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I think one of the most interesting characteristics of his prose is the author’s non-interference in the reader’s interpretation, the non-moralization and the non-stylistic perception of the Lithuanian village. Still, previous interviews with the author continue to return to the same topics. Why did S.T. Chondro? What’s he doing in Los Angeles? Do you have relations with Lithuania? Why do you give interviews so rarely? Really, is it sentimental?
The recently compiled prose book “Collector” has become a great opportunity for this exceptional interview. “Here Palmira Mikėnaitė, the wife of Antanas A.Jonynas, came up with the idea of bringing everything together into one thing. Maybe it is old? Such a pre-mortem set “, in an interview he said.
About the Author
– In the world of literature and even at university, you are described as a person who left Lithuania to stop writing during the Soviet era, fishing in the warm Los Angeles and without giving an interview to anyone. And even now our conversation is a correspondence. What determines your decision: lack of time, unwillingness of a stranger to transcribe your sentences, or perhaps you just think it doesn’t make sense?
– In general, I don’t like interviews and I generally refuse at all. I don’t need them at all. Also, for a live conversation you need to agree on a moment, compromise something, maybe give up something more interesting, for example, fishing, it is better for letters. After finding a minute, I sit down at a convenient time for myself and can think of answers.
I don’t need them at all.
Photo from personal archive / year 2014, Los Angeles, Saulius Tomas Kondrotas
– You are a mysterious author who lived behind the Iron Curtain but was able to write authentic prose. Now your person as a writer is mythologized. In all of the interviews, you reply that you don’t react to others’ comments in any way, but still, did you smile a little … while drinking your morning coffee and reading the articles?
– No, I don’t remember. I often don’t even know about those comments because I’m not looking. Sometimes friends appear, but not always, it disappears without contacting me.
– How do you feel because Lithuanian readers are so greedy to know something about you?
– I don’t feel any way. I don’t think about it at all. I’m not even sure they really want that. Well, but if you say …
– Remember the days when you were a young writer. Where did the ambition to create come from?
– Hard to say. Perhaps for fear that one day you die and nobody knows that you live at all. I started with art, I drew, I attended art school, I tried, but the feeling grew, as if the entire effort to create something in the art field was a desperate attempt to break through a thick masonry wall. Officially, everything was fine, the teachers praised me, the road seemed straight, straight to the Art Institute, but I felt very unsatisfied, so I gave up.
I was fifteen then. Since I always read a lot and the desire to achieve something did not disappear, I thought that perhaps it would be better to write instead of drawing. I wrote a story, Moksleivis magazine published it and even paid a fee of 30 rubles. Perhaps those 30 rubles determined everything.
Perhaps those 30 rubles determined everything.
– In the memory of the history of literature, you will always be mentioned as a person who introduced magical realism and had a rebellious attitude. What did you expect of yourself as a young writer? What did you want to write?
– I expected what everyone expects. Write, be printed, popular. The popularity of books, movie orders, theater orders, and higher royalties depend on their popularity. From the age of twenty-two or three, he was a professional writer and lived on literature alone.
I expected what everyone expected. Write, be printed, popular.
– Are you a sentimental person?
– Naturally, yes, but if necessary I can curb my feelings and act completely rationally.
Personal File Photo / 1969 Trakai Rowing Base, Saulius Tomas Kondrotas
About snake sight
– The Archive of Literature and Art took a look at the final version of this novel submitted to Vaga Publishing House in 1981. It mainly replaced only a few particles. How strong was this really edited and censored novel of yours? Is what we are reading now close to the original you created?
– That’s what you saw there, and the whole editorial. There was no censorship. We censor ourselves at the time of writing. We knew the limits that could not be exceeded, so we had to somehow turn around in that permitted area.
We censor ourselves at the time of writing.
Sometimes we went to the border, we received warnings that it might be too close to the limit, that the next time the publisher would not tolerate it, but would not censor it.
– In which character of this novel did you put yourself the most?
– I put everything in the book myself, in all the characters, in the landscapes, in the descriptions of things. All fantasy. But I could not identify with any character, I did not attribute my motives, thoughts, feelings, qualities to anyone. Everything is just fiction.
– The atmosphere that represents in the novel is anxious, the old Lithuanian town is not represented idyllic. Here people are sick, they are sinful and they constantly transcend limits. One of the characters, Count Emil, reads Friedrich Nietzsche, he is like a “superman”. Ancestors are also not romantic in your work. What is your relationship with the past?
– For a long time I have felt that the Lithuanian people are not what was represented in the first half of the 20th century. When I started digging deeper into various sources, such as 19th century recipes, this turned out to be the case.
For a long time I have felt that a Lithuanian people is not like that.
Large amount of imported ingredients, spices, foreign alcoholic beverages. Now I don’t remember exactly, but as in the 15th century, England bought almost all of the tar from the Lithuanians, and the main imported product to Lithuania was white wine. A slightly different image than usual with ropes and clasps.
Personal File Photo / 1960, Seredžiai
About the collector
– In other interviews, you say that you would like to edit your texts and shorten the sentences yourself. And what would you change in terms of themes, characters, plot, and ideas?
– Now I would not change anything, I would leave it as it was. After all, this is not what I wrote. It was written by the man I was with and whom I no longer remember very well. I do not value those texts as my own. If I read them, it is like an external reader.
– The collection contains two texts that have not been published anywhere: “Sketch” and “Notes by Cornelius Jederman”. In what context were they born?
– They were published, only not in Lithuania. I finished them after arriving in America, somewhere around 1986-1987. I don’t remember the context now. It seems to me that I started them in Lithuania and finished them abroad.
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