Oriana Fallaci: The Woman and the Myth

9. To Be or Not to Be

• AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF iNTERVIEW WITH HistOlY, Fallaci began a new phase in her career. She had succeeded at breaking the limits that journalism had, to her mind, imposed and once again pmsued her desire to produce a pmely literary work. Thus, she took a leave of absence to write a poetic novel, IJettera a un bambino mai nalo. Much concerned that the metric quality of her Italian prose not lose its lyricism in English, she asked John Shepley to do the translation, completed as Letterlo a Child Never Born. In 1975, she expressed her faith in the American translator. She wrote to him, concerned that her book had a partieulm rhythm she could not find in English, and concluded he was the only person she lmew who could do something about it. She admitted that Shepley had a grasp of Italian and could capture the flavor of her novel. She expressed her esteem for him and her eoniidence in his capacity as a tTanslator.l Years later, Fallaci expressed a notably different opinion dming a television interview, Un soldato di nome Oriana, conducted by Francesca Alliata Brormer.2 Fallaci criticized the English translation and maintained that it was not good enough to be read commercially. It needed to be redone, she 158 TO BE on NOT TO BE 159 explained, but she had neither the emotional energy nor the time to do it. She had just prepared Lettera a un bambino mai nato as a trade cassette. The American actress Faye Dunaway had suggested reciting it in English as part of a theatricall'elldition of the book. According to Fullaci, she had not carefully studied the language of the English translation when it first apperu 'ed but, after Dmlaway's proposal, attentively looked at it and then criticized it. Fallaci's comments during the RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) interview retTact her earlier expression of faith in Shepley. They also emphasize her desire to present herself to the world not just as a novelist but also as a translator in possession of English linguistic expertise. Her reversal about Shepley's translation signaled the controversy she had developed with translators (who knew that the image of Fallaci the translator was weak). Most translators knew that she was not in a position to judge accurately the merit of Shepley's translation. Fallaci draws upon dIe analogy of physical exercise to explain why she cannot simultaneously write novels and newspaper articles. "Literature and journalism are like two different sports. Playing tennis develops body muscles that are not the same as muscles developed by a soccer player or swinImer .,,3 Likewise, the demands journalistic projects malce upon the writer's time-traveling around the world doing interviews, gathering data for articles -make it virtually impossible to achieve the concentration needed to write novels. Fallaci is very awru'e of the difference between an active, literary journalist and a novelist. Journalism prevents the full emergence of her creative energy. A character from one of her subsequent books expresses this point. "The writer is a sponge who absorbs life to spit it out again in the form of ideas. '" According to the character, a novelist not only perceives and imagines new insights but also anticipates and transmits them.4 FaJlaci possesses a type of imagination that exists in audlors of fiction but passes many jOlU'nalists by. Her dilemma never consists of an incapacity to create but the inability to break away from the journalistic requirement of gathering and communicating accurate information. "This litermy impulse was restricted in the straitjacket of journalism, that is, the rigor that journalists must have in the observance of truth."5 As a novelist, she has license to relocate events in lime and place. "One of dle precise differences between a journalist ruld a novelist derives from the fact that a writer's duty is to unleash and launch imagination.,,6 Letter to a Child Never Bom emerges as an intense form of self-revela- 160 TO BE OR NOT TO BE tion and historical sensitivity. These featmes combine with novelistic elements of freedom and spontaneity and result in the creation of popular literature .7 She has written what Dwight Macdonald calls a bastard form having it both ways, "exploiting the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of :fiction.,,8 The end product, written in poetic prose, dramatizes an intensely personal situation from Fal1aci's life fild...