I doggedly asked each PennySaver seller if they used a computer. […] I began to feel that I was asking the question just to remind myself that I was in a place where computers didn't really matter, just to prompt my appreciation for this. As if I feared the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. [. . .} I don't mean that I really thought this, out loud; it was just happening, like time, like geography. The web seemed so inherently endless that it didn't occur to me what wasn't there.

— from It Chooses You
 

IN THE SUMMER of 2009, Miranda July was working on the screenplay for her long-awaited second feature film, The Future, but was mired in writer's block — the kind that besieges most of us who are daily distracted by the internet's shiny boxes. Looking for a different form of distraction, July took to reading the PennySaver, a circular of classified ads that arrived each Tuesday with her junk mail. The advertised items ranged from hairdryers to baby jaguars, but there was little information about the sellers — aside from their phone numbers. Fascinated by the mysterious people behind these random objects, she decided to traverse Los Angeles and interview a selection of sellers about their lives, their hopes, their dreams and fears. It was a fantastical procrastination project, one that she secretly hoped would reveal to her the answer for how to finish her screenplay. These interviews became the book It Chooses You, a collection of narratives, interviews, and personal essays reflecting the various Los Angeleses within the city. (The block quotes below are from the book, released in paperback earlier this month.)

¤

Miranda July: The second you step out of the usual ways that you connect, you become self-aware of connecting, and so maybe it becomes more of a topic. The idea of class, and different L.A.s inside L.A., was sort of unavoidable, and I wasn't trying to avoid it. I was going straight towards it. Craigslist vs. the PennySaver was an obvious way to talk about that and think about it. That's familiar to everyone. I'm interested in forcing myself to not just critique what's there but to try and see what's not there. The internet is what it is, and we each have our own struggle with it. But since this moment is pretty ephemeral, this particular time where not everyone is on it, but most of us are, it's a real harsh dividing line. When you stop on the other side of it, it's like you're in another era. It's like living without a phone.

If there's any theme of my process, it's generally to go towards what's uncomfortable, or things that I'm not even certain are there, or are anything at all.
 

The door opened and there was Michael, a man in his late sixties, burly, broad-shouldered, a bulbous nose, a magenta blouse, boobs, pink lipstick. Before he opened the door completely he quietly stated that he was going through a gender transformation.

[…]

Miranda: When did you begin your gender transformation?

Michael: Six months a...