Interview - Christian Holstad
by Fabrizio Meris
by Fabrizio Meris
[Fabrizio Meris] Let’s start from the very beginning. You were born in 1972 in Anaheim, California — a place I had to Google, I’ll be honest. What struck me immediately is that it’s a sort of constructed place, almost a non-place. And obviously Disneyland is right there, which is perhaps the ultimate symbol of consumerist culture. Given that your practice has been so focused on ecology and the impact of waste on society, I wondered whether that early contact with that world left any kind of mark.
[Christian Holstad] Definitely. My mother and father had just moved there from Minnesota with my sister — it was a very different world for them. And Anaheim in 1972 is not what it is today. Most people say the first three years of life are the formative ones, psychologically. And for my parents, who were young and struggling, Anaheim was what was available. There was nothing green around — just trashy strip malls and, from what I understand, prostitutes on the outskirts. Which is probably why Disneyland was built there in the first place — people would come from all over the world, and that kind of thing tends to follow. At the same time, Disneyland was the only green place around. So my parents, in a sort of 1972 euphoria, bought year passes because they weren’t expensive. I was going multiple times a week, because it was simply where we had a park, where there was grass. My first three years were just full of Mickey Mouse.
[FM] And how does that make you feel now, in retrospect?
[CH] It made a huge impression. I think I formed a very early, very visceral understanding of American culture at its peak of propaganda. Hollywood and Disney are not so far apart — they’re different things, but really the same thing. They constructed what people thought, their morals, their beliefs, the language they used. I understood the colors; I understood the grammar of it. And at the same time, even at three years old, at some point you see Mickey Mouse take his head off. So there was always this awareness of the reality underneath. And then we moved to Indiana, which was almost the opposite — I knew immediately it was not the same world.
[FM] Indiana is also where your actual education began, I imagine.
[CH] Minneapolis had two good museums — there was the encyclopedic one, like a local Met, and then there was the Walker. It’s also where I fell into ceramics, which is actually how I started. My high school had a ceramics facility better than most colleges, and the teacher was exceptional. So I started really early — I remember riding my motor scooter to ceramics class at fifteen. That’s what I went to art school for, in Kansas City, which at the time was probably the best undergraduate program for ceramics in the country.
[FM] That’s interesting, because the previous interview I did was with Salvatore Arancio, who actually asked me to say hello — he speaks very highly of you. His story was completely different: he grew up in Sicily, with no contemporary art museum whatsoever. He told me his entire aesthetic was formed by cinema, because it was the only thing available. So it’s striking that you had direct access to a major contemporary institution at such a young age.
[CH] I don’t know; it’s actually a very selfish position. I wish it were so, but no. It becomes militancy only when I have to defend what I do—and I defend it. I defend autofiction and autobiography in general, because I believe stories are always stories. Readers don’t care whether what you recount is your story or someone else’s: the real question is whether the story itself holds. The difficulty in autofiction lies precisely in turning one’s own experience into something that concerns others. I defend autofiction because I consider it a valid literary genre. But mine is not militancy: rather, it’s an inability to go beyond it.
[FM] And then, inevitably, New York. Which neighborhood were you living in when you arrived?
[CH] I moved into the East Village, because that’s what was available and I really loved it. I still think of it, in some ways, as my home there. It’s changed so much — but when I go back, there’s still the possibility of seeing someone I knew as a baby and watching them having grown up. I can’t do that in any other neighborhood.e memory of the body, but also a collective memory that inhabits each of us.
[MA] What do you mean?
[MP] That there is a primitive memory that concerns all of us—not just me or you, but us as a community, as part of something far older than each of us. For example, something that moves me deeply is the fact that women tense up, become alert, when they hear a baby cry. Not because it annoys us or disturbs us—no. But because, in ancient times, when we were truly primitive, a baby’s cry could attract wild animals. It was a matter of survival. That memory still lives within us today. It isn’t irritation; it’s the primitive part of me—my origin—saying: “Be careful, something could be coming. It’s no longer a puma in the forest, but in Piazza San Lorenzo.”
[MA] Beyond your rebirth at seventeen, were there others?
[MP] Yes, there were. So far I would say two important ones: that one at seventeen, and then the financial collapse, which also marked an era. From that point a new time began—one I would never call poverty, but concreteness: a return to reality. At first it felt like poverty, of course, but then I understood it was simply life bringing me back to a necessary reality.
And when I returned to reality, my third life began: a family life, in which I place my work, my family. Another life entirely, different from the previous ones. And maybe—who knows—a couple more still await me.
[MA] In your essay on Lisa Morpurgo you write that every natal chart is a perfect DNA, expressing in encrypted form our innermost nature. Since you work in astrology and write the horoscope for Grazia, what does this mean for someone like me, who reads horoscopes but doesn’t truly know astrology? Does this image really help us understand the link between destiny and identity?
[MP] Yes, it does. The natal chart— I always say—is the photograph of your birth, of your origin, and also of your identity. It doesn’t represent destiny, but rather temperament, inclinations, and the way we face life. It doesn’t tell you what will happen, but how you will make things happen, and how you will experience them. It’s something much subtler. Astrology isn’t, simply, a discipline that predicts the future or tells you whether your hair will fall out tomorrow—it tells you how you will feel when your hair falls out.
This is what fascinates me: it’s deeply psychological, humanistic, and as a writer I find it immensely interesting.
The natal chart is truly the image of your inner world: as if constellations, stars and planets traced a design that then manifests graphically and materially.
It’s a design that lives inside you, and that design plays like a score. You sound a certain way, and your sound can be heard. We all sound a certain way, and when we align with someone it’s because we like their sound; when we don’t, we clash.
It’s something intelligible, connected to vibrations, to electromagnetic waves. I don’t want this to sound New Age—because it isn’t—even though that risk is always there when touching certain topics. For me, the fascination is entirely in observing, through the magnifying lens of astrology, my life and the lives of others.
[MA] I find the image of the sky as a map of my inner origin very beautiful.
[MP] The map of your soul, to put it simply, is the set of coordinates that reveal its form. And I also think it’s very healing, because once you know who you are, you don’t need to change—you need to evolve from that point.
Knowing who you are, even thanks to astrology, gives you a kind of grounding, because—as we said—it’s a map, and a map offers coordinates that help you frame yourself, centre yourself. Of course, we can use any map we choose: I used astrology, someone else uses psychoanalysis, someone else uses drugs—who knows, each has their own map.
I found my centre in this way: I understood who I was. Then, naturally, between who I am and who I want to become there is an abyss; but who I want to become depends on who I am. I can become that person only by dealing with what I am. Expecting from oneself something one is not is like expecting to have been born under another sky.
No. You were born under that sky, into that family, and that is your origin; but you can transform it through the choices you make in life.
[MA] selvàtico is a magazine that was born around landscape. Let me ask you something more personal: what is your landscape today—your place, your space?
[MP] This is a difficult question for me, because I consider myself a writer of interiors. I always make this distinction between writers of interiors and writers of exteriors: it doesn’t mean that writers of interiors write only about interiors—they might well describe exteriors, but the landscape they inhabit is an internal one.
Mine is definitely an internal landscape, not an external one: it’s a physical place, but not outside domestic walls. When I write, I always picture the interiors of houses—not necessarily mine, but furnished spaces. My place is definitely the apartment, the bourgeois apartment.
[MA] And these apartments—what elements do they have? What do you surround yourself with? Is there always something you carry with you?
[MP] Yes. Let’s say that I have a deeply emotional relationship with furniture and objects: I don’t surround myself with things that have no value or meaning for me. If I need a table, I don’t just go out and buy a table: that table must have meaning.
So my home is very charged in this sense. Not so much with objects—although lately yes, with the children—but with meaning. When people visit and say my home feels warm, it really is—precisely because it isn’t warm: it’s overwhelming. All those meanings put you on alert, they keep you “up”. My imaginary homes, the ones I give to my characters, are always homes with furniture, but furniture chosen precisely, one piece at a time. As my friend, the writer Ilaria Gaspari, says—she spent a fortune dressing her characters in her latest book, because in cinema you can spend only so much, but in literature you can do as you like—I, instead, spend a fortune on furniture.
[MA] I’d also like to introduce the literary agency you founded in recent years: what led you to open it, and how do you feel in this role?
[MP] I’m actually a very practical person, and in my work as a writer I can only use that practicality up to a certain point.
That’s why I love working on the agency: it allows me to get my hands into things, to work in a concrete way while still remaining in a sphere of communication. And I should say that I opened the agency at a moment when I had just had my first child, so there were other family needs too: I was no longer alone, and I started asking myself: what do I do now? What will I do when I grow up? How will I support my family? And so I began this thing—really a leap into the unknown, because I didn’t know how to do it. People were already sending me manuscripts, asking to be connected with publishers, to figure out how to promote a book. It was something I did naturally, out of passion.
At that point I told myself: I might as well do it for work, and at least make it something stable—because how many books can one write? One every two or three years.
It was a practical choice, but also deeply tied to my passion for publishing: a world I’ve known since I was young, which feels completely natural to me.
And in fact, from the moment I began, I loved this work immediately. I truly enjoy it.
[MA] Do you have mentors—someone who continues to resonate within you today?
[MP] I do have infatuations, yes, in many areas. But I don’t really have that habit of carrying one author or one book with me through life. Although yes, I have favourites—those who have stayed with me, whom I remember…
[MA] Could you name a few?
[MP] Of course. As a girl I was an avid reader of late-19th-century French novels, and I found that atmosphere again in The Story of My Money. It’s the story of a woman who falls into ruin, who kills herself—a very French late-19th-century story. I realised it only afterwards; evidently these things stay with you. I never retain the precise memory of a book or its plot: what remains is the feeling, which is also the memory of life itself. When I talk about autofiction in my classes, I always say it isn’t the story of one’s life, but the feeling of one’s life: what remains, what you remember. And books work the same way for me. Inevitably, they resurface in me as I write—they return in unconscious ways, like dreams. After the French writers, as I grew older, I loved the American Beats. I must admit I’ve read little European literature; I was never a great lover of our continent’s fiction.
I never liked Nick Hornby or Zadie Smith; it’s not the kind of literature that speaks to me. I still love contemporary American literature very much.
[MA] You also talk about literature in your podcast, Senza pensarci. What else do you feel you want to do?
[MP] I don’t have major plans, also because—as I say in the podcast—I do things from one moment to the next without thinking too much. I’ve never been the kind of person who prepares long in advance, saying: “In two years I’ll do this.” I’d like to, but I can’t. I’d love to arrive prepared at important encounters, but it never happens: as soon as I have an idea, I put it into practice. Some friends tell me I behave as though I fear I might die tomorrow: I’m always in a hurry to do things. Of course, sometimes that leads to somewhat hasty results, but many other times it has paid off. Some think spontaneity isn’t a value—for me it is. I couldn’t do things any other way. As for the future, I have no idea: maybe I’ll decide in five minutes.
[MA] Does dialogue with your past inheritances shape the things you do? How much do things come back?
[MP] A lot. Immensely. Although I’ve always rejected roots—family roots—rejected them philosophically, let’s say; they were never something that truly interested me. Perhaps because of the family I come from—there are countless reasons. But my roots, the roots of my own tree—those yes, they’re very important to me. Because I come from there, those are mine, and I cannot forget them.
[MA] What is your most “wild” side? Where do you feel wild?
[MP] … I’m uncontainable. Maybe, instead of asking what my wild side is, I should ask what my most tamed side is. Even though, in reality, I have a very disciplined inner life. My internal world is very strict—much stricter than it might appear. I don’t allow myself mistakes; I have a deeply inflexible internal structure. I go from one extreme to the other: outwardly I’m wild, but in truth I’m extremely rigid about certain things.