Author’s Note: Frankie Barnet, “Mood Change”

If all the world’s animals have been wiped out by a self-absorbed billionaire with mommy issues, the sensible thing to do is get paid to dress up in a dog costume and bark at sad pet owners who miss their companions. That, at least, is the line of thinking for Jenlena, a twenty-something Instagram poet at the center of Frankie Barnet’s hilariously absurd debut novel, Changes of provision. At one of her pet gigs, she actually meets billionaire Roderick Maeve, who’s next big idea involves going back in time to introduce solar panels to the 1700s to mitigate climate change.

Changes of provision is an exuberant novel full of smart, intelligent ideas and sentences that draw you into Barnet’s world. A group called Moon Bethlehems is ditching their first name and advertising on Twitter. A canceled man meets Daphne, Jenlena’s roommate and friend, and together they draw from memory all the animals missing the world. Jenlena shares her poem with Roderick, but isn’t sure if their relationship is for appearances or if he’s actually invested in her. A pair of siblings is suing their parents for being born. Confident and crazy to read, Barnet’s debut is one you won’t want to end with.

Our culture spoke to Frankie Barnet about absurdism, moral arguments and cults.

Congratulations on your debut novel! How do you feel about it finally coming out?

Okay, a little apprehensive, but cautiously optimistic.

Just saw he got an amazing piece of information from George Saunders!

Yes, I was grateful for that. I studied with George at Syracuse, so I had an intro. I was so lucky, it was beyond my dream at the time.

Changes of provision it’s such an interesting and warped look at contemporary culture. What draws you to satire?

It never felt like a choice, the way I wrote… going back to George, I started my MA at Syracuse in 2016. He was my favorite writer for probably a decade before that. I’ve always loved reading since I was a kid, but I never liked the things we read in school. I’m Canadian so I grew up reading things that I might like now but found so boring then and kind of dated. Reading George and even Kurt Vonnegut—they weren’t even satire, but those books had so much life in them. I think in the last few years I’ve gotten to a place in my writing where you don’t know what’s going to happen to it, if anyone’s going to read it or care at all. At least I want to have fun. I want to honor myself in both the good and the bad extremes.

It’s very tiring, I’ve found, to be tied to reality. I was away for a week and I don’t usually keep a journal, but I tried to keep one on the trip. I found it so boring! How do you decide what to leave in or leave out? In your writing, if you free yourself from reality, you abdicate all responsibility for taking notes.

The book opens with the idea that the animals of the world are revolting against humans. It’s such a striking idea – when did it start forming in your mind?

I think it was during COVID when people thought it was caused by bats. There have always been these stories, here in Montreal, some kind of whale came very close to the river near the city. Stories about animals doing crazy things. I guess that’s where it came from.

I really empathize with Jenlena’s way of thinking about the world – she desperately wants to participate in society and let the allure of her twenties take her anywhere. When she gets into a relationship with this billionaire, something her friends might scold her for, she just shrugs it off. Is there an argument for putting your own self first over the thoughts or ideology of others that might get in the way?

I think tension is something I’m really interested in. I think there are ways I wish we could push ourselves further, beyond “I like this.” It’s difficult because for the vast majority of people, it really doesn’t matter what we do. We can post on Instagram, “Stop eating meat,” and it doesn’t matter. It’s hard to denounce a normal person for enjoying what they like. On the other hand, sometimes I wish we could look a little further beyond the individual. I know it’s a vague thing to say, but I think the problem is that we don’t quite know how. Then we run into these stupid “Oh, you liked a Woody Allen movie” arguments. We have nowhere to put this fear and anger that we have.

I’m also so obsessed with her bad Instagram poetry in small print that she mistakenly thinks will get her into grad school in the States. My favorite title is “Once I stuck a beer soaked tampon in my pussy”. Why did you want to write about a character who is also a writer?

I mean, I think he can get into grad school! Nobody thinks so, but I went to grad school in the States, so… I mean, (writing about a writer) just came naturally. Personally, I love a confessional book, I love autofiction. I know my friends have a chip on their shoulder about it, like “You’re not being creative if you’re writing autofiction,” or a semi-autobiographical novel, sort of cliché that this is everyone’s first novel. But I have nothing against it. I guess there was a little sprinkling of me in the character, the kind of stuff I’d write if I were less self-aware or, I want to stick, dumber.

I love how the book gives time to all the characters, even the jilted boyfriends and multi-billionaires. Why did you want to include multiple POVs?

It was very exciting for me when I discovered Jordan and he made his way into the novel, because you don’t really hear from these people. I guess some people would say that’s fine, but he’s just a dishwasher playing in a band. He’s not some millionaire celebrity. I thought it would be interesting to hear what that experience was like, being cancelled. It was fun to play devil’s advocate a bit, and I enjoyed writing multi-POV because I got to talk about things I’m interested in and have ideas about, but I’m a fiction writer, not an essayist, I don’t want to to go out there and say “This is what I believe.” Not to say that’s what essayists do, but they’re much more careful when weaving their opinions into things. I can’t be that careful. What I can do is throw out four or five conflicting ideas about a topic, each of which is somewhat true or makes sense, and that way I can talk about something I’m interested in without being too didactic or simplistic. This one.

when i read Changes of provision, I get the impression that fiction acts primarily as a kind of playground for you, which makes it so interesting to read your take on things. After the animals revolt, they are all killed by this billionaire, who later wants to build a time machine to thwart the Industrial Revolution by introducing solar panels to the construction workers. Is this a fair read, where you kind of let the ideas of a story take you where you go next?

Yes, absolutely. For me, it’s a balance between being completely playful and letting it work, and the editing and revision process limits it and implements a structure that grounds the reader. I hope it will be successful. Ideally, I would put my head down and start writing in my notebook and not think. And then, it’s a process of “What did I mean? How can I make this sound reasonable?

The Moon Bethlehem Cult is such an interesting idea – this group of people, disillusioned with global unrest and climate change, are abandoning their first names and seem to be spreading their message primarily through Twitter threads. Did you draw from something in the real world to create this group?

Well, I’m fascinated by cults. There’s a detail in the book where (Daphne and Jenlena) meet in a cult class at university, and I took that class and it was a defining moment in my life, learning from this woman who looks a lot like the professor that I’m talking about. in roman. I’m not saying this book does—I have an idea for another book I really want to write about a better cult—I’ve never seen a depiction of a cult do it justice because of how fascinating I found this class and this woman’s research.

I think, for Changes of provision, I wrote the novel for a long time and it didn’t work. It was very flat and didn’t have these absurd elements, no animal extinction, no Bethlehem Moon, no time machine, very boring. I was at a point where I had to ditch it or do something drastically different. I had this flood of ideas about, “Okay, time machine, there’s got to be a cult, no animals.” I guess I’m just going back to having fun with it, throwing out ideas that I’m passionate about.

There’s this section of Moon Cicero I’m thinking of where he’s promoting a magazine article, which Sheila Heti lets on to discuss “pessimism as a radical act of self-care,” but comes to drop it a little later after what he saw next to an ad for Air Canada. I really liked how this act of self-promotion and vanity is right next to these left-wing, holier-than-thou ideas.

Yes, going back to that tension you asked about before: how do we balance our higher principles with individual comfort and ambition? I think it’s very easy to say, “How dare you do this materialistic thing” when you’ve never had the opportunity to do it. But at the same time, what’s the point of having principles if you’re not… you know, there’s going to be tough times when you’re going to be pressed on them. There are definitely a few people online who rely on Moon Cicero. I like. And of course I have respect for all my characters, I have respect for her.

There’s this touch of the absurd that I’m really drawn to and love to use in my writing as well. What’s your comedy writing process like – did you set out to write a funny book, or did the state of the world just take you there?

I think it’s in tone with most of what I write about, probably a little more outrageous. I’m thinking of a later major review I did where I was reading a lot about Lorrie Moore. I always loved her, but I was coming back to her after a few years. She’s a very funny writer, but she’s also a very sad writer, and I think both of those things come from her personality. I was in a drought to find things I enjoyed, reading-wise, and I was surprised that these stories had so much life to them. That was something I wanted to capture, to be specific about wanting to do that and to pick out certain sentences that fell flat and inject them with specificity. For Lorrie Moore, it comes off as either really sad or really funny or both.

Finally, are you working on anything else at the moment? You mentioned a cult book earlier.

I’m working on something else, but I had a baby, who’s almost nine months old, which is crazy. I haven’t written anything — I’m trying, and I hope that maybe when he’s a year old he’ll go to kindergarten here. Subsidized. I don’t want people to think I’m rich or something.

But I kept trying to write a novel, the central idea of ​​which I have had for over ten years. I’m just struggling and really want to end it because I’m sick of it. And then I want to write this cult book. So we’ll see.

Changes of provision is out now.