Talent Show: Juliet Lapidos and Tom Lutz

Tom Lutz joins Juliet Lapidos to discuss "Talent," her new novel about a 29-year-old English grad student who can’t finish her dissertation, spending her days eating pop tarts rather than producing pages.

By LARB Radio HourApril 26, 2019

Juliet Lapidos is currently a senior editor at The Atlantic, and previously worked for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Slate. Tom Lutz joins Juliet to discuss Talent, her new novel about a 29-year-old English grad student who can’t finish her dissertation, spending her days eating pop tarts rather than producing pages. (Relatable.) Everything changes when she meets the niece of a famous author and gets access to his notebooks. Anna finds in the author’s archive the inspiration that takes her on a whirlwind journey into the depths of a literary mystery. Tom talks with Juliet about every writer's favorite subject, writer's block, along with the role of slacking in American culture, and that ancient quandary of artistic production: hard work vs. inspiration or, could we say, talent.