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61
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
29/100Critics
93/100Scholars
Author:
Larissa Pham
Publisher:
Catapult
Date:
May 4, 2021
Pop Song is a book about love and about falling in loveâwith a place, or a painting, or a personâand the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Plumbing the well of culture for clues and patterns about love and lossâfrom Agnes Martin's abstract paintings to James Turrell's transcendent light works, and Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean's BlondeâPham writes of her youthful attempts to find meaning in travel, sex, drugs, and art, before sensing that she might need to turn her gaze upon herself.
What The Reviewers Say
... stunning, vulnerable.
... a masterclass in the art of looking closely. Pham’s attention is delicate and lucid, cleaving to her subjects like film. Through her prose we see objects not only for what they are, but for what they represent – the emotions and memories they bear.
[Pham's] observations span a lot of ground — night runs on Yale’s campus, a painting course in France, a residency in New Mexico, each place an astute rendering from a definitive voice.
Pop Song begins to read like a beautiful, literary breakup album, each essay operating as its own track. By the time you’ve turned the final pages, you want nothing more than to flip the metaphorical album over, drop the needle, and begin again.
