In this conversation, Brandon reflects on the creative pivot that led him to abandon years of work and begin anew in a Paris hotel room with the novel he truly wanted to write. We talk about Wyeth, the young painter at the heart of Minor Black Figures, and how the book became both a meditation on art and politics in contemporary America and an exploration of individuality, cynicism, and belief.

From the quiet intimacy of art restoration to the noise of online discourse, Brandon speaks candidly about millennial disillusionment, the commodification of the self, and the role of fiction in reclaiming life from abstraction. It’s a deeply thoughtful, funny, and searching conversation with one of today’s sharpest literary minds.