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All rise for Scott Turow |
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| 09/12/2007 |
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After Friday’s discussion with Gherardo Colombo, the American writer, spurred on by questions from Irene Bignardi and Andrea Purgatori, spoke to audiences about his artistic experiences.
Tolstoy vs. Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound said that the artist represents the avant-garde. That he should take it upon himself to carry culture forward, to propose new ways of thinking, without worrying about being universal. I was always suspicious of this attitude, especially after I graduated from college.
When I became a prosecutor, I took on the role of narrator for juries. A lawyer’s task is similar to a writer’s: to listen to numerous voices, those of witnesses for the former, and of characters for the latter; to assemble everything into something coherent and universal, for the jury in the first case, for readers in the second. On the other hand, a lawyer who thinks it isn’t important to address everyone is destined to lose the case.
As a prosecutor I never found it difficult to draw the jury in, to explain in a simple way how the crime was committed, how evil comes to be. And the issues that come to light in a courtroom resemble those a writer comes up against. Which is why I don’t agree with Pound, who claimed that high art is for the few. Instead, I side with Tolstoy, who supported the universality of the work.
Saul Bellow
It’s hard for me to speak about my relationship with Bellow. I read his books like others read the Gospel. There are echoes of his literature in my writing, for example the use of idioms. He was my idol, perhaps because we have some important things in common: like me, he was from Chicago and Jewish.
Nevertheless, despite his importance to me, I never met him. We exchanged a few letters and telephone calls for an interview that he ultimately didn’t agree to, and nothing more. Actually, I never wanted to meet him and only after his death did I understand why. Bellow went to school with my father and I didn’t want our knowing each other to depend on that. My relationship with my father was rather difficult. He was a man who carried a lot of anger in him, partly because of the untimely death of his mother. And Bellow was similar to my father in certain ways.
The public
My relationship with the public is imaginary. It’s a mutual embrace. For many years I wrote on commuter trains and at night in my basement. I wrote a lot and editors rejected my work. But every artist continues to create because he or she trusts that the public is waiting for their work.
My timeline is different from that of my readers. From email exchanges I realize that what’s important for the public may no longer be important for me, because in the meantime I’ve changed, I’ve developed other ideas.
Two eccentric books: Ordinary Heroes and The Laws of Our Fathers
I see myself as a novelist. Sometimes I write classic noir novels, other times I take different routes. It depends on how I feel. I have to add that readers identified more intensely precisely with those books that were considered to be eccentric or alien to my work. Furthermore, Ordinary Heroes and The Laws of Our Fathers are two novels connected to one another because they’re both about eras – WWII and 1968 – that very much conditioned my generation.
Ordinary Heroes is an attempt to understand and accept the parent that I ultimately always searched for. The events in the book are experiences I borrowed from my father. My vision of the world inevitably comes from things passed down from parents, which is why I believe that WWII is a central event for my generation. It is undeniable that those who fought in that war were always reluctant to speak about it. Nevertheless, their silence contained a powerful message: the rhetoric of war conceals the profound reality of a senseless massacre that can in no way be redeemed through celebrations and stories. I therefore don’t think it’s a coincidence that my generation protested and was radically opposed to the Vietnam War. My father supported me fully in this because he didn’t accept the idea of sending a son to die for a senseless cause.
911 and my upcoming book
The attack on the Twin Towers broadened the range of questions that US citizens asked themselves before it happened. Reality was made more complex by 911. What relationship is there between our values and our fears? What are we willing to give up for our security? It isn’t easy for a writer to face such complex issues. I had to wait a while before I felt sure enough to tackle present-day issues. So my next book will be about international justice but I promise I won’t soapbox. A writer must write stories about individuals and not political or theoretical essays on concepts such as justice.
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