Liska Jacobs on writing, breathing, and drinking in hotels

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Liska Jacobs used to work as an archivist at The Getty. Now she writes novels — her first one, Catalina, starring a woman who works at MOMA.

Does doing one kind of beautiful work make you miss the other? I asked Liska that and other questions in this interview. Read on to hear her thoughts on the dualities of Los Angeles, the pleasures of anonymous drinking in hotels, and the value of breathing.

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Siel: Why Catalina? What is it about that place that made you decide you must title a novel after it?

Liska: I wanted the meat of the novel to take place on an island so that I could really force everything to a crisis — but Catalina specifically because it’s a perfect compact version of Los Angeles. It has the same duality where on the one side it’s an artificial playground (Hollywood/Avalon), and the other is wild landscape (Santa Monica Mountains/ Los Angeles National Forest/ Two Harbors). Elsa, my heroine, has the same struggle going on within her — actually, her whole group of friends are outwardly feigning certain personas, while inwardly seething from past wounds and insecurities.

I love how a chunk of the story happens at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. There are so many hotels I’d like to stay in in the LA area — but I don’t because, you know, I live here. What is the hotel stay you’ve enjoyed the most, and did that stay involve writing?

Thank you! I love the anonymity of drinking in hotels. There’s just something about them, maybe it’s the people passing through, or just the pleasure of sitting in a place that’s made to evoke a certain style or time. It’s like being on a set. The Miramar always makes me think of 1920s Santa Monica, of early seaside splendor and the flapper era.

One of my favorite hotels is the Hotel De Russie in Rome. I’ll probably never be able to afford to stay there, but I can sure as hell spend an entire evening drinking in their courtyard. They have a separate cocktail list just for gin and tonics! And at night you can hear the cicadas in the Villa Borghese Gardens.

On the Otherppl podcast, you talked about your former life working as an archivist at The Getty. Elsa was an assistant at the MOMA. Do you ever miss your museum career — being surrounded every day by beautiful objects?

This is such a great question. I do miss it. Not just the vaults, which were brimming with so many interesting things—from early editions of Shakespeare, to Mapplethorpe prints, to Kirchner’s sketchbook and Matisse drawings — but the small things too. I miss having coffee with a group of people I grew to love working with. And I miss seeing the city covered in fog and feeling like we had the sky to ourselves, and the deer that came down or the hawks that nested one year on the roof of the GRI. It’s a sad sort of missing though, the kind that comes with age.

If you were to go through the entire first book process again, from acceptance to publication, is there anything you might do differently?

I’d try to breath a lot more. I know that sounds silly, but there was so much hurry up and wait—that looking back, I feel like I willed a couple years by too quickly. I was so impatient to be here that I didn’t stop to enjoy the process. Mostly because at the time it didn’t feel like one. It felt like a mad sprint and if I let up for a minute, I’d blink, and it would have all been a dream.

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