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writer, occurring as naturally as a tree bearing fruit. When it exists, the writer can give Gisella—almost without thinking about it—the extra pedal, and then her foot can reach the machine and she can make it move, and the pedal can move the large wheel on the side, and the wheel can spin, and the wheels of the story can spin too, and the whole fragile
and slightly groundless world, born from a marriage of imagination and reality and words, can begin to move fully and confidently.
    When I write a character, I want to know and feel and experience as many characteristics and psychic arrays as possible, including things that are difficult even to name. For example, the character’s muscle tone, both physical and emotional: the measure of vitality and alertness and tautness of his or her physical and emotional being. The speed of her thought, the rhythm of his speech, the duration of pauses between her words when she speaks. The roughness of his skin, the touch of her hair. His favorite position, in sex and in sleep.
    Not all of these things will end up in the book, of course. I believe it is best for only the tip of the iceberg, only one-tenth of everything the writer knows about his characters, to appear in the book. But the writer must know and feel the other nine-tenths too, even if they remain underwater. Because without them, what surfaces above the water will not have the validity of truth. When these complementary elements exist in the writer’s consciousness, they radiate themselves to the visible aspects and serve as a sounding board and a stable foundation for the character, and it is they that give the character its full existence.
    I can attest that when I reach that knowledge of the Other from within him—and this does not always occur, not with every character; I wish I could reach it with every character, but regrettably that does not happen—
when I reach that place in the story, I experience one of the greatest pleasures of writing: the ability to allow my characters to be themselves—inside me. The writer then becomes the space within which his characters can fulfill their characteristics and desires, their urges and acts of foolishness, madness, and kindness, which the writer himself is incapable of—because he is a specific, finite person, and because these characteristics, these desires and acts, threaten him or somehow contradict him, even invalidate him.
    What marvelous happiness, what sweet reward there is in these moments, when in the very act of writing a character, the writer is also written by him or her. Some unknown option of his personality, an option that was mute, latent, suppressed, is suddenly articulated to him, redeemed by a particular character, brought to light .
    From experience I know how wonderful it is when a character I have written surprises me this way, or even betrays me, by acting in contrast to my consciousness and personality and fears, acting beyond my horizons. The feeling at those times is one of extraordinary physical and emotional pleasure. In the simplest way, I can say that it is as though someone grabs me by the back of my neck with immense vigor and lifts me up, forcing me to take off outside my own skin.
     
     
    On a closely related issue, I would like to say a few words about the meaning of literary writing—as I see it, as I believe
in it—for people who have been living for over a century in an area that can be described, without exaggeration, as a disaster zone.
    First, a clarification: I am not planning to talk “politics,” but rather to address the intimate, internal processes that occur among those who live in a disaster zone, and the role of literature and writing in a climate as lethal as the one we live in.
    To live in a disaster zone means to be clenched, both physically and emotionally. The muscles of the body and the soul are alert and tensed, ready for fight or flight. Anyone who lives in this condition knows that not only the body clenches