Ariel Dorfman.

AuthorPOSTEL, DANNY
PositionAuthor - Abstract - Interview

The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London this October signaled the possibility, however fleeting, that justice, on hold for a quarter century since the dictator's brutal 1973 seizure of power in Chile, might finally be realized. It provided a source of hope for those who survived that cataclysm and for the many Chileans who were forced to flee their country in its aftermath. Among the most prominent of those driven into exile is playwright, poet, novelist, cartoonist, essayist, and memoirist Ariel Dorfman.

Born in Argentina and raised in both the United States and Chile, Dorfman threw himself into the momentous democratic movement that brought Salvador Allende to power in Chile in 1970. Dorfman eventually took a position as cultural adviser to the president's chief of staff. In 1971, he co-authored a book, How to Read Donald Duck, that comically but trenchantly attempted to decode the cartoon as a tool of imperialist domination. Then came the nightmarish conclusion to Chile's popular revolution--and quite nearly to Dorfman's life. That dark day, September 11, 1973, ushered in a reign of dictatorial terror that would last more than a decade. It became the defining experience for the young political writer. He was supposed to have been summoned to the national palace in the event of precisely such an emergency, but mysteriously wasn't. Many of his closest friends and political fellow travelers were tortured and killed during the coup.

Dorfman deals with the haunting memory of the coup in most of his works. His numerous books include The Empire's Old Clothes (Pantheon, 1983), Widows (Pantheon, 1983), The Last Song of Manuel Sendero (Viking, 1987), Mascara (Viking, 1988), Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance (Viking, 1988), My House Is on Fire (Viking, 1990), and Konfidenz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995). His 1992 play, Death and the Maiden, was turned into a movie; it was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley. Dorfman's most recent book is a memoir, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998).

This interview was conducted in Chicago shortly before General Pinochet's arrest in London.

Q: It's been almost exactly twenty-five years now since the coup that toppled the government of Salvador Allende. You call it the moment when history turned you, against your will, into the person you would become.

Ariel Dorfman: It was the moment in my life when everything changed, the moment of conception of the person I now am, how I became this person...

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