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Name /T4984/T4984_APP 06/18/04 06:51AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 147 # 1 A P P E N D I X I 147 La Edad del Tiempo: An Interview with Carlos Fuentes, Los Angeles, California, April 1994 W I L L I A M S : The first notice I saw of ‘‘La Edad del Tiempo’’ was the plan in the Spanish edition of Christopher Unborn, which is when you announced twelve of the fourteen cycles that are presented in the Spanish edition of The Orange Tree. Was this the first announcement , in Christopher Unborn? F U E N T E S : I believe so, because I believe that I wrote the project for the first time at Dartmouth College in 1981. I was writing Christopher Unborn, and then I conceived of all the novels in a more or less organic and articulated fashion. W I L L I A M S : Do you remember the date, by chance, that you conceived of the idea for ‘‘La Edad del Tiempo’’? F U E N T E S : In January of 1981. W I L L I A M S : So you began to think of your cycle a while ago. F U E N T E S : Fourteen years, right? And perhaps the books go through a metamorphosis many times, changing their positions like a constellation of mobile stars, changing places. W I L L I A M S : Like the characters of your novels, who are in a constant process of transformation. It is not very common that a novelist has such an overall vision of his complete work. F U E N T E S : Very Balzacian, right? I’ve been reading Balzac since I was young. He has always been a teacher of mine, a teacher of good habits, and, at times, of bad habits. I also read other authors with complete novelistic cycles: Roger Martin Du Gard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anthony Powell, even Faulkner. There’s a tradition. The circumstances at Dartmouth, I believe, were that I was writing in a cubicle in Baker Library, and I spent a desolate winter there, which Orozco called a ‘‘white hell.’’ Nevertheless, I found it a very stimu- Name /T4984/T4984_APP 06/18/04 06:51AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 148 # 2 lating setting with good friends, of course, but a place which is so isolated, Raymond, that it had to generate a cultural life of its own. In contrast, Princeton did not have its own cultural life because New York and Philadelphia are nearby. Hanover is so far away that they had to construct a cultural center, the Hopkins Center, with good films, theater, and fine chamber music. I was writing Christopher Unborn in a very exciting world, and the novel itself stimulated me tremendously . Perhaps because it is a novel based in the future, a prophetic novel, it permitted me, paradoxically, to look back and to try to understand my work in its entirety. Moreover, I was teaching a course on time in the novel and the novel of time. This also has something to do with my impression that there is certainly no novel without time, while there certainly have been times without novels. Many times conspire in the novel: the time in which it was written, the time of the writer, the time in which it could be written, the time it takes the reader to read it and the times that are created within the novel, the writing time, the time to which the novel refers and the historical time of the novel, the fact that while the novel occurs in the present it will transform into an historical time, as in Orwell’s 1984 that has already gone by. So, all of these permutations of time are essential to the novel. There can be time without novels, as in ancient Greece and Rome, right? But there can be no novel without time. It is impossible to write a novel without the time factor at the core of the work. W I L L I A M S : Before talking about five or six of these cycles, and the idea of ‘‘La Edad del Tiempo,’’ why did you choose this title? F U E N T E S : Look, it is a paradoxical title because, on the one hand, I am thinking about time as an element which is essential to our era. The reflection on time as a constant, fundamental fact of...

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