Name: Ana Hein's review of Pop Song by Larissa Pham
Item: Pop Song
Rating: 4
Author: Ana Hein

Larissa Pham

Endlessly inventive, intimate, and provocative, this memoir-in-essays is a celebration of the strange and exquisite state of falling in love, whether with a painting or a person, that interweaves incisive commentary on modern life, feminism, art and sex with the author's own experiences of obsession, heartbreak, and past trauma. Like a song that feels written just for you, Larissa Pham's debut work of nonfiction captures the imagination and refuses to let go. Pop Song is a book about love and about falling in love--with a place, or a painting, or a person--and the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Plumbing the well of culture for clues and patterns about love and loss--from Agnes Martin's abstract paintings to James Turrell's transcendent light works, and Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean's Blonde--Pham 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. Pop Song is also a book about distances, near and far. As she travels from Taos, New Mexico, to Shanghai, China and beyond, Pham meditates on the miles we are willing to cover to get away from ourselves, or those who hurt us, and the impossible gaps that can exist between two people sharing a bed. Pop Song is a book about all the routes by which we might escape our own needs before finally finding a way home. There is heartache in these pages, but Pham's electric ways of seeing create a perfectly fractured portrait of modern intimacy that is triumphant in both its vulnerability and restlessness.

Adventures in Art & Intimacy

Pop Song

Ana Hein

elif sinem

I absolutely adored this one. Pham is such a good writer - she is excellent at tracing old scars and invoking a contemplative, melancholy mood throughout. Her voice has so much grace. 

I have two problems. First, the trauma presented is almost... too much? One essay is particularly painful to read, with Pham throwing her every trauma at us without much preamble or resolve. This sounds horrible put that way, but when you get told about eating disorders without any continuation after, it just gets the vibe of oversharing. Jia Tolentino does this too and while I get that it makes the essays more personable, it also feels too forceful? 
The second issue is a lot of these essays are just too long. Usually it's because of the inclusion of descriptions of artworks and artists that felt superfluous.

But other than that it's so good and absolutely perfect for a nightly read.

Armi

Elena Kuran

Nicholas Barnard

'...I don't know what comes after, once I decide to let desire have its way with me. How to un-melt the melted? How to turn the ground powder back into a person? This idea points to a knowledge that I don't have: how to love without losing the self.' Plumbing the well of culture for clues about love and loss - from Agnes Martin's abstract paintings to Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean's Blonde - this brilliant work of debut nonfiction explores the state of falling in love, whether with a painting or a person. Pham creates a perfectly fractured portrait of modern intimacy, triumphant in its vulnerability and restlessness. Pop Song is a book about distances: the miles we travel to get away from ourselves, or those who hurt us, and the impossible gaps that can exist between two people sharing a bed. Here is a map to all the routes by which we might escape our own needs before finally finding a way home.

Ana Hein &
Pop Song by Larissa Pham

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Ana Hein &Pop Song by Larissa Pham

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Ana Hein &
Pop Song by Larissa Pham