 The formal presentation of the award, numerous promotions throughout Serbian cities, meeting readers in Novi Sad, Niš, Vršac, Sombor... ensued after his arrival from America, where Vladimir Pištalo lives and works as a university professor.
What was your reaction to the news about the NIN Award?
– The NIN Award draws attention to the book; it is, as I set out in my recipient’s address, something that provides a dignified frame and a spotlighted platform to a literary work, and this is a good thing for both the book and the perception of it. Hopefully after this award, people will read my books more, and then these books will provide the opportunity for their readers to perhaps come to like them.
What does this recognition mean for you?
– The NIN Award affords one the opportunity to make a statement. Simply put, in this way the author gets a chance to be heard by many. He merely need bow and begin. And I don’t mean only interviews, but also meeting readers and talking to them, and I also mean the book. The NIN Award has the power to reaffirm a writer who has potential. And vice-versa. Over the past few days, I’ve talked with many people. One of them told me there were people who read one book a year – the book that receives the NIN Award. This then is actually an opportunity for the book; having someone who’s not into literature read it, and then add it to his/her library and recommend it to others. Also, some get hold of the book through misunderstanding. But, when this happens, that very moment the book stands a chance, and if it can captivate a reader with its poetry, its magic, then that is a good thing.
How did Nikola Tesla come to be your literary inspiration?
– There was not any big plan here. There are writers with the great plan in terms of their creative work. In this context, I would mention Vasko Popa, who one December evening told a friend of mine the list of poems he intended to write next year. The latter was astounded, but Vasko Popa indeed, through the end of the following year, wrote the very poems that he had announced he would write, and in that same order too. Popa had a grand scheme regarding his creative work to which he stuck. In my case, this is inconceivable. I proceed from small things, from details that later evolve into whatever they should develop into.
What then did you proceed from in writing this novel?
– In the beginning, Tesla was for me a series of interesting images. One of them was when, in his later years, he slipped, his legs literally in the air. For an older man, this could indeed spell trouble. Describing this event he at one point said that the "entire cluster of his nerves burst into flames", that he flipped and landed on his feet. A passer-by that happened to be just behind him asked how a man of his age could so nimbly land on his feet. Tesla replied that he had seen cats do it, but not people. This fine tuning of his nerves just at the right frequency is amazing. People studying Tesla’s work know what I’m talking about here. There is also the image of a great scientist as he is producing thunder or the one where, as boy, he threw a snowball that turned into an avalanche. For the sake of those who had not read the book, I will say that Tesla was rolling snowballs downhill with a group of boys. As they rolled downward, the snowballs grew in size but at some point they stopped. However, Tesla’s snowball did not stop but continued to grow. It became bigger and bigger as it was rolling and at some point began to rustle and then thunder. It slowly began to separate a layer of grass, then a layer of soil, then several pine trees, as the avalanche gained momentum. Terrible thunder could be heard too. Here is revealed a metaphor of how something – that was nothing – something elementary appears. And this is a metaphor about Tesla himself, about the immense power one man released. Those were some of the images I later translated into the story. It took much knowledge to do this. One cannot conceive anything without an image, but without knowledge one cannot recount anything. First, I would transform images into story, and then again transform other mastered concepts into images. A friend of mine once said of Bunuel that he had a wonderful ability to transform ideas into images. I think that this is what painters, film directors, but also writers, do. I proceeded from images, supplemented them with knowledge and a story and then again narrated them through images.
You said there was a strange bond between a banknote with Tesla’s image and you inspiration?
– Tesla’s image is depicted on a nice-looking blue-coloured banknote from the time of hyperinflation. The banknote looked splendid, irrespective of the fact that its worth was already negligible. It is interesting to note that the more the value of money dwindled, the images on the banknotes became increasingly less realistic. The images of our great men came to look like images on a Wanted poster. Then those millions of zeros next to the greats who in a way looked quite disestablished on the banknotes. Tesla’s image was shown on one of the first such banknotes. The blue colour was beautiful. At that time, I had already begun work on Tesla and I felt some sort of magical bond. I pinned it to the wall and looked at it all the time.
It is interesting to note that you have cloaked the story about Tesla – although it’s in the form of a novel – into the poetic. How did you do that? At one time, you stated that the story about Tesla could not be told without poetry.
– I think no story can be told without poetry. For some writers, poetry is poetry and prose is prose, and for them prose is made up of solid, clever sentences bearing such and such a capacity and a plot. For me, this is not enough. If I were forced to write such prose, I would desist because this is not what I am interested in. Poetry is what I am interested in in a work. Literary critics used to call this combination of poetry and prose - prosetry. One poet told me that poetic prose was like the sphinx – two different elements. To me, it did not seem like different elements. These two things – prose and poetry – did not appear to me to be different. Prose and poetry did not look different to me, just as thoughts and feelings did not come separately to me so I reproduced them as such in the novel.
The writing of the novel was preceded by many years of research, diving into many archives, libraries and the like...
– Creative work was for Tesla an open question, and so it is for me as well. Tesla would cite Mark Twain who spoke of himself as being lazy and would have achieved nothing had he not perceived it as play. And he achieved a lot, because if we take it that writing is work, then he indeed had an impressive opus. But since he regarded his work as play, this is how he saw it. The work Tesla was committed to for him was like breathing! He did not feel as most people do – going to work at seven in the morning and returning at five in the evening. As regards my collecting material, now that is work, the digging in archives, documentation, libraries. I spent days, months and years at such places. And, may I add, that kind of work has no restorative effect, like writing does. So as to balance out the two, I disciplined myself and as much time as I spent in some archive collecting material, I would sit down each day at the desk and work on the novel. Just so I could remind myself that this was leading somewhere. It would have been much easier for me had I been engaged in writing an encyclopedia about Tesla. I was forced to cut and dig into all that I could get my hands on to come up with something in this heap of dry material that would help me throw light on Tesla’s character. Over the past years in a way, I have condensed the knowledge thus gained to be able to pass it on, to translate it into images. The book has two elements, one is the magical, and the other entails the increased perception I have gained precisely through imaging.
In way, you were privileged to get to know Nikola Tesla’s character more closely. Is there something in the life of this great man that you found particularly fascinating?
– There were many unusually strange moments in his life. First of all, there was the abundance of those beautiful, mystical images that I began with and which remained pivotal in my perception of him. The story is so infinitely strange and remains so even after I told it. That’s the whole point. This is not some puzzle with just one unknown element. One cannot resort to paraphrasing this story, just as one cannot paraphrase a poem. For instance, we ask ourselves what is the poem Santa Maria della Salute all about? And even if we retell it, it will continue to shine on. It is the same thing with Tesla’s biography – even though it has been recounted, its magic lives on.
 How would you explain the symbolism of your novel?
– People have commented in various ways on the title of my novel. One man asked me whether I thought that all books previously written about Tesla were merely masks, and that I was the first one to offer a portrait. Of course, I don’t. I think that truth is the biggest magic. Here, I would cite Kant who used to say that man must conduct himself in such a manner as to provide a role model for a universal rule. Just think if this rule was to be applied and we tell someone how ugly he/she is, or that he/she is thief, a bad man/woman and something of the like. Such a society could not survive. I am convinced that our choice is either kindness or truth and that using a mask is a completely normal part of functioning in a society. Also, Tesla was seen by many as different, as a mask, but for his part, he, too, saw many people as masks. I have asked myself what is it that transforms masks into people and came to the conclusion that it is love, love alone. One of the key questions the book raises is what was the measure of love, of emotional exchange, that existed between Tesla and other people.
At one time, you said that one of your motives for writing this novel was to acquaint American readers with Tesla’s childhood and youth, and Serbian readers with that part of Tesla’s life that he spent in America.
– I’m glad you mentioned this because this was my true ambition. In the books on Tesla published in America, I would say that the way his childhood and origins are described is scant, even ‘muddled’. One could tell that those who wrote about it were not in the know. It was my intention to describe Tesla’s life from within, showing the way of life in the country in his native place. As far as readers here are concerned, I would say that among the books written thus far about this great Serbian scientist there are many that cover this part of Tesla’s life, prior to his departure for America, after which he virtually falls into obscurity. This America, to which Tesla went, was not a uniform America, a static country. This was a country undergoing continual and large-scale changes. Let us just remember the series about Tesla in which these Americans appear like cardboard figures. There is, for instance, that man Johnson. A very interesting character. He ran a magazine that was a sort of mixture between our NIN weekly, Politika daily children’s supplement and, say, several other good newspapers. It was a journal everyone read, even the presidents. This man enjoyed high esteem in America. He knew everybody. He practically ushered Nikola Tesla into high society circles and introduced him to all the most influential people of that time. Another thing was that he was a pleasant, handsome man, with a sense of humor, had tact, not a difficult person. Tesla liked him. Perhaps this was so because Johnson possessed that quality which Tesla valued most – a certain innocence. He sensed that Johnson had retained this innocence although he had been a skilled diplomat. He had managed to escape from becoming robotised. He fought for the right of negroes at a time when there were as many as a thousand lynchings a year. He fought for women’s rights, for environmental protection, for international copyrights, was Roosevelt’s friend. He was a poet, a very important figure in America but also a close friend of Tesla’s. The description of the life of Tesla’s dear friend was to me of great significance in terms of putting together the whole picture of Tesla’s life in America. I tried in my book to sum up these two elements – Tesla’s childhood and youth, on the one hand, and the scientific work and life in America, one and the other – into a single story.
Is there any chance of your novel being translated in America any time soon?
– I refrain from answering such questions. That would be like that one time when they asked me whether I would like to win the NIN Award. There is a chance of that happening as some negotiations are under way, but I prefer to talk about it when it happens.
Have you ever thought about a film about Tesla, as your novel provides an ideal basis for this, it being full of images?
– Had I not thought the subject fascinating, I would not have spent as many years on it. This visual plane is what I find most interesting. This topic warrants time. In this case, it would be the images themselves that mattered, not only the story. Someone from the world of film would have to have a very strong instinct to do a film about Nikola Tesla.
Does your story about Tesla end with this novel?
– It was not my ambition to become an expert on Tesla that would research everything about him until I turned eighty. My intention was in fact to write more about America. What I know as an American historian and someone with knowledge of American literature and contemporary life I hope to use to write a series of essays in which I would portray the ordinary, normal America, contemporary life in a way that would be understandable to contemporary readers. And not in the way that has been done when they said that Serbia was in fact Milošević. Serbia, this is you and I, here and now, as we talk; it’s the people sitting on the river rafts telling jokes. The ordinary life of people always differs from the official one, both here and in America. If someone treats us unjustly because they confuse the official image with intimate life, why should we be unjust to that someone by disregarding ordinary everyday life that may be quite simple and normal? The images of America have somehow always been spectacularly abnormal. It is this unspectacular America that I write about, and in this I would again dwell on Tesla.
You said that almost all your literary heroes are connected through immortality. How do you pick your characters? What does a person need to be like to find himself in one of your novels?
– I have no particular concept. Something just happens to attract me. These are people who carry great stories; they are greater than life when seen through the eyes of their fate. They are precisely the opposite from those characters I wrote about when I became a writer. Those were stories about narrow, pathetic and poor human lives in some disgustingly impoverished and closed circumstances that one could do nothing about other than sit and cry. Sit down and begin to cry, surrounded by dilapidated walls, some muddy courtyards…. There is so much misfortune in the world. I am not saying that misfortune should be avoided, but that it is inherent to man to overcome difficulties and find solutions. Even in very adverse situations, one can do something. And whither all this, where does this golden yarn unwind, as in fairy tales, and go? Its direction is what I am interested in. Overcoming apparent impossibilities and problems and pointing to the way of human potential. That is what interests me. I am interested in the stature and immortality of man and his achievement. To be romantic is not merely the attribute of art. Maxim Gorky used to say that suffering is the trait of a tree, animal and stone. What matters is overcoming it. Perhaps it is true that this is the quality I take as a departure point when picking the main character.
You say that one can live in two countries, as you do, but that one cannot write in two languages. Considering that you write only in Serbian, do you find that as a writer you are at a disadvantage somehow with regard to the English-speaking world? How hard is it for a writer to create outside of his own language?
– I have tried to write a novel in English, but it didn’t work. You simply don’t have this type of intimacy, this kind of feeling of each nerve. My friend Stevan Tontić told me that language does not come only from the mind but from the nerves, from the body. All the nice and ugly things that happened to one in one’s life, all this is contained in the experiences of the body that then pour forth and are then molded into words. When you try to write in a foreign language, you blunt the charge of your expression.
How did it come about that you went to America?
– It happened quite by accident. A friend of mine suggested I apply for the MacDowell colony in New Hampshire for writers, painters and musicians. This colony is in itself an interesting story. It was founded by a lady by the name of MacDowell. She was the wife of a relatively significant composer at the turn of the last century when they were not a force to be reckoned with in art. She decided to take her sickly husband into the mountains where they built a small cottage and in which he could play and compose while enjoying clean air. As a wonderful and devoted wife, she would come every day to bring him a basket with lunch and then they would dine. Such was an ideal working day for an artist. Their friends from New York used to come for visits and they also liked it. Then she went to build several other small cottages where painters and writers used to come, and she would bring them baskets with food as well. Later, before she died, some non-profit organisations assisted the colony. Today, there are some 30 such small cottages in which artists, writers, and painters come to stay in the course of the year. I went there and wrote for two months, receiving these baskets. Naturally, I took with me all my diplomas, recommendations and I applied to the University of New Hampshire, where Charles Simić worked and to whom I sent some of my books, which he liked. We became friends, and in the meantime he referred me to some people and I finally received a scholarship. I began to study and was a much better student than when I was studying in Belgrade. Here, it did not matter as much, but in Belgrade my life depended on my studies. I got all ‘A’s and when I graduated, I immediately got a job and began teaching American history.
What does your everyday life in America look like?
– My everyday life, all in all, resembles the everyday life of our writers living abroad. I have many friends in New Hampshire, in Connecticut, in New York and Boston. I spend my time, almost every day, with my friend, philosopher Predrag Čičovački. We go swimming together and converse. As we slowly do the breaststroke, we discuss human existence and other phenomena. I go to the theatre every weekend. Plenty of time is left for some serious work.
How did Vladimir Pištalo become a writer; did you have your own literary models?
– As for models, these would include Andrić and Vladan Desnica, especially Desnica, whom I regard as a writer of great significance. His work I place at the very top. Then there’s Thomas Mann and Chekhov, the writers who exerted the greatest influence on the formation of my moral view of the world. Also, Bulgakov. As to how I became a writer – I think I had no choice.
What are you currently working on?
– It is a book about Venice. I have just mentioned Thomas Mann. When he began to write The Magic Mountain, he thought it would be a novella the size of Death in Venice. But it became a sizeable book. I have conceived my future work as a novella about Venice. Venice is here the main character. This work is my intimate perception of Venice. Both, the manner of writing and the subject have somehow intertwined. We’ll see how it turns out in the end. | 
