Words Matter

Paul Olioff on Writing that Keeps Him Reading

Fringe ArtsSara McCulloch — Published November 9, 2011

The day before I interviewed Paul Olioff, he sent me this link asking if I’d ever heard of Lois Long. Olioff was once my academic advisor and after only a couple of appointments with him, I noticed just how observant is he is: the students that line the seats outside the library, the classes certain students like, or professors they should steer clear from.

I would also run into him at Chapters a few times, recommending at least four books in whatever section we were in. For most of the interviews I’ve done so far I didn’t really know the people. But I’ve known Paul for four years now and this interview, to be honest, was more of a selfish thing—I just really wanted to know what interested him and why he read so many different things. His comments and critiques, like Long’s, are biting and usually astute. We talked about Long, books, Montreal and other things. For once, though, I asked the questions.

SM: First thing you ever read that affected you in some way, and why?

PO: Although it’s become a bit clichéd, The Catcher in the Rye had a big impact on me when I was 15. I initially cared more about the fact I stole it from my high school book supply room and used it as a means of starting a conversation with the cutest girl in the ninth grade. Gradually, it had an impact on me because of the alienation of Holden Caufield and his friends and family. I was going through a period of reinvention at that time, and it provided the perfect reference. I couldn’t identify with being a rich kid from a boarding school, but Holden was not comfortable in his own skin and neither was I. It was also a means of communicating with my dad, who read the original (I still have the first paperback printing) and found it refreshingly honest, even though he was an adult at the time.

SM: When you discuss books with someone, what do you touch on first?

PO: I often reference one book with another, largely because I like to explore a theme in literature and then will stick to it until I become bored. It was like that with my run on Montreal Lit, and I am becoming fascinated with the United States between the World Wars right now. A book conversation usually emerges from another topic, as I will inevitably reference something I have read to accentuate a political or sociological discussion.

SM: What kind of writing (style, tone, etc) really gets to you? In journalism or fiction, for instance, what to you is effective storytelling?

PO: I love the lone voice of the alienated city dweller, the person who looks at you cautiously in the grocery store, or seems to be thinking of something profound on the subway. A first person narrative pretty much sums it up. I like writing that is fast-paced and introspective, that doesn’t shy away from the sexual, the scatological and anything that reminds of our failure to be perfect human beings. A narrator should leave you interested to meet them. A narrator should make you want to immerse yourself in the story- as soon as I see myself profoundly outside their world, I shut down and shut the book.

SM: Do you think that the alienated, sometimes marginalized, figure is the most objective?

PO: I often do—how can they not? An insider has a much tougher time trying to be objective as they often have an alliance with one character or another, or are too confident that they have made the right choices in life and would never analyze their situation like one who has been made to feel they don’t belong. True, the alienated figure might be the source of their own exclusion and will hence have a bias, but if they sense that they don’t belong in some way, it is often fodder for their analysis of why that is. It really depends on the story, but it might be good fodder for a psychological discussion about literature to suggest that what motivates someone to pick up a pen in the first place is their sense of alienation. The “insider” might write an autobiography if famous, a self-help book if not.

SM: What do you read now? What have you stopped reading? Why?

PO: I used to read Philip Roth to try and find a Jewish voice I could relate to. Relating to anything as a Jew has been a struggle, and my own identity issues have often blocked me from exploring my literary roots further. With Roth, and Portnoy’s Complaint, I found the horny, conflicted middle class kid who forever defines his life in relation to his ethnicity and his parents. Gradually I grew out of Roth, finding many of his books to be too American. Canadian Jews have a completely different identity –we like hockey, there a fewer of us, and we have not been pushed to assimilate as much as our American cousins.

Our sense of identity I feel evolved a little more organically, with no one asking us “literally” to sit on our hands. I switched to Mordechai Richler as a result. I also like Rawi Hage, or should I say LOVE Rawi Hage, as he writes with testosterone flavoured with a light dash of Middle Eastern poetry. De Niro’s Game and Cockroach are two of my favourite books. I would also give a nod to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections: it summed up my fear and loathing of the conservative, North American Midwest and the culture of backstabbing, judgmental politesse.

SM: Is there also something different (in terms of identity) for Montreal Jewish Canadians?

PO: In some ways less so than between cultures of the majority because there is always the sense of being different. Still, what sets us apart applies the same way to other Canadians. We have to manage the elements. Solomon Gursky is a great example of that, an elderly Orthodox Jews in the frozen North –imagine! Still, our identity shifts as we become more accepted as part of the mainstream, no question about it. What motivated someone who dealt with exclusion and anti-Semitism in the ‘30s doesn’t hold true now. With acceptance comes a shift in the concept of being outside the mainstream.

SM: What about Leonard Cohen as a marginalized figure?

PO: I liked The Favourite Game very much but have shied away from some of his other stuff. Beautiful Losers did not speak to me in the same way. I felt so outside the world of the characters it was like being their Westmount nanny. His poetry on love and sex is much easier to relate to, because you don’t need a trust fund to appreciate a woman’s body.

SM:What about Can Lit?

PO: I would define my love of Can Lit geographically. I once read four consecutive novels set in Montreal, each from a radically different perspective. Canada does not have one literary voice in the same way that Canada suffers from a serious problem of self-definition. We have a hard time coming to grips with the artificial entity that is our country, and search endlessly for the ideal iconographic image that embodies it.

The more one reads Can Lit, the greater the sensation of regionalism, where one can appreciate the conflict the author faces with their geographical environment. In that respect, no matter what the novel, the weather always sucks, and in some way the characters have to move around it like an obstacle in the road in search of their resolution to a particular conflict.

SM: In terms of Canada defining itself or carving itself out, what do you think needs to happen? What are Canadians or Canadian writers neglecting to do?

PO: It’s not the authors, it’s the country itself. We need to look locally or regionally for our own definition of Canada. Writers have not failed as they write from their own experience. Margaret Lawrence and W.O. Mitchell defined the Canadian West as Richler or Gabrielle Roy define Montreal, but neither duo defines Canada in its entirety; they can’t create an ethos out of something that doesn’t exist. Huckleberry Finn appeals to every American brought up on the idea of rugged individualism. We can’t quite compete with that.

“It’s not the authors, it’s the country itself. We need to look locally or regionally for our own definition of Canada. Writers have not failed as they write from their own experience.”

SM: You just brought up weather in Can Lit – let’s discuss it a bit. Do you ever find, especially living in Montreal, that weather can separate people? In Montreal, for instance, there are people you don’t see all winter because you never want to leave home / make the effort / etc. Do you notice that theme in Can Lit? Or the books based in Montreal?

PO: Absolutely, and it completely messes up the dynamic between them. You often see in Can Lit, a scene where two characters meet after a long time and there is a page or two of awkward introductions, followed by mutual recriminations about “not seeing each other enough.”

Scientific studies have shown that you can increase productivity in a lab or on a project if all the participants eat and work together so that they can see each other. Any kind of relationship works the same way. You can begin to feel a bond with someone that is easily broken after a lengthy absence. Trust breaks down, and the false sense that you had of being part of the center of their world is gone. I don’t know if that fuels resentment or whether our perpetual desire as people to be loved and accepted will require us to find a replacement closer to our immediate periphery, but it happens over and over again.

SM: What are you reading right now?

PO: I am absolutely loving Amor Towles Rules Of Civility: – it picks up where the flapper culture leaves off, 10 years after the Great Depression. Only half way through, it is a fascinating take on social classes in New York in the late ‘30s and is even more interesting as it is written from the point of view of a woman, although written by a man. She begins as an outsider, but as I read this in real time, she is sashaying through the class system, hiding her working class roots. As a matter of fact, ALL the characters have something to hide, much in keeping with the frivolity of the leisure class, depicted as carefree younger siblings and nephews and nieces of the Jay Gatsby. Intimidating, the world of the upper class is so rife with ritual — the wrong fork at the wrong occasion can reveal a lack of class, and the right tie and coat can allow a party crasher to arrive unnoticed. Also, there is some great dialogue, as if the protagonist is speaking almost in jive, or sounding like the witty couple in the Thin Man series that was popular in the ‘30s. 140 pages to go and my between-the-war New York fetish will be satiated.

I forgot about Lois Long! I was attracted to her writing after a segment on her during Prohibition, the latest Ken Burns historical documentary. As the embodiment of the original flapper, it was her witty prose that drove the aspirations of middle-class girls in the Midwest to want to move to New York. She was also one of the first gonzo journalists, writing eloquently about her life of partying and bar hopping in speakeasies during the ban on alcohol. Her prose was confident, witty, often cutting, but emblematic of a generation of people who were well read and who read well. It was a tribute to her longevity that she maintained a column for 45 years, writing about fashion even after the New Yorker became more of a magazine about social trends and politics. Sadly, her longevity was her downfall, preventing an early romantic exit like Anita Berber’s or Rimbaud. In her day, it was about laughing in the face of Victorians and Protestant Republicans. Today we have deconstructed so much of the hell of the last 90 years, you can’ expect someone to write in the style of a Fitzgerald character.

SM: You are also an academic advisor at McGill. Firstly, do you meet students who want to become writers? What happens to them? Have they ever struggled with different setbacks? Also, do you ever recommend books to your students?

PO: I always suggest books depending on my knowledge of them as people. A few have wanted to write but are trying to establish themselves in another type of venture first, largely to pay the bills. Their major struggle is financial – no time to write if they have three jobs or are furthering their education. Most blog, and are damn perceptive about the human condition. Whether they turn the blogs into works of fiction or non-fiction is their choice, but it seems like less of a commitment to have random entries on a website with no deadline. Still, it’s fodder for a good novel. I think of Katrina Onstad and how working as a film critic for the National Post allowed her to write a novel about a liberal feminist who works for a bunch of insane, right wing megalomaniacs in a national paper.

SM: Why didn’t you ever go into writing / journalism / etc?

PO: Simply put, I can’t ask the “big” question. I have a need for acceptance that interferes with my ability to probe into the more intimate aspects of a person’s life. Of course, this refers more to investigative journalism, but the furthest I managed to get in that field was community radio, where I interviewed guests on topics of local interest for a few years. I guess I didn’t have the motivation at the time for anything else, and jobs in the early ‘90s were scarce.

Writing was a whole other deal – I know who titillates me in a literary sense, and never thought I could match the dexterous prose of a great writer who has the ability to inject ironic twists into their character’s development. The Rules of Civility was amazing in that regard — the person you meet on page 30 was not what you expect on page 300. I love the way Towles made these twists believable. If there is one thing I hate, it’s the dishonest literary character who leaves you thinking “Not in my neighbourhood.”

Anyway, that’s why I choose social media – a sound bite of wit here and there and the odd quip or wry observation is about where I see my skills – glib like a politician looking to dump the incumbent, but just as shallow. Maybe it’s the fear of hearing my own voice, to sound pretentious; a successful life that didn’t begin that way requires a lot of reinvention and the convenient evisceration of the worst memories. It’s not too late, I guess.