Q: What strikes me first and foremost about Simon's Family is the awesome abundance of historical and psychological references and themes: World War II and the Holocaust, the Sumerians, the Oedipus complex, the nature of reality, animism. I could go on. Few authors, I doubt, would be able to navigate such rich and varied depths with your skill. What led you to some of these interests? Why do you think you are able to piece together such a cohesive story from them? MF: A person is far more complicated being than our culture is prepared to accept. He or she has a lot more depth, and his or her life has totally different dimensions, than our upbringing and culture allows. The problem is that we see only what we have been taught to see.
I have also written novels with motifs from the Old Testament--The Book of Eve, The Book of Cain, The Tale of Norea, to mention a few of them. These books demanded some research. What I learned from my studies was that the biblical stories are variations of myths thousands of years older. They were handed down from people to people in ancient Mesopotamia, all the way from the oldest culture we know of--the Sumerian.
This roused my all-absorbing interest in the myth--the mysterious and eternal symbol of an original view of the human life. Then I stumbled upon a Swiss historian who soon fascinated me. He didn't divide the time according to the old model of Stone Age, Iron Age, etc. Instead, he spoke of the magic age, the mythic age, and following that, the logical age--where we are now. It hit me powerfully that, even today, each child repeats these stages. Every very small child lives in a magical world until he or she reaches the mythical age, when life is dominated by the fairy tales--of the hero, the princess, the Tomnoddy, who always brings home the victory and so on. Then, finally the child is put in school and is told that one plus two equals three and that this is the only reality.
After a while, usually in middle life, we start to suspect that, somewhere along the line, we have suffered a great loss. And then the longing for reestablishing the child we once were can come upon us.
Q: I asked you in a previous conversation about your first book, Hanna's Daughter (Ballantine Reader's Circle guide to Hanna's Daughters), if you ever uncovered any interesting stories in your own family history. Your reply was that Simon's Family was, in fact, the novel that contained autobiographical elements. So, I can't resist asking what aspects of this novel are autobiographical.
MF: It was like this: I had reached a point in life where I wanted to go back and re-create my childhood. Not the family stories, not the pictures in the family album, but my personal experiences, feelings, memories. But there was a problem. I couldn't bring the little girl who I once was to life. She refused to take form. The months went by and life was miserable. One day someone said, "Write about a boy." And so Simon was born. And because he was a boy, he let a lot more of his feelings out and was more aggressive that the little girl who had been me. But the foundation was the same: a strong sense of being an outsider and a great loneliness.
Q: Like Hanna's Daughter, Simon's Family is full of characters who possess uncanny intuitions that border on the mystical. Are these people extraordinary in life, or do you believe that as human beings each of us carries within ourselves the ability to transcend reality? In Simon's vision while in the Iraqi desert, Gudea tells him that God makes an attempt to establish wholeness in every child that is born. "A few years at the beginning of every life, man is still able to communicate with everything that lives, with the rivers and the skies." Why do you think that certain people, like Simon and Karin, never lose that oneness?
MF: No, the people in the novel are not extraordinary. The sad thing is that only a few people ever dare to open up to the magic/mythical dimension that is a part of our legacy.
Q: Karin starts out as the most simple and accessible character in many ways. Yet as the story progresses, she becomes one of the most complicated and elusive. Do you agree? What does Karin represent for you?
MF: We all play roles, and probably we have to, to allow the social play to continue. It is important to play them well, but it is more important that we don't confuse ourselves with the roles we play.
Karin plays for understandable reasons (her own childhood, the time, spirit, etc.) the role of the good mother and the loving wife. She does it well. She is more genuine in her interpretation of the role than most of us. But women are also people of intelligence, ambition, striving to develop the self, to influence and to be seen. Karin didn't take these sides out on the husband or the children, which is common in many families. She didn't become dictatorial or a martyr. She lived her part--and denied her aggressiveness. Until the day when Simon's girl showed up, the combative Klara, soon to be a doctor. And then I think Karin's denied aggressiveness rose up from unknown depths within her and struck Simon and Klara. We all have, as I already mentioned, many depths--and the most dangerous are those we've refused to see throughout the years.
Q: Referring back once more to our prior interview in Hanna's Daughters, you stated that the mystery of women for men lies in sexual fear, "the man's fear of being absorbed." (Hanna's Daughter, p. 353) If I had to choose the most overt theme of this novel, it would be the complicated feelings that men have for women. Simon, Isak, Eric, Reuben--each of these men is tormented in some way by the women, or the memory of the women, in their lives. Tormented and yet nourished. You obviously have strong feelings and ideas about this. Can you elaborate a bit?
MF: I think that the small boy's total dependency on the almighty mother is part of the explanation. The baby girl is, of course, also dependent. However, she doesn't have to break from her mother until her teens.
Q: I wonder if Simon's Family prompts a different reaction or touches a different nerve in Europe versus the United States. While every country is haunted by the long, historical shadow of the Holocaust, I can't help thinking that it casts an even darker one in Europe, where so many countries lost great numbers of Jewish people. Do you have any sense of a different reading of the novel from these two continents?
MF: Perhaps the long, bloody history of Europe leaves its mark on the people here. Every new hell gives rise to a collective horror. Every picture from the wars in the Balkans gives rise to the feeling that man is incomprehensibly evil. The Holocaust is the foremost symbol. Here, we had to witness a Western industrial nation use all its technical knowledge to build well-equipped factories where they rationally and systematically murdered millions of people.
Q: Although you don't make specific references to Taoist philosophy, there seems to be a close affinity with its teachings at work in this novel--in particular, the notion of living in the present moment and the idea of other realities and planes of existence. Is this purely coincidental, or is this another interest of yours?
MF: I have always been interested in the history of religion. Through the years, I've studied Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Judaism. They point out different paths to insight, but at the core their messages are the same. Hinduism says, "You are it." Jesus says, "Heaven is within you," and "Only he who receives the Kingdom of Heaven as a child can enter in it." [Translated from the Swedish edition of the Bible]
Q: Simon is one of those rare characters whom writers dream of creating. He is so distinctly himself and yet always unpredictable. He embodies so many profound ideas bout life and still never comes across as pedantic or contrived. Can you tell us more about how you conjured him up? As you mentioned, he is a loose characterization of yourself.
MF: That's right. I wrote about myself and dared to be open and ambivalent because I could hide behind another person.
Q: It must have been a struggle to create a mate worthy of Simon's complexity. Now that you've done it, I cannot imagine anyone other than Klara fulfilling that role. There is a lot that links them together. What, in your opinion, is their most significant tie to each other?
MF: The most significant tie between them is that they both felt they were stranger in this world.
Q: Both Simon's Family and Hanna's Daughters have become number one international bestsellers. These two books are about very different situations. True, they both deal with wartime angst, but that alone does not make a bestseller. What do you think is driving the success of your novels?
MF: Almost all of the experts have different answers to that question--"A good storyteller," "An irresistible touch of the mystical," etc. Personally, I have no explanation. I am just endlessly happy and surprised.
Q: You must get inundated with fan mail from your readers. What are some of your favorite questions and comments about your work?
MF: Yes, so many letters that the piles of bad conscience constantly grow. The most common phrase I hear from fans all over the world is "You have given words to something I have always known but couldn't express."
Q: The stark beauty of the Swedish landscape added to the ethereal quality of the novel. Was this otherworldly, dreamlike dimension of the novel a catharsis for the heavier themes of the Holocaust and psychological abuse?
MF: No, the depictions of nature have nothing to do with psychology, the Holocaust, or other measurable phenomena. Rather, it is religious. The Swedish people are the most secular in the world. The churches are empty. But according to a recent study, around fifty percent of Swedes say that they experience God in nature. I am one of them, although I wouldn't choose the word "God". My wanderings in the great forests and along the shores give me a rich spiritual experience.
Q: I've asked you before about your favorite American novels or authors. You've cited Kurt Vonnegut and Toni Morrison. At that time, you'd also fallen in love with James Salter. What are you reading these days? I won't limit you to any particular country--although at least one American novel would be appreciated.
MF: Wonderfully enough, I have made a new literary discovery that has helped me through the long winter--the work of Joyce Carol Oates. What an author! I hope you are proud of her. Other than that, I mostly read nonfiction.
Q: What does this bestselling international author have in store for her readers?
MF: The hardest thing about being an author is the waiting. This winter is a long wait.
© Copyright 2009 by Marianne Fredriksson. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine. All rights reserved.
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