![]() ''Still, in any Latin American novel you find politics. ''I don't consider my novels political at all,'' she said. She said that, in a political sense, it was impossible to ignore what was going on in the streets. The young journalist switched to fiction - including writing for the stage in Chile - because of a desire to broaden her themes. One time I went out to look for a job as a chorus girl, dressed like a bimbo, with false emeralds in my belly button.'' We did everything - hidden cameras, humor, musicals, sketches. When I was 17, I wrote for Paula, a women's magazine, Mampato, a children's magazine, and, at the same time, I conducted a weekly program on the state television channel. ''Journalists are paid very poorly in Latin America. ''I was a journalist all my life,'' Miss Allende said. But her interest developed after the military coup. ![]() The author recalled that originally she was not that concerned about politics. Allende only had about 46 per cent of the people, mainly from the left and center, behind him.'' But there were many Chileans who also feared that Allende would mean a Marxist government. At that time, the United States Government did not want Allende to be the President of Chile. to find support for the takeover by the military junta. was not altogether responsible,'' she said, ''although it was easy for the C.I.A. Miss Allende does not hold any one political element or agency responsible for the fall of the Allende Government. Finally, after a year and a half, I couldn't stand it there any longer and left.'' ''I thought we would go back to democracy soon afterward - I didn't think it would be tolerated for long. 11, 1973, the very day that Allende was killed at the palace,'' she said. The Chilean revolution and coup are never far from her mind or writings. ![]() Knopf, Miss Allende's American publisher. ![]() Her second novel, ''Of Love and Shadows,'' included crime and romance, and her next novel, ''Eva Luna,'' named for its title character, a storyteller with the ability to invent her life, will come out in the fall from Alfred A. She is a niece of the late President, Salvador Allende Gossens, giving her immediate name recognition. Miss Allende's internationally acclaimed first novel, ''The House of Spirits,'' while set in a fictional country, is not far removed from the Chile that went through a peaceful Socialist revolution and then was taken over by the present military junta. ![]() In recent months - ''because I am in love at this moment with a lawyer who lives there,'' she said happily - Miss Allende has spent a good deal of time in San Francisco. The 45-year-old author from Chile lives in Caracas, Venezuela, and visits this country frequently. In a preview of her ideas, the exuberant Miss Allende talked about her writing and herself. ''More than most writers, the political novelist is interested in the rise and fall of ideas.'' The series, conceived by Al Silverman, the book club's chairman, has already covered such categories as memoirs, biographical and religious writing. ''The novelist in his or her fictional journey is seldom far from the world of politics, if by politics we mean established authority of some kind -state or church, for instance, or social convention,'' said William Zinsser, the editor and author who has assembled the series for the club. The theme this season is fairly controversial: ''Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel.'' On successive Thursdays this month and next, the other speakers will be Robert Stone, Marge Piercy, Charles McHarry, Gore Vidal and Jimmy Breslin - all, in their own ways, political novelists. Miss Allende is the leadoff speaker tonight in the fourth annual lecture series at the New York Public Library, which is jointly sponsored by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the library. Just plain novelist, she said the other day, will do. Like most other serious novelists, Isabel Allende of Chile would prefer not to be fingerprinted and imprisoned in a confining category - not as a female writer or as a political writer or even as a Latin American writer. ![]()
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