I met Louisa Treger in the midst of her book tour. She’d just come off a round of other interviews and yet the moment we sat down to speak, you’d never guess she’d already answered so many questions about her latest work of biographical fiction. She answered each question carefully and thoughtfully – encouraging conversation. As I wrote in my book review – it was this conversation that endeared me to Dora Maar – the latest character she writes about in the Paris Muse. Dora Maar was best known as being Pablo Picasso’s muse and the inspiration behind “The Weeping Woman”; but as Louisa uncovered, she was so much more than that. Below Louisa shares how she picks her characters, what drew her to Dora Maar and what she hopes readers take from this book.
I love historical fiction as a genre because for me it’s always been a nice way to learn about different time periods and people. What drew you to writing historical fiction?
My subjects chose me. The more novels I write, the more it’s becoming apparent that a theme is emerging. I’m drawn to writing about strong women who are outliers or pioneers. Women who struggled to conform to the world, but who achieved extraordinary things. There are so many of these women who have been written out of history and it’s become my mission and passion to uncover as many of their stories as I can. One thing I am fascinated by is that in some ways things have improved for women over the centuries and in some ways they haven’t changed at all. Issues we are still up against include the pay gap between the sexes, domestic and sexual violence and the fact that society still can’t accept strong women who are leaders. We’re called strident or mean. Whereas a man displaying those qualities would be called a leader and cheered. This is why I write historical fiction, history isn’t a series of dry facts that happened in the past, it’s a narrative that we live and keep on reliving.
How do you go about finding these stories and how do you know that a story is the one you want to share?
A lot of my subjects choose me. For example, a friend who is not a writer said, ‘Have you heard about Nellie Bly, she’s the sort of woman you write about’. I went away to research her and was instantly hooked. She was America’s first female investigative journalist and made her name by going undercover in an asylum to report the wretched conditions faced by patients. Of course, the dangerous part was getting out, getting in was easy. No doctor could conceive a sane woman committing themselves. But trying to convince doctors you’re sane and are really a reporter and don’t belong in an asylum was hard. It’s my gut that tells me whether a story is right for me. I wanted to uncover what kind of woman could do that voluntarily – especially at the end of the 19th century.
What drew you to the story of Dora Maar?
I was enthralled by her black an white images. She imbues everyday life with an uncanny atmosphere that is very disturbing, but it is also spellbinding. I researched her more and found out that she was a poet, a painter and a left-wing activist. Most people if they know her name at all, it is for being Picasso’s Weeping Woman, his lover and his muse. She was so much more and I decided that she needed her own story.
How do you balance fact with fiction in your books which are all biographical historical fiction?
I research the facts quite carefully as any historian would. My novel follows the biographical facts as closely as possible. Fiction gives me the leeway to access the emotional depths of the characters, to invent thoughts and private conversations and bring to life the historial feelings as well as the facts. I felt that this story particularly needed the fictional form because the feelings and the love affair and Dora’s journey of self discovery and self expression was so powerful, you need that extra licence that fiction gives you.
What’s your process when researching your novels?
It’s a mixture. If I can go to the places, that brings the novel to life like nothing else. I love primary sources. There is nothing that really gives you access to the characters like primary material. I also read everything that’s been written about them. I like to immerse myself in their lives and their period and then they come to life.
It’s like method writing
Exactly. These women live in my head for a long time. I absorb their voice by looking at their art, reading their writings. Sometimes it’s difficult to leave that particular world, you’re walking around with ghosts. Historical factual biography is as accurate as the sources – which can be letters and memories which are hardly objective themselves. What I as a novelist and biographer have in common is that we’re bringing to life our own sense of that person as accurately and vividly as we can.
Dora Maar was in a toxic relationship with Picasso and she struggled to pull herself away. Why do you think it was so difficult for her to walk away from that?
I do hope that this is something that many women in the 21st century can relate to. I certainly can, because I have a history of dating red flag men. One falls in love headlong and utterly and it is totally intoxicating and that person makes you feel better than you ever have in your life. You’re almost enthralled to them. When it starts to go downhill, often very subtly and unnoticeably you’re fed just enough breadcrumbs to hook you back in, so you live in hope that those good times will come back. With Dora you have to take her era into account. The second world war broke out while she was with Picasso and they lived in Nazi occupied France. To be a woman on your own was terrifying and unthinkable. Picasso was an international celebrity and that gave him a measure of protection and she needed that. She needed him. If she was ever going to leave him, the outbreak of the war put a stop to that.
When she met him she lost a part of herself. She lost her passion to the point that she’s more well known for being his muse than her own work.
Before she met him she was a pretty well known photographer in her own right. She exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the exhibition of surrealism of 1936 in London. Picasso steered her away from photography to painting. To him, painting was the only artistic medium that mattered, but I’m sure there was also an element of him not wanting his lover to be too successful or too independent. To an extent he did it to her. She became a painter but she was never as good a painter as she was a photographer. Her painting was too much enthralled to him and she admitted this saying that in the end she painted empty landscapes because that was the only way? she could get away from Picasso.
Do you think the artist muse relationship is always skewed?
Yes, it’s skewed and problematic for muses who are also artists. Dora only wanted to be taken as an artist in her own right. She wasn’t interested in being a muse. I think twentieth century muses became more assertive along with the expansion of women’s rights. Muse has connotations of being quite passive – objects for male artists to project onto. For someone like Dora, who wanted to be an artist that was a problem. She met him as an equal, she seduced him as an equal. She gradually lost her power. I think he took away her power and dehumanised her further in his Weeping Woman portraits. They’re among his best and most famous works but she looks like she’s disintegrating in them. She’s scarcely human. Her head is thrown back or biting on a handkerchief. Her hands are claws, she weeps tears of blood. He’s turning her into something else – it was very disturbing, he’s taking away her power.
If you could spend one day with one of the characters you’ve written about – who would it be and why?
It would either be Dora or it would be Jacqueline Lombart who was her close friend. She was a fiercely ambitious painter and absolutely enthralling – blonde and bubbly and mesmerising. She married a man who was much more powerful, famous and older than her. She mirrored Dora’s trajectory getting involved with picasso. Jacqueline married Andre Bretton who was the leader of the surrealists. Andre was only interested in Jacqueline as a muse, someone to fall passionately in love with, the mother of his child. He was not in the least bit interested in her career. They moved to New York during the war and Jacqueline reinvented herself. She adapted much better than Andre did and she left him. She got back her own agency much more so than Dora. Although Dora did return to her art after her relationship with Picasso ended.
When someone finishes The Paris Muse, what do you want them to leave with?
I want them to leave with a vivid impression of a woman who was way ahead of their time. Who was extraordinary, a pioneer experimental photographer who really lost herself in this love affair.
The Paris Muse is published by Bloomsbury and distributed in SA by Jonathon Ball. It is available here.
