Paula (50 page)
Authors: Isabel Allende
Godspeed, Paula, woman.
Welcome, Paula, spirit.
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS
OF LOVE AND SHADOWS
EVA LUNA
APHRODITE: A MEMOIR OF THE SENSES
ZORRO
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THE JAGUAR AND EAGLE TRILOGY
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Isabel Allende on Destiny, Personal Tragedy, Writing
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Our Story
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Mission of the Isabel Allende Foundation
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The Year After Paula's Death
Life at a Glance
Lori Barra
I
SABEL
A
LLENDE
was born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, and raised in Chile. She fled Chile in 1974, upon the assassination of her uncle, President Salvador Allende. She worked in Venezuela from 1975 to 1984 and then moved to America. She now lives in California with her husband, Willie Gordon.
She has worked as a TV presenter, journalist, playwright, and children's ? author. Her first book for adults, the acclaimed
The House of the Spirits
, was published in Spanish in 1982 and was translated into twenty-seven languages.
Isabel holds to a very methodical, some would say menacing, literary routine, working Mondays through Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. She writes using a computer, seated in what she refers to as a “small cabin off my garden.” Her routine shuns music in favor of silence and stands by at least one ritual: “I always start on January 8th.” Asked how she begins a book, she replies, “With a first sentence that comes from the womb, not the mind.”
Her favorite reads include
One Hundred Years of Solitude
(Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez),
The Female Eunuch
(Germaine Greer),
La Lumière des Justes
(Henri Troyat),
The Aleph
(Jorge Luis Borges), and
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
(Mario Vargas Llosa), and the poetry of Neruda.
She has written eight novels, among them
Zorro, Portrait in Sepia
, and
Daughter of Fortune
. She has also published a celebration of the senses entitled
Aphrodite
, and
My Invented Country
, an account of her life in Chile. Her latest book,
Maya's Notebook
(published in 2013), is about a young woman who struggles with drugs and alcohol.
“Few people know how to be still and find a quiet place inside themselves. From that place of silence and stillness the creative forces emerge; there we find faith, hope, strength, and wisdom.”
“Life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences”âcan you describe that noise, what it is, what it means to you?
We have very busy livesâor we make them very busy. There is noise and activity everywhere. Few people know how to be still and find a quiet place inside themselves. From that place of silence and stillness the creative forces emerge; there we find faith, hope, strength, and wisdom. However, since childhood we are taught to
do
things. Our heads are full of noise. Silence and solitude scare most of us.
You often talk and write about destinyâwhat is destiny for you?
We are born with a set of cards and we have the freedom to play them the best we can, but we cannot change them. I was born female, in the forties, from a Catholic and conservative family in Chile. I was born healthy, I had my shots as a child, I received love and a proper education. All that determines who I am. The really important events in my life happened in spite of me, I had no control over them, like the fact that my father left the family when I was three, the military coup in Chile (1973) that forced me into exile, meeting Willie, my husband, the success of my books, the death of my daughter, and so forth. That is destiny.
You use real people in your life as models for your novels' characters. You also use real events to come up with your plots. Yet you have a storyteller's gift for fleshing out each character and composing beautifully written stories. Do you ever find yourself at a point where your journalistic background clashes with your fiction?
My training as a journalist has been very helpful in my fiction-writing career. From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct an interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there. Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves, they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction, on the contrary, it helps enormously.
Most fiction writers draw on family events for inspiration. Is it stressful or liberating to write about your family in a memoir, without the cloak of fiction?
I wrote about my family in
Paula
and then again in
My Invented Country
and
The Sum of Our Days
. I don't find it difficult but sometimes my relatives get angry . . .
How difficult was it to write during this painful period of your life? Or did you find the task of writing somehow cleansing, a way to ease your mind away from the tragedy unfolding before you?
Writing
Paula
was not difficult, it was very healing. I wrote it with tears, but in one breath, as if Paula herself was dictating those words from the Beyond. I started the book a month after my daughter's death and I wrote for a year. During that time I was permanently in touch with Paula, remembering, analyzing what had happened, making peace with my loss. The book helped me to understand the tragedy and gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own life.
You have lived more lives than most. You have the gift to reinvent yourself and to adapt to whatever life casts your way. Yet in
Paula
you write, “I'm lost, I don't know who I am . . . Too many contradictions . . .” After all you've been through, do you believe that we are all multifaceted beings, all of us complex and full of contradictions and capable of much more than we can ever imagine?
I never said I wanted a “happy” life but an interesting one. From separation and loss I have learned a lot, I have become strong and resilient as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome.
You have written letters all your life, most notably a daily one to your mother. You've also worked as a journalist. Which form or experience of writing helped you most when you started writing books?
The training of writing daily is very useful. As a journalist I learned to research, to be disciplined, to meet deadlines, to be precise and direct, to keep in mind the reader and try to grab his or her attention from the very beginning.
How does writing each book change you, if at all?
Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul. Why do I write about certain themes and certain characters only? Because they are part of my life, part of myself, they are aspects of me that I need to explore and understand.
Do you have a favorite book of your own?
I don't read my own books, and as soon as I finish one I am already thinking of the next one. I can hardly remember each book. I don't have a favorite but I am grateful to
The House of the Spirits
, my first novel, which paved the way for all the others, and to
Paula
, because it saved me from depression.
I
STARTED
the Isabel Allende Foundation on December 9, 1996, to pay homage to my daughter, Paula Frias. Paula's untimely death in 1992 broke my heart. She was only twenty-eight years old when she died, a graceful and spiritual young woman, the light of our family.
During her short life Paula worked as a volunteer in poor communities in Venezuela and Spain, offering her time, her total dedication, and her skills as an educator and psychologist. She cared deeply for others. When in doubt, her motto was: “What is the most generous thing to do?” My foundation, based on her ideals of service and compassion, was created to continue her work.