Canal Street Dreams | August 22, 2025

Episode: "Harold Rogers & Sean Thor Conroe on Canal Street Dreams"

Hosts: Eddie Huang (A), Natashia Perrotti (absent)
Guests: Harold Rogers (C), Sean Thor Conroe (B)

Overview

This episode is a dynamic "Boys Hour," with Natashia out due to child care. Eddie Huang is joined by novelist/comedian/boxing trainer Harold Rogers and writer Sean Thor Conroe. The trio dives into the grit and unexpected joys of following creative dreams: carving your own literary lane, relationships as artistic collaboration, the tension between autonomy and partnership, carving space for authentic male voices, and the birth of a new avant-garde literary magazine, “Blast 2.” The conversation stays raw and hilarious, touching on identity, self-doubt, generational shifts, gooning culture, and why the creative life means living with real consequences.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Roots, Identities & Origins

• Intro + Banter
  • Natashia is away; it’s an all-male episode (00:07).
  • They joke about Eddie's daughter naming a toy “Senna” after the Brazilian F1 legend, highlighting family quirks and multicultural roots (00:30–01:00).
  • Harold shares his Brazilian background through his mother and Irish/Italian roots from his father.

2. Harold Rogers: Novelist of Consequence

• On his novels:

  • Harold’s first novel, Tropicalia (2023), is set in Brazil.
    • Second novel Humpty Dumpty is coming (set in Ohio), drawing from real high school scandal roots (02:13–02:35).

• The Steubenville Scandal

  • Harold recounts how a real-life sexual assault case at his hometown high school inspired his new novel—a story about systemic cover-ups and cultural shifts (03:03–04:51).

  “It was the first Me Too story, you know, in a lot of ways.” – Harold (03:35)

• The Personal Fallout

  • Eddie presses Harold on what happened to the assaulters; the group riffs on small-town fates, and how fiction immortalizes real-life villains (04:51–05:06).

3. Becoming a Writer: Instincts, MFA, Friendship

• Early Writing Habits
  • Harold wrote a short story daily post-high school, sending them to his then-girlfriend for instant feedback—if she didn’t respond, it ruined his day (05:37–06:23).
• Boxing to Columbia MFA
  • Both Harold and Sean met at Columbia’s MFA (post-2019), with Sean losing his handwritten manuscript during a night out—only to recover it in a raucous tale (06:27–07:03).
  • Pandemic hit; their MFA became a self-guided "Zoomed out" experiment (07:49–08:16).

“It's dope when you are a fan of your homies' writing.” – Eddie (07:09)

4. The Columbia/NYC Experience & Cultural Memories

• Eddie’s Film School Story

  • Eddie describes making a student film "Reverse the Curse" at Columbia, reflecting on racial casting challenges and quitting film due to Hollywood narrow-mindedness (08:16–09:15).

• NYC Mixtape & Nostalgia

  • Harlem, mixtapes, and Pop Smoke memories punctuate the episode. Music and sport become a through-line for generational change.

“To me, a great rapper is like, you just put the city on your back.” – Eddie (12:13)

5. Music, Atmosphere & The End of an Era

• Pop Smoke as Symbol
  • Sean and Eddie discuss how Pop Smoke’s music marked a cultural era: pandemic park closures, public mourning, and a broader sense of loss (12:13–13:57).
  • Minor chords and “funeral music” become metaphors for early pandemic gloom (13:21–14:05).

6. Relationships as Collaboration & Material

• Writing About the "Shorties"
  • All three note their partners play central roles in their work; they "collaborate" by observing each other in fiction and nonfiction (14:16–16:24).
  • Sometimes partners love being written about; other times, fictionalizing real relationships creates real conflict.

“The only thing a girl wants is for you to write about them and describe them…on some level.” – Sean (15:03)

• Consequences in the Personal
  • Harold shares how candid writing about family disputes had real consequences: fights, cold spells, but more truth (16:48–18:18).

“If you writing something that's not going to have any consequences, then it's not reverberating at all.” – Harold (18:23)

7. Domestic Travel & Literary Bumbling

• Travel Fails = Content
  • Harold describes a humiliating parking fail in Bordeaux with his girlfriend, leading to explosive, relatable couple conflict (19:03–20:44).
  • Sean’s Japan trip echoes this, with language barriers and cultural gaffes providing story gold.

8. Art, Vulnerability & Growth Through Partnership

• How Partners Change Us
  • Eddie reflects on growing past romanticized isolation; partnership makes him a better man, though it breeds codependence (21:19–22:47).
  • Group discusses literary history of codependency, from medieval troubadours to Dante’s idealization of Beatrice (20:44–21:19).

“You do have to open up...the best version of me is like, co-mingled and entangled with Natasha.” – Eddie (22:47)

9. Living With Failure & Self-Doubt

• All three are candid about letting down their partners, being embarrassed, repeating mistakes, and using writing as self-correction (23:16–25:06).
• Reflecting on process: regular journaling/substacking as therapy and a way to "capture the moments as it changes" (26:02).

10. Young Men, Literary Trends & The New Magazine (Blast 2)

• Are Books for Boys Dead?
  • Sean and Eddie discuss how most books are bought by women, and editors say there’s no market for “books for boys.” They challenge this, arguing for authentic, messy male lit (32:37–35:24).

“There used to be an era where the publishing industry doesn't want any books like this anymore...They actually don't want young dudes reading.” – Sean (34:37)

• On Being True to One’s Voice

  • Chasing trends vs. singular vision; pressure to adapt vs. the compulsion to stay true and take risks (35:24–36:36).

• Harold’s Felony, Literary Gatekeeping

  • Eddie opens up about MFA rejections, underscores self-taught, autodidact literary routes (45:39–46:50).

• Blast 2: A New Literary Vanguard

  • New magazine to energize avant-garde, esoteric, challenging writing. The name references an early 20th-century magazine; the mission is iconoclastic and chaotic (“a stick of dynamite”) (43:11–44:03).
  • Emphasis on idiocy, being a belligerent, stubborn advocate for outsider voices (46:47–47:02).

11. Gooning, Skills & Anti-Performative Knowledge

• Against Superficial Depth

  • Critique of modern “skills” as mere performance (41:38–42:09).
  • Eddie on cooking: “You can't pretend to know how to cook, right? No. It's gonna taste like shit.” (42:09–42:11)

• Skill-building, Craft, and the Value of Doing Something

  • Conversation pivots to the poverty of a performative, algorithm-targeted creative industry and a longing for energy, vision, and craftsmanship (44:40–44:51).

12. Physical Spaces, Friendship & Community

• On Boxing Gyms, Kitchens, and Parties
  • The best creative friendships come from gyms and kitchens, not industry parties (56:45–57:59).
  • Camaraderie in physical spaces eclipses professional networking.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On confronting uncomfortable truths in writing:

  "If you writing something that's not going to have any consequences, then it's not...reverberating at all." — Harold (18:23)

• On the burning need for non-performative literature:

  "That's not new literature...I wish people would seek to just like share something original as opposed to be like, I want to be successful." — Eddie (50:15)

• On idiocy and creative process:

  “To be a good novelist, you got to be smart and an idiot. You can't be a good novelist...” — Harold (52:28)

• Knucklehead travelogue as literary genre:

  “Reading Places Review, it's like you get the trilogy of, like, the knucklehead literary dudes trying to travel with the shorties and the shorties just like, you guys are morons.” — Eddie (20:32)

• On the creative life having consequences:

  “There's always consequences... If everyone just, like, loves what you're saying and love what you're doing, like, then you're not really challenging.” — Eddie (18:32–18:48)

Key Timestamps

• 00:07–02:30 | Introductions, backgrounds, and literary credentials.
• 02:35–04:51 | Steubenville scandal and “writing from real life.”
• 05:37–07:36 | Early writing practices, friendships, Columbia MFA stories.
• 08:16–09:15 | Eddie’s film school story, quitting film.
• 10:13–13:57 | Columbia, Harlem, pop culture, Pop Smoke as the “last great rapper.”
• 14:16–16:24 | Writing about partners—joy, pain, and “living with consequences.”
• 16:44–18:23 | Real-life fallout of sharing private stories.
• 19:03–20:44 | Travel blunders as relationship and literary inspiration.
• 21:19–23:16 | Relationships as growth, from individualism to “co-mingled” adulthood.
• 23:28–26:02 | How mistake-riddled life feeds art.
• 32:37–35:24 | The crisis for “books for boys,” performativity, and the new lit mag.
• 43:11–44:03 | The birth of Blast 2 mag—a call for belligerent, outsider writing.
• 45:39–47:02 | Breaking into the literary scene without an MFA.
• 50:15–51:01 | The hollowness of formulaic, “successful” creative work.
• 56:45–57:59 | Best friendships are forged in gyms and kitchens.

Closing

The episode closes with an invitation to contribute to “Blast 2,” an embrace of creative weirdness, and some light-hearted bullying of Sean. There’s a persistent call to arms for authenticity—messy, consequential, personal—and a celebration of literature not as performance, but as the blasted-out truth of one’s idiot self. Whether it’s through novels, substack diaries, or throwing a party at a boxing gym, Eddie, Harold, and Sean model a relentless pursuit of the raw and the real.

For submissions to Blast 2: blast2mag@gmail.com
For more: https://basedfob.substack.com/