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.
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
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Sean Thor Conroe lives in Harlem.
@stconroe
@seanthorconroe
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