Roshan Sethi’s debut, The Simp: A Novel Without a Hero, is a Hollywood satire written in conversation with William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. It follows an aspiring actor into an assistant job from hell with a biting sense of humor, a keen point of view on identity politics, and a bit of hope for any artist creating into the void. If anyone could combine such seemingly disparate elements with confidence and control, it’s Sethi. He’s not just a novelist, he’s a director, screenwriter, and practicing oncologist.
The very busy Sethi made time after working on call at his hospital to speak over the phone about the perils of undergrad creative writing workshops, the trouble with The White Lotus season one, and why he almost exclusively reads the classics.
Continue reading “Roshan Sethi wrote The Simp almost as if he were rewriting Vanity Fair”