Guest post written by Perfume & Pain author Anna Dorn
Anna Dorn is an author and editor living in Los Angeles. She teaches writing classes at Write or Die and is an associate editor at Hobart Pulp. She was a Lambda Literary Fellow and her second novel Exalted was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. Her next book Perfume & Pain is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
Releasing on May 21st, Perfume & Pain is a controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.
They tell you in Creative Writing 101 to never write about a writer. Because writing is boring and interior and we want our characters to be active and alive. But I’ve always ignored this advice. I love books starring writers or creative people generally. Artists are messy and funny and mean to themselves in a way that makes them compelling protagonists. I made my most recent protagonist a novelist for this reason and others, including wanting to explore the challenges in managing the expectation to be messy and unhinged on the page and polished and inoffensive off of it. And so Astrid was born—my hotter, blonder, more successful alter ego writing books that the chaotic TikTok girlies love but who is unable to promote her work without offending people. Below are some of my favorite novels that also grapple with the various conflicts inherent to making up stories for a living.
Leave Society by Tao Lin
In Leave Society, a novelist who resembles Tao Lin leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. In Tapei, the protagonist Li tells his doctor he writes novels. “Knows about everything, then?” the doctor says. “I write novel so I know nothing,” responds Li, who is on a quarter tab of LSD. Both bickering and bonding with his parents in between drafts of his new book and various microdoses, Li contends with optimism, despair, and the idea of leaving society.
The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman
I easily connected with this novel about a self-centered and recently canceled novelist named Anna. Inspired by Ayn Rand’s theory of radical selfishness, Anna flees the New York literary scene for Los Angeles, a city where “magic happened to people who absolutely didn’t deserve it.” In Hollywood, she writes an animated TV show starring “Ayn Ram.” But family tragedy brings her back to New York, where she’s offered to kill her ego at a strange commune on the Greek island of Lesbos. There, Anna finds herself abandoning selfishness for community, ultimately reshaping her perspective and offering a new way to live.
Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
In this comedic thriller, struggling writer Florence lands a job assisting reclusive author Maud Dixon (who I saw as a Donna Tartt meets Elena Ferrante). Working for Maud takes Florence to a Moroccan villa, where Maud’s new novel is set. It’s all vibrant streets and wind-swept beaches until Florence wakes up in the hospital with no memory of how she got there. This one kept me up all night.
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
In a book Stephen King rightly called “insanely readable,” a struggling novelist steals a plot idea from his student after the student dies—resulting in massive commercial success that ultimately endangers his life. As the novelist tries to track down an anonymous person troll accusing him of theft, he finds out the real story behind his former student’s plot, and who stole what from whom. The reveals kept coming until the final page.
Apartment by Teddy Wayne
Like The Plot, Teddy Wayne’s Apartment is a literary thriller about literature. It’s 1996 and the unnamed narrator attends Columbia’s MFA program on his father’s dime while living in an illegal sublet. Feeling guilty about his luck, he offers his spare bedroom to Billy, a charismatic, working-class writer from the Midwest. The narrator is envious of Billy’s talent while Billy is resentful of the narrator’s privilege, resulting in a tense friendship that culminates in a climax that made me gasp.
The Valley (a void) by Vanessa Roveto
Tragedy brings disgraced poetry professor Victoria from Iowa back home to the San Fernando Valley—a place people avoid as well as a literal geographic void. There, Victoria integrates every character she encounters, absorbing then dispersing them into the landscape, the Uncanny Valley, warping time and naturalizing dreams. The narrative watches Victoria split and then recompose; the selves reunite in a strangely erotic climax. David Lynch wishes he wrote this book.
Why Did I Ever? by Mary Robison
Money Brenton is a script doctor and single mother struggling to stay both employed and sane. Consisting of 536 very short chapters, the novel was born out of Robison’s attempt to cure her writer’s block by writing small sections of text on thousands of index cards. Later, these sections were assembled to form the novel’s mysterious sequence, now heralded for its influential form.
All Fours by Miranda July
Miranda July’s latest stars a “semi-famous artist” the nature of whose work is never precisely revealed, although she does reveal, “a whiskey company had licensed a sentence I’d written years ago for a global print campaign,” so I’m calling her a writer. This writer-slash-artist embarks on a cross-country drive only to stop at a motel just one town over, where she finds a less literal form of freedom. All Fours explores niche celebrity, female sexuality, and perimenopause with Miranda July’s trademark quirky and tender-hearted wit.
