THE LIFE OF ORIANA FALLACI, GUERRILLA JOURNALIST

By DWIGHT GARNER

The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006) wrote all sorts of things during her long career: novels, polemics, war dispatches, truth-dealing celebrity profiles.

 But her Christiane Amanpour meets Joan Didion reputation rests on her confrontational interviews, mostly with political figures, which were repackaged in best-selling books in the 1970s and 80s. Fallaci’s questions could resemble rectal probes.

 She began an interview with the actress Gina Lollobrigida by stating, “I don’t think you’re as stupid as people say.” With Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, she asked: “Do you know you are so unloved and unliked?”

 Her interviews were guerrilla achievements and global events. She was witty, well-prepared, antagonistic; she got people to say things they ordinarily would not.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger regretted his 1972 interview with Fallaci after he referred to himself in it as a “cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse.” This displeased President Richard Nixon and prompted what passed at the time for a sizable scandal.

 Interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979, Fallaci wore a chador. When she criticized the condition of women in Iran, Khomeini said, “If you do not like Islamic dress you are not obliged to follow it. The chador is only for young and respectable women.”

 Fallaci tore it from her head, saying, “That’s very kind of you, Imam. And since you said so, I’m going to take off this stupid, medieval rag right now.”

Cristina De Stefano Credit Francesco Castaldo

Fallaci was sometimes criticized for being a poseur and a narcissist. But there was no one like her and there still isn’t.

Fallaci is the subject of a short new biography, “Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend,” by the journalist Cristina De Stefano. Written in Italian, it has been translated into English by Marina Harss.

 It’s the first authorized biography we have of Fallaci, with access to new personal records, and welcome for that reason. It is not particularly well-written or thoughtful but it gets her story onto the page and, thanks to its subject, is never dull.

 Fallaci was tiny (five feet one, 92 pounds) but had an explosive personality. She was called La Fallaci. She did not take well to editing. She did not suffer fools.

 She was born in Florence, where her father was a cabinetmaker and part of the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. As a young girl she became a courier for the resistance, smuggling hand grenades inside heads of lettuce.

 Her mother was intelligent but stunted; she was forced to cook and clean for her husband’s extended family. Fallaci said she became a journalist, then largely a man’s profession, in part to vindicate her mother………………..

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/books/review-oriana-fallaci-biography-cristina-de-stefano.html