Photo Credit: Elena Seibert
Miranda Popkey’s Topics of Conversation is one debut you won’t want to miss in the new year! This novel follows the narrator across two decades through a series of interrelated conversations. These conversations, held primarily between women, examine sex and power, intimacy and control, in the context of relationships. They also explore how we interpret and internalize messages from the world around us, as well how these messages shape our own narratives, beliefs, and desires.
Popkey kindly took some time to answer a few questions for The Nerd Daily as she prepares for the release of this book in January 2020, which is available for purchase. Read on to learn more about the author, how she considers this novel to be in conversation with other works of art, and what she would love to do if she had all the time and money in the world.
First of all, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions for The Nerd Daily! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your debut novel, Topics of Conversation.
You’re welcome! I do find it’s hard to write about myself without sounding like a personal ad: MWF ISO readers for her novel … A handful of facts: people I meet are surprised that I grew up in California; I’ve moved at least two dozen times; I speak Italian, though not as well as I used to; I started running marathons this year; the older I get the further left I move on the political spectrum. About the novel: when I first started talking about it, I described it as a series of linked conversations about sex and power. And that’s true—but underneath that is an interest in how desire forms, the kinds of wants mainstream culture cultivates. As I wrote, I was thinking a lot about the kinds of cultural products I ingested as an adolescent and the kinds of messages—about relationships especially—that stuck in my head as a result.
Although the reader knows she is a female and has a sense of her age, the novel’s narrator is never given a name. Did you always intend for the narrator to be unnamed? How does this choice impact the story you tell here?
I didn’t! Though I do have a hard time with naming. I’m too aware that whatever name one chooses, at least one reader will have known someone with that name and that their feelings about that person may end up influencing how they view the character. That’s in part why my narrator is nameless in the text. I say in the text because she does have a name—only I tried it out on a few people and they all reacted negatively. In the end, instead of changing her name, I decided to keep it a secret. I hope the fact that she’s nameless gives the reader a bit more freedom as they form an impression of her—that the impression they form is based on what she thinks and likes and notices, rather than on the set of associations that may attach to a name.
Each chapter is set in a different location and year. How did you settle on this structure for the book? Do you have a favorite chapter?
Fundamentally, the structure is a cheat. The idea of teasing out the arc of a plot over a couple hundred pages—that seemed too daunting to me. Having a number of smaller arcs that could then be tied together seemed possible—if not, at several points during the writing, exactly probable. It’s also true that I wrote the novel during an MFA program, and the workshop model—which most MFA programs, mine included, use—lends itself more naturally to short stories than to novels. So it turned out to be really helpful that I had decided to construct a novel from what were essentially a series of short stories because then I also got the benefit of being able to bring these sections to workshop and get feedback from my fellow writers.
The novel rings so true to a broad range of female experiences, even those we don’t always feel comfortable sharing with others. Was this book influenced by any life experiences that you would be willing to share? And could you also talk a bit more about the influence of the “Works (Not) Cited” at the end of the book?
I’ll say that I have been, more than once, in a relationship in which the power dynamic was unequal—i.e. in which I had less power than my partner. In each case, that inequality was initially enticing, was in fact part of what attracted me to the other person; only later or in retrospect did I understand how that inequality had also hurt me. And one of the most difficult parts of processing the latter understanding was acknowledging my own complicity in the pain I ultimately felt, without therefore absolving the other person of responsibility. What I mean is that sometimes it’s not a question of consent; it’s a question of, Should I be asking this question in the first place? You can be emotionally cruel and still get a yes from your partner; the fact that your partner gave that yes will be something they need to acknowledge and think about, and the fact that you were emotionally cruel will be something that you need to acknowledge and think about. This is, obviously, in the realm of morality, not the realm of the law.
About the “Works (Not) Cited”—while I was working on the novel I read Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi’s Fra Keeler, and she includes, at the end, a list similar to and that then directly inspired mine. Immediately I found myself wishing more books would do this. If the book is a house, the list is a key, but for the house next door, and inside is a gossipy neighbor who’s been watching the book-house for ages and as soon as you step inside she starts talking your ear off. For me it felt specifically important to acknowledge what I was reading and watching and listening to and thinking about because, one, the novel is so interested in the way cultural products shape desire; and, two, I wanted the reader to know that my novel isn’t this wholly original thing. It’s deliberately in conversation with a lot of other—better!—works of art.
On Twitter, you described Topics of Conversation as being about “power, desire, narrative – everything I’ve been thinking about for the past two decades.” Let’s unpack that statement a bit. There are clear themes of identity, intimacy, power, control, and desire that run throughout the novel. In what ways have these topics remained on your mind over the years and why were you interested in tackling such weighty issues in your debut novel?
One of the questions the novel is asking is, How is desire formed? I think it’s not uncommon, especially as you age, to wonder why you’re attracted to what you’re attracted to—especially if the objects of your attraction end up in some way disappointing or hurting you. Certainly I noticed my own attraction to a particular kind of relationship dynamic and wondered about its origin and also its strength, given that the relationships I sought out that participated in this dynamic never ended up working out. The moment of crystallization, unfortunately, was the #MeToo reporting that began with the revelations about Harvey Weinstein. Because the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were horrifying—but then beyond the horror of his (I guess I have to say alleged) assaults, I found I was also disturbed by the fact that a man who seemed to enjoy abusing people had been for so long such a powerful cultural arbiter. He’d produced films that were for me formative; I was interested in thinking about how those films had been shaped by his desires and how they had then shaped mine.
The narrative of one’s life is also a fascinating topic to examine. At different points in the novel the narrator describes one’s narrative as a way to make sense of life events. She also admits that she is often trying to frame a “better” story for her own life, as the real thing can be rather boring. What led you to explore narratives in this way?
I often think of my life as a narrative, or as a series of narratives. Most people do, I think, at least to some extent. We look back on and craft stories from our pasts in hopes of making sense of them; we look ahead to and tell stories toward specific futures in hopes of reaching them. I think the danger—and, like the narrator, I have fallen into this trap, which is in part why I was interested in writing about it—is in artificially shaping our lives to fit the story we’re telling ourselves, regardless of the changing realities of our situations. Because while constructing a narrative can be useful as an interpretive tool, plot doesn’t carry us along; our own decisions do. (Well, to a certain extent; demographic and geographic and socioeconomic conditions play a huge role as well, and are more determinative in some people’s lives than in others.) Narrative can be a way of absolving oneself of responsibility; that in particular I’m suspicious of.
What have you not been asked in interviews thus far that you want to be sure your readers understand about Topics of Conversation?
I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised to find that my interviewers, by and large, haven’t conflated author and narrator. That said, it is worth repeating that the novel is truly fiction; the things that happen in the novel didn’t happen to me, even if the emotional states I describe are all ones I have had some kind of experience with.
A recent article in The Atlantic stated that you are also a social worker. What drew you to that field and in what ways has it influenced your writing?
I landed in social work—or human services; it seems important to clarify that I don’t have a degree in social work—by accident. When I moved to Massachusetts, I signed up with a temping agency. The first job they sent me on was with a small nonprofit that helps low income families connect to job training opportunities; that nonprofit ended up hiring me. It hasn’t affected my writing yet—in part because this kind of work, even if you’re doing it part-time, as I am, takes up a certain amount of mental and emotional space—except in the way that all learning experiences do: by reminding me that I know very little and that little not well.
You have written for a large array of publications, from The New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog and The Paris Review Daily to GQ.com and New York magazine’s The Cut. Tell our readers a little more about your writing interests in general. What direction do you hope to take with your writing in the future?
The older I get the more I realize how much I want to do and how little time I have to do it. In an ideal world, one in which I had endless amounts of money and a time-turning hourglass at my disposal, I’d get to labor over long, digressive reviews; and I’d figure out a way to overcome both my anxiety when conducting interviews and my tendency to procrastinate and try to do some actual reporting; and I’d write fiction every morning and read fiction every night. The world being its actual, less than ideal, self, all I can say is that, right now, I’m interested in narrative tropes and depictions of intimacy. Where those interests will lead is still an open question.
Let’s Get Nerdy: Behind the Writer with 9 Quick Questions
First book that made you fall in love with reading: I devoured mysteries as a child—Nancy Drew was an early favourite and I will still sometimes turn to Poirot when I need something soothing. But the first book I read and thought, Oh, literature, was Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
3 books you would take on a desert island: Can I count all four extant volumes of Robert Caro’s still in-progress biography of Lyndon Johnson as one? I’m going to say that I can. So that, and the collected Lydia Davis, and the third I’d pick just before setting out; I like the idea of leaving something to chance and whim.
Movie that you know by heart: I’m afraid my answer is Curtis Hanson’s A. Confidential. I don’t know that I should have seen that movie at twelve, but I did—over and over and over again.
Song that makes you want to get up and dance: The last time I felt spontaneously moved to move was when I saw Lucy Dacus perform her cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”
Place that everyone should see in their lifetime: I’ve hardly seen enough of the world to judge, but I do think everyone should see an ocean—or some other enormous body of water—at least once.
Introvert or extrovert: Introvert
Coffee, tea, or neither: Coffee
First job: Assistant in an accounting department. Proud to say I still retain my 10-key-by-touch skills.
Person you admire most and why: As a writer, Renata Adler circa 1976. As a person, it’s a tie between my mother circa 1992 and this local hero.
