people change details. But, in essence, I think, it's not whole cloth.

I'm wondering, I won't get back to my family too much, but my, my uncle, legend, always had it, was a, was a, a boxer at some point. He ended up was cutting cloth somewhere in the garment district.

Yeah.

But he was actually close to being a Golden Glove boxer.

Yeah.

I accepted that on faith. But I, I, I've never seen a picture of him in a boxing ring, y'know? He's long dead now. But, that was a family legend.

Well, if they told it to you, it was true.

Okay.

Maybe he wasn't as good as they said. Maybe he didn't get that close to Golden Gloves

Well, if they told it to you, there was a, a good measure of truth in it, you'd say.

Yeah. I think so.

I mean, it's a question of how many, how many sales, I suppose, Lily actually made.

That's right. But my, but my mother claimed, and my mother was not, would not have said that she, she took over Lily's route when Lily went to California. did pretty well. She made a good living.

Were there any…. Suprises? Revelations? As you thought about your family, Or your own growing up, or…?

Revelations.

Your parents don't kiss. Is this a revelation?

[laughs] No, they didn't kiss, they never kissed in public. But you know, I think it was a reticence of that generation. There was very little public affection, very little, even in members of my family who were more affectionate in public than my parents, there wasn't that much of that. Revelations, you know, I think, I think the revelation to me was how much I had loved them.

Even your father?

Even my father, yeah. I mean, he was really some guy. He was something else.

I don't love him, from the book.

You didn't love him

Don't love him, yeah.

He was, he was, but I used to say when I was, when I was younger, "my father, he has integrity."

Would you like another?

No. "He has integrity." And I, and I was right. He had integrity in the sense that he was what he was and nobody-- and he made no concessions to anybody for what he was. And that wasn't an un-important thing to know, to learn. I mean, to, to have learned as a child, that you can be what you are, and get along in the world.

He ran a series of garages here? That was -

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He had a series of garages-

And he would come home and your mother would run the garage, and not know what she-- [laughter] I mean, that's pretty strange.

I know it's strange. He, he would come, he worked 12-hour, 15-hour, 20-hour days, and he'd have to have a nap. So he always lived near the garage. And, um, he couldn't afford to have a helper. So he'd send my mother down. And she couldn't drive. I couldn't drive myself until I was 40 years old. I didn't know how to drive. Um, and the reason I didn't know how to drive is my father tried to teach me how to drive.

Always a mistake.

Always a mistake. Bigger mistake in this case. Uh, so he would send my father, my mother down to the garage. And, uh, she would watch. She would sit in the office and she would, and she would say, "Oh, well, just leave your car there. I can't get you. No, you can't get your car now. You have to wait till the boss comes home." It was quite amusing. And I don't think I told a story in the book of the time, uh, he had a goat. He took a goat in lieu of payment. Some farmer came in and parked his car and couldn't pay. And had a goat in the truck and couldn't pay. And my father took the goat and kept it in the toilet. And for several days that was a great attraction for my schoolmates and me, we would go and, and, and see the goat in the toilet.

An only kid, an only goat…

And I hope he fed it. I hope he didn't die. I don't know… if he fed it.

What about, uh, how do you pronounce your name? Szymborska?

Wisława Szymborska.

Yes. You liked her poetry very much.

Oh, I loved it. Yeah. And I'm not a reader of poetry. But it's so direct. It's like, I mean, it's like listening to somebody sitting across from you. It's beautiful, yeah, I loved it. And when I read it-

Not in Polish -?

Not in Polish, no. When I read it, I thought, she has the same feelings about her family and death of family.

She has a feeling I can draw on.

Unsentimental. And direct. And-- yet: deeply felt.

Did you ever meet Ben's father?

No, he was dead. I'm really sorry about that. Did you know him?

I was once in that house, I remember. Some Brendan Gill event.

Must have been quite an astonishing thing.

I was in that house, which was one of the most amazing houses I've ever, ever been in.

[Laughs]. I am so sorry I didn't know his father. If I'd known his father, I think I would have, I would understand Ben better. I don't, I never met him. And his mother, I didn't meet his mother either. And I never saw the house.

You never saw the house? It's still there.

I know it's there, it had just been sold.

Yeah, they're all gone. Maybe I could write it, now.

With the royalties on your book, you can buy it back, right?

Yeah, that's--

Oh, right. [Laughs]

that's too much malevolence going on in my family [laughs]

Well, it's good material. Malevolence is, it's fun to work with.

What are you working on now?

I'm just doing short--

Good stories. But, but you didn't have lots of letters and journals and things like that to help you along?

You're not going to wait another ten years for a book, are you?

I hope not. I don't have another ten years. Just short pieces. I just did a piece on the vagina monologues for a guy, for Craig Raine. You know him? He's a poet. He runs a-

No.

Other people with memories, that would stimulate your memories?

No. In fact, I didn't want to ask my cousins. Because I knew that their memories would interfere with mine. And I wanted- and, uh, and they would differ from mine. Uh, and they would have a different take on what happened. And, um, I didn't want that. So I- I, so I just... I relied on mine.

Yeah I know the name, but-

He's a poet and an essayist. And he has a small magazine in England called Arate. He was a, he loved the first story. And he's been a wonderful champion of the book. And he asked me to go to the vagina monologues and write a piece for him. And I did. I went to the vagina monologues and wanted to run shrieking into the streets. And I'm doing a piece for the book review [sighs] now. I don't have another book.

What's the difference? I mean, in a sense, I have to say, all childhoods are different. I mean, it depends who's telling the story. Like, I was just reading the, this Margaret Travels book. I was going to write a piece about her. And the idea that she and her sister would have such divergent views of what the-

They don't speak, you know.

Yes, right. What the parents' life was like. Yeah. And I think that my brother, who's dead now, as well, my older brother - he and I were like, it was two separate childhoods. Our views towards our parents were totally different.

What's the piece for the Book Review?

I can't tell you!

Oh!

I'm not allowed to say.

Ok.

I mean, another piece - a review.

Oh, a review. A review of a book.

Yeah. You know we can't…. We're under an oath. We have to take an oath not to say. But I don't have another book. Although, this is what I'm thinking. There are the, the, the American Communist Party sent all its archive to Moscow. It's all in Moscow. It's all in Moscow. It is now on Microfilm and been sent back to the Library of Congress. What I want to do, what I would like somebody to pay me to do, is to go to the Library of Congress and troll through it. It's not indexed. It's all totally chaotic. I would like somebody to let me do that and pull a thread from it somewhere.

How much older was he?

Two years. It didn't matter. We'd sit there and we'd talk about, like, who's got different boyhoods, it was amazing.

Yeah.

Of course, you didn't have that by not having a sibling. So it wouldn't-

Yeah. No, I didn't have that.

But at least you have different points of view, I suppose, from other relatives and so on. I mean, in your mind anyway, you see that people might see them differently, or...?

Well, I have, I have, I have, I have alive, um, all my cousinsare alive. Um, and they, and one of my cousins, uh, was relieved, was, was, was, uh, my cousin Raheel's daughter was relieved because her mother was really a horror. But nobody in the family ever acknowledged how much she suffered because her mother was a horror. And she was relieved that she was relieved that-

Her mother, or your mother?

Her mother. Yeah. So she has something that, so when her children say to her, "was it really like that? Was your mother really like that?" She can say, "yes, this is what it was like."

Maybe so.

Write it down.

This is what I would like to do.

That's the advantage of doing a memoir, you see.

Yes. Nobody- you don't have to transcribe anything, no research.

Make it up.

Make it up. [Laughs] No!

Do you keep a journal of things like that? No?

No. I never have. Sometimes I read something, and I read something, and I write it down, and I guess what's called a commonplace book. Just quotes. No, I keep no journal.

When did your title come? What did you think of that?

What title?

Title of the book.

It came with the first story.

Just like that

How I Came Into My Inheritance. You know, I worked for Fan magazine. I'm extremely good on titles and blurbs. I can do them. They just come like that. It's my talent. My major coup for Fan magazine was, as I wrote in the book, when May Britt married Sammy Davis Jr. That was a touchy situation. And my title was, "Why I Married a Man Shorter Than I Am."

Well, you've got something to draw on.

Oh yeah.

How wonderful.

I always thought about cannibalizing his books [laughing].

Of course! I cannibalized my Uncle Meyer's autobiography.

Mmhm.

And the obvious question is, why Trujillo? Why now you go to the Dominican Republic after writing so many books about Peru?

Mmhm

I realize that one was about Brazil and so on....

And during these months, I heard so many anecdotes, stories about Trujillo. And I also read some books about what was life in the Dominican Republic during those 31 years of the Trujillo regime.

It took me three years, more or less.

How close does the novel cue to the reality of the events?

It's a novel. It's not a history book.

So I took many, many liberties with history. But the only limitation that I imposed on myself was I'm not going to invent anything that couldn't have happened within the framework of what was life in the Dominican Republic. And I think I have respected this.

I have invented characters. The-Let's say the historic characters I have treated with the freedom that you treat invented characters. I have used historic characters for the invented characters.

But well what usually novelists do, eh?

I have respected the basic facts, you know? the basic facts. But I have changed and deformed many things in order to make more, let's say, persuasive the story.

But unlike what readers think, I have not exaggerated.

On the contrary, in certain cases, I have attenuated what was the violence during those years. Because I think the objective history is totally unbelievable. You can't really believe all the things that happened during those years.

And whether in fact or fiction, I guess we can't believe it.

Urania and his father are invented characters.

Well, I suppose there were many Uranias in Trujillo's life, you know? But the character is invented.

Her father is invented, but it follows more or less a very close collaborator of Trujillo, who was, well, falling disgrace. And suddenly, as a Cerebrito Cabral, lost everything in just a few hours, you know? His money, his power, his friends, his prestigious life.

And that's something that Trujillo used to do systematically. Just to disseminate fear, insecurity among, among his own people.

It was a way to keep everybody on the alert, eh? And to encourage, how can I say, this kind of servility towards him.

He was very shoot. He was not a cultivated person. But he was, he knew very well human weaknesses. And he knew how to manipulate appetites. And he was very cold. Very cold in a very passionate country.

And he was convinced that everybody has a price, so that everybody could be corrupt. And what is terrible is that during those 31 years, he almost managed to prove that he was right. [laughter]

As is the case of many Latin American dictators. Well, many dictators, not only Latin Americans, hm?

How would you compare him to other dictators... his record compared...

I think, well, he had more or less all the common trends of a Latin American dictator but pushed to the extremes. In cruelty, I think he went far, far away from the rest. And in corruption too.

Maybe the big differences was that unlike, let's say, Somoza, or in the case of Peru, Fujimori, money had not this attraction, this abstract attraction.

Money did not?

No, no, no.

He was not interested in money. He used money, of course, because it was an instrument of corruption. But this was one of the big fights between him and his wife. His wife, yes. She was...

She was salting away money and switching things like that

Oh oh yeah-but hiding this from Trujillo, because Trujillo didn't want his family to take money outside the country.

Well, in the last two years, when he started to decline, you know, he forbidden that any Dominican took money abroad, you know? And if one tried to do it, well, he lost his property and his patrimony. So the family was sending money, but in a very discrete way, against Trujillo's will, you know?

And in his life, his sexual potency was an important thing.

Oh, essential.

Well, that's a common trend in Latin American dictators, eh? Africans too, you know? General Abacha. You remember how he died? [laughter]

But that was one of the first things that puzzled me in '75 when I was in the Dominican Republic. He went to bed with many women, but he went to bed with his minister's wives, for example.

And you got the impression that he did that, not only because he liked these ladies, but because it was a way to put his ministers at a test.

He wanted to know if they were ready to accept this kind of humiliation, the extreme humiliation in a machista country, you know?

That was the extreme humiliation for a Dominican, you know? And many ministers accepted and were prepared to play this, let's say, well, grotesque role. And they remained loyal to Trujillo even after the killing of Trujillo.

So this...so when I mean corruption, I am thinking things like this, you know?

Well, then certainly you have the father actually giving his daughter, which is sort of the only thing It's the first choice, not just the one.

Well, this is something that happened, you know? I had a very interesting conversation with one of his secretaries, Khalil Asha. Ashe. Khalil Ashe.

He's a very nice person. By the way, he was very kind. He organized a dinner for me with former Trujillistas. It was an unbelievable experience. And he told me, he told me, each time that El Jefe went in tourney by the interior, there were many fathers. Modest people, peasants who brought their daughters as a gift to the Jefe.

And the Jefe didn't know what to do with these girls because...And I said, but this is true, absolutely true. And they were very proud, you know? My daughter for the Jefe, for El Jefe. It was not only because they wanted favors in exchange, it was because it was a normal.

So the society was deeply, deeply corrupt by the system, you know? He was a kind of god. And so everything that touched the god was good, you know, was of value.

Sounds like something out of the Middle Ages. I mean king and...

Yeah.

Well, nothing of this is uncommon. I think this happens in all dictatorships, but not with the theatricality that happened with Trujillo. I think Trujillo had the opportunity, as he was a natural born actor, to make life a kind of big, big show in which he could materialize all his fantasies, his appetites. And he did these incredible things, you know?

He made his elder son, Ramfis, a colonel when Ramfis was nine years old, and a general when he was, I think, 12 or 13 with a military parade, you know? And ambassadors had to attend with tales, you know? And it was grotesque. And at the same time, the reality was very, how you say, submissive to this power.

Is there one reason why the people loved him so much?

What I try to show in the book is that a dictatorship can always be resisted at the beginning. It's always possible to resist, to put some frame to obstacles, to this increasing power. But what is terrible with dictators? And it's not only the case of Trujillo, you know? Look at Venezuela today, Chavez. Well, now Chavez is in decline. But for years, the Venezuelans, in spite...

In writing this book, did you put any of yourself into your characterization of Balaguer?

If I put myself into...

Your characterization of Balaguer?

Well, not consciously, at least, no.

He's a fascinating character.

Was he really like that?

Well, I don't think I have been disloyal to what he really is. Maybe he's more complex. Maybe he's less complex than my character. I don't know.

But I had three long conversations with him when I was writing the novel, three. And he was so clever to evade difficult questions.

He was a kind of, how do you say in English, an anguilla.

An eel. Ooh!

He was absolutely, um. And I said to him, Dr. Balaguer, you are a cultivated man. You have read a lot.

A poet!

You have written quite decently, you know?

How could you for 31 years serve with such loyalty and competence, you know, against us and live surrounded by criminals and by the worst kind of human being?

And he said to me, look, when I was young, I wanted to be a politician. I had many sisters to take care of. If I went into exile, I wouldn't have been a politician. And I wondered if I would have been able to support my sisters.

So the only way in which you could do politics during those days was with Trujillo. So that's what I did.

And since the beginning, I said I'm not going to do two things: I'm not going to participate in sexual orgies with Trujillo [laughter] and I'm not going to steal one dollar.

And he said to me, and I have done this. I have never steal one dollar, and I have never participated in a Trujillo orgy [laughter]

I said this is the secret of your power? [laughter]

Well. Well, you also say in passing that the phrase was never for any reason lose your composure was his motto.

That's right.

Never lose your composure. With all this happening around you?

Another wonderful phrase of Balaguer was in my five presidencies, corruption has arrived to the door of my office, but it has never entered my office. [laughter]

Well, he's a poor man. He has no money, only power. He has got tremendous power, but no, he's a no, I think it's only power. That was his only passion in life, you know?

It was such a quiet colorless. Withdrawn....

Oh, yeah, he was very quiet. He managed to fool Trujillo, which was very difficult, you know? He was put in the presidency because Trujillo said publicly to many collaborators, you know, Balaguer has no ambitions. [laughter]

That's the reason why he must be the president. He has no ambitions.

But he really did, though, didn't he?

Of course.

I think he had, but he was so clever. He knew that the last symptom of political ambition was the end of his career with Trujillo.

In direct contrast, you have your characterization of the, what's his name, Hugo Romero.

Yes.

Who should have been the leader of the revolution, and then suddenly he froze and was not able to. What is his story?

But he hated Trujillo because Trujillo humiliated him systematically, publicly.

He was a sewage, for example.

Yeah, exactly.

And he was in the conspiracy, and he was, well, he had the responsibility of the coup d'etat, the establishing of a military junta, to call elections, you know? He had the green lights of the United States, of the State Department.

But he wanted to see the corpse. He said that. I need to see the corpse.

But then he was paralyzed. And I don't think this was because he was a coward, because he was not a coward. He was very courageous during the three months in which Ramfis tortured him in an incredible way with doctors who resuscitated him in order to be tortured again, you know?

All testimonies are that he was very, very courageous during this incredible, you know, agony.

But he had Trujillo inside himself. Trujillo was there like a super ego. And I think that's what happened with millions of Dominicans. Trujillo was inside them, you know, and governing their instincts, their elementary fears. And that was horrendous, you know, the kind of mental slavery. And I think Pupo Roman is the best, is the emblematic case of this.

But the expectations were there. I mean, he had so many moments at the point of the assassination when he could have acted, could have done something. And he's just unable to...

He was unable because he was paralyzed. He was paralyzed because if you kill God, you became really so insecure and confused. And that's what happened to him, you know? God was dead.

What do you do in a world without God? He hated this God, but it was God, you know?

It's the only explanation because he knew perfectly well that he would pay, that he would be known, that he was in the conspiracy.

Did you change your mind about Trujillo as you wrote the book at all? Did you get any different feelings about...

Oh, no, no, not at all.

Actually, they were human beings. They were human beings. And they became monsters because a whole society was pushing them to be monsters, to be gods, you know?

And if a society converts you in a god, you become a monster. I think that's what was, for me, a very important goal, to describe Trujillo as a human being, to show that he was a human being transformed in this monstrous human being, but not only because his excesses, his appetites, but because this servilismo, service.

Or Hitler and you got the...

In any case, as a non-politician, as a writer, you've been able to do more about politics, would you say, through your writings?

Yes.

You've been able to do more and say more about political matters than if you were a politician yourself? I mean...

I, well, as a novelist, what I want is to create a world that can be persuasive by itself, by its language, its mythology, the strength of its characters. When I went to defend certain ideas, cultural or political or social, I write essays or articles and fiction for me is something much more mysterious, something that is not depending on actuality, something that in my case always came from very deep images.

I always, as in the case of Trujillo, I have chosen themes to write novels about in a way in which my impression is that I am not so free to chosen them, that I've been chosen by these themes because something has happened to me or something has been there in my life that is pushing me towards certain themes and excluding others. And I have the impression when I write a novel that my whole personality is involved and not only reason but also unreason, not only knowledge but also irrational drives, you know, emotions.

And like what happened when I write an article or an essay in which I think that I have total rational control of what I am doing. No, when I write a novel, I try to open these doors of the inner part of the personality because I think probably the richest matter that is behind these themes come from the secret part of the personality, you know?

Does that mean they're in effect two different personalities or?

No, I think a rational, rationality is just an aspect of your personality. And I think this is the dominant factor when you write, at least this is my case when I write an article or when I write an essay.

But when I write fiction, and not only novels, plays too, I have the impression that my total personality is involved. Reason but also unreason.

Ideas but also instincts, intuitions, irrational drives, passions, and all this creates a kind of matter which is sometimes a surprise to myself, you know?

I was partly thinking something along those lines when I asked before whether you changed your mind about Trujillo when you were writing the book. And I wondered, does the book change as you write it? Are you surprised by things that come up?

Oh, yes. Yes, I am.

Oh, yes.

Always the book, well, the novel is always different of what was my first idea of the novel, always. And sometimes very, very different, you know?

Even in the case of Trujillo, which I knew more or less what would be the structure, the trajectory of the story. At the end, for example, I never thought that Urania would become such an important character, maybe the most important character.

It was also a surprise for me the way in which Balaguer imposed himself and became almost as important as Trujillo, you know?

That's something that was happening without being planned, you know?

When you started, you had the three stories planned.

Yeah, I have a lot of, well, trajectories. That's what I need before I start writing, trajectories, a character that starts here and finishes here, and they cross and they cross in this way or another.

That gives me the basic assurance in order to start writing.

But then during the process, which is always fascinating and full of surprises, you know, things start to change because certain characters suddenly take a shape, you know, become more important presences. And others, on the contrary, decline and pass to the second role.

And all this is fascinating because I don't think I have 100% control of this, I mean rational control, you know. And that's what excites me more when I am writing a novel. This is really a great incentive, you know?

The other thing is here you're dealing with real historical characters.

Yes.

I mean, they're totally a work of the imagination. I mean, it's a work of the imagination, but it's not.

Well, in my case, there is never purely imagination. Even the novels in which I have been less, let's say, detached of personal experience to write, I think there is always a root with this in my memory and certain images that are the raw material are to fantasize, to imagine, you know?

I need this kind of personal involvement at the beginning. Then I think the story takes off. But at the beginning, I need this personal involvement with the story.

Does that mean that there's an autobiographical element in all the books?

Oh, I think there is an autobiographical element in all novels.

I think it's impossible to fantasize 100% on a story.

I think stories are, I think the point of departure is something that is deeply close to what your life is.

And then, of course, not the point of arrival is always very different. If not, I think it's a bad novel. But the beginning for me, well, maybe because that is my case, I don't think in any novel I've written, I have invented everything.

No.

I think all of the, maybe those writers are the writers I prefer because I feel so close to them in the way I create, I build my stories.

What are you reading now as a reader?

Well, I'm reading a lot of books because the novel I am writing. I am writing about Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin.

About what?

Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin. Flora Tristan was the grandmother of of Paul Gauguin, the painter.

A very interesting character, 19th century woman who was a social agitator. Very courageous, very idealistic, and with a tragic history.

And his personality was very similar to the--to her grandchild because Gauguin was, as her, so stubborn and also idealistic, you know.

They were looking for the paradise, different kind of paradises.

She wanted a paradise of social justice, of equality, no more discrimination of women, total equality. But it was a paradise, you know?

So she went into all the anarchist sects and she was a San Simonian, a San Simon follower, a Charles Fourier follower.

And finally, as she couldn't fit, you know, exactly in any of these movements and sects, you know, she created her own sect.

But it was this persecution of paradise. And I think Gauguin was the same you know. Gauguin went to La Martinique, to Panama, and then to Tahiti, and finally to the Marquesan Islands looking for the paradise.

Not a social paradise. He was not interested at all in social justice, on the contrary. [laughter]

But a paradise of beauty.

Beauty is something which was shared by the whole society. And he saw that this was impossible to reach in Europe because art, beauty had become in Europe a monopoly of a very small coterie of artists, collectors, critics.

And that art was completely cut from the common people. And he had this idea that only in primitive cultures, beauty was still as religion, as a common patrimony, a common expression.

And he went to look for this and looking for more primitive cultures. And as he didn't find it, he invented it in his paintings.

But the personalities of both were very, very close, you know?

Could you say where the idea for the book came from?

It came when I read. It came when I was young, a university student, and I read a book by Flora Tristan called Peregrinesiones de una Paria. Well, a French book, Peregrinesiones de un Paria. How do you say that? Pilgrims of a Paria?

Pilgrim of a Paria.

No, Peregrinaje.

Peregrinaje, pilgrim.

Pilgrimage of a Paria.

Fantastic book in which she tells about a year that she spent in Peru in 1830.

It's a fantastic description of what was a new Latin American republic still deeply contaminated by the colony from the perspective of a French, let's say, liberated woman.

And I became fascinated with her case, you know, because she decided in Arequipa, a southern Peruvian city, to change the world.

She decided there to declare war to this unjust world, which was discriminating women, treating women as second-class citizens. And it was a real declaration of war. And she started an incredible life.

For 10 years, she was fighting, you know, injustice. And in a crusade, a fantastic, from a moral point of view and from an intellectual point of view, it was a total political failure. But probably she was the first real feminist in Europe.

It sounds to me like the ideas gestate a long time. If this goes back to your school days, if Feast of the Goat goes back to 1975, you don't just suddenly invent an idea.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

I never write a novel with the first idea. No, no. This is something that should be making its way in a very, how can I say it, spontaneous way.

If this remains there and comes back and comes back with new images, and I discover that I had been more or less inventing something around these images, I start to take notes. And then I forget, and I do other things. But the idea is there, coming, taking shape little by little.

When I start writing a novel, actually, I have been working on the novel for many years.

How do you actually write? On a computer? Or..

I hand write first, and then I rewrite using the computer. But the first draft always by hand.

I started like this. This is the rhythm that I am accustomed to. And so first draft always hand write.

Mhm

At some point you said, in all great literary texts, often without their authors intending it, a seditious inclination is present.

Yes.

You said things like that quite a lot. But I was curious about the phrase, without intent, without the authors knowing--

Oh, because there are authors who are not in any way enthusiastic with the idea of changing the world? No. Balzac, for example, he was a real reactionary.

He wanted the world to remain as it was.

He didn't know what he was doing in effect?

Well, he didn't know that he was producing a very explosive image, which was tremendously critical of the real world. It was not his intention at all.

He was for the establishment. But I don't think there is a great fiction that is not an essential contradiction of the world as it is, you know?

I think if you produce a great, great novel, what you are producing is an alternative world, a kind of world that is not the real one because the real one is something that you are rejecting through this alternative world.

But I don't think this is an explicit mechanism which is pushing you, not at all.

And I think that is the richness of literature because these alternative worlds are this devastating criticism of the real world because they embrace all perspectives, all points of views, depending on the personality of authors, of the personal demons of authors, you know?

In some cases, yes. In some cases, you can say, yes, of course,

In some cases, you can say, yes, of course, there is an explicit critical attitude, or political or cultural. But I would say that in most cases, no. A writer is trying to materialize a vision or a dream without knowing that in this vision and in this dream, there is a very deep rejection of life as it is, of the world as it is, of humankind as it is.

For me, this is the great contribution of fiction, of the novel, to human progress.

And I think priests knew it before critical intellectuals. You know that the Inquisition forbade the novel for 300 years in Latin America.

I think they were very lucid. I think they understood very well this seditious consequence that fiction can have in the human spirit.

If you are too much contaminated with the idea of different worlds, perfect worlds, beautiful worlds, coherent worlds, and you are comparing this with the real world, the real world always loses the match, you know?

One of the curiosities of Trujillo in the book is the fact that he has such a dislike of the arts broadly, has no appreciation or understanding.

No, not only, only

Clothing, his dress.

The only time that he was interested in literature was when Balaguer was incorporated to the Academy and read this incredible discourse in which he compared Trujillo to God.

It was an ode to Trujillo.

Well, Trujillo was there. And Balaguer, in a very well-written piece, said, well, did the the Dominican Republic has survived? 400 years of catastrophes, of invasions, of civil wars, of hurricanes, earthquakes.

Because until 1930, God took care of our country. But in 1930, God said, well, it's enough. I'm going to give this responsibility to someone else. And so Trujillo took this responsibility. And Trujillo said many times that for the first time, he was really impressed with a literary text.

And I think he really believed that Balaguer was right when he said that he had taken this responsibility and he has replaced God with this responsibility to save the Dominican Republic of disintegration. [laughter]

But for the rest, he despised the literary fantasies of his wife. His wife published two books.

She didn't write them, though.

No, she didn't.

But she published a book of.

Yes. And Betty, of course, lived for the poetry world and was, in a way, queen of all of it. She had an understanding of the need for poetry in our culture. And I've never met anyone like her in her efficiency about making that understanding public property. She could convince anyone to give a hundred thousand dollars the next day for the promotion of poetry as part of our American culture.

And she didn't have a name for it and I said it's not to be called a library. It should be called a, it should be called Poets House. And without an apostrophe because nobody owns poetry. It belongs to civilization. That was it.

Let me ask a silly question. Why do we need poetry?

Why do we need poetry? Because every great civilization has demonstrated the need for myth and poetry in the effectiveness of the state itself beyond power, beyond military strength, beyond commerce. What a great civilization needs to demonstrate is the power of what it stands for in terms of human dignity and freedom. And the word, the myth, is essential to the survival of civilization, and to the culmination of its powers. I think anyone who studies history would have to agree to that.

I mean, you say poetry you mean poetry. Not poetry in the sense of fiction being poetic, or anything else.

No, I mean poetry in the largest sense as a spiritual force. And I equate it with myth in that. Poetry and myth. The myth of a culture, the myth of a civilization, is what perpetuates the state as a state and as a power in the world.

Ok. I was interested that one purpose of the Poets House is to give poets a place to work and read. Can poets learn from other poets? And what do they learn?

Where else are they going to learn? It is largely from other poets that one begins to be a poet. You're not going to become a poet through learning prosody. That's certainly true. But through the energizing force of the word. That is essential to one's education. I think every poet begins by simply being enchanted by the sound of words. Like other poets, I remember walking, running rather, through the woods shouting new words that I had learned.

Yeah. Well, it is not always, say, in your permanent posession. You cannot count on being a poet every time you sit down at your desk with a pen in hand, or a pencil more likely.

I have long intervals. I seem to work in cycles. I have a creative cycle and then I can be silent for days, for weeks, months, years even, during my lifetime. A lot has to do with circumstance.

It's usually a phrase, an image. It's a rhythm more than anything else. And I've always felt that poetry begins with sounds rather than with sense. And you ride on that rhythm until your own being takes possession of it. And really, the sound and the sense combine and then you have some sense of where you're going, aside from riding on that rhythm. But, to a large degree, I think the poem is more interested in perpetuating a flow of sound than it is of producing a meaning.

Sound comes first, meaning can come later. Do you still, when you write a poem, you speak it, you say it?

I say it, I say it, yeah. And I'm likely to use, use up fifty or seventy-five sheets of paper before I have a feeling that I'm really on my way to producing a poem.

Writing is rewriting.

You know, Cal Lowell used to say, "I don't write poems, I rewrite them. I revise them." And he actually did.