ZR: I've read that you studied physics when you were younger. How did that influence your writing?
LH: I think that although my study of physics has left some traces
in my literature, the real significant
influence must be traced back to the fact that in my adolescence, a time when
writing began to be my essential activity, I
chose to specialize in physics. As it happens, ever since I’ve had use of
reason, both predilections, mathematics and literature, have been very strongly
apparent in me. Beginning at the
age of four I can recall making up stories, feeding voraciously on the stories
people told me or read to me, as well as those I listened to in secret, and
later, when I learned to read, devouring fiction. And at the same time, by age
four I see myself trying to provide a rational explanation for everything that
surrounds me and turns out to be inexplicable. At school I was good at writing
compositions and nearly infallible in math. In adolescence, it seemed natural
for me to express everything that was excess and madness through writing, but
(perhaps for that very reason) it never occurred to me to choose literature as
a formal course of study.
ZR: What changed, then, to make writing your career?
LH: For me writing was a place of freedom, where I could discover
and reveal myself exactly as I was. I didn’t hesitate to choose physics as a
major because scientific thought was a passion of mine and because, somehow, I
felt that this type of thought could contain me and help me get organized. At
sixteen I entered the College of Exact Sciences and, at the same time, began to
work for a literary magazine, El grillo
de papel (The Paper Cricket) and write my first short stories. At
twenty-one, with one book of short stories nearly complete, I left the College
of Exact Sciences because I realized that I was still passionate about science,
but I had nothing to contribute (to create) in that field. Where I really did
have something personal to contribute was in writing, in which I could express
even my scientific self. And that’s what I think has happened. In several of my
short stories, and also in my novel Zona
de clivaje (Cleavage Zone), the character who tries to organize reality
logically appears at the forefront and is challenged.
ZR: What other ways did your study of the sciences affect your
writing?
LH: As I’ve already intimated, my study of physics made concrete
contributions to my writing. Above all, it has refined my ability to
structure and organize both fiction and essays. But it has also made very
concrete contributions in terms of acquired knowledge. In my works of fiction
the reader will detect that Entropy, the Uncertainty Principle, or the planes
of cleavage form a natural part of my experience. And in the novel The End of the Story, the College of
Exact Sciences appears as an unavoidable locale. In short, I think that one
very chaotic, nonsensical area and another, very rational and systematic one,
coexist within me, and as far as I can tell, it’s a fairly peaceful
coexistence.
ZR: Do you have a theory about why Argentina has given birth to so
many short story writers over the last century? I think about Japan, how it has
given us so many great short poems—haiku, tanka. It seems as though a country
can specialize in a particular literary genre, but why?
LH: As you very correctly point out, Zack, Argentina is a country
of notable short story writers. Even a tremendous novelist like Roberto Arlt
has written exceptional short stories, and Borges, the canonical Argentine
writer, didn’t need to write a novel in order to attain that status. I think, rather,
that there are a number of factors, sometimes interconnected, favoring the
abundance and excellence of short story writers in Argentina. I’ll mention a
few. 1) Unlike what happened in other Latin American countries, in Argentina,
in the beginning, there was very little influence from Spanish literature
(which is very lush and has little to do with the austerity of the short
story), and on the other hand, a great deal of influence from English and
French, and later, North American literature, three literatures in which the
short story has been very important.
2) In the River Plate region we have had, in my opinion, the first great
short story writer in Latin American literature: Horacio Quiroga. Quiroga was born in Uruguay (another
country with notable short story writers) and lived nearly all his life in
Argentina. He was a bad novelist, and in every sense, a master of the short
story, since he didn’t just write remarkable stories; he also wrote masterfully
about the secrets of the genre. In his Decálogo
del perfecto cuentista (Ten Commandments for the Perfect Short Story
Writer), he points out those whom he considers to be the masters of the genre:
Poe, de Maupassant, Chekhov, Kipling (a selection that illustrates what I said earlier).
3) In Argentina there is, by and large, a starker, less exuberant countryside
than in other regions of Latin America, a phenomenon that, in a complex way,
influences the choice of worlds and narrative styles. 4) There is a type of
speech and syntax (connected, in turn, with a unique way of seeing reality and
a predisposition to irony and doubles entendres)
that perhaps draws us Argentines to the unique effect the short story presents.
No doubt these are approximations or points of departure to try to understand
this phenomenon. The fact is, in Argentina there are great masters of the genre
and several generations of noteworthy writers of short stories, which makes it
more likely that new writers will write short stories. For various and complex
reasons that exceed the limits of this response, a short story tradition has
become ingrained in Argentina and that trait, literarily speaking, makes us who
we are.
ZR: Could you say something about how your family came to
Argentina?
LH: My maternal grandparents
arrived as children in 1889 on the Weser,
a mythical ship that brought the first [Eastern European] Jewish immigrants to
Argentina that same year, those who established the first colonies in Entre
Ríos and Santa Fe. My great-aunts and uncles were “Entrerrianos” (from the
province of Entre Ríos); the first to be born in Buenos Aires was my mother. My
paternal grandparents arrived in 1905 at La Pampa, with my father, who was a
newborn baby, and two other small children. All of them came from Russia, from
the Ukraine area. I don’t know much more than that.
For more on Liliana Heker, please see this blog.
For more on Liliana Heker, please see this blog.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
How to Get Published: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Why Write Poetry? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka
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