This is the first part of a two-part conversation with Alice Bolin, author of Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse (Mariner Books; HarperCollins).
About the book:
In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.
In “The Enumerated Woman,” Bolin investigates how digital diet tracking apps have increasingly transformed our relationships to our bodies. Animal Crossing’s soothing retail therapy is analyzed in “Real Time”—a surprisingly powerful portrait of late capitalism. And in the show-stopping “Foundering,” Bolin dissects our buy-in and complicity with mythmaking around iconic founders, from the hubristic fall of Silicon Valley titans, to Enron, Hamilton, and the USA.
For readers of Trick Mirror and How to Do Nothing, Culture Creep is a swirl of nostalgia and visions of the future, questioning why, in the face of seismic cultural, political, and technological shifts as disruptive as the internet, we cling to the icons and ideals of the past. Written with her signature blend of the personal and sharply analytical, each of these keen-eyed essays ask us to reckon with our own participation in all manner of popular cults of being, and cults of believing.
About Alice:
Alice Bolin is the author of the essay collections Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession and Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse. She has been nominated for Anthony and Edgar awards. Her non-fiction appears in the New York Times Book Review, New York magazine, the LA Review of Books, and The Cut. She lives in Minneapolis.
Mentioned in this episode:
This article, “The Persistent Fantasy of the Fashion Magazine Job” by Alice Bolin (Racked)
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (Mariner Books; HarperCollins)
Cosmos by Carl Sagan (Ballantine Books)
The White Album by Joan Didion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Big Short, a film directed by Adam McKay
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg (Alfred A. Knopf)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse and Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (Mariner Books; HarperCollins)
The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino (Penguin Random House)
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (Melville House)
Females (Verso Books) and Authority (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Andrea Long Chu
American Bulk: Essays on Excess by Emily Mester (W. W. Norton & Company)
Girlhood by Melissa Febos (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert (Penguin Random House)
White Magic by Elissa Washuta (Tin House Books)
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The Write Question team is Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton, Montana, a literary and community resource for the Bitterroot Valley—providing space to explore, discover, and share passions since 1974. More information can be found at Chapter1Bookstore.com.
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Funding for The Write Question comes from members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. A hat-tip to Humanities Montana for supporting The Write Question since 2008.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
