This is the second part of a two-part conversation with University of Montana alumna Alice Bolin (MFA , ‘11), 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.
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 for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Bookworks of Whitefish, offering new books of all genres, stationery, and puzzles. Open 11AM to 6PM Monday through Saturday. Located in downtown Whitefish, Montana, in the Third & Spokane Building.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
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