Brian Oliu

Here’s Brian Oliu on his Jesuit education, the beauty and influence of Biblical cadence, missed connections, misconceptions of Catholicism, writing as an act of faith, and, of course, Mr. Perfect. Links to Brian’s books appear at the end of this interview--check them out, as well as his excellent writing in online and print literary magazines.

1. You briefly mentioned your Catholic upbringing at the PANK blog back in 2011, but I'd like to hear more. What moments, experiences, and people shaped your childhood in the Catholic tradition and faith?

1. My family on my mother's side is Scottish/old-time Brooklyn & we are Catalan on my father's side--I've always associated religion & Catholicism with culture as well as ancestry. My grandfather on my father's side was selected to attend a Jesuit school in Barcelona & so that element of faith has always been inherent in me; certainly all the romance of my Catholicism (& there is romance! my parents' first date was mass!) comes from both sets of grandparents, but specifically him. I remember going to church as long as I can remember: when I was very young, our town didn't have a building to hold services in, so our congregation rented out the Presbyterian Church where I went to nursery school as our parish built our own church. One of my first church memories is when I was seven-years-old, we held Christmas mass in the unfinished building--no electricity, the floor made of concrete. Above all, my mother was instrumental; she was a CCD teacher & by far the coolest CCD teacher. She made me actually want to learn all of the saints & the odd mysticism that accompanies Catholicism--she made faith seem so practical & real, which really spoke to me as I got older & disenchanted with the whole idea of religion (as I feel we all do at some point). 

2. Family is how you've framed your Catholicism, and I especially like how you discuss your mother's faith: influencing you to investigate the mystical, but also showing a faith that is "practical & real".  What do you think about those Catholic dualities existing together: of the intangible and daily coalescing in the same faith? And how have they returned to you later, as an adult?

For me, they need to co-exist; & I think in this question you've gotten to the core of what I believe is my version of faith & Catholicism. I went to Loyola University-Maryland, a Jesuit college. The priests on campus really pressed us into examining what faith truly is--I remember one of the phrases I heard kicked around is that "God is the ultimate paradox: he is the answer, but he is always the question." I found a lot of comfort in philosophers, specifically Kierkegaard & the idea of the leap of faith: that instead of saying "Oh, God made my football team win," we acknowledge every logical reason behind the occurrence until we have exhausted all rational thought. Then, we have an option to either chalk it up to pure chance or say that this is an act coming from something larger than ourselves. At Loyola we had a priest who was in the International Association of Exorcists; before they could perform a proper exorcism, they had to examine the patient in a multitude of ways to prove that what is happening is unnatural. After a billion questions about exorcisms (he never cracked), he finally let us in on the fact that 98% of his cases could be explained by natural & rational causes--in the other 2%, they would perform the exorcism. When explaining my faith to others, I tend to tell this story: that God is somewhere in that 2%. 

3. I can appreciate that you use a story about exorcisms to explain faith--I think Catholicism's strangeness confuses people on the outside, but seems comfortably mysterious to those who believe. As a writer and a teacher of writing (at the University of Alabama), what do you see as the connection between the words you use (in a non-fiction, fiction, creative sense) and the Word (in a spiritual, intangible sense)? Has your Jesuit education and Catholic background affected how you encounter or construct narratives?

Being a book nerd, I've always been most fascinated by the concept of the Vulgate & St. Jerome; the Bible as a translated & historical text instead of a holy book. The extreme care in the language, the assembling of narratives, the search for missing parts. (I especially love the theory of the Q source, the image of someone getting quotable passages from Jesus as he walked around is the absolute best.) In regards to how the writing process comes in, I firmly believe in the concept of logic when I write: there are a lot of if/then statements, & everything must adhere to the higher order of the piece, or else I find it unsuccessful & clunky. I also believe firmly in rhythm: that the sentences themselves are formed in a way that makes things easy to grasp so that when a sudden twist comes (typically in the form of a misdirection or a confession, especially in nonfiction) it shakes one out of the cadence in what I hope is an interesting way. What I love the most about writing is the fact that you can string together a series of letters/glyphs & have someone see them & feel something. There is something spiritual in that: where if you do a good enough job of mixing together these things, you can make someone experience something completely out of thin air. The fact that a book, a piece of text, is the epicenter of how our world works, is just fascinating to me: that there is language there that can shape lives, language that can change any & every thing within ourselves.

4. The writing act as a moment of faith, offering words to the reader--I like that, and it makes me think of So You Know It’s Me, your 2011 book of missed connections. Each of these narratives feels like a mixture of prose poetry and epistles; they are offerings to unknown souls, and they are constructed, rhythmically, in the cadence you enjoy from the Bible: the recursive "you," the usage of commas to create litanies of feeling. Could you talk about the writing, publication, and reception of this book? Did it feel like an act of faith to you, at any moment?

Most definitely--I've always been fascinated by the use of "you" & "I" as I think it carries an unbelievable amount of weight to it, even as the concept of both of those things shift throughout the narrative. My graduate thesis was a re-telling of The Odyssey through computer code, which I felt merged quite well, mostly because it got me into that rhythm of "epic" language which delivers things quite "matter-of-factly" as the Bible does, as well as gave me this opportunity to be very forward with the reader, as the majority of interactions we have with technology utilize the second-person & presents questions & demands upon the user. As for So You Know It’s Me, it started as a side-project I started working on during the summer. I was bogged down with the manuscript I was currently working on, & so I started the project as a way to write daily. I was inspired by reading a missed connection that happened at a party that I DJed; it was such a strange feeling to be in a place where one of these things occurred. I started writing one missed connection every other day for 45 days, as Craigslist policy dictates that posts will be erased after 45 days. I wanted there to be for one day the entire narrative arc, & then the pieces would start erasing. I was both surprised & thrilled as to how it caught on; I would post about them to my friends on Facebook & Twitter, but other than that, the pieces were anonymous. 

The original postings caught the eye of Roxane Gay & she wanted to collect all of them & publish them. It was a fascinating thing to have something that was perceived as temporal collected somewhere; while the fact that it is now a physical thing is exciting, I was nervous about it losing something when taken out of its original context. The reception has been greater than I've ever imagined--people seem to love teaching it, & people continue to stumble upon it two years after publication & drop me a line. It's so incredibly kind of folks to do that. In some ways, the construction was a way of paying penance; doing something rhythmically & on a schedule, which is not often how I sit down to work. 

I think there is an element of faith in all writing & in all writers--when we sit down to write, we have a small idea of where the story will take us, but at some point, something else takes over: I can sit down to write something about a particular subject & before I know it, I am talking about something else entirely. It's one of the things I enjoy most about writing--starting with one plan & seeing where you've wound up.

5. Are there writers in the Catholic tradition, or particular Biblical texts, that have influenced your sense of narrative? Or writers from any spiritual tradition that you've found intersected with your Catholic background?

I absolutely adore Dante; Paradiso & La Vita Nuova especially. I've always been fascinated with instances of poetry & prose weaving together--for me, nonfiction is so much closer to poetry than to fiction. I also found myself really into some of the Martyrology stories, (which, I know, morbid), but it was astonishing to read these accounts. Of course, Flannery O'Connor & her twists in logic & her constantly evolving definition of "good". I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton in college, & while I wasn't completely behind everything he said, I loved his prose & his playfulness with language--the effortless wit in his sentences was a lot of fun to try to dissect. Augustine, of course: "in aere aedificare". I love any moment in the Bible where the language shifts from the "high" to the "colloquial"--1 Corinthians 12 does a great job of this (& ends with the awesome line "And I show you a still more excellent way.") 

I'm not a writer of million dollar words, so I appreciate the cadence that the Bible as well as these authors take: words that we see every day arranged in a way to make something beautiful & something that represents something higher than the words themselves. 

6. You've returned to that idea of the daily being remade, or re-seen, as something beautiful and higher than the moment. That reminds me of the non-fiction of Andre Dubus: how he was focused on daily sacraments (he placed receiving the Eucharist next to making sandwiches for his daughter--not to devalue the former, but to show how the Spirit elevated the latter).

It's also interesting that I nod my head to what you say, but I wonder if people on the outside of Catholic tradition consider the faith in this way. Have the perceptions of Catholicism that you have encountered (in general life, from other writers) been consistent or inconsistent with how you perceive the faith, or have other elements of the religion been stressed (positively or negatively)?

Dubus is a great example! I think the beauty of nonfiction is to write things that are 'about this, but they're actually about this.' I write essays about video games & professional wrestling, but for those who have zero interest in that stuff, I'm like 'I promise I'm using it as a vehicle.' 

I am in academia in the Deep South, which is a strange place to be as a Catholic for two reasons: 1. The majority of Alabama is Baptist. 2. The majority of academia is atheist/agnostic. When I teach, I typically make a quick joke about diagramming sentences & be like 'this one is for those of you who went to Catholic school'--at one point, I was asked if I was Catholic & if it's true that Catholics drink beer at church. Furthermore, the Fundamentalist Baptists will leave you alone & try not to save you/bring you to their church if you're like 'Oh yes, I've found a great church--St. Francis?' because Catholics are beyond saving, apparently. (Although I will add that Nick Saban goes to my Church, so that has made life a lot easier when it comes to dealing with folks.) As far as dealing with peers & other writers, it can be difficult, because sometimes I feel as if I'm grouped in with other more conservative sects of Christianity, & so I often find myself explaining my theories on religion & Catholicism & what works for me & why. I often start by talking about the Jesuits & by talking about how Catholicism allows room for the rational as well as a more liberal way of thinking. I like to think that friends leave the conversation with a more positive viewpoint than they did coming into the conversation; I understand it is easy to group all Christians together, however, as we both know, certain sects couldn't be further away from each other (& even then I could talk about Franciscans & Dominicans, etc)

7. When you mention needing to explain Catholicism, I think of evangelizing (not what's you were doing; it's not even thought of as really a Catholic mode; we tend to be more apologists). I'm of two minds with evangelizing: in one way, who am I to tell another what to believe, and yet if I love a film or a book or a pizzeria, I will tell people, so why not faith?

In that vein, I see fiction and creative non-fiction as ways to dramatize belief rather than convince people to believe. An example of this is your piece "Acts of Reparation to the Virgin Mary" from one of my favorite, albeit defunct journals, On Earth As It Is. It's a beautiful piece, and does the work of opening one to the Catholic experience without having a thesis or a goal.

Are there others pieces of yours--published or unpublished--that dramatize some element of Catholicism? Any in the works?

I think that's a really apt description of the lyric essay as well: it's less about teaching someone something, it's more attempting to capture an experience that allows the reader to have similar feelings as the author at that time. I'm working on translating a book that my grandfather wrote in Catalan on marathons: he was a religious man, but also a chemical engineer--the book shows both of these sides in regards to the physical act of long distance running, & I feel like the best way to approach a huge task like running a marathon is to have a balance between the spiritual and the practical. Catholicism seems to sneak its way into a lot of my work; I've been working on a series of essays about professional wrestling, & there's one wrestler from the 80s, Mr. Perfect, who was well known for being an amazing "seller", meaning he was the best there was at losing & making everything look real--so this idea that he exists in this world to do one particular thing is fascinating to me; so obvious parallels to the concept of "God's perfection" as well as one's role in the world find its way into that piece. A lot of the video game pieces in Leave Luck to Heaven have Catholic ties as well; the whole concept of the creation of worlds and the idea of the loss of life, not to mention the fact that I'm writing from a place of nostalgia, means that there are moments of Catholicism that find their way in--whether it is preparing for my grandfather's funeral in “Donkey Kong” (Puerto del Sol), or my First Communion in “Bubble Bobble/No Parasol Stars” (Caketrain). I think a common theme in a lot of my work is prayer--the idea of reaching & hoping in writing can be such a powerful thing & can deliver these beautiful turns in language & transcending moments that can catch you by surprise.

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Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey & currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is the author of So You Know It’s Me (Tiny Hardcore Press) & Level End (Origami Zoo Press). Leave Luck to Heaven, a collection of lyric essays based off of 8-bit Nintendo games, will be released in 2014.