Pola Oloixarac was born in Buenos Aires in 1977. Her debut novel Savage Theories was a breakout bestseller in Argentina and Spain, and was nominated for a Best Translated Book Award; in 2010 Granta recognized her as one of the best young contemporary novelists in Spanish. Oloixarac is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and her fiction has appeared in Granta, n+1, The White Review, and in an issue of Freeman's Journal dedicated to "The Future of New Writing." Previously a resident of San Francisco, CA, Oloixarac currently resides in Barcelona.
Pola Oloixarac is in conversation with John Freeman reading from and discussing her new novel MONA, published by FSG, in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Saturday, March 20
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Where are you writing to us from?
I’m writing from Barcelona, in Spain. We moved here right before the pandemic started. Two years ago I was living in San Francisco, in Precita Park, and there are so many things I miss from San Francisco (strawberries, The Big 4, Tartine, City Lights, my cannabis bar on Mission St.), but I guess it was also very San Francisco to leave: everybody always seems to be moving away or coming back from a trip faraway.
What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?
The books by Yotam Ottolenghi, the Israeli-British cook. I’ve never been much of a cook myself (my humble repertoire of edibles never got anyone salivating), but what was there to do? So I became the chef. I started with Yotam’s Simple, and moved on to Flavor, Plenty, and Sweet. Following the recipes brought a complete renewal of the reading experience, because I could turn the words of Ottolenghi and his collaborators into immediate things, and kind of feel the precision exerted by the recipe words. The books are easy to follow and even if they can be sometimes ingredient-intensive, those forays into rose harissa, chermoula and za’atar make up for all the traveling you ain’t doing. And then you bite and you’re suddenly in Istanbul, or Northern Africa. Planning to get his Jerusalem next.
What are 3 books you always recommend to people?
I always recommend Il Gatopardo, by Tomasi di Lampedusa, the Italian Proust. It instantly puts me in a mood of forgetting about the world, the kind of luxury only books can afford.
I also recommend a lot An Elemental Thing, by Eliot Weinberger, and I typically gift The Blazing World (Siri Husvedt), The Elementary Particles (Michel Houellebecq), and Opus Nigrum by Marguerite Yourcenar.
These three from Argentina: Any Victoria Ocampo, Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza, and Borges by Adolfo Bioy Casares, which I’m happy to say will be available soon in English. It’s an eerily fun book, Borges’ bitchy side shines diamond-like.
Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?
As a teenager I’d read Henry Miller, Bukowski, and Martin Amis compulsively. Their writer/artist characters were a walking disaster, mean and charming, and there was a pattern: these male writers who’d have drugs, booze and sex all around were typically looking for Literature In Capital Letters and asking themselves (it’s fair to say they were quite self-centered) the Big Questions. I think MONA began a bit like a reaction to all that. Why did all these fun-loving artist characters always have to be men? Mona herself is a young woman writer prone to sexual desires and all the beautiful excesses the world has to offer, with her own bag of anxieties, secrets, and trauma. Also, lately, I feel very inspired by contemporary philosophy authors like Emanuele Coccia and his writings on plants. I’m obsessed with Brazil, the Amazon, and the plant world. I’m mostly inspired by people I know, I think friendships are books by other means (the vice versa applies, too).
If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?
It would be located in Calella de Palafrugell, a lovely fisherman’s town in the Costa Brava, the Catalonian coast. We’d have books dedicated to seafaring, overseas anthropology, ocean-inspired mythology, Bronisław Malinowski’s diaries in oceanic archipelagos, etc. Our name would be “The Kraken”, and our best seller “The Extraordinary Lives of Octopuses.”
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