Pop Song - Larissa Pham

Shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics'' Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book''...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.