51: Miranda Popkey

MASS–NYC — Miranda Popkey (b. 1987) grew up in Santa Cruz, CA. I went to middle and high school in Santa Cruz, CA. I was unaware of this until we talked. I’m glad we talked.

Her debut novel, Topics of Conversation (2020), published by Knopf in January, is an absolute banger. One of the most immediate, intense, complicated books I’ve hit in a minute. I read it slowly, over the summer; and then again, this time quickly, over the past three days.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Topics-Conversation-novel-Miranda-Popkey/dp/0525656286

CONTENTS

2 min - Santa Cruz!
4 min - how the Jan 2020 drop
7 min - on narcissism
9 min - on reviews / having no chill
14 min - Sheila Heti, Vigdis Hjorth
15 min - on resisting certainty
17 min - Joan Didion
23 min - becoming aware of underlying narratives / assumptions
25 min - on Back to the Future
29 min - Santa Cruz! cont.
31 min - ‘amplifying the fuckery’
33 min - is writing therapy
36 min - on LA Confidential / violent masculinity as ‘attractive’
42 min - is the essentializing of gender biological or taught or both or does it matter
49 min - book as invitation to examine one’s desires
50 min - Norman Mailer
53 min - flirting with vs. running away from the reader
56 min - Rachel Cusk , Rings of Saturn by Sebald
1 hr - me virtursignalling that I've read Wuthering Heights
1 hr 2 min - the line between wanting to sleep with someone and be them
1 hr 5 min - the 'Dylan' character and forgiving your parents