I've known about Oriana Fallaci since the interview with the former
unlamented Shah of Iran. In fact I think I read her collected
interviews from the late 1970s. The one with Kissinger sounds very
familiar. It was Andrei Codrescu who would write to prospective
submitters to /Exquisite Corpse/ "You take your chances submitting to
this wit machine" because your rejections could be printed and
pilloried. Similarly anyone who sat down with Fallaci was at risk of
being exposed, attacked, made fun of, and sometimes subjected to
face-to-face verbal assault.
I'm less interested in Fallaci's "take" on Islam than on her
personalized style, her apparent lack of objectivity (if such a thing
exists), her ability to fearlessly get into the face even of Ayatollah
Khomeini with apparent disregard for her own safety and with unconcealed
contempt for his version of the culture she was attacking by assaulting
him. No "making nice" during the interview, followed by assault in
print afterwards--everyone seemed to know from the start why she was
there and what she was about.
I do not know how to "define" her, the journalism she practices, or the
willingness of her subjects to be given the Fallaci treatment.
Anyway, no, she's not dead, this is about an interview with /The New
Yorker/:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060605fa_fact
Ken
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Ken Wolman kenwolman.com rainermaria.typepad.com
"Don't be a baby, be a man. Sell out."--Lenny Bruce
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