PR: Tess Pollok
Tess Pollok is a writer and critic based in New York and Los Angeles.
Tess Pollok (@tessanditsdiscontents) is a writer and critic based in New York and Los Angeles. She is the editor of Animal Blood Magazine and has fiction published in Heavy Traffic Magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Forever Magazine, among others. Her essays and criticism have appeared in publications for Hauser & Wirth, Almine Rech, and Jeffrey Deitch.
The last thing you finished reading
Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood. I read it for work, part of an assignment to interview her for the LA Review of Books. It wasn’t something I would’ve gravitated towards without, like, being directly told to do so, but I ended up admiring a lot about it. She’s a very talented stylist.
The last thing you abandoned reading
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgård. I only made it about 20-30 pages.
Next on your list
I’ve been meaning to get The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage by Catherine Malabou ever since my friend recommended it on Goodreads. It uses psychoanalytic frameworks to examine the etiology of psychic wounds from both a philosophical and neurobiological perspective, basically mapping inner experiences like emotions and traumas to physical ailments like brain lesions. I love reading about mental illness, cognition, dissociation, personality disorders, etc. Disorganisation & Sex by Jamieson Webster is another one in this canon I want to read. In terms of novels, there’s a lot. I’m really looking forward to Television by Lauren Rothery. I’m always excited about George Saunders and his new novel Vigil is coming out in January. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Foreclosure Gothic by Harris Lahti. The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus. I also really want to read Sakhalin Island, one of Chekhov’s only nonfiction books, a travel journal from the easternmost provinces in Russia. And First Love and Other Stories by Turgenev, my other favorite Russian.
Something on your list but you never begin
The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard. I weirdly, like, can’t understand how it’s supposed to be read. I actually used to have a copy but the format and illustrations really confused me and then my boyfriend threw it away before I could really make an effort to understand it. When I moved I bought it again and then lost it again. So it feels like it’s running away from me. I’m planning on buying it a third time so I can try again.
Something in which you have no interest
I don’t like when someone plays with formatting too much outside of a poetry setting–or, I feel like you have to be really good to earn something like that. When the text is suddenly right-aligned for no reason, or there’s too many italics/fonts, or kitschy stuff like a chapter is presented as a teleplay or advertisement. I think of it as gimmicky and distracting. One huge exception is The Telephone Book by Avital Ronell. I think the atypical formatting works for her. The alignment changes from page to page and the text sometimes shrinks up and down as she talks, gets louder or quieter. It’s about schizophrenia and telephonic logic, so the formatting decisions feel stylistically consistent and actually complement the material, it makes it feel schizophrenic. When it works, I don’t mind it. It just has to make sense. Over time I’ve developed an aversion to genre-bending stuff, with some exceptions. I didn’t like The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey. I used to find it exciting but now I have a deeper appreciation for operating within a set of recognizable conventions. It’s a sign of skill, maturity, and self-discipline. But there are still some genre-fluid things I love. Females by Andrea Long Chu will always be a touchstone for me.
Something you reread
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is my most reread book. I was really, really impacted by it in college. The images of nature are so powerful and eternal. It inspires me to feel perpetual awe and humility.
Something you never forget
I can’t remember it verbatim, but Cormac McCarthy’s comparison of horses to dreams in All the Pretty Horses. That scene where the boys are shepherding the horses across a mesa at night. I remember the feeling of it so distinctly. He’s one of my favorite writers.
Conditions in which you read best
Curled up. Either in bed or on the corner of my couch.
Conditions in which you read most often
Lazy afternoon or before bed.
Conditions in which you cannot read
If I’m depressed, or busy, I can barely read. I also go through phases where I do nothing but read. It really depends. I like to let my focus and interest in it ebb and flow as it wants.
A favourite bookstore
My default bookstore in LA is Skylight Books. When I lived in New York, it was McNally Jackson, sometimes Strand.
A favourite genre, form, theme
I love novels about perversion or novels that comment on abjection in some way. Sabbath’s Theater is my favorite Philip Roth book for that reason. Novels where the narrator is revolting, or something else about the story makes me feel disgusted—Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky. Novels about self-destruction. I like stories about marriage, stories about the psyche, stories about money, stories about America, stories about sex.
A favourite title
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn.
A favourite book cover
Modern Library Classics edition of Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
A favourite recent read
Money by Martin Amis.
A favourite nostalgia read
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Or Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus.
A favourite greatest of all time, personal canon read
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy.
Do you method read
I annotate nonfiction and theory, but I don’t take notes or write in the book in any way when I’m reading fiction. For notes, I do all the regular stuff–underline, bracket, write questions/thoughts in the margins.
Do your books tend toward any condition
Totally destroyed. I’m so careless with them. I leave them out by the pool all the time so a lot of them have water damage. Also, I leave them facedown a lot.
Do you have any books that are prized possessions
I have a box set of In Search of Lost Time handpainted with swans and lilies, dating back to when it was called Remembrance of Things Past. I found it at a used bookstore in Scotland my freshman year of college.
A text that surprised you
Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson because it was so abstract and theoretical while also being so realistic about capturing madness and raw emotion, it felt impossibly close and far at the same time. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. The first book of hers I’d ever read and she became a lifelong favorite author. Also, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole–starts off funny, but descends into a crazy, seething nihilism.
A text that disappointed you
The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
A text that altered you somehow
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy.
Open up a text and copy a line at random
“I started siding with her, beholding whatever she beheld–the fishbowl ashtray, the dishful of pastilles and drops, the plum-colored splotch she kept rubbing on her shin.”
From Stories in the Worst Way by Garielle Lutz
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