Mary Fisherov is an
internationally published writer of literary fiction whose novels have been
translated into German, Spanish, and French. She has been awarded several
literary prizes in her native Russia. Love’s
Destiny Foretold is her first work in English.
Fisherov, who comes from a literary family, is on the Classics faculty of a California state university. Here, she responds to Istoria’s questions about her book and herself:
One of the major characters in your book is an opera star. You describe the music she sings so well that one can almost hear it. Are you an opera fan? If so, what are your favorites?
Fisherov: In my
twenties, I discovered opera for myself and became a huge fan for awhile. One of
my first discoveries was the ”Ring" cycle at the Met. The seats I could
afford were at the very top of the opera house, and the height always made me
dizzy. This is how I remember opera: being overwhelmed by music and dizzy from
the height. And since Wagner was, in my head, connected with my memory of New
York, I made my heroes involved with his music. Wagner, Ellis Island, and
Tenement Museum: the triangle of impressions.
Because
of the book's operatic feel, it also has a very melodic quality to it. Do you
listen to music when you write? If so, what? If you could recommend a
"play list" for readers to listen to while reading Love’s
Destiny Foretold, what would it include?
Fisherov: Unfortunately,
I absolutely cannot do two things at once - say, write and listen to music. The
only sound I can tolerate while writing is the hum of people's voices in a
coffee shop. I think that prose has its own music inspired by the language
itself. As a non-native speaker, I was never sure if I got that melodic quality
in English. I am very happy that you seem to have perceived it in my text. As a
"play" list I would recommend Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and Tristan
and Isolde, Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko (the
air of magic and incantation), Ravel's Bolero (for Raoul's madness in the book);
and then you have noticed a Carmen
motif!
There is at times an almost surreal character
to the novella that reminds one of the same quality in, say, the movie Moulin Rouge.
Were you attempting to paint that kind of picture? What experience were you
hoping the reader would have?
Fisherov: I suppose it is
just me, my signature, I cannot write otherwise. Readers find that my other
books have a slightly surreal, dreamlike atmosphere about them. I do not
attempt to give this impression on purpose - I suppose it is a reflection of
how I perceive the world. My task when writing this book was just to write a
romance novel, a completely new genre for me. But, I guess, it was unavoidable
that I brought some of my previous writing experience into it.
The
character of the opera singer herself, Lilane Ferraro, is brilliantly done. Did
you have a particular opera singer in mind when writing her?
Fisherov: In some way I
was inspired by Maria Callas, who started out as an overweight and completely
unglamorous teenager. There was that divine beauty of her voice - and then, by
an almost superhuman effort, she transformed her looks, brought them in
accordance with her voice, so that her outer shell would express the vocal
beauty: turned herself into a goddess.
You
have noted that the Russian agents, Kislin and Gerashchenko, are modeled after
Russian leaders Vladmimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. Tell us a little about
what you were parodying here in each of them.
Fisherov: I just needed
to model the secret service guy on somebody - and I realized I have one just in
front of me, he is actually running my country. I know that Putin, like my
Kislin, had that dream of working for the secret service from an early age. The
KGB was, of course, a most evil organization. Yet evil has always something of
an operetta in it, evil is never great or tragic (the suffering it inflicts is
tragic). Thus the secret agents serve as a comic relief in my novella. The
cold-hearted one needed a sidekick, someone more human. So I gave him
Gerashchenko.Your book lightly, elegantly pokes a little fun at "revolutionaries" especially when Vera wonders about whether "loving humanity" would allow her to love Gabriel, just "one man." Could you share some thoughts on that, on what you wanted readers to come away with from these and similar scenes?
You have written literary fiction, but Love’s
Destiny Foretold is a romance novella, a delightful confection of a book. Could
you tell us why you decided to explore this genre?
Fisherov: Once, in an
airport, I was in a very good mood and picked up a novel by Tessa Dare - I
guess I was lucky because she writes really well. I never read romance novels
before, and was quite stunned at the possibilities this genre offered. Shortly
before that, I finished writing a poem that was quite sad, hard, and I very
much wanted to amuse myself. In the airplane, I imagined what I would write if
I were a romance novelist, and came up with the Love’s Destiny Foretold story.
That
summer I was reading a fascinating book by Jack Finney, Time and Again, about a man who time-travels into the late 19th
century New York. I especially loved the descriptions of the Elevated Railroad
and the Ladies' Mile! My romance novel was very much inspired by it.
Writing
it requited a giant leap of faith for me: I do believe in love, of course, but
I do not believe in happy endings. However, I suspended my disbelief for the
time I needed to finish it.
How long have you lived in America?
Fisherov: I have spent four years on the East Coast in the Nineties, and five past years in California.
This
is your first book in English. Would you tell us a little about the challenges
of writing in a language that is not your native tongue? Do you know/speak
other languages?
Fisherov: In Russia I am
asked sometimes if I would ever write a novel about the U.S. Instead of writing
about the U.S., I decided to write an American novel. Not in the sense of the
Great American Novel, of course. But American in the sense of musicals and
potboilers, written in the way that seems American to us, Russians: plot
twists, cliffhangers, a dynamic sequence of events, a happy end. Writing it in
Russian seemed counterintuitive to me. But in English it came to me quite
naturally. Since English is not my native language, I aimed first and foremost for clarity and precision, to make myself understood. In general, I love foreign languages, I speak a bunch of them. Right now I am learning Catalan.
It is reported that Chekhov once said if you place a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, someone needs to fire it by the end of the play. You set many "guns" on the mantelpiece and fire them all by the end of the book -- were you aware of that saying?
Fisherov: Yes, very much so! It is a saying that I remember from the school bench. Our existence may be random, but every detail of a creative work must have a purpose. Maybe art is just that: a stubborn fight of human soul against the aimlessness of physical life.
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Mary Fisherov's first English-language book, the romance novella Love's Destiny Foretold, will be available this month (May 2012) for Kindle and for Nook and other ereaders midsummer.
