Annotations for Form: Interjection

Um--Urania and her father are the principal invented characters, yes? Is that

The what?

Urania and her father.

Eel.

Well, I think it's a very, well, this is absolutely historic. It happens exactly like that. Pupo Roman was the chief of the army. The second in command after Trujillo, he was very powerful. He was married with Trujillo, no daughter, but a sobrina [interjection "niece"] a niece of Trujillo, Trujillo niece.

[inaudible]

Absolutely, there was no way to escape. But he tried to escape against all reason. A very pathetic, tragic case. Oh, I have respected. It's one of the episodes in which I have respected history more, you know?

What I try in the novel, because there is always a big danger when you write about a dictator. And it's that to present him not as a human being, but as a monster. Hitler was a monster. Stalin was a monster. Mao was a monster. Trujillo was a monster.

A [inaudible]

Or Hitler and you got the...

Well, I don't, well, it's difficult to answer this question because we don't know what is the real influence of literature in life.

You don't think that it causes revolutions, though at all so the literature will not....

Well, never bought, have never bought a book.

Well, but this was a very serious survey made by the Association of Writers. And half of the Spaniards have never bought a book. But there is something to add to these statistics.

Well, there is the important question, too. What people are reading?

Well, I am a novelist, but I do some.

I discovered that I am returning to certain situations probably because there is some kind or trauma or something that is deeply hiden--hide-hidden--hide-- hidden in my life, which is behind my literary vocation.

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?

And it's also true of Flaubert and Faulkner

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

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.

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.

And this creates a kind of malaise? A kind of malaise in the mind that can be the point of departure of critical attitudes.

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