BONUS CONTENT: Hannah Pittard on the Changing Nature of Literature

On the writing of "If You Love It, Let It Kill You" and her recommendations of things to read, watch, and listen to.

Hannah Pittard, photo by Anya Lorenzo

I hope you had a chance to read my interview with Hannah Pittard about her very funny novel If You Love It, Let It Kill You.

There was a lot we covered that didn’t make it into the piece, so I’m sharing some of that here, along with her recommendations of things to read, watch, and listen to.

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Interview Extras

On the changing nature of literature

“I do think, in some ways, If You Love It is almost a performance piece. I think the nature of literature is changing rapidly. There are definitely people who still write beautiful, traditional stories. It seems like they’re able to put on this helmet and just ignore technology. And I love it. I love living in those worlds. It feels almost like a fantasy now, because it is so devoid of the insanity of our new reality. All of that to say, I think there are these expectations now that the author be present and be accountable for the thing they’ve written. It’s no longer the text without the author. And I think a lot about that, because I’ve been in this game now for about 20 years and the emphasis on the identity of the writer is getting louder and louder and louder. I wanted to write about that. I knew—with this book and with the memoir, and with my ex’s book and with that magazine article—what I was doing was a kind of performance. You want the writer? I’ll put her in the book. Forget the tie-in essays. I’ll just pretend to put all that here and see what you think.