Strategy consultant turned writer Natasha Joukovsky joins me to discuss why bourgeois comfort is more conducive to writing than you think, why choice-plots make for better fiction, the eyerolling prevalence of manufactured nonchalance, our shared distaste for Atlantis Bahamas, and MUCH more!
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack - https://8ca54796.streaklinks.com/CJPd0z7cXCh07hc4JAiMaKTC/https%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter.osv.llc%2F.
Important Links:
- Natasha’s Website - https://natashajoukovsky.com/home/#books
- Natasha’s Substack - https://joukovsky.substack.com/
- The Portrait of a Mirror - https://natashajoukovsky.com/buy/
Show Notes:
0:00:00 Intro
0:00:43 “You can do everything, just not at the same time”
0:04:46 It’s Recursion All the Way Down
0:14:33 Pretending to Read vs Actually Reading
0:19:33 Manufactured Nonchalance as a Status Signal
0:29:20 Counter-Signalling, Fake-Famous & Jim’s Cursed Trip to Atlantis Bahamas
0:50:00 On No-Choice Plots & Writing in Service of Beauty
1:02:42 The Self-Deception of Status Hunting
1:12:55 Why Bourgeois Comfort is More Conducive to Art Than You Think
1:23:08 Natasha’s Next Book
1:27:02 “We don’t do auctions”
1:33:07 Natasha as World Empress
Books Mentioned:
- The Portrait of a Mirror; by Natasha Joukovsky
- The novels of Jane Austen
- Status Anxiety; by Alain de Botton
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem); by T.S. Eliot
- Class: A Guide Through the American Status System; by Paul Fussell
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Ulysses; by James Joyce
- Metamorphosis; by Franz Kafka
- Beloved; by Toni Morrison
- In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past); by Marcel Proust
- Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose
- The Status Game; by Will Storr
- Anna Karenina; by Leo Tolstoy
- The Theory of the Leisure Class; by Thorstein Veblen
- A Little Life; by Hanya Yanagihara
