Eleven Minutes
Page 21
At that point, I had already decided to write about sex, but I still didn't have a plot or a principal character; I was thinking of something much more along the lines of the conventional search for sacredness, but that visit to Langstrasse taught me something: in order to write about the sacred nature of sex, it was necessary to understand why it had been so profaned.
In conversation with a journalist from the Swiss magazine, L'Illustree, I described that spontaneous book-signing in Langstrasse, and he wrote a long article about it. The result was that, at a book-signing in Geneva, several prostitutes turned up to have their copies of my books duly signed. I was very struck by one of them in particular, and afterwards--with my agent and friend, Monica Antunes--we went for a coffee that turned into supper that turned into other meetings in the days that followed. Thus was born the connecting thread of Eleven Minutes.
I would like to thank Anna von Planta, my Swiss publisher, who supplied me with important facts about the legal situation of prostitutes in her country. I would also like to thank the following women in Zurich (using their noms de guerre): Sonia, whom I met for the first time in Mantua (who knows, maybe one day, someone will publish your book!), Martha, Antenora and Isabella. And in Geneva (again using their noms de guerre): Amy, Lucia, Andrei, Vanessa, Patrick, Therese and Anna Christina.
Many thanks also to Antonella Zara, who allowed me to use passages from her book, The Science of Passion, in certain sections of Maria's diary.
Finally, I must thank Maria (nom de guerre), who now lives in Lausanne with her husband and her two lovely daughters and who, during various meetings with myself and Monica, told us her story, on which this book is based.
Paulo Coelho
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More...
About the author
Meet Paulo Coelho
About the book
How I Came to Write Eleven Minutes
Q&A with Paulo Coelho
About the Author
Meet Paulo Coelho
PAULO WAS BORN IN RIO in August 1947, the son of Pedro Queima Coelho de Souza, an engineer, and his wife, Lygia, a homemaker. Early on, Paulo dreamed of an artistic career, something frowned upon in his middle-class household. In the austere surroundings of a strict Jesuit school, Paulo discovered his true vocation: to be a writer. Paulo's parents, however, had different plans for him. When their attempts to suppress his devotion to literature failed, they took it as a sign of mental illness. When Paulo was seventeen, his father had him committed twice to a mental institution, where he endured sessions of electroconvulsive "therapy." His parents brought him back there once more after he became involved with a theatre group and started to work as a journalist.
Paulo was always a nonconformist and a seeker of the new. When, in the excitement of 1968, the guerrilla and hippy movements took hold in a Brazil ruled by a repressive military regime, Paulo embraced progressive politics and joined the peace and love generation. He sought spiritual experience, traveling all over Latin America in the footsteps of Carlos Castaneda. He worked in the theatre and dabbled in journalism, launching an alternative magazine called 2001. He began to collaborate with music producer Raul Seixas as a lyricist, transforming the Brazilian rock scene. In 1973, Paulo and Raul joined the Alternative Society, an organization that defended the individual's right to free expression, and began publishing a series of comic strips calling for more freedom. Members of the organization were detained and imprisoned. Two days later, Paulo was kidnapped and tortured by a group of paramilitaries.
This experience affected him profoundly. At the age of twenty-six, Paulo decided that he had had enough of living on the edge and wanted to be "normal." He worked as an executive in the music industry. He tried his hand at writing but didn't start seriously until after he had an encounter with a stranger. The man first came to him in a vision, and two months later Paulo met him at a cafe in Amsterdam. The stranger suggested that Paulo should return to Catholicism and study the benign side of magic. He also encouraged Paulo to walk the Road to Santiago, the medieval pilgrim's route.
In 1987, a year after completing that pilgrimage, Paulo wrote The Pilgrimage. The book describes his experiences and his discovery that the extraordinary occurs in the lives of ordinary people. A year later, Paulo wrote a very different book, The Alchemist. The first edition sold only nine hundred copies and the publishing house decided not to reprint.
"Paulo would not surrender his dream."
Paulo would not surrender his dream. He found another publishing house, a bigger one. He wrote Brida (a work still unpublished in English) that received a lot of attention in the press and both The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage appeared on bestseller lists. The Alchemist went on to sell more copies than any other book in the literary history of Brazil.
Paulo's story doesn't end there. He has gone on to write many other bestselling books that have touched the hearts of people everywhere: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Warrior of the Light: A Manual, Eleven Minutes, and the forthcoming The Zahir.
"The Alchemist went on to sell more copies than any other book in the literary history of Brazil."
ABOUT THE BOOK
How I Came to Write Eleven Minutes
DURING MY LIFETIME, I have experienced sex in many different and contradictory ways. I was born into a conservative age, when virginity was the defining characteristic of any decent young woman. I witnessed the emergence of the contraceptive pill and of antibiotics, both indispensable for the sexual revolution that would follow. I plunged enthusiastically into the hippy era, when we went to the other extreme, with free love being practiced at rock concerts. I now find myself in an age which is half conservative, half liberal, an age haunted by a new disease resistant to all antibiotics.
It is part of a writer's role to reflect on his or her own life, and writing a book about sexuality came to be a priority with me. I tried various approaches, but all failed. It was only when I met the prostitute who would provide the connecting thread for this novel that I realized: in order to write about sublime sex, I had to start with the fear that everything will go wrong.
Eleven Minutes does not set out to be a manual or a treatise about a man and a woman confronted by the unknown world of sexual relationships. It is an analysis of my own trajectory. It took me a long time to learn that the coming together of two bodies is more than a response to certain physical stimuli or to the survival instinct. Sex is a manifestation of a spiritual energy called love.
"It was only when I met the prostitute who would provide the connecting thread for this novel that I realized: in order to write about sublime sex, I had to start with the fear that everything will go wrong."
Sex means, above all, having the courage to experience your own paradoxes, individuality, and willingness to surrender. I wrote Eleven Minutes in order to find out if, at this stage of life, at fifty-five, I had the courage to learn everything that life has tried to teach me on the subject.
Q & A with Paulo Coelho
What is the central idea in Eleven Minutes?
We live in a world of standardized behavior, standardized beauty, quality, intelligence, and efficiency. We believe there is a standard for everything, and we believe, too, that if we stick to that standard we'll be safe. Because of this, we have created a kind of "standardized sex," which, in fact, consists of nothing but a string of lies: vaginal orgasm, virility above all else, and that it's better to pretend than to disappoint your partner. As a direct consequence of this, millions of people have been left feeling frustrated, unhappy, and guilty. It also lies at the root of all kinds of aberrant behavior, such as pedophilia, incest, and rape. Why do we behave in this way with something that is so important?
To what extent is the Maria in the book the real-life Maria? How much of herself will she find in the story?
Maria is a real person, and is now married with two children. However, the book isn't simply her biography
, because I've also tried to make use of various other parallel elements. I think she would recognize her story in the book as a whole, but she wouldn't necessarily have been confronted by the same situations with which my character is confronted.
Has she read Eleven Minutes?
She read a first draft in October 2002. She felt that the book was made up of a blend of different people, and I told her that this had been precisely my intention. She asked who had written the diary in the book, and said that she wished she could have written it. She did ask me to change the age of the principal male character, and I agreed--he's older in real life than he is in the book.
Did meeting foreign prostitutes working in Switzerland mean that the book turned out very different from the way you had originally envisaged it?
The idea of writing about sex is one that had been on my mind for a long time, but I hadn't found the right approach. Besides, the gestation of every book is a mystery to me: the text itself only comes into being once I've already written it in my subconscious. Perhaps in my other attempts to write about sex, I was too determined to deal only with its sacred side. The reality is very different though, and I'm very pleased with the way I've resolved the problem.
Hundreds of Brazilian women share Maria's story: going from the backlands of Brazil to the big city and then traveling abroad to work as prostitutes. Is there a parallel between that sad trajectory and the pilgrimage routes?
My book doesn't set out to be a study of prostitution. I've tried to avoid any kind of moralizing tone and in any way judging the main character for the choice she makes. What really interests me is how people relate to each other sexually. My intention, as always, is to be straightforward without being superficial.
"The idea of writing about sex is one that had been on my mind for a long time, but I hadn't found the right approach."
What is the significance of the references to the Road to Santiago in the book? Is there something particularly significant about the fact that Maria meets the male character, Ralf, on a stretch of that particular pilgrimage route, even though she knows nothing about it?
There's a realistic aspect to it--the Road to Santiago does, in fact, pass through Geneva--and there's a symbolic aspect too--because, from that moment on, Maria's body and soul begin to become reintegrated, because of love.
Do you think the fact that your main character is a prostitute will cause you problems in Muslim countries, like Iran, where your books have had great success?
I don't think about these things when I write. I think only about being true to myself.
In the dedication, you say that some books make a reader dream, while others bring him or her face-to-face with reality. Could this be seen as a warning?
The dedication isn't a warning, it's a declaration of personal principle. I have to write about topics that interest me, not just things that others might want to read about. My readers are intelligent people. If they felt there was a formula that was repeated in all my books, they would stop reading them. I, myself, am always surprised by what I write, and that, I think, gives life to a book.
"I think only about being true to myself."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAULO COELHO was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. Renowned for his best-loved work, The Alchemist, he has sold more than fifty-six million books worldwide and has been translated into fifty-nine languages. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, among them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France's Legion d'Honneur, Paulo Coelho has inspired millions worldwide. He was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2002, and writes a weekly column syndicated throughout the world.
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Praise for Eleven Minutes
"Sensual.... [An] adults-only fairy tale."
--Washington Post Daily "The book casts a curiously sweet spell."
--Entertainment Weekly "Compelling.... A gripping exploration of the potentially sacred nature of sex within the context of love, this may well become Coelho's next international bestseller."
--Booklist
"Gratifyingly erotic.... The narrative embeds itself firmly in Maria's perceptions and experiences, her emotions, dreams, and struggles to understand life."
--Washington Post Book World "A rare combination of craftsmanship, imagination, and inspiration.... With a master's touch, Coelho pulls the reader, slowly but irresistibly, into ever-darker worlds.... Coelho has set up a world so real that the reader really doesn't know until the last page which way the tale will end."
--Fort Worth Star-Telegram "Down-to-earth dialogue.... One of Coelho's strongest."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Paulo Coelho's stripped-down style of writing--and spiritual message--have won him millions of fans worldwide.... Eleven Minutes was the planet's top-selling fiction title for 2003, with Harry Potter a distant second."
--The Times (London)
ALSO BY PAULO COELHO
The Alchemist
The Pilgrimage
The Valkyries
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
The Fifth Mountain
Veronika Decides to Die
Warrior of the Light: A Manual
CREDITS
Cover Photograph by Ernesto Rios Lanz/Sexto Sol/Getty Images.
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ELEVEN MINUTES. Copyright (c) 2006 by Paulo Coelho. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition (c) DECEMBER 2006 ISBN: 9780061835575
Version 12072012
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