Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse

(Hardback)

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"This book re-framed my entire adolescence. I highly recommend you read it." LING MA

From the critically acclaimed author ofDead Girls(stylish and inspiredNew York TimesBook Review), a sharp, engrossing collection of essays that explore the strange career of popular feminism and steady creep of cults and cult-think into our daily lives.

In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.

In The Enumerated Woman, Bolin investigates how digital diet tracking apps have increasingly transformed our relationships to our bodies. Animal Crossings soothing retail therapy is analyzed in Real Timea surprisingly powerful portrait of late capitalism. And in the showstopping Foundering, Bolin dissects our buy-in and complicity with mythmaking around iconic founders, from the hubristic fall of Silicon Valley titans, to Enron,Hamilton, and the USA.

For readers ofTrick MirrorandHow to Do Nothing,Culture Creepis a swirl of nostalgia and visions of the future, questioning why, in the face of seismic cultural, political, and technological shifts as disruptive as the internet, we cling to the icons and ideals of the past. Written with her signature blend of the personal and sharply analytical, each of these keen-eyed essays ask us to reckon with our own participation in all manner of popular cults of being, and cults of believing.

Reviews

"In Culture Creep, Alice Bolin traces the rot back to its sources, looking at the ways Millennials have been indoctrinated through our culturalconsumption, and more worryingly, what exactly we've been indoctrinatedinto. I can think of no higher compliment than to state that this book re-framed my entire adolescence. I highly recommend you read it." Ling Ma, author of Severance and Bliss Montage [A] deliciously dry, moody essay collection Bolins book is a lyrical meditation. Carina Chocano, New York Times Book Review, on Dead Girls Excellent... an uncompromising and infinitely engaging exploration of the existential burdens of being a woman or a girl living, and dying, in our misogynist culture Bolins essays dismantle our romantic, toxic notions about female sexuality and innocence, and interrogate her own role in consuming them, in order to solve the ongoing, unsolved mysteries of how real girls and women can outlive Americas obsession with their ruin. Salon.com on Dead Girls Sharp-eyed [Bolin] stakes her ground with a refreshing air of defiance, freely mixing highbrow and lowbrow, late-night cable television with classics of American literature. In her willingness to show herself as a work in progress, thinking through a problem rather than presenting its solution, she leaves breathing room for indecision and revision, ensuring that her writing is always pulsing with life. Washington Post on Dead Girls Bracing and blazingly smart, Alice BolinsDead Girlscould hardly be more needed or more timely. A critical contribution to the cultural discussion of gender and genre, Los Angeles and noir, the unbearable persistence of the male gaze and the furtive potency of female rage. Megan Abbott, Edgar Awardwinning author ofYou Will Know Me The essay collection takes a good hard look at this fascination with dead girls The cultural criticism serves to help us all think a little bit more about what were consumingand whos being damaged by it. Entertainment Weekly "Stylish and inspired." New York Times Book Review, Editors Choice, on Dead Girls Dead Girls turns experience into literature Amid the atomized sprawl of American cities and American culture, Bolin lays bare the connections lurking beneath the glare and the violence, daring us to accept nothing as it is. Los Angeles Review of Books I loveDead Girls! Bolins essays are the perfect blend of criticism, humor, and memoir. The book made me think about my own fascination with true crime in a way I have never considered before. This is a book for any mystery/true crime fanatic... or even a casual fan. Emma Roberts, Belletrist Dead Girlsis everything I want in an essay collection: provocative lines of inquiry, macabre humor, blistering intelligence. Bolin deftly lays our TV habits and pleasure reading and musical tastes in front of us, daring us to look closer. I love this book. I want to take it into the middle of a crowded room and hold it up and scream until someone tackles me the ground; even then, Id probably keep screaming. Carmen Maria Machado, author ofHer Body and Other Parties With this book, Alice Bolin has singlehandedly rekindled my affection for criticism-as-memoir, offering a wry, supremely intelligent reinventionof the genre.Dead Girlsis about living in, and through, culture; about the inseparability of art and life; about the lies we tell ourselves and otherpeople, and the lies we love to be told. And its just so, so funny and sad and big-hearted. I love this writers every word and I look forward toreading her for the rest of my life. J. Robert Lennon, author ofBroken River "This isnt just an essay collection but one of the biggest of the season A smart, feminist take on an endlessly juicy subject. Literary Hub, on Dead Girls The nonfiction book everyone is talking about. Bustle, on Dead Girls Dead Girls isnt all analysis; its introspective narrative, too, as Bolin deftly interweaves her own coming-of-age in LA with her investigations of our cultural compulsions. Thrillist Throughout her essays, Bolin runs a thread through topics like trauma, domestic violence, white female complicity, and Britney Spears with sharp analyses that... for the most part thoughtfully deconstruct a trend that says a lot about the complex, systemic misogyny buried in each of our brains. The Portland Mercury, on Dead Girls

Author Bio

Alice Bolinis the author ofDead Girls:Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, aNew York TimesNotable Book. She has been nominated for Anthony and Edgar awards. Her nonfiction appears in theNew York TimesBook Review,New Yorkmagazine, theLA Review of Books, and theParis ReviewDaily. She lives in Minneapolis.