Pathological Relations: Nicolette Polek
Questions on reading
Nicolette Polek (@nicolettepolek) is the author of Bitter Water Opera and Imaginary Museums.
The last thing you finished reading
An obituary that a friend sent me of Maryam Mirzakhani, a mathematician who specialized in billiard dynamics.
The last thing you abandoned reading
Nadirs by Herta Müller… I reached the end of the Google Books preview. Marshlands by André Gide, a little too cheeky.
Next on your list
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
Something on your list but you never begin
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, The Loser by Thomas Bernhard
Something in which you have no interest
Riddle-ish, self-involved books.
Something you reread
Recently—The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973–1983, Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter for a class I was teaching, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Something you never forget
Ondřej Sekora books, reading In The Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano at Cash Lake in the Patuxent Research Refuge. Reading Stephen Sexton, Chelsey Minnis poems over the phone.
Conditions in which you read best
Chair facing the corner.
Conditions in which you cannot read
Slightly cold, over-caffeinated, and near a table of highschoolers.
A favourite author
Joy Williams, Marilynne Robinson, Graham Greene…
A favourite genre, form, theme
Highly internal picaresques, like How I Became a Nun by César Aira. Microbiographies like Fleur Jaeggy’s These Possible Lives.
A favourite recent author
Deirdre Madden
A favourite title
What Time is this Place? by Kevin Lynch
A favourite book cover
Patricia Highsmith’s mass market paperback covers
A favourite nostalgia read
Nancy Lemann feels nostalgic to me, though I’ve only read Lives of the Saints a year ago. Louisa May Alcott, Bolaño, Sophie Calle
Do you annotate
In paperbacks. Last week I annotated The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards with overheard fragments of a Carl Zimmer lecture happening in the next room. Will otherwise mostly underline “perfect images,” new words/turns of phrase, etc.
Do your books tend toward any condition
I’ve left so many books outside, so lots of water warping. My copy of Dave Hickey’s Pirates and Farmers has the last ~40 pages torn away?
Do you have any books that are prized possessions
My childhood home burned down last year, and with it all of my books of sentimental value…
A text that surprised you
Lucinella by Lore Segal.
A text that disappointed you
Scenes from a Childhood by Jon Fosse.
A text that altered you somehow
Bible :~)
Open up a text and copy a line at random
“It isn’t right to say ‘When I was little I loved x,’ if you still love x now.’”
Thanks for playing:
PR
