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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Oriana Fallaci | | Journalist, interviewer and author | | | | "I sat at the typewriter for the first time and fell in love with the words that emerged like | | drops, one by one, and remained on the white sheet of paper ... every drop became something that if | | spoken would have flown away, but on the sheets as words, became solidified, whether they were good or | | bad." | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Oriana Fallaci lost her protracted battle with breast cancer on September 15, 2006. | | | | Journalist and filmmaker Giselle Fernandez writes... | | | | We suffer the sad loss of an icon today in the passing of Oriana Fallaci in her native Florence. | | This passionate and powerful voice of the 20th Century was forever bold and brazen in her dissection | | of politics, power and ego, and their devastating effects on democracies everywhere. She wrote with an | | integrity and force of character that defined her life's work up until the very last days. Fallaci was | | perhaps my greatest inspiration as a journalist. Her dynamic, dramatic and distinct point of view on | | the demise of democracies, especially in her latest works that evoked death threats against her, did | | nothing to silence her conviction or her writings. She died as she lived -- with passion, conviction, | | purpose and power. They don't make writers like her anymore. | | | | I most loved her book, "A Man," which she would never allow to be made into a Hollywood movie, as | | she feared her Man would be turned into a hero and would defy the very soul of the work in doing so. | | In her "Letter to a Child Never Born" or in "Inshallah" or most recently "The Pride and the Rage" and | | "The Force of Reason," she showed above all a love of the common man, of humanity in all its weakness | | and strengths, and never failed to point a finger and hold those guilty accountable for their greed, | | deceit or destruction. She understood that there was a love far greater than ones own personal need | | for love. There was a love on a much grander scale that put truth, justice and the future of mankind | | above all. This is from where she wrote -- a deep and soulful place that would not allow her to be | | bland or middle ground in any way. For this I loved her. | | | | She refused to let me interview her, document her life, and for me that is such a sad end to one | | of my greatest hopes. But she was probably right; I know her best from her writings. That voice cannot | | be silenced. I know she did not go gently into that good night. I imagine her fighting that dark door | | every second of the way. I also know there must have been a bold bright light of truth awaiting her on | | the other side and she was probably annoyed at the blinding. I can only hope so. | | | | Giselle Fernandez | | | | Fallaci's obituary in the British Times OnLine | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] | | 1993 "Today Show" interview with Tom Brokaw / Plus three retrospective videos (in Italian) | | Click thumbnails to load / Quicktime .mov format | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Biography Resource Center: | | Oriana Fallaci | | June 29, 1929 - September 15, 2006 | | | | Occupation: Writer | | Nationality: Italian | | Source: Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, (c) 1999. | | | | Table of Contents | | | | Sidelights | | Personal Information | | Writings | | Further Readings About the Author | | Biographical Paper by Jill M. Duquaine - May 1996 | | | | La rabbia e l'orgoglio (Rage and Pride) - Il Corriere della Sera (English translation) - October | | 2001 | | La Fallaci's Story - Il Corriere della Sera - Complied by Stefano Jesurum - October 2001 | | Unpublished Portrait of Oriana Fallaci - Panorama - Lucia Annunziata & Carlo Rosella - January 2002 | | | | New York Observer - The Rage of Oriana Fallaci - Interview - January 2003 | | Wall Street Journal - The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt - Editorial - March 13, 2003 | | Wall Street Journal - Prophet of Decline - Interview - June 23, 2005 | | Frontpage Magazine - Daniel Pipes' introduction at her final public appearance - November 28, 2005 | | Frontpage Magazine - Fallaci: Warrior in the Cause of Human Freedom - November 30, 2005 | | American Spectator - Oriana in Exile - July 18, 2005 | | | | Sidelights: | | | | Though she has written novels and memoirs, Italian author Oriana Fallaci remains best known as an | | uncompromising political interviewer, or, as Elizabeth Mehren puts it in the Los Angeles Times, "the | | journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no." Her subjects include Henry Kissinger, | | Willy Brandt, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the late Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, from whom she | | extracted such criticism of India's Indira Gandhi that a 1972 peace treaty between the two countries | | almost went unsigned. Already as famous as many of the figures she interviews, Fallaci is a | | freethinker passionately committed to her craft. "I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed | | in feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear," she writes in the preface toInterview with | | History. "On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in | | what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take | | a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice)." | | | | While Fallaci's morality has seldom been questioned, her interviewing techniques are highly | | controversial. According to New York Times Book Review contributor Francine du Plessix Gray, Fallaci | | combines "the psychological insight of a great novelist and the irreverence of a bratty quiz kid." | | Known for her abrasive interviewing tactics, Fallaci often goads her subjects into revelations. "Let's | | talk about war," she challenged Henry Kissinger in their 1972 interview. "You're not a pacifist, are | | you?" When a subject refuses to cooperate, he becomes "a bastard, a fascist, an idiot," notes Esquire | | contributor David Sanford. | | | | Fallaci denies her reputation as a brutal interrogator, insisting instead that she merely frames | | the questions other reporters lack the courage to ask. Where others seek objectivity, Fallaci prefers | | an approach that she calls "correct" and "honest." Each interview, "is a portrait of myself," she told | | Time contributor Jordan Bonfante. "They are a strange mixture of my ideas, my temperament, my | | patience, all of these driving the questions." | | | | Although Ted Morgan complains in the Washington Post that Fallaci "wants to be more than a | | brilliant interviewer, she wants to be an avenging angel," Fallaci defends her unique approach on the | | grounds that she is not simply a journalist but a historian as well. She told Bonfante: "A journalist | | lives history in the best of ways, that is in the moment that history takes place. He lives history, | | he touches history with his hands, looks at it with his eyes, he listens to it with his ears." To | | Jonathan Cott in a Rolling Stone interview, she explained: "I am the judge. I am the one who decides. | | Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven't I the right to paint you as I | | want?" | | | | Fallaci's commitment to self-expression began at an early age. She told CA that she remembers | | writing "short naive stories" at age nine. "Yet," she continues, "I really started writing at sixteen | | when I became a reporter in Florence. I got into journalism to become a writer." When asked what | | circumstances had been important to her career, Fallaci said, "first of all, the fact of belonging to | | a liberal and politically engaged family. Also, the fact of having lived--though as a child--the | | heroic days of the Resistance in Italy through a father who was a leader of it. Then, the fact of | | being a Florentine. That is, the result of a certain civilization and culture. However, I sometimes | | wonder if the most motivating factor has not been the fact of being born a woman and poor. When you | | are a woman, you have to fight more. Consequently, to see more and to think more and to be more | | creative. The same, when you were born poor. Survival is a great pusher." | | | | Fallaci told CA that the purpose behind her writing is "to tell a story with meaning. Certainly | | not money. I never wrote for money. I could never write for money--which means by order or for an | | engagement with a publisher." Instead, the motivating factor of each of her books is "a great emotion, | | both a psychological or political and [an] intellectual emotion. Think of Nothing, and So Be It, the | | book on Vietnam. For me, it is not even a book on Vietnam, it is a book on the war. (I am obsessed by | | the uselessness and the stupidity and the cruelty and the folly of the war.) Letter to a Child Never | | Born (which was not written for the issue of abortion as it has been said so often and so | | gratuitously) was born out of the loss of a child. A Man was written out of the death of my companion | | Alekos Panagoulis and the grief for such loss. However, one should notice that the leitmotif of all my | | books is the theme of death. These three books always speak of death or refer to death, my hate for | | death, my fight against death... . Freedom is only one of the many other elements. What really pushes | | me to write is my obsession with death." | | | | Her work habits are spartan. "I start working early in the morning (eight or eight-thirty a.m.) | | and go on until six p.m. or seven p.m. without interruption," she told CA. "That is, without eating | | and without resting. I smoke more than usual, which means, around fifty cigarettes a day. I sleep | | badly in the night. I don't see anybody. I don't answer the telephone. I don't go anywhere. I ignore | | the Sundays, the holidays, the Christmases, the New Year's Eves. I get hysterical, in other words, and | | unhappy and unsatisfied and guilty if I don't produce much. By the way, I am a very slow writer. And I | | rewrite obsessively. So I get ill and ugly, and lose weight and get wrinkles." | | | | Fallaci finds the current literary scene, "rich, even too rich. How much substance under such | | richness, who knows? Only time can give such measurement. A writer needs time to be tested in his/her | | value. Having success in life means nothing. Success in life has too much to do with fashion, | | publicity, and so on. A writer stays a writer after his death or many years after his/her books were | | published. Also, a writer is a writer when his work goes beyond the limits and frontiers of the | | language he/she writes in. Because a writer must be universal, timeless, and spaceless." | | | | In Letter to a Child Never Born Fallaci chronicles the fictional dialogue between the narrator and | | the baby the woman carries inside herself. "The plot proceeds," according to Isa Kapp in the | | Washington Post Book World, "as a monologue-debate on procreation and the right of a woman who has | | conceived a child to decide whether she should allow it to live." Based on Fallaci's own three-month | | pregnancy, the novel "has moments of intense emotional power," allows Francine du Plessix Gray in the | | New York Times Book Review. But du Plessix Gray goes on to say that "it too often lapses into a bathos | | that is as disconcerting as it is unexpected." Yet du Plessix Gray concludes that Letter to a Child | | Never Born "is a poignant testament" and finds that "in her best moments, Fallaci, as always, strips | | truth down to its naked bone." In her essay on Fallaci for Feminist Writers, Maria Elena Raymond | | explains that Letter to a Child Never Born is "considered to be one of the finest feminist writings | | about pregnancy, abortion, and emotional torture." | | | | In A Man, Fallaci attempts to immortalize the martyred poet and Greek resistance leader Alekos | | Panagoulis, the great love of her life. Though she calls the book a novel, A Man recounts the real | | story of Panagoulis's fight for Greece's freedom--a fight he continued until his death. In 1967, | | Panagoulis attempted to assassinate the fascist Greek dictator Georgios Papadopoulos by planting a | | series of bombs along the roads he traveled each day. The plan failed, and Panagoulis was captured and | | imprisoned almost immediately. During the next five years, the revolutionary was subjected to physical | | abuse as well as psychological torture in an effort to break his spirit and will. Despite the inhuman | | treatment, Panagoulis refused to succumb, and his repeated escape attempts and uncompromising | | rebelliousness finally led him to be isolated in a specially constructed cell, not much larger than a | | double bed, with no windows and only three paces' worth of standing room. He remained there until he | | was freed under a general amnesty in 1973. Two days after his release, Panagoulis was interviewed by | | Fallaci, and, firmly convinced that their meeting was an act of fate, the two became lovers within a | | few weeks. | | | | For the next three years, Fallaci and Panagoulis shared a tempestuous relationship. According to | | Marcia Seligson in the Los Angeles Times, "he told her: `I don't want a woman to be happy with. The | | world is full of women you can be happy with... . And I want a companion. A companion who will be my | | comrade, friend, accomplice, brother. I'm a man in battle. I always will be.' She became all those | | things, surrendering her own full and independent life to follow this difficult, maddening, towering | | man. She lived an emotional pendulum of anguish/bliss; there was no serenity, no future, only thrills | | and chills." Panagoulis was killed by political enemies in an ambush made to look like an auto | | accident in 1976. Within months of his death, Fallaci began work on the book she would dedicate to | | him, and, in 1979, published what she considers her most important work,A Man. | | | | Critical reaction to the book runs the gamut from praise to disdain. Supporters, such as Seligson, | | hail A Man as "a work of passion, courage, candor and exquisite skill." Saturday Review contributor | | Julie Stone Peters describes it as "a majestic and soul-stirring narration," maintaining that Fallaci | | "has learned from her interviews how to control the novel." Peter Brunette believes that her ideas | | transcend "the `merely' political: Fallaci places her subject in the most deeply Greek context of all, | | that of ancient tragedy, as she marvelously adduces one resonant mythic parallel after another on the | | way to her lover's final submission to his tragic fate," he writes in the New Republic. | | | | Others eschew her approach. "Throughout this catalogue of misery, Fallaci never makes the right | | choice," notes a Time reviewer. "When the account needs historical analysis, she offers tantrums; when | | suffering cries out for a tragic spirit, she substitutes bathos." Vivian Gomick compares it to "an old | | fashioned dish of hearty melodrama being offered as though it were the cuisine of tragedy." | | | | In the novel Inshallah, Fallaci writes a fictional account of Italian troops stationed in Lebanon | | in 1983. After both the American and French peacekeeping forces are the targets of suicidal truck | | bombers, the Italian forces ready themselves for what they fear is the inevitable third truck bomb. | | "Rarely," writes Christopher Dickey in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "has there been a setting so | | ready-made for classic tragedy." Unfortunately, Dickey believes that Fallaci "has always had trouble | | hearing any voice but her own" and that Inshallah "might have been a monument to her talents and her | | passion. Instead it remains as a tribute mainly to her ego." But Thomas Keneally finds much of value | | inInshallah. "Fallaci," Keneally finds in the New York Times Book Review, "writes with a muscular | | eloquence when giving us the squalor, yearning and shadowboxing of the soldiers' existence." Although | | he sees Fallaci's asides to be the weakest part of her narrative, Keneally concludes that Fallaci "is | | profligate with plot and detail, and her openhandedness and the inherent tensions of her large story | | should insure that most readers will overlook her equally spacious faults." | | | | Critical opinions matter little to Fallaci, who doesn't keep reviews of her books and told CA, "I | | do not respect reviewers. They are almost always failed writers, consequently envious and jealous of | | those who write. I find their profession kind of despicable, because it is so unfair and stupid to | | snap judgments in a little article after the work of years. I think that the real reviewers are the | | readers. I care very much for the letters of my readers. I receive them from all over the world, and | | they always say much more intelligent things than those written by the `reviewers.' | | | | "There are a couple of incisive reviews from my readers that I could quote. One came from a poor | | worker, a forty-year-old carpenter from Florence, after reading Letter To a Child Never Born. It said: | | `I read your book three times. You know why? Because it said the same things I always thought about | | life. Though I did not know that I was thinking them.' Another one came from a fifty-year-old | | concierge of Milan: `Your books have taught us courage.' Another one from a student of Shanghai: `I | | learnt from you the meaning of the word freedom.'" | | | | Through her books, Fallaci says she hopes "to die a little less when I die. To leave the children | | I did not have... . To make people think a little more, outside the dogmas that this society has | | nourished us with through centuries. To give stories and ideas that help people to see better, to | | think better, to know a little more. Then what? Writing is my way of expression. Therefore, a need." | | | | Her advice to aspiring writers is "not to be in a hurry to publish. And to rewrite, to rewrite, to | | rewrite." Though she has respect for the work of many contemporary writers, Fallaci admits "all my | | direct encounters with the contemporary writers I admire or still admire professionally, ended in | | bitterness. I mean, I found out that as persons they were not as admirable and respectable as they | | were as writers. And I am incapable of dividing the judgment between the writer and the private | | person." | | | | Most of Fallaci's books have been translated from Italian into numerous other languages, including | | English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Dutch, Croatian, and Greek. | | | | Personal Information: | | | | * Family: Born June 29, 1930, in Florence, Italy; daughter of Edoardo (a cabinet maker and | | politician) and Tosca (Cantini) Fallaci; companion of Alexandros Panagoulis (a political activist; | | died May 1, 1976). | | * Education: Attended University of Florence. | | * Politics: Liberal. | | * Religion: "None." | | * Residence: Florence and New York. | | * Awards: Has twice received St. Vincent Prize for journalism; Bancarella Prize, 1971 for Nothing, | | and So Be It; Viareggio Prize, 1979, for Un uomo: Romanzo; Prix Antibes, 1993, for Insciallah; | | D.Litt., Columbia College (Chicago). | | * Assignments: Reporter, Il mattino dell'Italia centrale (newspaper), beginning 1946; reporter, | | Epoca (magazine), 1951; special correspondent, Europeo (magazine), since 1950s. | | Has interviewed: internationally known figures, including Nguyen Cao Ky, Yasir Arafat, the Shah of | | Iran, Henry Kissinger, Walter Cronkite, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Nguyen Van Thieu, Zulfikar Ali | | Bhutto, Willy Brandt, the Aytollah Khomeini, and Mu'ammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi. Lecturer: at | | universities including University of Chicago, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Yale | | University. | | | | Writings by the Author: | | | | * I sette peccati di Hollywood (title means "The Seven Sins of Hollywood"), preface by Orson Welles, | | Longanesi (Milan), 1958. | | * Il sesso inutile: Viaggio intorno all donna, Rizzoli (Milan), 1961, translation by Pamela | | Swinglehurst published as The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman, Horizon Press (New York City), | | 1964. | | * Penelope alla guerra (novel), Rizzoli, 1962, translation by Swinglehurst published as Penelope at | | War, M. Joseph (London), 1966. | | * Gli antipatici, Rizzoli, 1963, translation by Swinglehurst published in England as Limelighters, | | M. Joseph, 1967, published as The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews , Regnery | | (Chicago),1968. | | * Se il sole muore, Rizzoli, 1965, translation by Swinglehurst published as If the Sun Dies, | | Atheneum (New York City), 1966. | | * Niente a cosi sia, Rizzoli, 1969, translation by Isabel Quigly published as Nothing, and So Be It, | | Doubleday (New York City), 1972 (published in England as Nothing and Amen, M. Joseph, 1972). | | * Quel giorno sulla Luna, Rizzoli, 1970. | | * Intervista con la Storia, Rizzoli, 1974, translation by John Shepley published as Interview with | | History, Liveright, 1976. | | * Lettera a un bambino mai nato, Rizzoli, 1975, translation by Shepley published as Letter to a | | Child Never Born, Simon & Schuster (New York City), 1976. | | * Un uomo: Romanzo (novel), Rizzoli, 1979, translation by William Weaver published as A Man, Simon & | | Schuster, 1980. | | * Insciallah, Rizzoli 1992, translated by James Marcus, published as Inshallah, Doubleday, 1992. | | * Rage and Pride, published as La rabbia e l'orgoglio, Rizzoli, 2001. | | * The Force of Reason, published as La forza della ragione, Rizzoli, Nov 2005. | | * (Not available in English) published as Se Entrevista a Si Misma: El Apocalipsis, Rizzoli, Nov | | 2005. | | | | Contributor of articles to periodicals, including New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Life, La | | Nouvelle Observateur, Washington Post, Look, Der Stern, and Corriere della Sera. | | | | Further Readings about the Author: | | | | Books | | | | * Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 11, Gale (Detroit), 1979. | | * Feminist Writers, St. James Press (Detroit), 1996. | | * Arico, Santo L. Oriana Fallaci: the Woman and the Myth, Southern Illinois University Press | | (Carbondale), 1998. | | * Gatt-Rutter, John, Oriana Fallaci: The Rhetoric of Freedom, Berg (Washington, DC), 1996. | | * Pattavina, Giovanni, Alekos Panagulis, il rivoluzionario don Chisciotte di Oriana Fallaci: saggio | | politico-letterario, Edizioni italiane di letteratura e scienze (Rome), 1984. | | | | Periodicals | | | | * American Spectator, July 18, 2005. | | * Best Sellers, May, 1977. | | * Chicago Tribune Book World, November 30, 1980. | | * Esquire, November, 1968; June, 1975. | | * Harper's, November, 1980. | | * Il Corriere della Sera, September 29, 2001. | | * Il Corriere della Sera, October 11, 2001. | | * Life, February 21, 1969. | | * London Review of Books, February 11, 1993, p. 19. | | * Los Angeles Times, November, 1980; December 2, 1980. | | * Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 10, 1993, p. 1. | | * Maclean's, February 8, 1993, p. 55. | | * New Leader, March 14, 1977. | | * New Republic, November 22, 1980. | | * New York, May 22, 1978. | | * New Yorker, February 21, 1977. | | * New York Observer, January 2003 | | * New York Times, January 25, 1973; November 3, 1980. | | * New York Times Book Review, February 5, 1967; February 13, 1977; November 23, 1980; December 27, | | 1992, p. 8. | | * New York Observer, January 2003. | | * Panorama, January 4, 2001. | | * Panorama, January 4, 2002. | | * People, March 14, 1977. | | * Publishers Weekly, November 7, 1980; October 5, 1992, p. 54. | | * Rolling Stone, June 17, 1976. | | * Saturday Review, March 18, 1972; November, 1980; January 8, 1981. | | * Time, October 20; January 19, 1981. | | * Times Literary Supplement, August 11, 1972; May 22, 1981; September 28, 1990, p. 1039; December | | 18, 1992, p. 18. | | * Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2003 editorial. | | * Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2005. | | * Washington Post, February 23, 1972; March 13, 1972; May 18, 1976. | | * Washington Post Book World, February 13, 1977, pp. G7, G10; November 30, 1980; December 13, 1992, | | p. 5. | | * World Literature Today, summer, 1991, p. 468. | | | | (c) 1999 The Gale Group: Biography Resource Center | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | ORIANA FALLACI: WORDS, POWER, AND STYLE | | | | by Jill M. Duquaine | | in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Social Change in Italy 875-333 | | Dr. A. Galt | | University of Wisconsin - Green Bay | | May 6, 1996 | | | | World War I proved disastrous for the nation of Italy. After first remaining neutral, Italy joined | | the United States, Great Britain, France, and other allied forces after it was promised land on the | | eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. But however optimistic Italy may have been upon entering the war, | | it proved to have severe negative consequences for the nation (Ginsborg, 1990, p. 10). The casualties | | numbered over 600,000 and by the end of the war, Italy was fighting to maintain its own borders. | | Instead of gaining the vast amount of land which had been promised, Italy added only Trentino | | Alto-Adige and Trieste to its territory. Following the war, Italy experienced significant decline. | | There was widespread economic unrest and disorganization, labor agitation, and much disappointment | | over the failure to gain the land which had been promised. There was high unemployment, high | | inflation, and the value of the Lire declined drastically, making savings, pensions, and wages worth | | very little (Ginsborg, 1990, p. 70). | | | | In light of these developments, World War I was somewhat of a radicalizing experience because it | | raised the political consciousness of the working class who realized that the war had aided only the | | wealthy and business classes. As a result, new political organizations were formed. Among these was | | Fasci di Combatimento (Fascists of Combat), began in 1919 by Benito Mussolini and other socialists. | | Known as the "Black Shirts" because of their attire, the Fascists stressed ideas of war, movement, | | action, machines and modernity. In order to achieve their goals, they relied on terrorist activities. | | They glorified war and preached extreme Italian Nationalism. According to the Fascist ideology, class | | conflict should be controlled through government control of labor, economics, and business (Ginsborg, | | 1990, p. 19). In this way, Fascism appealed to the interests of business owners who wanted to control | | labor disputes. However, Fascists also gained the support of laborers by making small concession to | | them. Peasants, dissatisfied with Socialism, also supported the rising organization (Ginsborg, 1990, | | p. 26). In 1921, Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party whose ideology included a strong central | | leadership based on conservative policies. Because it served the interests of many different interest | | groups within Italian society, the National Fascist Party grew rapidly. By 1925, Mussolini was | | undoubtedly the most powerful man in Italy. And even though by the beginning of the 1930's Fascism was | | beginning to fall out of favor with many Italians, Mussolini remained in power throughout the 1930's | | and in 1940, he joined Hitler in world War II. | | | | It was in the midst of Mussolini's ascension to power that Oriana Fallaci was born in Florence, | | Italy on June 29, 1930 (Arico, 1986, p. 587). Fallaci's writing, both as a journalist and a novelist, | | indicate that the social and political state of Italy both before her birth and during her youth had a | | significant impact on her life. It is from these circumstances that she emerges as what many consider | | to be "the greatest political interviewer of modern times." | | | | Another major influence in Fallaci's life was her father, a liberal who had opposed Mussolini's | | rise to power and continued his opposition during the entire Fascist period. By the time Oriana | | reached the age of 10, Italy was involved in World War II. Joining her father in the underground | | resistance movement, she became a member of the Corps of Volunteers for Freedom to fight the Nazi's | | (Levy, 1975, p. 36). When Florence was occupied by Nazi troops during the war, Fallaci's father was | | captured, jailed and tortured before he was finally released alive. At the age of 14, Oriana received | | an honorable discharge from the Italian army (Arico, 1986, p. 587). The war ended in 1945, when Oriana | | was 15. Although experiencing these events at such an early age was difficult, Italian Fascism and | | World War II, as well as her father's liberal resistance, were to be major influences on Fallaci | | throughout her life. | | | | At the age of 16, Fallaci "discovered the power of words, and decided to become a writer" (Levy, | | 1975, p. 37). As she describes it: "I sat at the typewriter for the first time and fell in love with | | the words that emerged like drops, one by one, and remained on the white sheet of paper ... every drop | | became something that if spoken would have flown away, but on the sheets as words, became solidified, | | whether they were good or bad" (Levy, 1975, p. 37). She began her career as a journalist with a crime | | column in an Italian daily paper, but her abilities quickly won her recognition and worldwide | | assignments to interview political figures as well as international events (Levy, 1975, p. 39). She | | currently works for the Italian magazine, Europeo, but also contributes to other magazines in both | | Europe and South America (Arico, 1986, p. 587). Her love of words and a full understanding of their | | power is evident to anyone who reads Fallaci's work. Her writing is insightful, complex and full of | | vivid description. | | | | It is Fallaci's focus on power relationships as well as her interviewing and writing style which | | place her far ahead of others in the field. Fallaci's focus on power and the use and abuse of power is | | evident in her interviews with political officials throughout the world. She has interviewed such | | figures as former CIA Director William Colby, Pakistani Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, and Iran's | | Ayatollah Khomeini, concentrating on their roles as dominant figures in the international political | | system. | | | | One of her most famous political interviews, at least in the minds of Americans, was with former | | U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Prior to Fallaci's interview, Kissinger had revealed little | | to the press about his life and personality (Levy, 1975, p. 38). However, during her questioning, | | Fallaci kept after the Secretary of State to explain the star-like status he enjoyed as a diplomat. | | Initially he dodged the question, but after relentless prodding by Fallaci, Kissinger gave in. He | | said, "Sometimes I see myself as a cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, a wild west | | tale if you like" (Fallaci, 1976, p. 22). By getting Kissinger to reveal this romantic image, Fallaci | | gave the entire world insight into how this world leader saw himself. As biographer Elizabeth Levy | | points out, "... Kissinger's actions affect our world. How he treats other world leaders is somewhat | | dependent on how he thinks of himself" (1975, p. 39). By likening himself to a cowboy figure on a | | horse, Kissinger revealed that he saw himself as a heroic, imposing leader who controlled much of the | | direction of U.S. politics and, therefore, international politics as well. As a result of this | | interview, Kissinger received criticism for months afterward. Even years later, Kissinger still | | referred to the Fallaci interview as "the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of | | the press" (Peer, 1980, p. 90). It is interesting to note, however, that Fallaci considers her | | interview with Kissinger one of the worst she's ever had (Bonfante, 1975, p. 69). | | | | Fallaci's focus on power relationships is not limited to her interviews with politicians. Some of | | her interviews with celebrities include Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner, Italian film director Frederico | | Fellini, and actor Sean Connery. In addition to interviewing celebrities, Fallaci has also done work | | with people who may not be obvious choices for discussing power relationships. As her November, 1964 | | interview with entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. illustrates, Fallaci is also concerned with how people | | confront oppressive power in their lives. From a 1996 perspective, Sammy Davis, Jr. might not seem an | | obvious choice to discuss confronting power. After all, he is a singer, a dancer, an actor/entertainer | | who starred on Broadway. However, when Fallaci interviewed him in 1964, her logic was clear-cut. She | | sums up her reasons in the very first question: "On my way to your house, Mr. Davis, I had a very | | disturbing thought. You have absolutely everything to make you hated by the multitudes of mean-minded | | and stupid people: you're a Negro, a Jew, married to a beautiful blond ... truly there's no other | | internationally famous person who contrives to combine so many 'sins' into one." And she concluded: | | "Goodness, this man must positively enjoy doing battle with the world, irritating people, provoking | | them, defying them..." (Fallaci, 1968, p. 227). | | | | As Fallaci so expertly points out, Davis was confronting oppressive power every day. Davis was a | | Jew in a time when many in the world expressed anti-Semitism. He was a black man during a period when | | issues of race where at the forefront of the American political scene and when parts of the United | | States, particularly in the south, were openly racist. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing | | with organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee using peaceful protest as a | | way to combat racism. Add to these the fact that Davis was a homely man with a broken nose and a glass | | eye yet married to a beautiful, blond, white woman, Mai Britt, who was an actress but gave it up to | | marry Davis and have his children. Even for liberals who might have accepted racial equality in | | theory, the issues surrounding interracial marriage and bi-racial children were far from accepted in | | almost any region of the U.S. during that time. Alone, any of these aspects would have been | | overwhelming. However, Davis was black, a Jew, and married to a white woman. It is upon this unique | | confrontation and defiance of dominant perceptions of right and wrong that Fallaci so artfully | | constructs the interview. Years later, in her introduction of the Davis interview for her book, The | | Egotists, Fallaci refers to the love story of Sammy Davis, Jr. and Mai Britt as "a fairy tale, the | | tale of the princess and the toad" (1968, p. 226). And yet she makes it clear to the reader that this | | man deserves the utmost respect for challenging much of what he feels is unjust in the society in | | which he lives. As Fallaci says, "As the minutes, the hours, passed, he grew steadily less ugly, until | | he almost wasn't ugly, and then he wasn't ugly at all, and then he was almost beautiful, and then | | beautiful..." (1968, p. 226). Only a person with Fallaci's insight could so perfectly convey that | | beauty is not what a person looks like, but what he or she stands and fights for. | | | | A final area which must be given attention is Fallaci's writing style. As one researcher describes | | it, "What makes her approach different is the degree of commitment and passion that she brings to | | journalism" (Arico, 1986, p. 587). It is this commitment and passion which makes her style so unique. | | Rather than focus only on the questions and answers of an interview, Fallaci tells the reader | | everything she is thinking, seeing, hearing and feeling. In other words, she gives the reader the | | experience of the interview. A clear example of this is seen in Fallaci's description of her interview | | with Yasser Arafat. She records everything about Arafat's appearance, to the point that an image forms | | in the readers mind. She talks of his "thick, Arab mustache and his short height which, combined with | | small hands and feet, fat legs, a massive trunk, huge hips, and a swollen belly, made him appear | | rather odd" (Fallaci, 1976, p. 123). In addition, Fallaci describes his head and face in great detail, | | noting "...he has almost no cheeks or forehead, everything is summed up in a large mouth with red and | | fleshy lips, an aggressive nose, and two eyes that hypnotize you" (Fallaci, 1976, p. 124). It might be | | argued that these details have little to do with a man who is known worldwide for his actions in the | | Middle East. However, by including this detailed description, Fallaci gives the reader the feeling of | | actually being there with her as she conducts the interview. In this way, she brings the reader closer | | to Arafat and makes them care about how his actions affect the world. | | | | This unique style is also evidenced in Fallaci's interviews and research concerning the American | | Space Program. Beginning in 1965, she did research and interviews with the intent of addressing what | | she considered the ultimate question concerning this program: "Why should anyone want to know about | | astronauts, space, and the moon?" (Levy, 1975, p. 41). The result of her query was her book, If the | | Sun Dies, arranged as a long letter to her father. Throughout the book, Fallaci invests personal | | feelings and sensations in the writing. For example, when she goes to Los Angeles to interview science | | fiction writer Ray Bradbury, Fallaci gives the reader her personal reaction to L.A. She writes: | | "Nothing is moving except the cars; nothing grows except plastic. I take a walk and I feel I am the | | only one walking is Los Angeles. I trip and fall on the grass, only to discover it really is plastic. | | There is no one to help me up, only cars, and cars don't have arms to reach out to me... I had reached | | Los Angeles, the first stage of my journey into the future and into myself" (Levy, 1975, p. 40). By | | describing L.A. from her personal perspective, she draws the reader in which allows a deeper | | understanding of the rest of the book. | | | | While conducting her research on the U.S. Space Program, Fallaci also interviews scientist Werner | | Von Braun. Von Braun is a former Nazi soldier who worked as a scientist for Hitler's government. He | | was responsible for the invention of the V-2 rockets which were used to bomb London during World War | | II, resulting in the deaths of over 3,000 and wounding over 68,000. Toward the end of the war, when he | | and fellow scientists were certain defeat for Germany was near, they decided to leave their legacy of | | the bombs, which could also be used for space travel, to the Americans (Levy, 1975, p. 42). Because of | | her background as a member of the resistance movement which fought the Nazi's during the war, as well | | as her feelings about the Nazi's who arrested, tortured, and jailed her father, Fallaci was bound to | | have a strong reaction to Von Braun. She admits this in her recount of the interview. Yet the | | transcripts show that her questions remained focused on Von Braun's importance to the U.S. Space | | Program and despite her strong anti-Nazi feelings, she does describe Von Braun fairly. She portrays | | him as a man who possesses positive qualities despite his background (Levy, 1975, p. 43). However, as | | she writes to her father about Von Braun, Fallaci again exhibits her unique style by investing some of | | her personal feelings into the retelling of the interview. As Levy writes: "But Fallaci tells the | | reader about the internal dialogue that was going on while she was interviewing Von Braun. She kept | | smelling lemon on Von Braun's breath, and the memory of the lemon scent was disturbing. She can't | | remember where she smelled that lemon scent before" (1975, p. 44). Few journalists use the technique | | of placing personal feelings in their writing, and fewer still do so to the extent of discussing what | | they smell during an interview. But Fallaci does and this technique is effective because it draws the | | reader into both the interview and the problem which she is struggling with: Where has she smelled | | that lemon scent before? Finally she remembers. She says, "Remember the German soldiers, all washed | | with disinfectant soap that smelled like lemon. We all loathed that scent of lemon" (Levy, 1975, p. | | 46). By investing so much of her feelings and her personal history into the telling of this interview, | | Fallaci allows the reader to experience some of what she has gone through. In this way, the reader | | gains a deeper understanding of and appreciation for not only the origins of the U.S. Space Program, | | but also of Fallaci. | | | | In addition to being a world-renowned journalist, Fallaci has also written several works of | | fiction. As in her journalism, Fallaci's novels address issues of power. However, they seem to focus | | more on dealing with and resisting power, than on those who possess power and use it in an oppressive | | manner. Instead, she writes from the perspective of the oppressed. In Letter to a Child Never Born, | | for example, Fallaci writes from the perspective of a single woman who finds herself pregnant as a | | result of a casual affair. The protagonist does not love the man, nor does she wish to marry him for | | the sake of the child. He encourages her to abort, even though abortion is illegal at that time, and | | tells her how stigmatized she will be as a single mother. By writing down the thoughts and feelings of | | a single woman who is faced with such difficult choices, Fallaci exposes the fact that the "choices" | | which are available for pregnant, single women are not adequate. Abortion, giving the child up for | | adoption, marrying the father in an attempt to maintain propriety, or choosing to raise the child as a | | single parent, all carry lifelong consequences and stigmatization. It is not, from Fallaci's | | perspective, a matter of choosing one over the others. It is merely choosing the one you can best live | | with. Fallaci's other works of fiction also reflect her fascination with power. Her novel, A Man, | | although fiction, is based heavily on Fallaci's dead lover Alexandros Panagoulis and his confrontation | | of power as a leader of the Greek resistance. As Fallaci herself describes it, "It is a book about the | | hero who fights alone for freedom and for truth, never giving up, and so he dies, killed by all..." | | (Fallaci, 1980, p. iv). Inshallah, Fallaci's 1992 novel, concerns itself with the civil war in | | Lebanon. As in her other works of fiction, she addresses groups and individuals who work to bring an | | end to their oppression. | | | | Fallaci began her life in a very difficult situation. As a result of growing up in Fascist Italy | | during Mussolini's dictatorship, she developed an interest in power and how power is abused. However, | | because of her father and her activities in the resistance movement, she also gained the sense that | | abuses of power can be challenged and resisted and even overcome. It is these factors which have so | | heavily influenced Fallaci's writing and which, along with her unique interviewing and writing style, | | have established her as what many refer to as the greatest political interviewer of modern times. | | | | BIBLIOGRAPHY | | | | Arico, Santo | | 1986 Breaking the Ice. An In-Depth Look at Oriana Fallaci's Interview Techniques. Journalism | | Quarterly, Autumn 1986: 587-93. | | Bonfante, Jordan | | 1975 An Interview as a Love Story. Time 20 October: 69-73. | | Fallaci, Oriana | | * The Useless Sex | | * Penelope at War | | 1963 The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. | | * If the Sun Dies | | * Nothing and So Be It | | 1976 Interview with History. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. | | 1976 Letter to a Child Never Born New York: Simon and Schuster. | | 1980 A Man New York: Simon and Schuster. | | 1992 Inshallah. New York: Doubleday. | | Franks, Lucinda | | Behind the Fallaci Image. Saturday Review Jan 1981: 18-22. | | Gilbert, Mark | | 1995 The Italian Revolution: the End of Politics Italian Style? San Francisco: Westview Press. | | Ginsborg, Paul | | A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943-1988. London: Penguin Books. | | Griffith, Thomas | | 1981 Interviews: Soft or Savage? Time 30 March: 47. | | Levy, Elizabeth | | By-Lines: Profiles in Investigative Journalism New York: Four Winds Press. | | Peer, Elizabeth | | The Fallaci Papers. Newsweek 1 Dec: 90. | | Raffaelli, Pier | | Photograph | | | | * Other books by Oriana Fallaci not used in this paper | | | | (c) 1996 Jill M. Duquaine | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Most recent revision Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | | (c) 2008 wa3key | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ .