Original subtitles

I think that's essential.

Love the process.

And then plunge into it. As we plunge into life or into falling in love, you

don't plan it. You don't have an outline. You don't have a manual. You

don't have anything. And in the process of writing, things happen.

And you start getting all the juices and the universe conspires to help you.

This is Talk Easy.

I'm Sam Fragoso.

Welcome to the show.

Today, writer Isabel Allende.

She's one of the most widely read authors in the world with more than 80

million books sold across 40-some languages.

Since her landmark debut, The House of the Spirits, Allende has built a body of

work that moves between the political and the personal.

often drawing from her own experiences of exile, love, and loss.

Now, at 84 years old, a very youthful 84 years old, Allende has turned her

attention to the act of writing itself.

Her new memoir, Storytelling, A Writing Life, looks back on nearly half a

century spent making stories.

That's where we begin today's conversation.

But we also talk about her childhood in Chile.

The advice writer Pablo Neruda gave to her as a young journalist, the 1973 coup

that eventually forced her into exile, writing from a place of profound grief,

her lifelong feminism and advocacy, love and marriage, and of course, what after

all these years keeps her returning to the page.

We taped this conversation with Allende in front of a packed, sold-out house at

the Wilshire Ebel Theater in Los Angeles.

And so at the top, I want to give a special thanks to two people, Chris

Simmons and Jacob Stein.

They're part of How To Academy and put on this very, very special evening.

I also want to thank everyone who showed up. As you'll hear, they were a very

animated and attentive audience.

And of course, I want to thank our guest, the one and only Isabel Allende.

You have reached the point, people love your work so much, that when you come on

stage, I saw some people even standing up and applauding.

Thank you.

Does it happen to you?

Do they stand for me? Yeah, because you're a celebrity too, so I don't know.

I'm so far from that.

Since the House of the Spirits in 1981.

Round of applause.

Yep.

Hey, we are not going to clap, okay? Because we interrupt and we don't have

much time, so no clapping.

And did you see the miniseries of the house?

Way better than the book. Don't miss it.

Yeah.

January 8th, very special day for you. Yes.

All your books since then have begun on that day.

And you said, you know, this is a good thing for me. It creates a lot of

discipline in my life.

Where are you at in the process of the next book?

Well, I'm three months away from January 8th, and I finished something, so I'm

desperate. Okay.

And also my family is desperate because when I finish a book, I mean, they like

to see me behind a closed door, quiet.

And the moment I emerge from the den, they panic because I start painting the

doors and changing the furniture and adopting another dog. And then life gets

messy. So it's not good for me to finish a book too...

Early in the year.

You said that, quote, I have a split personality, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

When I'm writing, all my thoughts are engaged in the process. I'm happy, calm,

focused. And then it goes on to say, but this idyllic situation is dramatically

reversed when the book is finished.

So what do you do now that you're done early?

Are you okay?

As I said, I painted all the doors of my house Dutch blue.

A wall, a mango color is becoming like a Mexican restaurant.

And my husband is from New York. He doesn't understand what's going on.

He's desperate, him too.

So they're eagerly anticipating January 8th again? Absolutely.

Okay, that's good. I just wanted to clear the air. You know, the ideal would

be to put me in a cruise around the world.

And as soon as I touch port, put me in another cruise around the world. That

would be ideal for them.

I'm sure they love you very much and are very happy that you're there. Sure.

Not convinced at all. Okay.

This new book of yours, Storytelling a Writing Life, it oscillates back and

forth between the past and present.

tracing not only how you write, but how you came to be a writer. And so I want

to start here.

Do you think it's possible to be a writer if you had a happy childhood?

No, no.

I mean, if you have a happy childhood, there is nothing you can do in life.

Because you are not prepared for anything.

You are spoiled, you are entitled, and then life hits you and you don't know

how to react.

Look, I raised my children in mild negligence.

And the result was perfect.

So let me tell you, a happy childhood is the worst thing that you can have.

I don't know why people insist on that, on the happy child. Also, it's a new

idea. Before, children were not supposed to be happy. They were supposed to work

at seven.

And go to the mines at 12.

So what's going on now? Now, just to ask a follow-up question, are you

encouraging children to work at 7?

Not necessarily.

This is being videotaped. I want you to know.

But it's not going to go anywhere, no? I think it's going to go everywhere.

Well, no, I'm not. Well, in that case, no.

So your childhood.

My childhood was a mess.

Yeah. Look, my mother married the wrong man, my father.

And he abandoned the family when I was not even three years old. And my mother

was pregnant of my little brother.

She had three children in four years.

I mean, fertility runs in the family. It's a curse.

And so my mother went back to live in her parents' house.

And I grew up with my grandfather.

My grandmother died. My grandfather went into a deep mourning, dressed himself in

black from head to toe, painted the furniture black.

There was no music, no desserts, no parties, nothing.

It was a somber, somber childhood that I spent in the basement reading.

And that was fantastic.

In the new book, you talk about how you were a young kid tucked away under the

stairs of a large drafty house.

What other image comes to mind when you think back to childhood?

A trunk.

In the basement, there was a metallic green trunk

with the initials TA.

And inside, it was full of books.

Young adult books mostly, but all the great, great writers, you know, Oscar

Wilde, Jack London, Bernard Shaw, all that was there.

And many years later, I learned that the TA were the initials of my father, Tomás

Allende. So that was his legacy.

And really, it made my childhood.

I've heard you say in the past that when you went to therapy,

And the therapist would go, your father left.

You have this wound. You would go, so what?

So what? Yeah. I mean, you have a good parent. My mother was a good parent.

And I never missed my father. And I never looked for him. And I know nothing

about him.

Zero. He didn't want to see us. So why would I want to see him?

Yeah.

And later, my mother married my stepfather, whom I hated for 10 years

because I didn't want anybody near my mother.

And then, 10 years later, I discovered that he was a wonderful man.

And he became my best friend and died in my arms at 103.

Oh.

As a kid, when adults would ask you, what do you want to do when you grow up,

what would you say? Support myself.

Yeah, I was six and I knew that I needed to support myself because if somebody

else is paying the bills, there's no freedom.

No freedom.

You know, Sam, that's why I have a foundation to invest in the power of

women. And there are three things that are essential.

One is to be able to support yourself and your kids in any circumstance.

So try to provide skills so that they can do that.

You need to be in control of your body. If you cannot control your fertility and

you have as many kids as God sends and there is no control, then you are

trapped again.

And if you live in a state of violence or fear, you're also trapped.

So we invest in those three things, trying to protect women.

I think that one does deserve a round of applause.

Actually, I don't do much. I just provide the funding.

But who does the work is my daughter-in-law, Lori Barra. She really

is there in every case, and she follows every program, and she's wonderful.

What did your mother think of your burgeoning feminism as a kid?

You know, I was born in 1942.

I'm 84 years old. I look good for my age, but it takes a lot of money.

And when I was born in Chile, in a Catholic, conservative, patriarchal

family or society, the word feminism didn't exist.

It came later.

And so I was just a very angry kid.

And then a very angry teenager because I didn't know, nobody knew what was wrong

with me.

And then I discovered feminism, and all this anger was channeled into a struggle

that I have sustained all my life.

And my mother at the beginning didn't understand because she was raised to be

a lady.

She was married to a diplomat. She wanted me to be a lady, but I didn't

have the raw material.

So she couldn't understand this thing about feminism. If a man can protect

you and support you, Why would you want to work in an office? You have to be

crazy.

And then in time, in time, she realized how submissive her life was

because she was not a feminist.

When did she realize that?

Late. I would say around 70.

But she lived to be 98.

And, you know, it's funny. My mom wanted to be a widow.

Yeah, many women do. Many women do.

According to my mom, it's the best stage in a woman's life.

Because by then, usually, you have finished raising kids, and now you are

free. The guy is dead. You don't have to take care of him.

So she had her widow dressed black, of course, with black shoes and a black

purse in the closet, hanging in the closet, waiting, waiting, waiting.

And then my stepfather kept on living way beyond his due time.

And then when my mom died before, when she was dying, also in my arms, I said,

Mom, you can't die because you're not a widow yet.

And she said, Well, you can't have everything you want in this life.

He died four months later.

But what is interesting, they fought like...

And even in their old age.

But when she died, he would see her.

And he would see her constantly and say, why doesn't she come and say hello?

And so we would say, well, you know, she's in heaven. What's she doing in

heaven?

She's resting. She's resting from what if she doesn't do anything?

From you. She's resting from you.

So it was a surreal situation.

Before you were a novelist, you were a journalist in Chile at Paula Magazine,

where you wrote columns titled The Impertinent Ones and Civilize Your Man,

where you offered advice like, quote, don't let your man remain a

caveman, transform him into the man of your dreams.

It is up to you to guide him down the path of true male attraction.

Yeah, for a Chilean woman, a man is always a project.

You can always improve them. They're always susceptible to be improved.

I'm talking about Chilean men. I don't know you guys here.

I think it probably extends beyond Chile.

Speaking of a man, what did Pablo Neruda think of your work?

He thought I was the worst journalist in the country, that I would put myself

always in the middle of the news, that I would never be objective, and if I

didn't have a story, I would make it up.

And I got that reputation of making, I was a very good journalist, I think, and

I got the reputation of making up stuff.

So on one occasion, I interviewed an unfaithful wife.

And that was a hit, because this was the late 60s when women were doing it, what

they have done always, because if men sleep with other women, with whom are

they sleeping?

Mathematically, they sleep with women, so the women are just as unfaithful as

the men. But we don't talk about it. So I interviewed this unfaithful wife.

And everybody thought I had made it up because I promised the woman that I

would never reveal her name.

And I kept my promise.

She's still alive.

She's 98.

And I can't clear my name because I can't tell everybody who she was.

But the best thing is that she was married to a womanizer.

a very important politician in Chile, but very attractive and a womanizer.

Well, we had the military coup. Everybody went into exile. It was a

diaspora. And he ended up as a refugee in Cuba. They divorced.

And I went to Cuba, and I...

So we talked and he said, of all the things you've written, what I really,

really liked was that interview with the unfaithful woman.

And I said, oh, that was a long time ago.

And he said, tell me, tell me, do I know her?

And I said, yes, intimately.

And because he was a woman, I said he couldn't guess who was, of all the women

he has slept with, who was the unfaithful woman.

So you see, revenge.

Before you met him, did you ever think about being a novelist, or did he say

something to inspire that? No, Pablo Neruda said that...

All my defects as a journalist would be virtues in literature that I should

switch to literature.

That was in 1973, a month before the military coup. And 11 days

after the military coup, Pablo Neruda died.

And I forgot what he had told me until I wrote The House of the Spirits in Exile

in Venezuela many years later.

You've spoken about this a lot in the past, but...

since you brought it up, can you explain or unpack the conditions and

circumstances in which you and your family had to go into exile?

Well, Chile was the longest and most solid democracy in the continent, in a

continent of dictatorships and caudillos and military coups and tyrannies that

lasted decades.

And then Salvador Allende, who was a cousin of my father, was elected. He was

a socialist.

And he represented a coalition of parties of the center and the left.

And they started a government that was very revolutionary in many ways.

And, of course, they were very...

very strong conservative forces in the country supported by the CIA that

started a conspiracy against the government from the very beginning, even

before he became president, even before.

And eventually, after three years of government, there was a military coup.

And in 24 hours, democracy ended.

And you know, democracy is like health.

We take it for granted until we don't have it.

And we have to be so vigilant because it can be lost in minutes.

In Chile, it was a matter of hours.

In one day, the military took over. The Congress was closed.

There was no independent judiciary.

You couldn't meet more than six people without a permit. There was curfew for

17 years.

That happened, and well, many people died, many people disappeared, many

people were tortured in prison, but many people left.

And my family, the day of the coup, the Mexican government sent a plane to

take Allende's family, Allende died in the coup, to take Allende's wife and

daughters and the rest of his family to Mexico.

They offered asylum.

And I didn't go because I thought, this is crazy, this can't last.

I mean, in a few weeks, the military will close, I mean, we'll call elections

and we will have democracy again. Nobody except them knew that it would last so

long and it would be so brutal.

So eventually, after a year, I left also with my children.

Did they threaten your children?

They threatened, well, I was very visible because I was a, and also

because of my name.

And so also I didn't know the consequences of doing what was

forbidden because there was no information.

Information was rumors that changed constantly.

So I started hiding people in my house and trying to find asylum

for people, trying to...

get them in some embassy, which was always very risky.

And then eventually, I got myself in trouble, and I was in a list, and I had

to get out.

But on one opportunity, a black car picked up my kids in school, and I

came back from my office in the afternoon or evening, and the kids were

not there.

So they were not in school, they were not there, they were not with the

grandmother who lived next door.

So can you imagine?

horrible, horrible hours, calling everybody, and then fearing that the

curfew would begin and we couldn't get out to look for them. And then

eventually they were dropped at the house around 10 o'clock in the evening

with a message for me.

Tell the whore of your mother that we are after her.

So then I left.

And I left for Venezuela.

which at the time was the most welcoming, wonderful country.

First of all, they called it the Venezuela Saudita because

it was so rich because of the oil boom.

And there was work. They accepted immigrants from everywhere.

It was warm. It was green.

Any excuse was good for a party.

Everybody danced. In Chile, nobody dances.

And in Venezuela, you do like this and people start moving, you know?

It's wonderful.

I can't tell you the beauty of the women in Venezuela and the men in the beach.

So it was another world completely.

And I lived there for 13 years.

After fleeing Nazi Germany, Brecht wrote, while in exile,

I'm like that man who carried a brick around with him to show the world what

his house used to look like.

And I'm thinking, when you're 40 and you're in Venezuela and you get around

to writing The House of the Spirits, was that book your brick in some way?

Exactly, Sam, exactly.

The brick, what was The House of the Spirits? I had no experience as a

writer.

I didn't really know what I was doing.

But I think it was an attempt to recover everything I had lost.

My family, my grandfather who was dying, my home, my country, everything.

And also the memories, because what happens with immigration and exile

is that you have to...

be in life completely immersed in trying to support your kids in making a living

in adapting in a new country learning a language and you start forgetting and

then in a few years you you have invented a past and you have invented a

country that is not real can we read a little bit from the book okay This is a

scene in the House of the Spirits almost at the end. The granddaughter of Clara

has been arrested. She's in prison. She has been raped, tortured,

mutilated. And she's left to die in what they call the dog house.

And she's there dying when her grandmother appears, the ghost of a

grandmother.

And this is what happens.

Clara, the grandmother, also brought the saving idea of writing in her mind

without paper or pencil to keep her thoughts occupied and to escape from the

doghouse and live.

She suggested that she write a testimony that might one day call attention to the

terrible secret she was living through so that the world would know about this

horror that was taking place parallel to the peaceful existence of those who did

not want to know, who could afford the illusion of a normal life, and of those

who could deny that they were on a raft drift in a sea of sorrow, ignoring

despite all evidence that only blocks away from their happy world, there were

others, these others, who live or die in the dark side.

You have a lot to do, so stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Drink some water and start writing, Clara told her granddaughter before

disappearing, the same way that she had come.

You know, that line at the end, you have a lot to do, so stop whining.

I was thinking about... your mother when I read that.

Was that a little how the conversation would go between the two of you when you

were writing and starting to write?

Not with my mother, but I was raised by my grandfather very severe, and I adored

him. A very honorable and decent man, but very severe.

And the message, the mantra in my childhood was, don't whine, don't cry,

don't complain, and don't ask for anything because it will not be given to

you.

And it's a great lesson, because in life, this is really useful.

So I grew up with no whining. I never whine.

Women in general don't whine.

So that book came from a letter that you were writing to him, right? That's where

it started.

It started, yeah, my grandfather was dying in Chile. I could not return to

bid him farewell.

And I started a letter. I had written him many letters.

But somehow I knew he would not be able to read it.

So I wanted to tell him that I remembered everything he had

told me. And I remember my relatives, my family, my crazy family.

And so I started with the oldest.

anecdote I heard as a child, and that was the story of my great aunt Rosa,

who was my grandfather's first fiance, and she died poisoned in strange

circumstances right before the wedding.

And it's not clear what happened, if it was a medication, something that came

from the pharmacy, or if it was an intended murder and she was the wrong

victim.

In any case, her photograph was always on the piano in the living room.

And my grandfather used to say that Rosa was beautiful as a mermaid.

And of course it was a sepia photograph, you couldn't see the color.

But in my mind, mermaids have green hair.

So that's why the character in the House of the Spirits has green hair.

But as I started writing, I realized that it wasn't a letter by...

by the second page, it was something different.

And it didn't matter, I just kept writing.

I had a job, 12 hours a day, two shifts, and I would come home and write at night

in one of those old typewriters. Have you ever seen a typewriter here?

Have you ever heard a typewriter?

Well, I had that in the kitchen, and I would type there at night and on the

weekends. Was that an Underwood?

Yeah.

and I still have a copy of it. It's not the real one, but nobody knows.

And so I tell people that it's the real one, and it ended up in a museum in

Oakland. And it's not the real one, but they don't know that.

And so what was I saying?

On the typewriter.

No, not the typewriter. Ah, going into the typewriter, a little anecdote.

Okay.

If you have the typewriters then, you would have tape, cut on tape, cut

with scissors, tape with scotch tape.

Delete and correct something, typex, white liquid, that you would paint and

blow it, and when it was dry, you had to put it back in there.

When the manuscript was finished, my mother read it, and the only thing she

said was, why did you give the villain the name of your father?

I didn't know that, or maybe I had heard it, but it didn't cross my mind. I mean,

it was his second surname, the name of his mother that was French.

I said, well, don't worry, don't worry, we'll change it. Yeah, we'll change it.

560 pages.

And so the family sits in a row in the dining room, and Paula,

with a ruler, goes page by page like this.

And when she finds the name, she paints it with typex, and Nicolás, who is

sitting there with the hair dryer, hair dries the...

And then I put it back. And it has to have one letter less than the original

name so that you can fit it in the space.

That's how we worked. And today, AI.

I can't believe it.

There were no copies, of course. You had only one copy.

Didn't you almost lose that one copy? I almost lost it. I carried my manuscript

in a canvas bag.

on my shoulder day and night. I would sleep with it in bed.

And I would go to the office with my bag and put it in my desk everywhere because

I didn't want to lose it. And one day I left it in the hairdresser.

And I was the last client. It was late.

And I left it there.

And I couldn't retrieve it. So the next day, the next day was Sunday or

something like that. And so I get there. It's closed.

And I'm desperate.

Monday, very early, I get there, and they had already thrown away the trash.

So I go out where the big cans were for the street, really, and dug in there and

found my canvas intact.

Intact.

So that was so lucky.

I love this audience.

Everyone has read this book here. You know it has a happy ending.

She didn't lose it. She didn't write it again.

And they all went, ah!

That's how much they love you. That was so wonderful, so wonderful.

AI could never. That family affair you described, there was an audience

question here.

How much of AI do you use in your research?

Nothing yet, but I will.

I'm terrible with technology, but absolutely terrible.

Things happen to my computer that... don't happen to any other computer in

the universe.

Like what?

I don't know. It turns green, for example.

And so my son, who is a techie, takes care of that part.

But now with all the research, before I did the research alone, but my brother,

my brother Juan, is a scholar, and he's a retired professor. He retired, and

he's bored to death.

He's also vegan and has like seven cats.

So his life is terrible.

He doesn't even eat properly, you know. So I

asked him to do the research for me. And he's wonderful because he's connected to

all the universities in the world.

But now he's learning to use AI for research.

It might happen that next year he can do that for me. But I don't think I will

ever be able to do it.

I think most of us could give a pretty good estimate of what we spend in a

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Last month, I traveled to New York City to moderate a gallery event and host a

couple tapings of Talk Easy.

I stayed over in Chelsea, and going to New York in September, it's just the

perfect time of year to be in Manhattan.

The summer heat is starting to break, but it's just warm enough to spend most

of the day outside.

And in between work, I'd walk around the High Line or head to Greenwich Village

to get some work done at a cafe, because working in a hotel room, eh, who wants

to do that?

I even caught a friend's concert in Brooklyn.

It was nice to spend a few days getting reacquainted with New York, and it made

me think about how much of traveling is about experiencing the everyday rhythms

of a place. The restaurants, shops, parks, and neighborhood spots that make

a city feel like itself.

That's why, when I find myself leaving my home in L.A. for any stretch of time,

I think it could be a good idea to list my space on Airbnb.

That way, someone can enjoy my city the way I enjoy the ones I get to visit.

It's a practical way to make use of my space when I'm already gone. Plus, the

extra income can help offset some of my future travel costs.

If you've got upcoming travel plans, your home could be working for you.

Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.

You and your mother began writing letters to each other in 1958, I think

it was, when you were 16. When I was 16 years old. And you started collecting

the letters in 1987.

I wanted to know, were the two of you closest on the page?

Absolutely. I totally recommend to live far away from your mother and write

every day.

We had the most wonderful relationship because we never saw each other.

And I adored my mother. She was funny. She was ironic. She was smart.

She was a great artist. She was just great and beautiful also.

And we were separated when I was 16. I was living with my grandfather in Chile

and she was in Turkey with her diplomatic husband.

And so we started writing every single day. Of course, it wasn't a

conversation. The mail would take a month at least.

But it didn't matter. There was someone there that eventually would read

whatever you wrote.

And then when I moved to the United States, we kept that forever, all our

lives, every day.

And then when I moved to the United States, I started collecting her letters

and a copy of mine.

And a couple of years ago, my son decided to digitize the letters that are

very well organized, because they were fading, some of them.

And we think that we have around 24,000 letters, which is absolutely

incredible.

Boxes per year, and if you ask me what happened, let's say 19th of July of

1988,

I go to the box, take the day, and I can tell you what happened that day with the

emotion of the day. So that's fantastic if you are going to write a memoir.

It's really great.

I was recently trying to write a brief memoir of a brief period in my life,

from 2015 to 2025,

10 years.

the end of love and a divorce, the time alone, and finding love at a very old

age again.

And I couldn't remember for my life why I had divorced my husband.

There was nothing wrong with him.

And I had no grudges, no bad feelings.

Couldn't remember a thing.

Just good things.

And so I went to the letters, and then I saw day by day what I had not seen then

and what I had forgotten.

So in that sense, it was very useful. That's what it's good for.

Yeah, unfortunately, what happens is that he died.

And so now I can write whatever I want.

And that's a power I don't want to have.

It's too much power. No, because it's not fair.

His version should be also in the book.

And I'm sure he thought I was a total bitch.

But because we never thought, I don't know why, what he would

think of my memoir.

So it's, as I said, too much power in my hands. I don't want it.

Why do you think...

It was easier for the two of you to exchange feelings and stories on the

page versus in person?

No, because circumstances separated us.

Maybe we would have chosen to be closer in person, but we couldn't.

First, because she was married to a diplomat, she was never there. She was

always traveling.

Then we had exile, and then I immigrated to the United States.

And eventually she returned to Chile.

So we were always separated because life separated us. And the written word was

the connection, the umbilical cord that was never cut.

When your daughter passed away and you felt, I don't know how to go on, I don't

know how to write, was she the one that encouraged you?

Yeah, when my daughter died, my mother came, of course.

She died on December 6, 1992.

And I started writing on January 8, a month later.

And on January 7, my mother said, what are you going to write tomorrow?

I said, Mom, nothing.

I'm just dead inside and nothing.

And she said, well, if you don't write, you will really die.

So the next day, she accompanied to my office, and she said, She

gave me a little package and she said, these are the letters you wrote to me

during the year that Paula was ill.

And there were 160 letters that she had in chronological order.

And she said, read them and you will see that the only way out for Paula was

death.

I'm going to buy a sweater in Macy's. Goodbye. And she left.

And for eight hours, she took eight hours buying the sweater. When she came

back without the sweater, I had cried my soul reading those letters,

but I had started writing.

There's a section in your new book where you write about your daughter's passing

and a dream she had nine months before.

Nine months before.

Paula was in her honeymoon, and she had a dream.

I don't know what the dream was about, but she wrote a letter.

And she put it in an envelope and sealed it with wax and wrote outside, to be

open when I die.

Why would a young 28-year-old bride in her honeymoon write

something like that?

And so we didn't open the letter. She was in a coma for a year.

At the end, when she was really deteriorating and it was sort of

obvious, I called her husband, who was in New York, and I was taking care of

her here in California.

And he said, open the letter. I had the letter.

And I said, I can't read it. And my daughter-in-law then,

eventually she divorced my son, she read it. And I can hear.

the letter in Celia's voice.

And she read the letter aloud.

And the letter starts, I don't want to be trapped in my body.

How did she know that that was going to happen?

I don't know. And it's a testament, a spiritual testament, a will, if you

want to call it that, in which she says that she's been very happy in this

life. She has had a lot of love.

and that she will always be with us.

Thank you for sharing that.

And my gosh, for putting it in this book, and of course the book that comes

from that moment, is that, of all the things you've written, is that the book

you hear most from readers about?

Yes.

When the book was published, I started getting, there was no internet then, and

we started getting snail mail.

hundreds, thousands of letters in every possible language from people who had

read the book, because everybody has losses.

It doesn't have a child that dies. It can be whatever, you know, divorce,

illness. And so we collected these letters in boxes, but without any

organization, just dropped them there in the boxes.

Eventually... My son and my daughter-in-law put them in drawers and

sort of organized the letters. To this day, I get messages at least to a week

about Paula.

And life is so strange that Paula died 33 years ago,

34 years ago, soon.

And a filmmaker is doing a documentary about me.

Go figure.

And she heard about the letters and she saw the drawers with the letters.

And she said, give me an example. And she picked up a letter.

And the letter was written by a young medical student called Erin

Coleman, who said in the letter, I read your book.

This has changed my life and the way I see my career as a doctor.

We are taught to deal with illness.

I will deal with the patient and the family of the patient. Everybody has

someone who loves them, who is suffering more than the patient.

And so the letter is beautiful.

The filmmaker said, can you read it on camera?

So I did. And my daughter-in-law, who is from Sicilian origin, and once she gets

an idea in her head, nothing can take it out.

So she said, let's find her.

And I said, Lori, this was 33 years ago. She's probably married, changed her

name. How are you going to find her?

I'll find her.

And she did.

And she's a doctor in Alabama working with the most vulnerable people.

We connected on Zoom and the filmmaker sent a camera over there to film her and

film me while we talked.

So that's...

I always think of a journey of a book, you know? It goes around like a message

in a bottle in the ocean. You don't know who's going to pick it up and what

effect it will have on someone.

I suspect you've had an impact on everyone here today.

Thank you. I have no doubt. Well, let's hope so because they paid for the

ticket.

You won't be so disappointed.

I want to talk about the foundation and talking about vulnerable communities.

I know you said earlier that, I think, quote, I just give the money for it.

But can you talk about the work that you're doing there, you and your family

are doing? The work that Lori does, really.

The foundation has a very clear mission.

Invest in the power of women, and as I said before, in education, which doesn't

necessarily to be higher education, skill.

health, which of course includes reproductive rights, and protection from

violence, violence and exploitation.

And the foundation works with people who are in the field doing the stuff. We

don't work with individuals because we can't follow.

everything. But Laurie checks every organization that we help.

We do a lot of work in the border with children that are separated from the

parents or that are in vulnerable situations.

And in other countries as well, we have programs in Nepal, in Africa, in Central

America, in Chile.

And well, thank God my books sell very well.

I have some more questions for you, but I'm going to Give some time to the

audience. Yeah, you better because you've been talking a lot.

I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

That's true. That's true. Okay.

Someone asks, do you have a clear sense of each character before you start

writing a book?

Or do the characters fully take shape as you write the book?

It depends.

Sometimes the character just appears like a vision.

Sometimes it's modeled after someone I know.

Sometimes it's the story of someone that I met years ago and the story has been

in me for years.

And sometimes I start with a character.

It might be a secondary character that is not particularly important but has

something to do in the story.

And that character starts to grow and grow and grow and takes over.

And then I can't get rid of it. And then it becomes one of the protagonists. And

other times I have a protagonist, for example, the devil lover, who is

usually a gorilla with a black ponytail and really sexy.

Okay, he starts like that, you know.

a sort of Antonio Banderas in Desperado.

And then by page 110, I don't like the guy anymore.

He's a jerk.

And I think, well, if I don't like it, why would the female protagonist like

him? I have to kill him.

So all of those characters end up dead before the end of the book.

And then I have to bring someone else to replace him.

It's a whole process.

It's like life, you know, you get rid of a husband and then you get another one.

Or a lover, for that matter.

Have you met Antonio Banderas before?

Yeah, a couple of times.

My God, he was so handsome.

I think he still is considering, but God, when he was young.

Considering age?

Considering that time passes for all of us.

Okay. I think you're doing all right. It's hard to be sexy when we get old.

It's very hard. I try, but it doesn't work at all.

I think you're doing just fine.

That's a round of applause.

Thank you.

Okay, what advice would you give someone who wants to start writing but doesn't

know where to start or finds it very intimidating?

It's a difficult question. You want to write, but you don't have a story, and

you don't know where to start.

I mean, most of the time, one wants to write because we have something to say.

We have a story inside.

To be in love with the mythology of the writer is one thing, but the process of

writing is a craft.

It's a job like any other job.

And in that little book, I recommend to aspiring writers, first of all, I repeat

what Elizabeth Gilbert said on stage, and I heard her. She said to someone

from the audience who asked the same question, she said, don't expect your

writing to give you fame or money.

write because you love the process.

And I think that's essential, love the process.

And then plunge into it. As we plunge into life or into falling in love, you

don't plan it, you don't have an outline, you don't have a manual, you

don't have anything. And in the process of writing, things happen.

And you start getting all the juices and the universe conspires to help you. And

you start paying attention to things that you would have missed completely if

you were not writing that story in particular.

And then you see signs that you can use, things that you can use.

So if you want to write, listen to Elizabeth Gilbert and then just do it.

You can always correct.

a bad page.

You cannot correct a blank page.

I said no clapping.

You know, once I had to teach a long narrative in a college, and I don't know

how to teach, so I asked my daughter to come and help me, Paula.

She came, and when we were entering the first class, she said, Mom, tell the

students to write a bad book.

And I said, why would I say that? And she said, because otherwise they will be

paralyzed. They are expecting to write the great American novel. It's not going

to happen. But a bad book, it's a start. So let's start there. It's like a bad

marriage.

Everybody has a first bad marriage.

Then you improve in time.

Look, I have had three husbands, and if I live long enough, I will probably have

another one.

Quote, divorce is a way out.

It's not the end of anything.

It's the way out of something that isn't working.

Here's another one you said.

Don't give me your condolences because it has been really good to end that

marriage.

It died a natural death.

It did. It did.

Unfortunately, as I said, I can't remember any of the agony.

Just died.

In your marriages, did you try to resuscitate them? Did you go to therapy?

Oh, therapy.

My first marriage lasted 29 years.

Nine years too many. And I tried desperately to make it work. And he

tried too.

For nine years?

Nine years. And it didn't work. And eventually we separated with no lawyers,

nothing. Just a conversation.

And it ended.

And the kids helped us to separate everything we had and start a new life.

The second marriage, the same thing.

And what was I saying?

Why did I get into the marriage thing? We were not talking about marriage.

Give me a second. I've got to remember myself.

No, okay, I remember.

Having fallen in love for a third time or been married for a third time, We

were talking about counseling and whether that helped.

Therapy. Yeah,

we tried everything. We tried ecstasy. We tried marijuana.

We tried mushrooms.

We tried therapy.

We tried gurus. We went on vacations.

Did any of the drugs help?

Ecstasy actually helped us get through a threshold when we were stuck in therapy.

That helped us.

But always with the help of the therapist.

Well, not always the drugs with the help of a therapist, but most of the time,

sometimes.

And it didn't work.

We were in couples therapy, and he wasn't paying attention. He would look

at his phone, answer his emails.

In therapy? He was on his phone? Yeah, yeah. And so I was doing all the work.

And the therapist, who was rather pissed at him, said, okay, in the next session,

each one of you bring in a piece of paper.

write down in one sentence what do you want from the other person.

So the next session we come and ask, did you do the homework?

And I said, yeah, I had my piece of paper. And he said, and Willie said, no,

I didn't have time.

He was retired, for God's sake.

And he didn't have time. So the therapist said to me, give

your paper to Willie. Willie, please read it aloud.

And Willie said, I don't need to read it. I know exactly what it says, but I'm

very sorry. I cannot give it.

And suddenly it was clear to me in that instant that it was over.

But it took me eight years to get there.

And in that phrase, I got it, finally.

And I said, well, in that case, we have to separate. Okay, okay.

And that was that.

And what I had written in the piece of paper was kindness.

That's all I wanted.

I still have the piece of paper.

Thank you for sharing that.

So be kind to some.

Kindness goes a long way.

Much better than sex.

You might not think so now, but you just listen.

I know what I'm talking about.

I will keep that in mind.

My mom was a, not that anyone asked, but I'll say, my mom was a divorce attorney.

And does anyone want to guess how many times she got a divorce?

Really good. Wow. Is that someone I know? It was exactly three times.

And I always say, she liked to practice what she preached.

Okay, let's go back to some normal audience questions.

This is what happens when you let me off the leash too long. Do you think anyone

can become a great author, or do you think for some it's an intrinsic gift?

It's a tricky question. I think that everybody can learn to write well.

Anybody can learn to sing, but nobody, I mean, few people are Maria Callas.

of luck and talent in the storytelling, but writing is a craft.

You can learn it.

For example, in that class, I had 19 students, and there was probably

two very good writers, and one of them was never going

to be a fiction writer, would be a wonderful nonfiction writer, because

didn't have the...

The crazy imagination that is needed to come up with fiction.

You have to be a liar, really.

Was that one of the defects that Neruda quoted? Yeah, that I lie all the time.

I think it worked out pretty well.

Yeah.

When your mother passed away, did how you moved through the world change?

Yeah.

When my mother died, I kept on writing to her for like two months.

But then there was no reply.

There was nobody there. And I felt her presence, but there was no one to answer

the letters.

So I stopped because I can't write a journal.

I need someone to tell something. I need a conversation.

I don't write for myself. I write for each one of you.

I realized when I stopped writing the letter to my mother that I stopped

paying attention to every day.

Before, I was aware of what was going on because I needed to have some material

for the letter in the evening.

Now, I go through life distracted.

Yesterday, there were 50 pelicans in the lagoon.

I would have

really noticed and create a story about the pelicans and research about

pelicans. For my mother in the evening, 50 pelicans just flew away and that was

that. There was nothing left, you see. And I feel that my days go

sort of blurred in a fog and too quickly.

So I'm clinging to whatever is left, you know, but it's not much.

Does writing, when you do go back to that office early in the morning,

approaching January 8th, is that what it is? Does writing help with this? Does it

help you pay attention in this moment?

It does, but then I pay attention to everything that concerns the book.

I am completely focused on the story, and everything that I can use for the

story.

I pay attention to, and the rest disappears.

My husband disappears, but... One

person in the audience wants to know, of all the books you've written, which one

did you enjoy writing the most?

The House of the Spirits, because I had no idea what I was doing.

I had no critical voice inside.

I knew nothing about the book industry. I'd never taken a literary class or

belonged in a workshop.

Nothing. So I had ignorance,

total ignorance and total innocence.

And that gave me freedom that I never had again.

When you start reading the reviews, when you start feeling that there is a world

out there of editors and publishers and agents and...

publicist and whatever, then it's not the same ever again.

Shelly asks, what is the best advice you have ever been given and who gave you

this advice?

My grandfather, don't whine.

Yeah, be strong. Be strong and fend for yourself.

What did your first agent tell you?

My first agent, Carmen Balcels, who was wonderful, wonderful. She was the

great... of the literary world in Europe for Spanish literature.

She really created the boom of Latin American literature.

I sent her the manuscript of the House of the Spirits, and she called me a

month later after she read it, and she said, I'm going to publish this book,

and it's a good book. Everybody can write a good first book because it's

everything they have, everything they are. All their memories are there. You

don't save anything.

But let me tell you, you will have to do double the effort that any man to get

half the recognition and respect.

And then she said, don't quit your day job because very few writers can make a

living writing.

And you have to have several books and maybe translate it and be successful in

order to make a living writing.

So that was very good advice.

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Before we go, I have some big questions, mine and from the audience.

This is one from Lou.

As an educator in the current world, where reading is competing with

scrolling and tick-tocking, how do we awaken a passion? I've never felt older

than saying tick-tocking.

I see it too, just so you guys know. How do we awaken a passion for writing from

their soul?

I don't know.

I really don't know.

I think that in my case, the passion started reading.

And I read such great books.

I read all the Russian authors, many of the English great authors.

I grew up with books.

And I think the passion for writing and how to write came from all the reading.

So what is happening now is that kids don't read much. They read very little.

And what I keep telling the parents is have them read what they love.

Don't give them Moby Dick.

Give them...

Give them what they love according to their age and to their character and

what their inclination is. And that's how you... Remember Harry Potter?

When you had a whole generation of little kids with 600 pages volume

reading? That was a miracle.

They loved it. And I think you have to start there by loving what you read.

In this new book, you write, Along the Roads I Have Traveled.

Memories are left behind, and in time they disappear.

What I don't write is blown away by the wind.

Is there a story or chapter of your life that you want to preserve

in the next book and moving forward? Is there something that's still... Well,

I'm thinking of that memoir with that husband that I would like to...

I think that most of the books I write are an exploration of a question. They

start with a question, and that is something I care about.

Something that has affected my life, or it's a memory, but it's something I'm

exploring. Even when the book seems to have nothing to do with me. I spent four

years writing Island Beneath the Sea, which is a book about the slave revolt

in Haiti.

Why would I want...

To write about that, there was no cultural background for me. There were

no slaves, African slaves in Chile.

There were no plantations. I knew nothing about Haiti.

Why was I obsessed with this thing?

And then when I finished the book, I realized that I had been for four years

exploring something that has been inside me all my life.

And that is absolute power with impunity.

What people can do to other people when they are not accountable.

During the war, in a dictatorship, the police,

sometimes a father.

When we have that kind of power, we can do horrible things.

And I was exploring that, the power of the master with the slave.

So every book is a question.

And I think that the question that I'm asking now about in this memoir is the

question of why love ends.

I know why love begins because I fall in love all the time with different people.

And I met Roger.

I met this guy because he started writing to me. He had heard me on the

radio. If you don't go to match.com, talk on the radio.

And he heard me on NPR.

And so he started writing every morning and every evening for six months.

And I had never seen a picture of him. I had never talked on the phone, nothing.

So he was from New York. I went to New York for something else, for Planned

Parenthood. And he wanted to have dinner with me, to meet me.

So we go out for dinner.

First time I see him.

And then I say, well, first the salad, then the ravioli.

And I say, well, what are your intentions?

Because I'm 74 years old, I have no time to waste.

The poor guy choked on the ravioli, but did not escape.

And the next day, he proposed.

The next day, I said, marriage? Are you kidding me? No, but if you want to be my

lover, you have to come to California.

So that's the way to handle men.

You have to attack.

Mean this thing about being all coquettish and feminine and wait for the

guy to know attack

Not

to get away from your current husband great subject but the You

said this thing earlier that I've just been thinking about which is in Chile

there was this

kind of government and faith in democracy, I think, as you said, that we

take it for granted.

And, of course, with the work you're doing with your foundation and in this

political moment, I do wonder how you think about power with impunity.

It terrifies me. It terrifies me because, as I said before, it's

uncontrollable.

We can't stop it often.

Once it gets rolling, it increases and it becomes more and more.

And we sort of get used to the daily thing, you know? Okay, I can live with

this, I can live with that, until you can't.

And so I'm afraid, of course.

And I think that my job...

at this point in life is try to create that awareness because I have lived it.

And there's this fascination now, not only in the United States, many, many

places in the world with authoritarian governments, with sort of questioning

the value of democracy and individual liberties.

And there's this thing of going back to the past also, to the mistakes that

we've already made.

that we know the consequence, we do it again.

Every morning you say, till about 10 a.m., that, everything you just

described, the news, basically every day, that it's with you.

And then you get into the office and you let it go. Yeah, but I start the day

differently. I have two dogs and they sleep with me. One of them on my head.

And so they wake me up with the first light. As soon as the little light comes

through the window, they wake me up. So it's still almost dark outside.

And I make my coffee and I put on a robe and sit outside in the garden with the

dogs. And I begin the day by being grateful, really grateful for the life I

have had and for all the privileges I have.

For the fact that I'm here with you, that I'm connected to people.

That is so valuable and so extraordinary.

So I begin by being grateful.

And then the rest of the day, things happen, the news and everything else.

But that moment of coffee and dogs and peace is

wonderful. It's just the beginning.

It gives me strength for the rest of the day.

And I am no spiritual.

Guru, none of it.

I'm no woo-woo thing, it's just coffee.

I don't mean to get too woo-woo, but as we close, can you

tell me about the day that your granddaughter Nicole was born?

When Nicole was born?

Paula,

my daughter,

As I said, I think I said, she died in my arms. And it was a

very, very special moment.

There was, how can I say?

We were all around her.

Her brother and Nico's baby.

And there was like stillness.

Stillness in the air, as if time had stopped.

It was a sort of sacred night.

The transition was so smooth and so painful

in many ways for all of us, but also sacred.

And then, nine months later, Nicole was born, my granddaughter.

And my son and my daughter and my...

daughter-in-law at the time, allowed me to be there for the birth and to receive

Nicole and cut the umbilical cord.

And that moment was so similar to the moment of Paula's going.

It was also a stillness, you know, the room was quiet when this baby came out.

It was an extraordinary moment, and my question was, tell me how it is, before

you forget, from where you come, because that's the place where Paula is going.

Tell me.

And Nicole is today, 33 years old, a gorgeous woman, and every time I see

her, I remember that moment, cutting the umbilical cord, bringing her to the

world, just welcoming her.

You've said that of all your characters and all your books, in a weird way,

Ava Luna is me or I am Ava Luna.

And Ava is an orphan from an unnamed South American country who uses

storytelling to survive, to navigate a nation in political turmoil.

And I thought we would close from a passage from that.

This is a part of Ava Luna in which

She's not talking. The whole book is narrated by her. But this is from the

point of view of the lover. You remember I told you I had to kill the first

lover? Yeah, he died.

And so I had to bring someone else.

And this guy is a photographer.

And so this is what he says.

You think in words, he says to her.

For you, language is an inexhaustible thread that weaves as if life were

created as you tell it.

I think in the frozen images of a photograph, not an image on a plate, but

one traced by a fine pen, a small and perfect memory with the soft volumes

and warm colors of a Renaissance painting, like an intention captured on

grain paper or cloth.

From an indefinite distance, I'm looking at that picture, which includes me.

I'm spectator and protagonist.

I am a shadow. I am in the shadow, veiled by the fog of a translucent

curtain. I'm there with you, but also here, alone, in a different frame of

consciousness.

In the painting, the couple is resting after making love.

Their skin gleams moistly. The man's eyes are closed.

One hand is on his chest and the other on her thigh in intimate complicity.

That vision is recurrent and immutable.

Nothing changes, always the same, peaceful smile in the man's face, always

the woman's languor, the same folds in the sheets, the same dark corners of the

room. always the lamp light strikes her breasts and cheekbones at the same

angle, and always the silk shawl and the dark hair fall with the same delicacy.

Every time I think of you, that is how I see you, how I see us, frozen for all

time on the canvas, immune to the fading of memory.

I spend immeasurable moments imagining myself in that scene until

I feel I'm entering the space of the photograph and I'm no longer the man who

observes, but the man lying beside the woman.

Then the quiet symmetry of the picture is broken and I hear voices very

close to my ear.

Tell me a story, I say to you.

What about...

Tell me a story you have never told anyone before.

Make it up for me.

Isabel Allende, thank you very, very much.

Thank you, everyone, tonight.

Thank

you for watching

Talk Easy.

If you enjoyed this episode with Isabel Allende, be sure to subscribe on YouTube

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You can also leave us a review on Apple, drop us a comment on Spotify, or follow

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Our producer is Caroline Reebok.

Today's episode was edited by Alex Dishel. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola.

Social media is by Lucy McGraw. This conversation was presented by

HowToAcademy and made in partnership with the good people at Higher Ground

Media.

I'm Sam Fragoso.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching.

And I'll see you back here next Sunday.

Until then, stay safe and so long.