Overview
- Vogue marked this week’s release of Flat Earth by asking Levy to name seven titles that shaped its conception.
- Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies is cited as a field guide to the modern internet male, informing the novel’s view of contemporary misogyny.
- Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights guided the book’s cool, reportorial tone, while Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever? modeled numbered fragments and restless momentum.
- Levy points to Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? for candid thinking on friendship and art-making that echoes through her narrative voice.
- A friend steered revision with Ben Lerner’s 10:04 as a template, as Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman and Jen George’s The Babysitter at Rest shaped themes of conformity, art scenes, sexuality, and uneasy adulthood.