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A
Conversation with Author
Q: Could you speak a little about
how you came to write The Fly-Truffler?
G.S.: I wanted to go under. I wanted to write about
the deep, abiding, irreducible realities of a Provence
that I've lived in since the early 1960s: well before,
that is, the land itself underwent spoliation at the
hands of speculators, publicists—the promoters,
that is, of an idle, perfectly sterile economy. It's
not for nothing that my protagonist, Philippe Cabassac,
wants to go under as well. Truffling, ferreting those
pungent mushrooms out of the rich subsoil, he comes
to unearth something far more than he'd ever anticipated:
far more than he ever thought existed. Quite unwittingly,
I might have done very much the same thing myself.
For several months after I'd finished The Fly-Truffler,
a dear friend of mine remarked how Cabassac in the
truffle-induced dream sequence he enjoys with his
dead wife, Julietta, is the very embodiment of Orpheus:
or Orpheus in his underworld relationship with Eurydice.
Unconsciously, I, too, had gone under a good deal
further than I'd anticipated. A myth, ineluctably,
awaited me.
Q: Does this often happen when you write? Do you discover
things, that is, that you hadn't intended?
G.S.: Only in those wonderful moments when the writing
seems to dictate itself, when the words flow with
a seemingly inherent knowledge of their own. When,
that is, as a writer, I feel—momentarily—written.
Then, only then, perhaps, do any of us have something
to say.
Q: You remarked in a recent interview that "The
Fly-Truffler isn't about a year in Provence, it's
about an eternity." What do you mean by that?
G.S.: Once again, it's a question of getting under
the publicized surface. The novel touches&3151or attempts
to touch—on those underlying verities that aren't
subject to the whims and fancies of our present-day
global economy. It speaks—or attempts to speak—of
rootedness, of residence, of an ancient culture that
even in its death throes manages to confer dignity
upon its very own. In a sense, Provence, in The
Fly-Truffler, is not merely a place but a state
of mind. It's emblematic of belonging. It brings Cabassac
and his Julieta together under the canopy of a common
denominator, a shared linguistics. "Here," within
the context of the novel, cannot be mistaken for "there,"
nor the palpable, the sensorial, the veritable for
the electronic pulsations of the virtual. Only in
such a context as this, I feel, could an archaic tragedy
such as Cabassac's and Julieta's actually take place.
Q: One might discern in your work two seemingly contradictory
impulses, one toward the realm of dream and metaphor,
and another toward immediate sensation like the smells
of earth and the taste of truffles and the feel of
the dank air of a rundown farmhouse. The latter seems
to revel in the reality that the former tries to escape.
How do you see these two realms reconciling?
G.S.: I don't see them, first of all, as separable.
One is an indivisible part, I feel, of the other.
Dreams, epiphanous visions arise, it would seem, out
of an intense perception of things physical. It's
the dust that instructs, the graceful line of a cheek
that infers, directs, predisposes the intellect to
reflection. Cabassac is a perfect case in point. Out
of a meticulous reading of the earth, out of a strict
respect for its particulars-the lay of a specific
patch of frozen orchard, for instance, or the way
flies dart over a truffle bed—he's brought, bit
by bit, to realization. In entering a set of self-imposed
ceremonial gestures, he's led—invariably—unto
those blissful visions of his beloved. Granted, in
Cabassac's case this leads to folly, but it's a folly
in which the heart's wildest aspirations find themselves
fulfilled.
Q: You've written about Provence in a recent collection
of essays entitled Luminous Debris. In that
collection, your approach to the subject is archeological.
How do you relate one to the other: Luminous Debris
to The Fly-Truffler?
G.S.: Once again, it's a question of delving, reaching
beneath. Be it for truffles, archeological vestige,
or—quite simply—those cherished moments deeply
secreted within memory itself, reality—it would
seem—lies at a certain depth. Against the present-day
dust storm of interactive ephemera that we're all
subjected to, reality—it might be said—lies
at a greater depth than ever before. Heraclitus once
wrote that nature loves to hide. It does so, today,
at a level of consciousness that can only be attained,
I feel, by intense scrutiny and introspection. If
Cabassac goes under, if archeologists in their examination
of past civilizations work their way through so many
successive strata, it's only to resuscitate those
lost realities, revive what might be considered quintessential.
Once again, I suspect, it's Orpheus at work. Once
again, it's the Orphic spirit within each of us, thrashing
at shadows, making its own obstinate way through the
underworld in an attempt to retrieve what it thought
forever lost.
Q: Would you say, then, that The Fly-Truffler
can be read as a kind of allegory?
G.S.: It's a novel, first of all, that recounts the
life of two distinct individuals living in Provence
at a particular moment in history and the fate that,
inexorably, befalls them. Underlying the specific
circumstances of that very story, however, myth, archetypal
dispositions, and yes, allegory itself might, perhaps,
be found. Doesn't it always, though, when the narrator
does little more than follow the lines of the heart?
Q: Do you truffle—fly-truffle—yourself?
G.S.: No, but my son does. He has a wonderful eye
and all the patience and concentration that that age-old
earthen ritual requires. More than anything, though,
he possesses the geomantic flair for such things.
When the season is at its height, he'll often return
with his pockets bulging with those priceless tubers.
He'll let them tumble out onto the dining room table,
black as charcoal and pungent as gardenias. He never
sells them, though. As "gifts of the earth," as he
calls them, he gives them away to friends, family,
immediate neighbors in the countryside. What else
can you do, he explains, with something so generously
given but give it, in turn, yourself? What else, indeed,
any of us might ask ourselves?
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