Rumpus interviewee Miranda July is the queen of making the mundane more interesting than we ever imagined. In her project “We Think Alone,” July sends emails collected from the inboxes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lena Durham, and many others to readers of the project, allowing the readers to peak into the lives of famous strangers.
In response to critics who say she sold out to celebrity, July admits that it wouldn’t have worked without this aspect, but she doesn’t see it as selling out. Of this controversy, she tells the Los Angeles Review of Books:
I think that over the course of 20 weeks, your experience is pretty different from something that’s trying to sell you something. It’s not contextualized. Everyone’s speaking for themselves, voluntarily.
