Disillusionment often burns within me, trapped in a web of cellular data, parsing fake news from real, and trying to ignore the ads reminding me all day, every day, that I could be thinner, more beautiful, a better mother, better wife, better human if only I signed up for another app or had a monthly box of something bespoke delivered to my front door. Discovering Courtney Maum was like finding a new-to-me singer and getting to gorge myself on their entire catalogue. Her most recent novels Touch (Putnam, 2018) and now, the recently released, Alan Opts Out (Hachette 2026), seemed tailormade to capture that internal disillusionment.
Maum’s biting, observant, sometimes hilariously absurd work uses satire to probe late-stage capitalism, consumption, and the companies force-feeding us more than we need and not always what we want. Alan Opts Out takes place in the fictional town of Belleport, Connecticut (inspired by her childhood home of Greenwich and its neighboring seaside enclave, Belle Haven). After bombing a pitch to US Dairy, advertising executive Alan Anderson has an epiphany about his career and adjacent, bloated lifestyle. Haunted by the rogue, yet seemingly prophetic farmer his team hired to support their pitch, Alan moves into his children’s former playhouse-turned-storage unit, attempts to live off the land and his well-appointed suburban pantry, and freaks out his family and neighbors while growing closer to them all.
Her previous novel, and my first of Maum’s to read, Touch, pulls on many of the same threads as Alan Opts Out, but instead follows a trend forecaster working for a tech company who envisions a not-so-distant future where people are sick of technological toys posing as replacements for human to human contact (and dating a man who has forsaken PIV sex at all costs). While another book, Before and After the Book Deal (Catapult, 2020), demystifies the publishing industry for aspiring and brand-new authors, including frank chapters and popular Substack posts on (you guessed it!) money and the razor thin margins most authors—even successful ones—live at. Set at the intersection of corporate America and the consuming public’s growing disenchantment with being told that we never have enough or are enough, her novels speak to this moment.
Amidst managing multiple family emergencies, Maum graciously communicated with me via email earlier this spring about Alan Opts Out, Touch, and her creative drive to reimagine how consumerism and overconsumption affect us all.
The Rumpus: Alan is your title character, but his wife, Vivian’s, story was just as illuminating as Alan’s. Your book is promoted as satire and, like all great satire, it also feels completely possible. What was it like to write about marriage and relational honesty using these two characters as your vehicles? How did they surprise you as the story evolved?
Courtney Maum: I’m so glad you recognize that satire is formed from possibility. I mean, as Americans we have been living, in my opinion, in a satire since 2015. Alan and Vivian are necessary counterparts of one another and I needed them as narrative vehicles for the book’s principal messages. Vivian happens to be Alan’s wife, but she’s also his target audience as an advertiser. She loves to buy things to match what other people have; she wants to be seen as someone who has more than what others do. She has no qualms from a socioeconomic or environmental standpoint about replacing something recent in order to have the hottest new thing. She has no issues with planned obsolescence. Things get tricky of course when her advertising executive husband has an epiphany and decides to opt out of capitalism, stop buying things, stop striving, and stop going after an ever higher paycheck. This upends her world and the unspoken contract they have between them.
In terms of them surprising me, they continue to do so, especially Vivian, because her values are the polar opposite from mine. I hope she changes her ways!
Rumpus: We’re all part of the culture we live in. As I read both Touch and Alan Opts Out, I felt like I was reading both a cultural critique and an inner struggle of pushing back against it. How did writing these books change your consumption patterns?
Maum: Actually, my changed consumption patterns came first. Touch was pretty much a result of me going on an anti-Amazon and smartphone crusade, trying to convince people how dangerous Bezos was, how dangerous it was to surrender to the devil of convenience, while also begging friends not to let their phones make all their decisions for them, to try to retain human instincts, human relations, humanity. Trump was elected right before Touch came out so I didn’t get the opportunity to reach as many people with that book’s message as I had hoped I might have. So I’ve passed that torch to Alan. His world is a different one than the world I was writing about in Touch where there were still nuanced ways available to curb the madness. The time period Alan takes place in—which is basically our present—is so ruled by capitalism that the only thing he sees fit to do is try to opt out of capitalism completely.
Rumpus: What about your production patterns? Even writers are creating products we want to connect to buyers. Where do you see the creative economy fitting into the capitalist machine?
Maum: Well, not comfortably, that’s for sure! All my books are about making art under capitalism, it’s a subject that’s dear to me as I’m a writer and my husband is an independent filmmaker and we’re trying to, you know, make art but also bring groceries home and try to provide a nice life for our daughter. I did a podcast recently where I ended up describing myself as part art witch and part art b*tch, and I think that’s an apt description of my approach to making—and then trying to eventually sell—my writing. Basically, there are certain times of the week where I unplug everything and put the phone on airplane mode and just go deep into the art, and then other day parts where I try to forge new connections with new readers and you know, get my stuff out there. I compartmentalize the two activities, basically. I can’t be thinking about the viability of a piece of writing when I’m writing it on Monday, but on Thursday, when I’m not in writing mode, I can.
Rumpus: I was lucky enough to get to see you on a panel at AWP in Baltimore this year. You were the last person on your panel to present and I was struck to see you, after everyone else had gone through their slides from their seats, get up and stand at the podium. After that, you strode over to the projection screen. In your presentation, you talked about needing to write by hand and the physical interactions you have with your stories as they are evolving. I didn’t realize it until I saw you in action, but the physicality of your creative process was so clear to me.
In Alan Opts Out, Alan’s body is like its own character in the book. He transforms from a soft corporate guy who barely knows how to use his lawnmower into someone who bathes in the saltwater of the ocean, stops shaving, and traipses through the neighborhood in bare feet. His wife is simultaneously repulsed and turned on by him.
In Touch, Sloane’s performance artist boyfriend wears a body suit in what I saw as a chastity belt, fully separating his physical body from the world around him.
Talk to me about how you humanize your characters’ bodies and their relationships between their bodies, their selves, and the physical worlds they live in.
Maum: You know, the journey back into the body from disassociation was something I underwent myself. In 2015 I was in a severe depression—diagnosed by a medical professional—and I wasn’t in my body at all. I wasn’t sleeping, I was part mother, part emailer, part zombie, I suffered a second trimester miscarriage; my body just did not feel like a safe nor happy place, so I kind of lived outside of it in my mind, which wasn’t healthy. I write about the journey back into my body and into joy as well in my memoir The Year of the Horses (Tin House, 2022). Horses brought me back into my physicality because if you disassociate on a horse, you can get into real trouble, you can get into a bad situation. I was being thrown a lot and falling off, but I wanted to continue with the horses, so I had to repossess my body, make it mine again.
So yes, me and my characters, we’ve become quite physical. It’s a response, I’m sure, against the sedentary on-demand lifestyle our culture encourages where our meals, our entertainment and our parasocial friendships all arrive delivery-style on demand. I like to be in my body a lot now. I’m not an athletic person but I like to dance. I like to be with others. I like to be in nature. I like to touch and smell. I aim for my characters to get out of the house as much as possible—they strive for connection, just like me.
Rumpus: Loneliness in a world surrounded by others is an undercurrent of so much of your work. Across your books, I see your characters seeking to remedy that loneliness in ways that keep us more lonely/severed from our true selves. For example, Sloane’s livelihood puts her at odds with her own desires for human contact. Alan lives with his family, but when he stays home early during his sabbatical, he doesn’t know any of their routines. Vivian longs for the acceptance of her neighborhood’s most exclusive social group while feeling disconnected from Alan and her children.
It’s when your protagonists finally engage authentically with themselves and others—even when they do something others may object to—they find a truer, if scarier model for engagement. How have you witnessed these behavior patterns in your real life relationships?
Maum: Authentic engagement is something I strive for myself in my relationships: professional, domestic, social, even my relationships online. I’ve been singing the same tune in all my fiction: screens are making us lonelier, the cult of convenience is a hoax, parasocial relationships cannot and should not replace the real thing, artificial intelligence is not something we “have” to accept just because it’s everywhere—for the time being at least, humans are still in charge. With some exceptions, we can still decide what we use our money for and where, with whom and where we spend our time. This passive attitude of “Well, everybody is using ChatGPT so I will, too,” is dangerous and false. We still have agency. We still have minds and bodies. I’m passionate about having hard conversations and scary confrontations in my personal life—and in my career as well—because I think these tough moments can lead to positive change. Not always! Sometimes things backfire, of course. But personally, I’ve reached an age where I simply don’t have the time or bandwidth to stockpile regrets and secret shame and unspoken hurts and bitterness and such. Honesty can be a kind of emotional colonoscopy, you know?
Rumpus: On the topic of a character who seems fully at peace with their inner selves, I want to shift to another element of Alan that completely drew me in. Without giving anything away, one of my favorite elements of the story includes some magical realism. For this character, does this element seem more magical or more real to you?
Maum: I love this question, even though I’ve been caught off guard by how frequently it comes up. (Kirkus, for example, hated the speculative aspects of the novel!) There’s one character, Sunny (Alan and Vivian’s daughter) who acts as a portal for some of the more magical elements of the book, but I’m actually cringing as I type “magical,” because to me, there’s no magic involved in Sunny’s life nor the world that she enjoys. She’s got an imagination, and she’s sensitive. She’s not just a believer but a practitioner of nonverbal communication. Which… I don’t see that as magical realism, I see that as the way we communicate with beings who don’t use spoken words. So for me, the speculative elements of this book feel real—are real—for me. They are the most beautiful part of the world that the Andersons inhabit; the most optimistic part of that world.
Rumpus: I was a little obsessed with “the Queen Annes,” as I’m sure many readers will be. This elite social group functions like a grown-up sorority and provides one of Alan’s most satirical storylines. But I also had this feeling as I was reading that somewhere, people with more resources and connections than me might actually socialize like this. Were the Queen Anne’s inspired by a real group(s) you’ve come across or were they a way for your imagination to really play?
Maum: A grown-up sorority is exactly what it is! And yes, it’s inspired by real organizations. The Isabella Eldridge Club is one such group in my part of Connecticut. Though I’m not a member, I’ve spoken at their get-togethers and have many friends who are members. This particular club was established in 1912, but women’s private societies have been around for quite a while. The Colony Club in Manhattan was founded in 1903, and throughout the late 1890s, there was a lot of momentum and passion behind women’s-only social clubs where women could come together to discuss how to impact and change current public policy. While the club in my book is a little frivolous, it’s standing on the shoulders of clubs that did wildly important work across the domains of suffrage, juvenile justice, child labor, family planning and elsewhere. It’s my understanding that womens’ social clubs are making a comeback and that interest in domestic arts is booming once again.
Rumpus: Has there been any early feedback about Alan that particularly stands out to you?
Maum: Yes. A novelist I deeply admire was not only kind enough to blurb my book but he dialogued with me a little about it and said he loved how Alan is trying to get away from brands while Vivian is becoming one. That meant a lot to me, as did all of the blurbs offered for this book by authors I so admire. You and I are speaking months before the book comes out, but I did have my first interview yesterday, and was excited to have the opportunity to yell about the Stanley water bottle trend from early [20]20s that spurred the anti-consumption bent in my new novel.
Rumpus: Indeed, Alan’s proclivity with creating brands seems to have given him a soft spot for what he described as Vivian’s rebranding upon moving to Belleport. Do you think Vivian stayed “on-brand” throughout the entire book and how do you imagine her epilogue, if you were to ever share one?
Maum: I actually have an epilogue! I cut it from the novel because I preferred the ending as it is now, plus, I wanted people to imagine their own version of Alan and Vivian’s life for themselves. I don’t think Vivian stays on brand throughout the book because she is someone whose identity was never fully formed. Near the end of the book, when things have become challenging for her family, she starts to touch the truest parts of herself, but I do think it’s in life after the book that she’ll really get to know herself and grow as a more authentic person.
Rumpus: In the novel, Alan comes up with a great slogan for cow’s milk, which his team is trying to help make popular again. Do you “eat your milk” [slogan in the book] or prefer alternative milk?
Maum: I eat mine! We are a full fat cow’s milk family through and through.
Rumpus: The marketing tactics that Alan, as an advertising executive, admits to using in the campaigns he works on, prey on fear and loneliness to drive consumption. Regarding the ways that late-stage capitalism attempts to offer a balm to those to who can afford it, what other emotions do you see the capitalist machine going after? How do you hope your work empowers readers to opt out in their own ways?
Maum: There’s a character in the book named Daniel who encourages Alan to understand that the advertorial campaigns he has been involved with exist to convince people that not only do they not have enough currently, they will never have enough. I think this sentiment has really been embedded in the American psyche. It’s one of the reasons we work more hours weekly than most other countries and we retire later (or never retire). We put up with a predatory health insurance system. We hold onto a version of an American Dream that is nearly totally based on consumption.
Luckily, I think we are already starting to see a shift in the national mindset. The greed and inequality in our country is so rampant and the cost of living is so absurdly high we literally can’t continue business as usual: as a people, as a country, we won’t make it if we don’t change. I’m glad that the sentiments and messages in my book complement the moment we’re living. If people want an empowering and uplifting read that will help them reprioritize (or confirm the reprioritization choices that they’ve already made), this is a good book for that.
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