"VISIONS OF ISABELLE" Q & A WITH WILLIAM BAYER
Q. You're known as a crime fiction writer, but Visions Of Isabelle is clearly an historical novel base on the life of a real person. How did you happen to write it?
A. It's an early work written back in the 1970s before I turned to crime fiction. One day my then girlfriend (now wife), Paula Wolfert, started telling me about this amazing person, Isabelle Eberhardt–an adventuress, Saharan explorer, writer and proto-feminist who dressed as a man and took an Arab male name. Intrigued, I tried to learn more about her, but there was very little information available. Finally, I went to the New York Public Library and read her published journals in French. Then one night, several weeks later, I dreamt of her. After a succession of dreams, I decided to write about her.
Q. Do you always dream about your characters?
A. Rarely. This was the first time. I felt haunted by her. There was a particular photo in one of the books taken just a few days before she died. She's sitting up in bed in a hospital, and there's something very weird about the expression on her face, as if the photographer crept up on her and surprised her. Also a sense I got that she knew something momentous and fearful was soon going to occur in her life. I remember a few years later, after Paula and I moved to Tangier (our plan was to move there for a year; I would write my Isabelle novel while Paula completed her Moroccan cookbook), I showed a copy of this photo to the writer Paul Bowles. He studied it, then shook his head and turned away. "I can't bear to look at it," he said. That was when I knew that there really was something strange there.
Q. Yet your book is not a biography?
A. Being a fiction writer, I didn't want to go that route, but it occurred to me that she'd make a great subject for a novel, and that if I fictionalized I'd be free to fill in many things not known about her. I think of Visions Of Isabelle as a kind of fictionalized psycho-biography, in that I try to probe into her psyche and erotic life.
Q. Did you do a lot of research?
A. I read everything she wrote and everything I could find that was written about her. It was only after I finished my research that Paula and I decided to go live in North Africa for a year. We rented a house in Tangier, enrolled Paula's kids in the American School there, and set to work on our respective projects.
Q. Didn't Isabelle Eberhardt spent most of her Saharan career in Algeria?
A. True. But it was easy for me to travel there from Tangier. I'd get in my car and drive to Algiers, then down to the various oases where she'd spent her time, and, finally, to the Saharan village, Aïn Sefra, where she died in a flood at age 27.
Q. A flood in the Sahara?!
A. Amazing, isn't it? Reminds me in a reverse way of that famous exchange in the movie Casablanca between Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains):
Renault: "What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?"
Rick: "My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters."
Renault: "The waters? What waters? We're in the desert."
Rick: "I was misinformed."
In fact, flash floods, though very rare, do occasionally occur in the Sahara. In this case there was a huge rain storm in the mountains, the water was funneled down through the gullies carved into the surrounding hills, and then suddenly and unexpectedly cascaded through the town like a tsunami. The Aïn Sefra flood was a genuine catastrophe in that the entire town was wiped out. People who live there still speak of it even though none of them were alive when it happened. As mentioned in the Afterward above, a few days later Isabelle's body was recovered, and she was buried nearby. Here's a picture of me beside her grave when I located it in 1974:
Q. Was Isabelle transgendered?
A. She'd always been boyish, and very much disliked having to play a passive feminine role. But the male Arab name and disguise was a way to travel alone in tribal areas. Most of the people she encountered along the way knew she was female, but so long as she called herself 'Si Mahmoud,' they accepted her as she presented herself.
Q. How much of your novel is pure fiction?
A. Impossible to say since I wove what I could verify with what I made up and now can't separate the strands. For those seeking historical truth, there are several excellent biographies mentioned in the Afterward. In English I recommend the one by Annette Kobak (not available when I wrote the novel), and in French, the exhaustive two volume study by the great writer and resistance heroine, Edmonde Charles-Roux. Also, Isabelle's Journals and most of her other writings are now available in English.
Q. Do you see her as an important historical figure?
A. Yes, though not on the scale of someone like T. E. Lawrence. She didn't change the world in a major way. But I think she's very important for reasons that go beyond her considerable accomplishments. She was one of a very select group of human beings–a person who tried to live in total freedom at a time when that was barely possible for a woman.
Q. Sounds like she'd make a great subject for a movie.
A. She would…and has. There's an okay film bearing her name released in 1991, a French-Australian co-production. Mathilda May plays Isabelle, and Peter O'Toole plays Lyautey. One odd fact: after directing this film, the Australian, Ian Pringle, served a sentence for stealing a Picasso and other stuff in New York. Far as I know, Mr. Pringle has not directed any movies since. Another odd fact: there's an anarchist-oriented publishing house in Portland, Eberhardt Press, named for Isabelle. Among their publications: a nice pamphlet about her life.
Q. Your title…?
A. I played with several titles, but I kept coming back to "Visions" because it seemed to suit the kaleidoscopic effect I was after. I also remember being influenced by the title of that great Bob Dylan song, "Visions Of Johanna." Paula, I and the kids loved his White On White album, and played it a lot when we lived in Tangier.
Q. Looking back, is there anything you'd change in the book written more than thirty-five years ago?
A. I don't think so. It was a joy to reread it while preparing it for e-book publication. It's the only book I've written that can be categorized as historical fiction. I feel I found a great subject and did well by her. And I'm sure that if I hadn't taken on this project, I would never have had the experience of living in North Africa…which led to my writing Tangier, my first detective novel, which I started as soon as I finished Visions Of Isabelle.