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Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy
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.
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.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 4, 2021
134 people are currently reading
7429 people want to read
About the author
Larissa Pham
9 books99 followersLarissa Pham is a writer living in Brooklyn. She has written for Adult, Guernica, The Nation and Nerve. Pham studied painting and art history at Yale University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews
January 21, 2022
Now Nominated for the John Leonard Prize 2021
Pham's memoir in essays tells the story of a love affair, how the author's alter ego arrived at the point of meeting the person, what happened during their relationship and how it ultimately ended. Throughout the text, this lover is directly addressed as "you", and as the title suggest, Pham - a writer and visual artist who holds a degree in painting and art history from Yale - intersperses her reflections on sex and human relations with various vignettes on different female artists, their works and goals: For example, Nan Goldin's "Heart-Shaped Bruise" serves as a starting point to discuss physical experiences and BDSM, trauma and personal history are connected to Louise Bourgeois' "Spider", and proximity vs. distance as well as the abstract vs. the concrete are pondered over the work of Agnes Martin.
While it seems a little labored how the characters always conveniently visit exhibitions of the artists whose works fit the core topic of the respective essays, Pham's insights are neatly intertwined with the art she outlines. There is also a raw and honest quality about her writing on personal experiences which contrasts nicely with her more sober explanations of art history. Pham questions herself about her attitude towards sex and how she uses it to avoid or establish intimacy. She also tries to come to terms with questions of emotional intimacy, and it's mostly very captivating to read.
Sometimes though, the text is strictly written in the terms of critical theory and the language of wokeness, and the effect is weirdly strange - it's not that you wouldn't believe the author's feelings, but the way they are expressed reads peak millennial: "this crossroads of my own displacement intersecting with the violent history of the country I'd been birthed in, my own complicity in its structures not always clear to me" - you get my point. But then again, Pham is keenly aware of the marketplace she operates in, that she as a female PoC was "selling out some minor trauma for a byline", because that was marketable. Of course, a talented writer like her wants and deserves to be more than that, but it's hard to find a place if you have to create it yourself.
An interesting read by a gifted new voice - while the text sometimes get caught in the loops of current discourse, it becomes clear that Pham's work also offers a distinctly original quality.
Pham's memoir in essays tells the story of a love affair, how the author's alter ego arrived at the point of meeting the person, what happened during their relationship and how it ultimately ended. Throughout the text, this lover is directly addressed as "you", and as the title suggest, Pham - a writer and visual artist who holds a degree in painting and art history from Yale - intersperses her reflections on sex and human relations with various vignettes on different female artists, their works and goals: For example, Nan Goldin's "Heart-Shaped Bruise" serves as a starting point to discuss physical experiences and BDSM, trauma and personal history are connected to Louise Bourgeois' "Spider", and proximity vs. distance as well as the abstract vs. the concrete are pondered over the work of Agnes Martin.
While it seems a little labored how the characters always conveniently visit exhibitions of the artists whose works fit the core topic of the respective essays, Pham's insights are neatly intertwined with the art she outlines. There is also a raw and honest quality about her writing on personal experiences which contrasts nicely with her more sober explanations of art history. Pham questions herself about her attitude towards sex and how she uses it to avoid or establish intimacy. She also tries to come to terms with questions of emotional intimacy, and it's mostly very captivating to read.
Sometimes though, the text is strictly written in the terms of critical theory and the language of wokeness, and the effect is weirdly strange - it's not that you wouldn't believe the author's feelings, but the way they are expressed reads peak millennial: "this crossroads of my own displacement intersecting with the violent history of the country I'd been birthed in, my own complicity in its structures not always clear to me" - you get my point. But then again, Pham is keenly aware of the marketplace she operates in, that she as a female PoC was "selling out some minor trauma for a byline", because that was marketable. Of course, a talented writer like her wants and deserves to be more than that, but it's hard to find a place if you have to create it yourself.
An interesting read by a gifted new voice - while the text sometimes get caught in the loops of current discourse, it becomes clear that Pham's work also offers a distinctly original quality.
April 17, 2022
I liked the vulnerability Larissa Pham displayed in this essay collection about art and romantic connection and travel. Aside from that though, I found this book a frustrating reading experience. This review by Phoebe highlights a lot of the issues I took with it so I will just emphasize the main points.
First, I felt like a lot of Pop Song read like vaguebooking. Pham makes a lot of intense emotional statements that didn’t communicate anything concrete enough to resonate on a deeper level. I’ll provide an example to exemplify this point:
“Remembering that – morning how he emerged in his towel to me in the kitchen, pleased, wet, and surprised – I think to myself, I wasn’t entirely happy then, but that was definitely a sort of happiness.
Maybe, then, it was a sort of preparation, for a greater kind of happiness. And in that happiness, a greater heartache. I didn’t know then how it could feel – how it would feel when I met you.”
I have so many questions about this passage that I don’t think were ever answered?? So if you weren’t entirely happy, what do you mean by “a sort of happiness” – like what is the actual emotion there? Also, how did this interaction serve as a preparation? What do you mean when you say a “greater kind of happiness?” Also, how are you supposed to know what it’s like to meet someone in the future if you didn’t know you would meet them yet? Finally, who is the “you” here (Pham uses the second person “you” throughout the book to generally refer to one or multiple of her romantic connections though I think this is disadvantageous because it’s unclear who she’s talking about at any specific point)?
I don’t state this to overly criticize her writing. In fact, I am curious about what she’s actually referring to, like the people she’s interacting with, as well as what lessons she’s taking away from her experiences. As Phoebe writes in her review, Pham doesn’t really draw any conclusions in this book, which felt like an avoidance of more genuine or tangible insight that would have helped us understand more specifically what she’s going through or what she’s been through. For example, there's a lot of romantic relational strife in this book though I'm still unclear about what continually caused this strife and what Pham has learned from it or how she's grown from mit. Perhaps this book may appeal to those interested in art though I hesitate to recommend it, unfortunately.
First, I felt like a lot of Pop Song read like vaguebooking. Pham makes a lot of intense emotional statements that didn’t communicate anything concrete enough to resonate on a deeper level. I’ll provide an example to exemplify this point:
“Remembering that – morning how he emerged in his towel to me in the kitchen, pleased, wet, and surprised – I think to myself, I wasn’t entirely happy then, but that was definitely a sort of happiness.
Maybe, then, it was a sort of preparation, for a greater kind of happiness. And in that happiness, a greater heartache. I didn’t know then how it could feel – how it would feel when I met you.”
I have so many questions about this passage that I don’t think were ever answered?? So if you weren’t entirely happy, what do you mean by “a sort of happiness” – like what is the actual emotion there? Also, how did this interaction serve as a preparation? What do you mean when you say a “greater kind of happiness?” Also, how are you supposed to know what it’s like to meet someone in the future if you didn’t know you would meet them yet? Finally, who is the “you” here (Pham uses the second person “you” throughout the book to generally refer to one or multiple of her romantic connections though I think this is disadvantageous because it’s unclear who she’s talking about at any specific point)?
I don’t state this to overly criticize her writing. In fact, I am curious about what she’s actually referring to, like the people she’s interacting with, as well as what lessons she’s taking away from her experiences. As Phoebe writes in her review, Pham doesn’t really draw any conclusions in this book, which felt like an avoidance of more genuine or tangible insight that would have helped us understand more specifically what she’s going through or what she’s been through. For example, there's a lot of romantic relational strife in this book though I'm still unclear about what continually caused this strife and what Pham has learned from it or how she's grown from mit. Perhaps this book may appeal to those interested in art though I hesitate to recommend it, unfortunately.
November 4, 2021
Taking a form somewhere between essay and memoir Larissa Pham’s words accumulate to tell the story of encounters that have shaped her perceptions, the art and artists that inform her own work, alter her ways of seeing or just offer up the possibility of something intimate that’s always just out of reach. The artists are almost overwhelmingly female, there’s Francesca Woodman whose mysterious, mythic photographs Pham collected online in her art school days, their representation of gender and trauma couched in a language she can all-too-easily interpret. Then there’s Nan Goldin’s early work, the bruised images that speak to Pham’s own explorations of the boundaries between sex and violence. And above all Agnes Martin’s contemplative, enigmatic grid paintings recollected during a trip to Taos where Martin once worked.
Embedded in Pham’s chronicle is a wider narrative of what it is to see and be seen, to build an identity while rejecting the ones endlessly imposed from the outside, including dealing as an Asian American woman with acquiring the status of fetish object in the minds of many of the men she meets, something invisible in much of the white, feminist theory she reads in college. And from this mesh of memories, visual associations and events another thread emerges, an account of an all-consuming, failed relationship and all the revelations and confusions that came with it. I found Pham’s book’s thoughtful, sometimes intense, often unflinching, on rare occasions perhaps a little predictably precious. But I really liked her voice, how she structured her material, and, although I preferred the more concrete aspects of her discussion - the section spinning off from Nan Goldin was particularly powerful - there was so much that resonated here that I was completely absorbed throughout.
Rating: 4.5
Embedded in Pham’s chronicle is a wider narrative of what it is to see and be seen, to build an identity while rejecting the ones endlessly imposed from the outside, including dealing as an Asian American woman with acquiring the status of fetish object in the minds of many of the men she meets, something invisible in much of the white, feminist theory she reads in college. And from this mesh of memories, visual associations and events another thread emerges, an account of an all-consuming, failed relationship and all the revelations and confusions that came with it. I found Pham’s book’s thoughtful, sometimes intense, often unflinching, on rare occasions perhaps a little predictably precious. But I really liked her voice, how she structured her material, and, although I preferred the more concrete aspects of her discussion - the section spinning off from Nan Goldin was particularly powerful - there was so much that resonated here that I was completely absorbed throughout.
Rating: 4.5
November 1, 2020
"Here's one promise of a bruise: it heals. A bruise is a way of witnessing: one has endured a blow and survived. It disappears once flesh has been knit back together. In some ways, a bruise is the inverse of photography, or any kind of art making. Art preserves; bruises fade. Once I could get past saying, I hurt, I realized I had so much more to say."
I admire the sway and tenderness with which Larissa Pham renders her experiences as an Asian American woman against the milieu of the world and all its dull conventions in her debut, Pop Song. Like Pham, I, too, sensed something deeper in the frozen fury rumbling in archives of Nan Goldin’s photography and was equally struck by the vibrant violence of Jenny Saville’s paintings. This book exposed so much of me in relation to the existence I’ve strived to live versus the life that feels pre-constructed for me. This book is crushing, cathartic, and utterly enchanting. It's one of those books that finds us unexpectedly at our deepest end, as if in waiting. Pham possesses a gravity that is entirely her own, pulling you into her orbit and into the arms of someone who knows what it's like to be sundered by this world. Pop Song harnesses Pham's most furious, soul-searching reflections — on paint and pain, lust, and loneliness — that unleashes a gossamer of hope and purpose. This book marks the advent of a merciful, miraculous writer.
Thank you, Catapult friends, for gifting me the easiest (and my first!) five-star read of 2021.
I admire the sway and tenderness with which Larissa Pham renders her experiences as an Asian American woman against the milieu of the world and all its dull conventions in her debut, Pop Song. Like Pham, I, too, sensed something deeper in the frozen fury rumbling in archives of Nan Goldin’s photography and was equally struck by the vibrant violence of Jenny Saville’s paintings. This book exposed so much of me in relation to the existence I’ve strived to live versus the life that feels pre-constructed for me. This book is crushing, cathartic, and utterly enchanting. It's one of those books that finds us unexpectedly at our deepest end, as if in waiting. Pham possesses a gravity that is entirely her own, pulling you into her orbit and into the arms of someone who knows what it's like to be sundered by this world. Pop Song harnesses Pham's most furious, soul-searching reflections — on paint and pain, lust, and loneliness — that unleashes a gossamer of hope and purpose. This book marks the advent of a merciful, miraculous writer.
Thank you, Catapult friends, for gifting me the easiest (and my first!) five-star read of 2021.
July 22, 2021
A wonderful reading experience for the most part. I found it clever and stimulating (I kept googling all the art and artists she refers to), but sometimes rather sentimental. I enjoyed her musings on art more than I enjoyed her post-mortem of her unsuccessful relationship with the unnamed "you" she kept refering to.
January 26, 2022
I bought this book after parul seghal cited it (favourably, it seemed) in her trauma plot essay for the new yorker, and got maybe 3 chapters in before realising I probably wasn't going to enjoy it as much as i anticipated. I ended up finishing the book tho, 11 essays in total, not going to break down each one because to be honest a lot of them blur together for me. lots of repeated concepts, overwritten at the sentence level and i found pham's aversion to drawing any conclusions about her experiences frustrating + also antithetical to the personal essay format. also at times it felt like she had hit a ceiling in terms of what she could actually articulate using words, which then led to an overreliance on these shorter, fragmentary paras - 'insinuating utmost meaning where there was only hollow prose', as lauren oyler would say - that came across as sophomoric, underbaked. it's not that i have anything against this style of writing generally; i think it can be deployed in a sophisticated way (in fiction, mostly) but here it felt like cheating; pham leaning too much on the reader desperately grasping for meaning to fill in the blanks she has left behind.
also, the critical theory sprinkle throughout - Barthes, Walter Benjamin?? - felt shoehorned in, like asuperficial attempt at elevating the writing & also a way for pham to avoid being honest about her own emotions. then there were also times where i think the writing would've benefited from more analysis (e.g. in the last essay where she's invited by a luxury brand she wrote copy for to go on an all expenses paid trip to shanghai and she ends up at an commercial art fair where it's clear she's v uncomfortable w/ how the art there has been so obviously reduced to commodity, felt like a missed opportunity for pham to show to insight into her own position as an individual trying to create art under capitalism.)
idk just kind of a disappointing book, it didn't feel adventurous or even very intimate (even tho there's copious references to pham's sex/love life), just weirdly evasive to the point where i enjoyed the drier art history bits more than I did the bits where pham reflected on her own past romantic relationships.
also, the critical theory sprinkle throughout - Barthes, Walter Benjamin?? - felt shoehorned in, like asuperficial attempt at elevating the writing & also a way for pham to avoid being honest about her own emotions. then there were also times where i think the writing would've benefited from more analysis (e.g. in the last essay where she's invited by a luxury brand she wrote copy for to go on an all expenses paid trip to shanghai and she ends up at an commercial art fair where it's clear she's v uncomfortable w/ how the art there has been so obviously reduced to commodity, felt like a missed opportunity for pham to show to insight into her own position as an individual trying to create art under capitalism.)
idk just kind of a disappointing book, it didn't feel adventurous or even very intimate (even tho there's copious references to pham's sex/love life), just weirdly evasive to the point where i enjoyed the drier art history bits more than I did the bits where pham reflected on her own past romantic relationships.
May 31, 2021
There is a lot to like in Pop Song. Pham is both intimate and scholarly, disclosing and discursive, open and hurt, angry and hopeful. A collection of personal essays tinged with scholarly discussions of art, the book turns out to describe the arc of a relationship, moving back through her life all through to the aftermath. She addresses her (former) love directly in the second person throughout the book, and while I've found "you" to be off-putting or precious in other places, here it works because Pham is almost always talking about how "you" made her feel or how she reacted to "you" or what she wanted and needed. There are some heavy subjects in here around bondage, racial fetishes, commercialization of art, and social media commodification of "authentic" lives among others. there are also some great descriptions of art and artists and how and why they matter both in general and to her. Really enjoyed this brave work.
August 7, 2021
I was introduced to Larissa Pham’s writing by my friend Shu-Ling, who linked me to one of her art essays on oranges; an essay that I love and reread often. Shu-Ling is another author who I admire, and there’s a special pile of books on my shelf/in my heart by young Asian women writers who inspire me to write and live as myself. In Shu-Ling’s own collection of essays, Echoes, she writes, “Why is it so bad to appear earnest? Why is wanting to be liked a flaw?” I thought of this a lot while reading Pop Song, a book that is unapologetically earnest. There is a difference between being honest and being earnest, and Pham notes that, in writing about the aestheticisation of pain, we stumble over the line between performance and a desire to be believed in.
These essays are deeply personal and critical, and Pham draws two styles of writing into conversation with each other repeatedly, sometimes when you expect it, and sometimes when you don't. I've heard that some people find her mix of personal memoir and art criticism disjointed at times, but I feel like this friction makes me appreciate it more. Larissa and I have had similar training, (we are both art students and “failed painters” turned personal essayists) and this retreat to discipline, like a muscle she can’t help but flex (!), is strangely comforting. I think often we expect art to enter our lives in a way that is ordinary and simple, but sometimes it really does feel like you are reaching towards something that requires a different language.
Like many others, I found that the weakest parts were her scattered use of second person throughout the book as an address to her lover, but even this is a weakness that I love. It really purposefully echoes Sylvia Plath and her dedicated teenage followers on Tumblr circa 2010 (incl ME), so lovingly described by Pham as "our way of showing up to church". It reminds me also of her contemporary, Jenny Zhang, and that particular style of personal memoir that I am always drawn to—unbearably vulnerable, almost embarrassing. There are moments that didn’t have to be included, parts that felt too garishly intimate like staring into a bright white light—but it’s a messiness that feels deliberate and shockingly beautiful.
I had a lot of huge feelings about this book and I still think I will file them away until I can articulate them the way that I want to. My favourite essays were “Body of Work”, “Crush” (which you can read online here!), and “Blue”, which I read in its original form in the Paris Review.
These essays are deeply personal and critical, and Pham draws two styles of writing into conversation with each other repeatedly, sometimes when you expect it, and sometimes when you don't. I've heard that some people find her mix of personal memoir and art criticism disjointed at times, but I feel like this friction makes me appreciate it more. Larissa and I have had similar training, (we are both art students and “failed painters” turned personal essayists) and this retreat to discipline, like a muscle she can’t help but flex (!), is strangely comforting. I think often we expect art to enter our lives in a way that is ordinary and simple, but sometimes it really does feel like you are reaching towards something that requires a different language.
Like many others, I found that the weakest parts were her scattered use of second person throughout the book as an address to her lover, but even this is a weakness that I love. It really purposefully echoes Sylvia Plath and her dedicated teenage followers on Tumblr circa 2010 (incl ME), so lovingly described by Pham as "our way of showing up to church". It reminds me also of her contemporary, Jenny Zhang, and that particular style of personal memoir that I am always drawn to—unbearably vulnerable, almost embarrassing. There are moments that didn’t have to be included, parts that felt too garishly intimate like staring into a bright white light—but it’s a messiness that feels deliberate and shockingly beautiful.
I had a lot of huge feelings about this book and I still think I will file them away until I can articulate them the way that I want to. My favourite essays were “Body of Work”, “Crush” (which you can read online here!), and “Blue”, which I read in its original form in the Paris Review.
July 12, 2021
I went to art school, too... And I don’t see the need to bring Walter Benjamin into discussions of James Blake and Joni Mitchell. In trying to break down emotional walls, it feels like she is constantly putting up walls. I really couldn’t connect. There are some paragraphs where I am like YES finally something REAL and then it becomes all too obtuse again. The same stories repeated throughout the book without a hook and when we got to the actual story in the end it was again, unemotional and disconnected, trying to theorize emotions. It mentions it was written during the pandemic but none of it happens in the pandemic. She is constantly going away, to China, to Mexico, to the Southwest, and then shit talking the very thing that she is doing (calling people gentrifiers, when she herself is participating in that very culture). I've liked Larissa Pham, some sections of the book I really enjoyed, but overall I really did not connect or like the overarching narrative. Such a cool idea, and some really good artists and theorists brought up, but done from such a distance it didn't work.
October 5, 2022
im sorry but this is why people shouldnt be allowed to write memoirs in their 20s
November 28, 2021
"Outside, it had begun to rain. Over the steam of my milky coffee, I looked out the window to see umbrellas popping open on the siewalk, some red or colorfully patterned, but mostly black. They looked like mushrooms sprouting on a log. Soon I would be down there, with all of those people — I felt, bathetically, a spike of warmth for every person in the world."
4.5 stars
enjoyed this lots <3 surprisingly expansive in that larissa pham travels a lot and characterises each place vividly, tying locations to her emotional journey and weaving all of this with compelling sections of art history and analysis. at times the work as a whole feels a bit unfocused or repetitive but i don't really mind.
'Body of Work', 'Crush', 'Haunted' and 'On Being Alone' were standout sections (chapters? essays?) for me. reminds me a lot of melodrama by lorde in how pham charts a relationship; also makes me think of linger by the cranberries, it's all very Do You Have To Let It Linger.
4.5 stars
enjoyed this lots <3 surprisingly expansive in that larissa pham travels a lot and characterises each place vividly, tying locations to her emotional journey and weaving all of this with compelling sections of art history and analysis. at times the work as a whole feels a bit unfocused or repetitive but i don't really mind.
'Body of Work', 'Crush', 'Haunted' and 'On Being Alone' were standout sections (chapters? essays?) for me. reminds me a lot of melodrama by lorde in how pham charts a relationship; also makes me think of linger by the cranberries, it's all very Do You Have To Let It Linger.
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May 4, 2021More reviews up on my blog Inside My Library Mind
A while back I read a short story collection, Kink, and one of my favorite stories in it was by Larissa Pham, an author I have not heard of before. So when I spied her upcoming memoir in essays on Edelweiss, I had to check it out. It was a must. And I am so glad I did because I really loved this.
Pop Song is a hybrid between a memoir in essays and art criticism, which is something I am seeing crop up more and more, and it’s something that conceptually works really well for me. Larissa Pham writes in short, poignant paragraphs, often resorting to lists and fragmented storytelling, and that’s a writing style I am finding works well on me. This is a deeply intimate look at not only the author’s life, but also at her understanding of art and how she uses art to come to terms with something that’s going on in her life. There’s a particularly searing part in my favorite essay “Body of Work” where Pham tells us how she broke up with her high school boyfriend, but after pondering a series of paintings she loves, she questions her own memory, and finds that she misremembered that event. She then uses that to explore this idea of us making our memories sadder in order to make that sadness more visible, or to perform our sadness as she claims at one point. It was so smart and powerful and that’s the exact point I fell in love with this collection.
I also really appreciated how Pham wrote about her trauma and how she writes about love and intimacy. Sometimes you just read something and it speaks to you, which is what happened to me with Pop Song. The thread that seems to bind her essays together is her relationship with her boyfriend, who is always referred to only as “you” and Pham explores her relationship from the initial stages to the breakup all along using distance as a way to contextualize her feelings and their relationship. That’s one thing I think she is brilliant at – she manages to really contextualize her feelings and thoughts through paintings and music in a way that feels really honest and authentic. She talks about her Tumblr blog at one point, and everything she discusses in that part is perfectly contextualized through the Tumblr culture. It was really remarkable.
Another thing I loved about this collection is that it was so rewarding to explore the art that the author was exploring alongside her. I have not heard of most of the art she references here, because she mostly focuses on American artists, but I loved finding the paintings she referenced online and then reading her thoughts with them in the background. There’s a part where she talks about a demo of Wild Heart that Stevie Nicks sang backstage at a shoot for the Rolling Stone, and it’s absolutely brilliant, and I am so glad I discovered that through this book.
There are definitely some less strong essays in here, and some of them go too deep into art criticism for me personally, so for me, some of them read at times like a textbook, but overall, the collection as a whole was brilliant and I will for sure read anything Pham puts out.
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“It was the first time I learned to perform my sadness. It is a skill I have retained”
A while back I read a short story collection, Kink, and one of my favorite stories in it was by Larissa Pham, an author I have not heard of before. So when I spied her upcoming memoir in essays on Edelweiss, I had to check it out. It was a must. And I am so glad I did because I really loved this.
Pop Song is a hybrid between a memoir in essays and art criticism, which is something I am seeing crop up more and more, and it’s something that conceptually works really well for me. Larissa Pham writes in short, poignant paragraphs, often resorting to lists and fragmented storytelling, and that’s a writing style I am finding works well on me. This is a deeply intimate look at not only the author’s life, but also at her understanding of art and how she uses art to come to terms with something that’s going on in her life. There’s a particularly searing part in my favorite essay “Body of Work” where Pham tells us how she broke up with her high school boyfriend, but after pondering a series of paintings she loves, she questions her own memory, and finds that she misremembered that event. She then uses that to explore this idea of us making our memories sadder in order to make that sadness more visible, or to perform our sadness as she claims at one point. It was so smart and powerful and that’s the exact point I fell in love with this collection.
“Pain resonates. Pain is an unlocked room with the door shut: it paid too much to stay away from the source of it, so I kept walking in.”
I also really appreciated how Pham wrote about her trauma and how she writes about love and intimacy. Sometimes you just read something and it speaks to you, which is what happened to me with Pop Song. The thread that seems to bind her essays together is her relationship with her boyfriend, who is always referred to only as “you” and Pham explores her relationship from the initial stages to the breakup all along using distance as a way to contextualize her feelings and their relationship. That’s one thing I think she is brilliant at – she manages to really contextualize her feelings and thoughts through paintings and music in a way that feels really honest and authentic. She talks about her Tumblr blog at one point, and everything she discusses in that part is perfectly contextualized through the Tumblr culture. It was really remarkable.
“That there was too much inside me that made me ugly, and unlovable, and impossible to care for. I have been so many people in my life, and on my worst days, all my selves seemed stacked up inside me, too full to allow anything else in, like trash shoved in a compactor. I thought of myself as haunted.”
Another thing I loved about this collection is that it was so rewarding to explore the art that the author was exploring alongside her. I have not heard of most of the art she references here, because she mostly focuses on American artists, but I loved finding the paintings she referenced online and then reading her thoughts with them in the background. There’s a part where she talks about a demo of Wild Heart that Stevie Nicks sang backstage at a shoot for the Rolling Stone, and it’s absolutely brilliant, and I am so glad I discovered that through this book.
“This is my weakness: I rely on the language of the body too often, when I think no other language will serve.”
There are definitely some less strong essays in here, and some of them go too deep into art criticism for me personally, so for me, some of them read at times like a textbook, but overall, the collection as a whole was brilliant and I will for sure read anything Pham puts out.
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May 4, 2021
"Today I have sensitive tattooed in script above my right elbow, an impulsive decision I made with you. Sometimes I skim my fingertips across it, feeling where the skin is still raised. All the bruises I've gotten over the years have sunk back into my skin, the capillaries absorbed, the flesh healed. The photos remain, and I do love them, but their beauty isn't solely in the suffering. What I needed most from my bruises, after all was not to know that I had acquired them but to know that I had endured. "~pg.76
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🌿
Thoughts ~
A truly creative and vulnerable memoir in essays.
One of my most anticipated reads of the year and once I started it I couldn't stop! It was everything I'd hoped it would be and more! Pham's essays are soothing and filled with thought provoking beauty on life, art, sex, love, pain, and heartache. Masterfully and tenderly written, she searches for the deepest meanings as she candidly weaves herself into works of art and photography, sharing her experiences of being an Asian American woman in our unjust, cruel society, and examining the agony we will put ourselves through to find our worth. A therapeutic reading experience, I definitely recommend checking this book out! I'm obsessed!
Thank You @catapult for sending me this book opinions are my own.
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For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
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🌿
Thoughts ~
A truly creative and vulnerable memoir in essays.
One of my most anticipated reads of the year and once I started it I couldn't stop! It was everything I'd hoped it would be and more! Pham's essays are soothing and filled with thought provoking beauty on life, art, sex, love, pain, and heartache. Masterfully and tenderly written, she searches for the deepest meanings as she candidly weaves herself into works of art and photography, sharing her experiences of being an Asian American woman in our unjust, cruel society, and examining the agony we will put ourselves through to find our worth. A therapeutic reading experience, I definitely recommend checking this book out! I'm obsessed!
Thank You @catapult for sending me this book opinions are my own.
•
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
June 29, 2021
Somewhere between 3-3.5 rounded down
A refreshing take on the memoir (in essays), with Pham melding an exploration of her personal and intimate life - specifically a love affair which consumes her - with that of art which moves her, including references to artists such as Agnes Martin, Nan Goldin (who incidentally I learnt about as she is referred to a lot in Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty) and Louise Bourgeois.
Some great insights, some sections which feel quite Myspace/tumblr left me feeling this was a bit of a mixed bag, but the writing is promising and I was engaged throughout.
Thank you Netgalley and Serpent's Tail for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
A refreshing take on the memoir (in essays), with Pham melding an exploration of her personal and intimate life - specifically a love affair which consumes her - with that of art which moves her, including references to artists such as Agnes Martin, Nan Goldin (who incidentally I learnt about as she is referred to a lot in Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty) and Louise Bourgeois.
Some great insights, some sections which feel quite Myspace/tumblr left me feeling this was a bit of a mixed bag, but the writing is promising and I was engaged throughout.
Thank you Netgalley and Serpent's Tail for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
September 8, 2021
I was secretly hoping for another kind of Chew-Bose, which I know, I know, is wrong.
A bit too sentimental and overwrought in some instances and all in all I found this difficult to read smoothly; my brain kept wandering and I had to reread so many passages to really grasp them.
(Might be my current mindset though, so take that with a pinch of salt.)
I loved reading about all the various artists that I myself really like, for instance Mark Rothko and his chapel in Houston (guess who wrote a whole 15 page essay on it last year for an abstract expressionism module), Louise Bourgeois (guess who wrote her art finals in school on her), or Flavin and so on – the art part was done really refreshingly.
So, a mixed one for me, but I think I will give Pham's future work a chance nonetheless.
A bit too sentimental and overwrought in some instances and all in all I found this difficult to read smoothly; my brain kept wandering and I had to reread so many passages to really grasp them.
(Might be my current mindset though, so take that with a pinch of salt.)
I loved reading about all the various artists that I myself really like, for instance Mark Rothko and his chapel in Houston (guess who wrote a whole 15 page essay on it last year for an abstract expressionism module), Louise Bourgeois (guess who wrote her art finals in school on her), or Flavin and so on – the art part was done really refreshingly.
So, a mixed one for me, but I think I will give Pham's future work a chance nonetheless.
June 19, 2021
It’s possible it’s because i read this at the tender time of ~going through a breakup~ but every part of this book struck me. It made me feel and think deeply about what it means to be an artist and what it means to be in love, and how those things are inseparable.
January 9, 2022
Ugh these essays were so good!
June 29, 2021
“It felt incredible to see that deep interiority I thought I’d been alone and frightened in, reflected in the words of someone else...I saw in [Louise] Bourgeois’ text another kind of home. I felt witnessed by her poetics... ”
There were many stretches of paragraphs and sentences I highlighted throughout the course of reading Pop Song, but I chose to open my review with this, because it describes, in Larissa Pham’s own words, my reading encounter with her tender writing. Something about how witnessed Pham felt in the encounter with Bourgeois made me felt witnessed too. This book felt close, inspiring, and so saturated with feeling - in defense of feeling your feelings, or maybe not a defense but an understanding that our sensitivity and attachments are our enduring compasses in this project of navigating life and love.
Art has always been a way for me to witness and recognise modes of relation and intimacy, to remotely feel, to love something even when they don’t reveal themselves entirely to you, to be moved by a gesture, line, the fraying of an object - the kind of close looking that art invites is also a kind of witnessing. Reading Pop Song makes me reflect on the ways that people holds us and art holds us too and sometimes when art holds us, it’s also us holding ourselves. Halfway through reading it, an image of my reading experience of Pop Song started surfacing in my mind - I was imagining a kind of small fire, think of a fireplace in the cold room and the comfort of the warmth, being held and seen in that light.
I felt the silvers of joy at reading about the blooming of love and then the lovelorn in me withered alongside the narrator when that love too succumbed to its fissures and cracks. The narrator’s most significant breakup makes me want to cry from the sharp identification. The need to ensure posterity, the obsession with time capsuling the unexpected intimacy and joy of the present, the dependence on such a joy and then the anxious attempts to ward off such a dependence. In the moment of a good thing, sometimes we can’t let the moment go. We tell ourselves, it’s too good to be true. We need evidence that it’s true, we need to save this good thing so it can endure bit by bit and Pop Song gave voice to this archiving impulse, this anxious self, this lifelong process of trying to not focus on scarcity and to reorient attention towards recognising the abundance of our feelings and attachments.
Keep feeling. Open that door. I’m finishing this book to usher in a birthday. It’s been such a great gift.
There were many stretches of paragraphs and sentences I highlighted throughout the course of reading Pop Song, but I chose to open my review with this, because it describes, in Larissa Pham’s own words, my reading encounter with her tender writing. Something about how witnessed Pham felt in the encounter with Bourgeois made me felt witnessed too. This book felt close, inspiring, and so saturated with feeling - in defense of feeling your feelings, or maybe not a defense but an understanding that our sensitivity and attachments are our enduring compasses in this project of navigating life and love.
Art has always been a way for me to witness and recognise modes of relation and intimacy, to remotely feel, to love something even when they don’t reveal themselves entirely to you, to be moved by a gesture, line, the fraying of an object - the kind of close looking that art invites is also a kind of witnessing. Reading Pop Song makes me reflect on the ways that people holds us and art holds us too and sometimes when art holds us, it’s also us holding ourselves. Halfway through reading it, an image of my reading experience of Pop Song started surfacing in my mind - I was imagining a kind of small fire, think of a fireplace in the cold room and the comfort of the warmth, being held and seen in that light.
I felt the silvers of joy at reading about the blooming of love and then the lovelorn in me withered alongside the narrator when that love too succumbed to its fissures and cracks. The narrator’s most significant breakup makes me want to cry from the sharp identification. The need to ensure posterity, the obsession with time capsuling the unexpected intimacy and joy of the present, the dependence on such a joy and then the anxious attempts to ward off such a dependence. In the moment of a good thing, sometimes we can’t let the moment go. We tell ourselves, it’s too good to be true. We need evidence that it’s true, we need to save this good thing so it can endure bit by bit and Pop Song gave voice to this archiving impulse, this anxious self, this lifelong process of trying to not focus on scarcity and to reorient attention towards recognising the abundance of our feelings and attachments.
Keep feeling. Open that door. I’m finishing this book to usher in a birthday. It’s been such a great gift.
May 10, 2021
Pop Song is generous, ambitious, and captivating. Pham skillfully explores her journey as an artist with tender explorations of desire, sex, and encounters with art. Her criticism is clear-eyed and sensitive, avoiding the trope of inaccessible artspeak with more human and truthful revelations on how art reveals the cracks and interstices of our humanity.
She writes so movingly about her feelings, which is no mean feat given how uncontainable emotions can be: feelings of restlessness and wanting to transcend her body, feelings of longing and yearning, feelings of living and writing in racialized capitalism, within an industry that often commodifies women's traumatic experiences without regard for how such confessional work warps one's sense of self. Pham is a singularly talented voice blending memoir and criticism and I recommend this book to anyone interested in porous constructions of the self.
She writes so movingly about her feelings, which is no mean feat given how uncontainable emotions can be: feelings of restlessness and wanting to transcend her body, feelings of longing and yearning, feelings of living and writing in racialized capitalism, within an industry that often commodifies women's traumatic experiences without regard for how such confessional work warps one's sense of self. Pham is a singularly talented voice blending memoir and criticism and I recommend this book to anyone interested in porous constructions of the self.
June 9, 2021
5 stars because this book is so very good at being itself. Even when Pham beckons us into depths of yearning and achingness that make me feel almost embarassed to be witnessing, I couldn't imagine it any other way. Thanks Larissa Pham for showing us the beauty in keeping our hearts open, wanting, and overflowing, how to interact with visual art and music and relationships from a place of deep and honest sentiment. <3
"My eye wasn’t possessive of people; it was only the closeness between us I craved. I knew I would lose it one day, and I wanted to make it visible, as though I could turn the way you touched me into a substance to hold."
"This is my weakness: I rely on the language of the body too often, when I think no other language will serve."
"Some silences are surprising to me. They evolve. I like when a silence starts out uncomfortable and then opens up into something peaceful, without movement or effort."
"My eye wasn’t possessive of people; it was only the closeness between us I craved. I knew I would lose it one day, and I wanted to make it visible, as though I could turn the way you touched me into a substance to hold."
"This is my weakness: I rely on the language of the body too often, when I think no other language will serve."
"Some silences are surprising to me. They evolve. I like when a silence starts out uncomfortable and then opens up into something peaceful, without movement or effort."
December 12, 2021
3.5 rounded up
i devoured the second half of this so for my own memory my favourites were (in no particular order):
- body of work
- the entirety of the breakup interludes
- what we say without saying; for making me rediscover a case of you & end up spending all evening listening to it, again and again
i devoured the second half of this so for my own memory my favourites were (in no particular order):
- body of work
- the entirety of the breakup interludes
- what we say without saying; for making me rediscover a case of you & end up spending all evening listening to it, again and again
January 7, 2022
4.5
i've been hyping this book up quietly in my own head for months (for no good reason), but it definitely gave me what i wanted from it. every essay was written in such a beautiful and engaging way, and some of the word choices stunned me at times. while the entire book is really good, i got entirely swept up in some of the essays, especially body of work, crush, and haunted.
i've been hyping this book up quietly in my own head for months (for no good reason), but it definitely gave me what i wanted from it. every essay was written in such a beautiful and engaging way, and some of the word choices stunned me at times. while the entire book is really good, i got entirely swept up in some of the essays, especially body of work, crush, and haunted.
May 23, 2021
Reading this while anticipating a breakup-esque emotion in my own life feels like a sign somehow.
September 9, 2021
ok really a 4.5 bc there were a few essays right at the beginning i didn’t like at all but then the rest some how made up for them??? this book is 4 my lyricism and lucidity baddies out there :) made me #feel :)
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June 19, 2021This is an ekphrastic autobiographical book about love and art. Summarizing her personal journey, Pham writes, “ …I went looking for paintings and poems and photographs, which were all ways that things had already been said. It seemed to me that what I was looking for was art, whether it was called art or called something else. I wanted to badly to connect to something, to recognize myself where I didn’t have the words to express – but. I knew I’d throw every painting in the world away to have you here with me.”
Pham mentions gaze aversion in over-stimulated babies. Sometimes I felt that while reading this book: the content was often uncomfortably TMI and far from pleasant. But at the same time, it was fascinating and powerful in its attempt at truthfulness. I will be thinking about this for a long time.
Pham mentions gaze aversion in over-stimulated babies. Sometimes I felt that while reading this book: the content was often uncomfortably TMI and far from pleasant. But at the same time, it was fascinating and powerful in its attempt at truthfulness. I will be thinking about this for a long time.
August 17, 2021
A thoughtful, introspective, and entrancing memoir. I listened to the audiobook, and I feel I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it instead, felt more connected to the writer somehow.
May 29, 2022
Pop Song is a difficult one to rate because in a lot of ways it was a moving memoir-in-essays that meditated on art and heartache and everything in between, and in others it was more like a teenaged blog about going on holiday after a break up.
Pham writes gorgeously about love, sex and intimacy - although sometimes the sex seems to pop up mid-sentence (one second she'll be making breakfast, the next she'll be bluntly talking about semen again). Sometimes these details seem to organically weave themselves into the narrative and other times it feels a bit random. Still, I'm nosy so I didn't particularly mind!
I was interested in her commentary on art - something I know very little about, but enjoy. I googled the artists as they cropped up and Pham certainly helped me to appreciate them by giving them context.
The travel writing left something to be desired, I feel. Pham evokes a sense of place beautifully, but it was obvious that she was writing about a couple of weeks away, rather than a full immersion in another cultural space. Her political thoughts are also sketchy and surface level - I found myself wishing she'd either fleshed these out or not bothered.
Still, the centrepiece of the collection is the relationship she has with "You" - the man she refers to in the second person and who she writes about with such pain and longing. By far the most striking thing about Pop Song is its honesty and vulnerability - a delicate striving that is so integral to the human condition.
Pop Song is a high 3 stars or a low 4 from me. I went for the lower rating because the first chapter (about running) bored me rigid and if I hadn't already bought the book I might not have carried on.
All in all, a beautiful but flawed meditation on loneliness, closeness, art, sex and intimacy, with lots of little extras thrown in. Recommended for those who (like me!) don't mind a bit of lyrical, self indulgent introspection.
Pham writes gorgeously about love, sex and intimacy - although sometimes the sex seems to pop up mid-sentence (one second she'll be making breakfast, the next she'll be bluntly talking about semen again). Sometimes these details seem to organically weave themselves into the narrative and other times it feels a bit random. Still, I'm nosy so I didn't particularly mind!
I was interested in her commentary on art - something I know very little about, but enjoy. I googled the artists as they cropped up and Pham certainly helped me to appreciate them by giving them context.
The travel writing left something to be desired, I feel. Pham evokes a sense of place beautifully, but it was obvious that she was writing about a couple of weeks away, rather than a full immersion in another cultural space. Her political thoughts are also sketchy and surface level - I found myself wishing she'd either fleshed these out or not bothered.
Still, the centrepiece of the collection is the relationship she has with "You" - the man she refers to in the second person and who she writes about with such pain and longing. By far the most striking thing about Pop Song is its honesty and vulnerability - a delicate striving that is so integral to the human condition.
Pop Song is a high 3 stars or a low 4 from me. I went for the lower rating because the first chapter (about running) bored me rigid and if I hadn't already bought the book I might not have carried on.
All in all, a beautiful but flawed meditation on loneliness, closeness, art, sex and intimacy, with lots of little extras thrown in. Recommended for those who (like me!) don't mind a bit of lyrical, self indulgent introspection.
May 6, 2021
Memoir is one of my favorite genres, and Pop Song did not disappoint me even a bit.
I rate books on the basis of how they make me feel. Pop Song made me feel like I should stay up all night looking out of my window and watch the sun rise. This memoir is divided into essays based on different topics of the author's life, but all the chapters have reference to an elusive 'you', a person the author loved/is still in love with. Whenever 'you' is referred, there is a certain melancholy that automatically seeps into the pages. There is no discernible rhyme or reason to when 'you' is mentioned, but I looked forward to whenever it happened.
I know nothing about art, but this book made me feel like I should visit the local art museums. There are references to a number of famous art installations, which I then immediately looked up. The thought process of the author after looking at art pieces is so different, making me realize how artists are on a completely different tangent.
All the essays are spectacular in one way or another, but my favorite is Crush. It had the right amount of angst and longing, and conveyed so many feelings. This book is definitely recommended for you if you like intense essays and talks about feelings.
I rate books on the basis of how they make me feel. Pop Song made me feel like I should stay up all night looking out of my window and watch the sun rise. This memoir is divided into essays based on different topics of the author's life, but all the chapters have reference to an elusive 'you', a person the author loved/is still in love with. Whenever 'you' is referred, there is a certain melancholy that automatically seeps into the pages. There is no discernible rhyme or reason to when 'you' is mentioned, but I looked forward to whenever it happened.
I know nothing about art, but this book made me feel like I should visit the local art museums. There are references to a number of famous art installations, which I then immediately looked up. The thought process of the author after looking at art pieces is so different, making me realize how artists are on a completely different tangent.
All the essays are spectacular in one way or another, but my favorite is Crush. It had the right amount of angst and longing, and conveyed so many feelings. This book is definitely recommended for you if you like intense essays and talks about feelings.
February 27, 2021
I'm not shy to admit that I don't know a lot about art-- Pham, however, is deeply immersed in all of its forms, and her brilliance shows in every segment of Pop Song. Pham herself is an artist, a world traveler, a lover, and much, much more. In this memoir, she enchantingly describes a select few pieces that have captivated her, relating them to beautiful, painful, and ultimately vulnerable points of her life, whether that be past, present, or future. Whether it's a painting, an installation, or even just an obscure interview, I found myself immediately looking up every artist and work, both to see with my own eyes and to understand her interpretations, completely enthralled in these beautiful works I would never know about otherwise. Larissa Pham herself has such a way with words and description that my copy is dog-eared and highlighted all throughout the book-- so many insights and emotion that I've always wished to put into words that I don't want to forget. Pop Song is somehow all of the following: vibrant, quiet, poignant, raw, and blooming. An absolutely stunning account of art and coming-of-age suited for the insightful reader.
December 5, 2022
I was so looking forward to this but it unfortunately didn't meet expectations. I arrived at the book anticipating a Maggie Nelson/Anne Carson sort of vibe (fragments, experimental form, autofiction, theory, the usual buzz factors). Yet Larissa's prose and storytelling failed to capture my attention and I ended up skimming chunks of the book. Out of everything, I enjoyed her insights about art and creative production. Occasionally she'd have a pithy statement that struck me as unique.
Blending memoir, theory, and cultural critique is a tall order and requires a fine balance to ensure one doesn't outweigh the others while still allowing space for original insights. The result, here, is a work that relied on theoretical frameworks and art references to do the thematic and emotional legwork: this referential mode of self-interrogation resisted true emotional depth, instead creating distance through the intellectualization of experiences and feelings. It lacked intimacy. Goes to show that saturating a text with discussions of sex and love doesn't always translate to a reading experience where one understands the significance the author seems to place upon both.
Blending memoir, theory, and cultural critique is a tall order and requires a fine balance to ensure one doesn't outweigh the others while still allowing space for original insights. The result, here, is a work that relied on theoretical frameworks and art references to do the thematic and emotional legwork: this referential mode of self-interrogation resisted true emotional depth, instead creating distance through the intellectualization of experiences and feelings. It lacked intimacy. Goes to show that saturating a text with discussions of sex and love doesn't always translate to a reading experience where one understands the significance the author seems to place upon both.
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