Luisa Valenzuela is a post-’Boom’ Argentine novelist and short story writer. Born on November 26, 1938 in Buenos Aires, she is best known for her work written in response to the dictatorship of the 1970s in Argentina. Her writing is characterized by an experimental, avant-garde style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective.
Valenzuela’s mother Luisa Mercedes Levinson was a prominent Argentine writer. The Levinson home was then a gathering place for Argentina’s literary community — Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, among others, were frequent guests. Because of this influence, Valenzuela started writing at an early age, and published her first story, “Ese canto,” in 1958.
The same year, she married Theodore Marjak, a French merchant marine, and moved to Paris where she worked for Radio Télévision Française. There, she met members of both the nouveau roman literary movement and Tel Quel. In 1961 she moved back to Argentina, and started to work as a journalist for La Nación and Crisismagazine. In 1965 she got divorced, and they had a four year-old daughter then. During 1967 - 68 she traveled throughout Bolivia, Peru and Brazil working for La Nación.
Having been awarded a Fulbright grant to participate in the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa, Valenzuela left Argentina again in 1969. While in the program, she wrote the novel El Gato eficaz. In 1989, she finally settled down in Argentina, after spending a year in Mexico and a year in Barcelona.
Valenzuela’s art of fiction is best described in Paris Review interview no. 170 which was conducted by Sarah Lee and Ksenija Bilbija. The following quotes are from that interview, and they will offer you her writing techniques and tips:
Importance of intonations
The connection to his or her written language is essential for writing fiction. But Luisa Valenzuela is someone who always travels and resides in different countries, from which you cannot focus on one particular language, especially on your written language. The result is clear: she is absent of the innate connection to her mother tongue and her own environment. What are the views of Valenzuela on this:
“Many writers say that language is their real home. I am all for that notion….. (But) I, for one, don’t need my roots deep in the ground; I carry them with me — like the aerial roots of our local clavel del aire.
“Anyhow, you can never really return home. Buenos Aires has changed so much that it is no longer my city. It is a good place to clam-in and write, and the mother tongue is crucial. One thing I discovered in coming back is the importance of your own intonations as background noise. I left New York when I started dreaming in English, talking to myself in English, thinking in English. The Argentine language is a home I don’t want to lose.”
I write on a ‘bridge’
But how does one write when s/he does not reside in one place?
“I always have written on that bridge between two places. For me, it is a necessary position — the displacement and decentering of a single perspective. I often write about Buenos Aires when I am away from it. I know for sure that Clara (her novel) came to life because I was missing Buenos Aires so much. That novel is so Buenos Aires of the 1940s — the lowlifes, prostitutes, and pimps, the carnivals. Being away gives me a good perspective. Now I am elated writing about New York in Buenos Aires. It’s a way of being in two places at the same time, ubiquity being one of my big dreams in life.”
Excessive reality
Latin American literature is always unique because its reality surpasses realistic elements that we accept. But how does that happen?
“I always am quite disturbed when American reviewers call my fiction surrealist. I consider it realistic in excess. Latin American writers think of reality as having a wider span, that’s all — we explore the shadow side of it.”
However, the real reason for the excessive reality connects to the origin of language according to Valenzuela: “But the real difference has to do mostly with the origins of language.
Spanish grammar is different from English grammar. This means that we have a different approach not only to the world, but to the word. At times it is something very subtle, a more daring immersion into the unknown. Un día soprendente, to give a very specific example, doesn’t mean exactly the same as un soprendente día.
In English, you cannot even turn around a phrase or leave a dangling participle. Joyce needed to explode the English language to allow its occult meaning to emerge; Cortázar just plays around with Spanish words and grammar for the same purpose. Ours is a much more elastic grammar.
English is onomatopoeic, beautifully strict, clear cut. Spanish, on the other hand, is more baroque and allows for ambiguity and metaphor. Does it have to do with the speaker’s character; or is character, as we may surmise, a construction of language?”
You cannot make a writer
Valenzuela’s profession was teaching creative writing when she was in New York. But can one teach creative-writing?
“You cannot make a writer — it is an innate way of seeing the world, and a love of language, and a lifetime commitment. But the students in those classes already had a writer’s mind, so you could teach them to see what they didn’t see in their own work and move them beyond their own limitations—force them, push them inside the darkest corridors of their imagination, and also motivate them.”
Yet, she has never taken a creative-writing class.
“Never. The streets, journalism, and travel were my classes. I love to roam on my own in the bad neighborhoods of foreign cities. But who knows, a good writer’s workshop could become the equivalent of that, and it might even put you on the right path when you are blocked. Though, I’m too proud, too old, and too lazy to even consider such a thing.”
Journalism
Valenzuela is a lifelong journalist. Can journalism contribute to fiction writing? Her answer is as follows:
“Not necessarily. Both worlds run parallel for me, but never — as yet — converge. Journalism taught me to be very precise and brief, very attentive to language. At La Nación my boss, Ambrosio Vecino, was a very literary man, a real teacher.
He had been Cortázar’s best friend during their college years together. But journalism requires a horizontal gaze; it is absolutely factual. On the other hand, fiction requires a vertical gaze — delving deeper into the nonfacts, the unconscious, the realm of the imaginary. These are two very different ways of seeing the world.
“Fiction, for me at least, is the best way to say things. I can be much more clear minded if I allow my imagination to take the lead — never losing the reins, of course, but at full gallop. I also believe that, if you are fortunate, you can access the unconscious through fiction; in my case, elaborate ideas emerge in a very organized manner. Fiction for me is a way of “writing what you don’t know about what you know,” to quote Grace Paley.”
Writing schedule
Should writers have a working schedule?
“Each work finds its own time. For many years I wrote at night. Then I became scared of writing at night, probably on account of the ghosts that you call to mind when you are writing, mostly when dealing with the subject of torture and other dark political issues. I’ve returned to the night shift just recently, and am rediscovering the pleasure of total silence. But I still enjoy jumping out of bed and onto the computer — from dream to word, with no time to repent.”