Margo Orlando Littell
Margo Orlando Littell is the author of the novels The Distance from Four Points and Each Vagabond by Name, which won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize and an IPPY Awards Gold Medal, was longlisted for the 2017 Tournament of Books, and was named one of fifteen great Appalachian novels by Bustle. Originally from southwestern Pennsylvania, she now lives in New Jersey.
Twitter: @margolittell
Instagram: @margolittell
Favorite non-reading activity?
It’s acutely painful to write about traveling now that the world has closed, but traveling is what I love most in the world besides reading. I love everything about traveling. Planning and researching and imagining. Reading books about the place I’m going. Making lists of things to pack and things to do. Shopping for the perfect travel accessories. I dislike flying, but I love being in transit—the limbo of an airport, especially a layover in a different country, jet-lagged and bleary; a coffee grabbed between flights or immediately upon arrival. The self-sufficiency of having one carry-on and one personal item (I don’t check bags). The insular, protective huddle of our family, away from everything familiar but one another. Souvenirs, found and purchased. Hotel rooms and perfectly located Airbnb. I love all of the excitement and surprise and novelty and hassle of being somewhere other than home.
Is there a work of art that you love? Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
One of my favorite works of art is an installation by the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle called “Exquisite Pain.” The installation consists of two parts. In the first, ordinary souvenirs from a long trip to Japan—letters, photos, etc.—are displayed in frames, each of them stamped with the length of time remaining until Calle’s heartbreak. The second part consists of fabric panels embroidered with the story of this wrenching moment in Calle’s life: when her lover calls her in Japan to end their relationship. Beside each embroidered story is the story of someone else’s heartbreak. Over and over again, Calle’s story appears on tapestries alongside others’ stories, but in each appearance, her story is shorter, the threads lighter, until her story almost completely disappears. In the telling and retelling, she moves on. Reading the tapestries is an immersion into grief, and then a healing. I saw this work in New York City in 2005, and it left me in tears. The catalog I bought at the gallery is among my favorite book-objects.
I’ve seen Calle’s work in person two other times: “Rachel, Monique” in New York in 2012, and “Parce Que” and “Souris Calle” in Paris in 2018. And I have many many books of her work.
Vacation druthers...City or rural destination? Why?
I love cities. I lived in New York for almost ten years, broken up by a year in Barcelona, and a city is where I’m happiest. Before having kids, my husband and I were obsessive travelers, and our kids are finally old enough to travel widely and well—over the past few years we’ve gone to Paris, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, San Juan, Cancun. There’s something amazing about watching our suburban kids sink right into city life—walking miles without complaint, eating street food, gathering a picnic to eat in a park, exploring museums and cathedrals, going to the theatre. It’s addictive, city traveling. The kids feel it too. That said, our favorite place in the world is a farmhouse in New Hampshire, in the middle of nowhere. We need and appreciate extremes—crowded Shibuya; a hundred unpopulated New England acres. Broadway show; darkness so absolute you can see the Milky Way. Both extremes feed our souls.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
Against the odds, I still have a red faux-fur coat from Charlotte Russe that I got in 2000. It no longer fits perfectly, and the fur is matted from too many winters that ended without dry-cleaning, but I can’t get rid of it. This was the coat I wore for my final years in New York, the coat I wore when I met the co-worker who’d become my husband, the coat I wore during the transit strike in 2005 when I had to walk from Park Slope to Union Square to get to work. Through Brooklyn, across the Manhattan Bridge, up Broadway for blocks and blocks. And at night, walking home—Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, shouting through a bullhorn from the end of the bridge: “You’re back in Brooklyn! Everything’s okay!” It was okay. I was living alone in a brick-walled apartment filled with books and not much else. Those years. I was very very young. I was wearing that coat. Maybe one day I’ll cut it apart and turn the fabric into a pillow. Or maybe it’ll just keep hanging in the attic closet with all the other things I can’t bear to give away.
Do you collect anything? If so, what, why, and for how long?
I collect oil portraits of strangers. By “collect” I mean “find at rummage sales for $5 or less” and by “oil portraits” I mean “any amateur attempt at portraiture, the more amateur the better.” What attracts me to these rummage-sale finds is the question of how they came to be there: why were they discarded? If a person was valued or loved enough to paint, why throw away the painting? Pathos and betrayal are inextricably linked to these portraits, and that’s why I like them. I hang them in my attic stairwell. At night, they’re exactly as creepy as you’d imagine. Twice, a portrait has fallen and crashed onto the wooden stairs late at night. Those were terrifying events. Glass was everywhere. I’m still not sure if I was being sent a message, or if the plaster holding the nail simply released it.
