Posted on 08/07/2004 5:28:38 AM PDT by jalisco555
ROME - Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist known for ruthlessly grilling her subjects, says she detests interviews but has granted one herself — to herself — because she is dying of cancer.
The Milan daily Corriere della Sera published the slim volume, "Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci," as a supplement to its newspaper Friday.
In the work, Fallaci, 74, asks herself why she agreed to the interview.
"Because death is on my back. Medicine has issued the sentence: `Lady, you cannot get better. You won't get better,'" is the reply.
Fallaci's battle with cancer began some 11 years ago. In the early 1990s, she had surgery for breast cancer. Her latest work indicates that cancer has recurred.
"I had a tremendous pain in my lungs and in my trachea and in my esophagus, where the Alien has made his nest," she says of her recent ailments.
Fallaci writes that she stopped taking care of herself, including having medical tests and seeing oncologists, on Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the terror attacks against the United States.
She said she needed to spend all her time writing and translating two books that have since been published and which, in her typically blunt style, reflect scathingly on society, including the differences between Christian and Islamic culture.
The second of the two, "The Strength of Reason," came out this spring. In it, Fallaci accuses the Roman Catholic Church of being too weak before the Muslim world, and Europe of selling itself to Islam "like a prostitute."
Two years earlier, her best-selling essay "The Rage and The Pride" drew accusations that Fallaci was inciting hatred against Muslims.
In her work published Friday, Fallaci, a former war correspondent, says, "The West, Europe, Italy, is sicker than I am."
Interviewing herself, Fallaci responds that she "detests" interviews, including those of the "so-called powerful of the Earth."
"To be good, an interview has to stick itself into, sink into, the heart of the interviewee. ... In this I have always seen an act of violence, of cruelty."
Subjects of her interviews would unlikely disagree. Among those who expressed amazement over her relentless style is Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state.
An amazing intellect. This will be a great loss.
>>The West, Europe, Italy, is sicker than I am."
she is right....ie,,Canada,has gone beyond redemption,flooding itself with the hoards of muslim and turd world barbarians
Amen on that...
A good woman, a friend to all that is good, a genuine journalist with great passion for truth - and for life.
Yet, after 9/11 - and from Italy - she put aside life to work for truth.
Would that all in the Western world read her essays and books...they would then know something of what the struggle is all about - and of a true hero in that struggle: Orianca Fallaci.
An amazing intellect. This will be a great loss.
Yes, indeed, her penetrating insight allowed her to get to the truth of things, even when it went against all she had believed.
My thoughts and prayers go out to her.
And an amazing woman.
May she leave this life at peace.
And may her remaining days be comfortable...
Fallaci accuses the Roman Catholic Church of being too weak before the Muslim world, and Europe of selling itself to Islam "like a prostitute."
Always one of the good guys... meanwhile Arafat, Mugabe, Castro,etc. they'll live to be a hundred I'm sure.
Yep. I'll never understand that. I know God does everything to His purpose, but from my lowly position, it just doesn't make sense.
She deserves this tribute and more. What a loss this will be to the world!
La Fallaci - speaks the truth about Islam and the cowardly Europeans who cower in the approaching night instead fo fighting back the evil ideology.
I wish her the best in her latest battle.
ping.
Bump for oriana...
She will be sorely missed, such a brave and honest voice.
On a recent afternoon, the telephone rang in Oriana Fallaci's Manhattan townhouse. The tiny, blue-eyed 72-year-old writer put down her cigarette and picked up the receiver.
"Oh, it is you!" she said. She assured the caller she was all right, then thanked him and hung up.
"He calls to see if I'm alive," she said, "to see if I need something."
The caller was a police officer, who has been checking in on Ms. Fallaci since the publication of her most recent book, The Rage and the Pride, which she wrote in New York during the weeks following Sept. 11.
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