Another Book Section Bites the Dust and A Romance Writer Dances with the AI Devil

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Another Book Section Bites the Dust and A Romance Writer Dances with the AI Devil
Release Date: February 16, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky (with Vanessa)

Overview

In this episode, Jeff, Rebecca, and Vanessa tackle major news in the world of books: the shutdown of the Washington Post's Book World section—a blow for literary journalism—and a headline-grabbing New York Times piece about a romance novelist going all-in on AI-generated fiction. They break down industry trends, the economics driving institutional decisions about books coverage, the current state of the publishing industry, and the challenges raised by AI in creative work. The episode closes with book recommendations and a spirited, highly detailed review of Emerald Fennell’s sensational, polarizing new Wuthering Heights film adaptation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Washington Post Shuts Down Book World Section

Timestamps: 04:13 – 13:07

• Context & Impact:

  • The Washington Post cut its Book World section amid broader newsroom layoffs (~30% staff cut).
  • Book World had solid relative traffic, but not as much as other coverage areas (e.g., national politics).
  • Jeff: “Very few people in this country read books anymore, as we know…unfortunately that means you may not be generating enough traffic to support it.” (04:54)
  • The main reason is likely a cost-benefit decision, not conspiracy or anti-books animus (cautions against blaming Jeff Bezos).

• Changing Media Ecosystem:

  • Traffic and conversion to subscriptions now drive priorities.
  • The Post is doubling down on its strengths: politics, local and national news, not cultural supplementation.
  • Vanessa notes, “What I think... it may not even be about clicks. It may be about who converts and who retains their digital subscription.” (08:33)
  • The main way people get book recommendations today: TikTok, YouTube—word of mouth and individual influencers outweigh institutional brands.
  • Jeff cites Ron Charles’s effort to adapt book coverage to video, social, etc., but institutional reach can't compete with compelling individual content creators.

• Economic Drivers & Publisher Advertising:

  • Publishers are buying fewer ads in news media, directing dollars to platforms (Amazon, Meta, TikTok), making book coverage less sustainable.
  • Vanessa: “It’s penny wise and pound foolish to spend on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok right now... you’re pulling up root and stem the seed corn from future generations of book coverage.” (15:28)
  • Book Riot’s own membership efforts proved "support us because we're independent media" does not convert. Content has to add value, not just exist for its own sake.

• Broader Consequences:

  • Fewer media outlets to cover/care for books impacts not just book sales but also broader literary culture and author support.

• Industry Snapshot:

  • Publishing market essentially flat: sales down ~0.9% (in dollars), with trade paperbacks dropping 9%.
  • Audiobook growth slowing: “Audiobook growth slowed to just 2.3%... want to keep an eye on that, because that has been supporting a lot of the softness across the board.” (21:06)

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2. Romance Author and the Advent of AI-Generated Fiction

Timestamps: 21:53 – 37:58

• New York Times Profile:

  • Coral Hart, a romance writer, was profiled for her full-throated embrace of AI, even developing her own large language model.
  • She teaches others, has published dozens of AI-generated books under multiple pen names.
  • Jeff: “The future of the books is here and it’s terrible. Basically, like, this is the thing we’re afraid of, Rebecca: that we’re going to get inundated with AI generated stuff...” (23:03)

• Why Romance Leads This Development:

  • Romance has historically been an innovator, more willing to experiment due to (often) outsider status—fanfic, erotica, self-pub, etc.
  • The appetite in romance is “ravenous;” business incentives reward quantity, making it attractive for automation.
  • Vanessa: “The demand is so much. Yes, it’s 20% of all book sales right now. This is where the opportunity for the scammer or the first mover to really rake it in.” (26:57)

• Ethical and Practical Challenges:

  • Amazon only requires AI use disclosure to Amazon—not to consumers. Enforcement is unclear (“...no one’s checking this. Like you could just say whatever.” 27:29)
  • Potential for Amazon to deploy its own LLMs to fill Kindle Unlimited with customized, user-generated genre fiction—readers may not know/care if authors are “real.”
  • Jeff: “Amazon doesn’t have to disclose to you if the author is not a real person...the disclosure piece is what I want us to home in on as an industry.” (28:07)

• Reader Reaction & Author Incentives:

  • Pushback exists, especially within genre communities, but disclosure is key.
  • Rebecca and Jeff argue this isn't a “romance problem;” incentives and tech exist across genres. Romance just often leads as early adopter.
  • Rebecca: “Romance tends to be early adopters for reasons you talked about. And this is the early adopting thing. That’s next.” (30:44)

• Industry-Wide Implications:

  • Historical sensitivity to innovation: past controversies over erotica, fanfic, self-pub—AI may eventually be viewed similarly.
  • Jeff: “There are people who are consuming hours of AI generated video every day and they know it’s AI...they don’t care because it’s entertaining to them.” (32:44)
  • The fear: that readers will eventually not care about the creator at all, and go directly to AI for their needs. “...if you didn’t really think there is a possibility that eventually authors...won’t have to be an author to generate your own book at some point.” (35:04)

• Pushback & Hope:

  • Jeff has faith that human-created art will retain a core audience with a desire for “connection that we feel when we read...that’s part of what makes it art.” (36:50)
  • The problem: AI-generated content is here to stay, and could shrink the traditional book industry even as a core of “human art” buyers persists.
  • Rebecca: “Just think about what you’re saying when you say you can use AI to detect AI...” (37:58)

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3. Book Recommendations

Timestamps: 38:25 – 50:54

The Correspondent by Virgin Evans

• Indie debut, told through the letters of a cantankerous older woman.
• Smart, fast-paced, “wonderfully, generically recommendable.”
• Jeff notes: “She has her opinions, which is great...She also has a fair amount of mini drama going on in her life...” (39:44)
• Unfolds like a mystery as the letters reveal relationships and backstory.
• Recommendation: great for anyone seeking character-driven, analog-feeling stories.

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

• Novel from the author of “I’m Glad My Mom Died.”
• Centers on a teenage girl (Waldo) who initiates an affair with her creative writing teacher.
• Sharp, unflinching portrayal of agency, rage, and blurred moral lines; not a simplistic “victim narrative.”
• Present tense, compelling read—“the rage is the driving emotion of this story.” (41:14)
• Draws comparisons to Ottessa Moshfegh—“performatively messy” but perhaps more organic.
• Jeff: “Her experience is what it is...letting it be messy...complicated. The way that Waldo sees all of the men in her life is sharp and ragey.” (50:54)

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4. Film Segment: Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell Adaptation)

Timestamps: 53:30 – end

Key Takeaways:

• Both watched the film separately and give a candid, in-depth (and humor-laden) postmortem.
• Not a faithful adaptation—actually “BDSM fanfiction” loosely inspired by the original.
  • Rebecca: “This is about as faithful to Wuthering Heights as like, I am still Catholic, which is took some of the sparkly bits with me and moved on. No, it is absolutely not a faithful adaptation.” (54:20)
• The film is visually bold, sensuous, and “surprisingly slimy.”
  • Jeff: “There are egg yolks. There is rain. There are blood, all kinds of bodily fluids. There’s a snail that is doing some symbolic work.” (56:15)
  • Memorable line: “My headline on Wuthering Heights is that it’s wet, cold and surprisingly slimy.” (56:08)
• The adaptation is all about power dynamics, pain, and sexuality—very different from the book’s brooding, unrequited, and often cruel love.
• Purists were left heartbroken (anecdote about a friend with a PhD in English crying at the liberties taken).
• Performances: Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie are praised, but their chemistry questioned.
• Side characters, notably played by Alison Oliver and Hong Chao, stood out.
• The visual and costume design are wildly anachronistic and avant-garde: “Disco Red Riding Hood... silver gilded giraffe print...”
• Notable, hilarious moments: audience laughter at double-entendres like “You’re wet.” (71:50), discussion of “Satan’s jello mold” and general “moistness.”
• Cultural “bait and switch” in marketing: viewers expecting a classic love story got provocative fanfic; many will be misled if they pick up the book after watching the film.

Quotable Moments:

• From Rebecca: “The common thing we see when this book is adapted...this is not the love story that it is being pitched at.” (57:36)
• Jeff: “I think...a large degree of your enjoyment of this will be: How hot do you think Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are? I saw this in IMAX, and that is Jacob Elordi. He’s already too tall. But IMAX was too much Jacob Elordi.” (69:22)
• On audience reaction: “Everybody in my theater just had the giggles...You could feel that sort of collective tension. The room just needed somewhere to go. And then everybody giggled it out.” (73:51)
• On adaptation: “If this movie worked for you, you are not going to like the book.” (83:31)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “Very few people in this country read books anymore, as we know…unfortunately that means you may not be generating enough traffic to support it.” – Jeff (04:54)
• “As much as you can try, and certainly like the Washington Post tried, Ron Charles has been a great sport for the last fifteen years...he has tried to adapt books coverage to like he was game to all of the forums, you know, to let's try video, let's get on Twitter, let's do things.” – Jeff (07:16)
• “It’s penny wise and pound foolish to spend on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok right now... you’re pulling up root and stem the seed corn from future generations of book coverage.” – Vanessa (15:28)
• “The future of the books is here and it’s terrible. Basically, like, this is the thing we’re afraid of…” – Jeff (23:03)
• “My case is not that the romance industry is even embracing AI. This is one particular user who may or may not represent other people. But this is the story we have in front of us. And frankly, it makes sense to try. I mean, the incentives are there.” – Jeff (37:58)
• “There are people who are consuming hours of AI generated video every day and they know it’s AI...they don’t care because it’s entertaining to them.” – Jeff (32:44)
• “I have a lot of faith in humans desire and appetite for art created by other humans.” – Jeff (36:50)
• “This is about as faithful to Wuthering Heights as like, I am still Catholic, which is took some of the sparkly bits with me and moved on. No, it is absolutely not a faithful adaptation.” – Rebecca (54:20)
• “The headline is that it’s wet, cold and surprisingly slimy.” – Jeff (56:08)
• “There are egg yolks. There is rain. There are blood, all kinds of bodily fluids. There’s a snail that is doing some symbolic work.” – Jeff (56:15)
• “If this movie worked for you, you are not going to like the book.” – Jeff (83:31)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------|--------------------| | Washington Post closes Book World | 04:13 – 13:07 | | Publishers & Book Coverage Economics | 13:07 – 21:53 | | Romance/AI-generated books | 21:53 – 37:58 | | Book Industry 2025 stats | 20:12 – 21:53 | | Audiobook growth slowdown | 21:06 | | Book recommendations | 38:25 – 50:54 | | Wuthering Heights film review | 53:30 – end |

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Tone & Style

The episode is lively, frank, occasionally wry, with a blend of industry-savvy skepticism and genuine bookish enthusiasm. The hosts balance analytic, business-minded takes with personal anecdotes, literary gossip, and a sense of bemused resignation at the state of contemporary media, storytelling, and romance.

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Summary for the Uninitiated

If you missed the episode, you’ll come away understanding:

• Why significant outlets like the Washington Post are cutting book coverage and what that means for readers and writers.
• How romance publishing continues to be first-mover for new, controversial tech—now at the AI frontier—with implications for the whole book world.
• The current, sobering state of the publishing industry’s sales.
• The kind of wild, “unhinged” adaptation you’ll get with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights—definitely NOT for purists.
• Outstanding picks for new, conversation-driving reads.
• How book culture’s future is being shaped—sometimes for the worse—by economic, technological, and cultural forces outside the control of readers, writers, and traditional publishers.

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For show notes, more in-depth industry news, and reading recommendations, visit Book Riot.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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Max $100 cash back per month.

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See terms at Venmo Me. This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Vanessa]

And Rebecca, we've got an action packed news show today, but we're going to try to be speedy because you and Vanessa are doing the yeoman's work. You're going to go see the thing tonight. Is that tonight?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Tonight we are both going to see Wuthering Heights in imax. It's going to be a whole lot of everybody.

[Vanessa]

Apparently it's tracking to do like $80 million in business this weekend. Like we've got a hit on our hands here, Rebecca.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, we do. And the reviews have been all over the place, which is about what I expected for something like this. But a positive review called it smooth brained sensuality. And there are folks have just been having fun with the headlines. One of the headlines also said Emerald Fennell knows to leave them wanting more.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I will be.

[Vanessa]

I have avoided any of the reviews or anything. I want to see what you and Vanessa have to say about it at the same time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm expecting an experience and I've so far done the public service of waving several people off of letting their teenage daughters go see it who only know about Wuthering height, the book and how much they liked it as teenagers. Like I think maybe you want to watch this trailer first.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, you might want to be careful out there. I mean, again, we on the whole are in favor of letting the kids read what they want to read. We did have a nice email slash comment from someone saying though sometimes you may just want to know, like give some guidance. Recommendation is it what you think you're getting into in the book and movie of Wuthering Heights? I don't think it is not Pride and Prejudice, but a little steamier. That is not what this is. It's a different deal completely.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. If you and knowing the folks I was talking to, like, you know, I kind of know their approaches to parenting and their values and I think you can be a sex positive parent and also not want your kids to go at a certain age. Go see what this looks like it's going to be.

[Vanessa]

Yeah. What if terrible people fell in love? Withering Heights by Emma.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we'll see. I'm really looking forward to talking about it with Vanessa. You can hear that at the end of this episode.

[Vanessa]

Also, if you want to know what's going on, Rebecca and I did the full Wuthering Heights book experience over on Zero to well read. Have got a lot of comments and reactions to that. Been good to see over there. So you can see that in the feed right now. We're going to be recording our next Patreon episode right after this. We'll go up in the feed a little bit less week next week for our paid subscribers. It's deals, deals, deals time. Rebecca. It's been a few months.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I love deals time.

[Vanessa]

I do enjoy doing that. A couple of one more announcement kind of thing. We are hiring a digital content specialist to come work with that. Work with us at Book Riot. There'll be a link in the Show Notes Book riot.com Listen, you can see all the details there. Especially if you're good at social video I guess is the quickest way to say that. Right. But what else do we want to say about this? Go check it out. See if it's right for you. We do not control the hiring. It's not going to help you to say, hey, my friend did a thing or whatever. Just encourage them to apply. Do that. But say nothing to us.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We can't do anything for you.

[Vanessa]

No, we can't do anything for you on that side. So looking forward to that. All right, without any further ado, there's really two big things I want to make sure we have time for. I'm not sure. I've been trying to think of something smart to say about the Washington Post cutting its Book World section. Rebecca, I'm now throwing it to you to say something because I've got nothing smart to say about this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. I don't think I have anything new to say about it. This I think feels like a really sharp loss for the World of books and Reading because it's been so long since we had. Since we lost a big book section. There was that run like eight, five years ago somewhere in there where a lot of mainstream and legacy journalism publications were closing their books coverage or they were drastically decreasing it.

[Vanessa]

Dallas Morning News, some of those kinds of places.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The Washington Post has even gone through a round of this in the past where they books coverage really significantly and then re expanded it to what it had looked like up until last week. So certainly a loss for readers, a loss for the world of books and reading. I don't know that it's actually the mark of anything else. Like the Washington Post is letting 30% of its staff go. The editor of Book World told Publishers Weekly that the book coverage did pretty good traffic, especially compared to other kinds of book coverage. But what that doesn't address is how did the traffic do compared to the other components of the Washington Post. And my. My best guess is that they are just making a straight cost benefit analysis. Books. Very few people in this country read books anymore, as we know. And unfortunately that means that you may not be generating enough traffic to support it. This is one of the complexities and I think downsides of having major corporations run media publications is that you are then subject to that kind of balance sheet. Like there are certain challenges for independent publications. We know them very well, very well. One of the things that we can do is decide that we're going to publish things simply because we like that saying, or we find it to be important and it aligns with our values and we can know that it's probably never going to get enough page views to balance out however much we paid the writer to do it and all of the staff time and all of those other things. In our thinking, that stuff is underwritten by the kinds of content that do go really wide and generate a lot of clicks. I don't know what the full philosophy was at the Washington Post. There's a lot of temptation, I know, to make this about Jeff Bezos and how utilitarian he is and that it's part of some larger conspiracy intent to just like cut down books and make them less relevant. I just want to caution us all against, like, I'm not a fan of Jeff Bezos, but anytime you're into a, like, they're coming for us, like we're. Then we're in murky waters.

[Vanessa]

It's probably worse that it could be just a dollar and cents thing. In a way it would be better feather in the cap of the Primacy of the world of books and reading. If someone's like, I've got to buy the Washington Post to cut the books coverage because those eggheads are going to take over the world if I don't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And like, you know, we know the primary way that people decide what they're going to read next is through word of mouth. Like, it's not through books coverage, it's not through a podcast, it's not through a website like Book Riot. Like right now, most people who are picking up books are picking up things that they Learned about on TikTok or YouTube because those are the mechanisms of word of mouth. And as much as you can try, and certainly like the Washington Post tried, Ron Charles has been a great sport for the last 15 years.

[Vanessa]

About the bacon hat. Do you remember the bacon hat? I remember the bacon hat.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Bacon hat. Like, he, he has tried to adapt books coverage to like he was game to all of the forums, you know, to let's try video, let's get on Twitter, let's do things. But in a media landscape that's driven by individual influencers, even a really compelling person behind a brand gets less traction. And we see that to be true as well. Coming from a Book Riot brand is less compelling for a TikTok user than an individual influencer that they feel connection to. This is just a really tough landscape for all kinds of coverage. Books happen to be part of that. It would make a tidier narrative and we could probably generate some more clicks and some more podcast shares if we thought that this was part of some, you know, bigger scheme. I think it really just is an unfortunate reflection of a lack of public interest in books coverage and what happens when you do a straight PNL decision about content.

[Vanessa]

I think it also could be shortsighted, especially if we look at they cut the sports section and sports is as big on TV and everything as anything has ever been. So I think what I'm seeing here is the Washington Post has moved to a fully subscription model. I don't even think they have a freemium situation more. We can get ten brief to subscribe. And so what I think it may not even be about clicks. It may be about. About who converts and who retains their digital subscription. And in this day and age, what is happening in Washington, the White House, the executive branch, and then bleeding over the judicial and the legislative is so compelling compared to what the new book's out this week. I think they're probably just seeing what drives is whatever the most recent sort of trump insanity is looking like and that's driving people to click and subscribe because they want to see that. And I think that probably makes sense right now. But if we all do our sort of civic duties and this is over in two and a half years, I wonder if they're going to find the case because I do think you the old adage is you diversify to protect and you concentrate to grow. And there's a lot of people concentrating in one area right now because the nature especially of liberal outrage right now is such that people are going to click and subscribe to those places they feel like is supporting the resistance or whatever. Also that feeds their sort of doom scrolling whatever thing they want to read about what's going on the DOJ that's insufferable and sort of unimaginable at this point. In a return to some sort of something like normal business operations on the country as a whole, will you be better off to have more of a diversified portfolio? Maybe. I don't know. But I do think if you're trying to drive subscriptions and you are doing national news, books and sports, so much of sports is local or you're an ESPN that I think the Washington Post finds itself caught in the sort of middle class of media properties where you really need for sustainability, making a profit, keeping the lights on reasons to do what you do best and do nothing else. And I think what they do best now is national, political, local and national international political coverage.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, one thing that sports and books coverage have in common is those personalities of the commentators. People do, you know, become connected to certain book reviewers that they either really like or that they have a bone to pick with. Same for sports commentators. And so much of that action is happening now on podcasts and social media. YouTube is huge for sports coverage, especially younger people like the prime media audience. People are not going to newspapers for their coverage of anything. And that's unfortunate. We have a lot of feelings about it. But I agree it might be short sighted. That also means that they might bring it back in the future. Like the Washington Post has done this before and we don't have crystal balls. We don't know what's going to happen. But it is possible that there will be. There's a contraction now. It's possible there will be some kind of expansion in the future. But that expansion could look all kinds of ways, especially as they're continuing to have to compete with social media. This podcast is supported by Quints. As the seasons start to change, or at least as we start to be wishing for spring, My husband and I always do a little wardrobe reset. We put away the heavy stuff, we take stock of what actually gets worn, and we fill in the gaps with pieces we'll rely on every day. And that's where Quince comes in. I've been a customer for years, and it's one of the places that we both turn to when we want staples that feel easy, well made and built to last. Especially for menswear, Quince makes the kind of everyday essentials that really carry a wardrobe. Organic cotton sweaters, Polos that work for just about any occasion, and lighter jackets that keep you warm as the weather shifts without feeling bulky. These are the pieces that get worn again and again and still look good. Quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middleman. So you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing from premium materials as part of our refresh. In my household, we've been stocking up on organic cotton sweaters Polos for him from Quince, and they've become instant staples. They're comfortable, they hold their shape, and they look pulled together without trying too hard, which is exactly what you want from your everyday pieces. Get in on the fun with us and refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com bookriot for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I-N-C-E.com bookriot free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com bookriot it's tax season, and at.

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[Vanessa]

Eligibility vary by state. This is ancillary to some degree, but related insofar as things I was hearing on my work visit to New York Publishing World last week and I've made this case before to more or less sympathetic ears from listeners. But but I do think one thing that's happening here is you can monetize against different kinds of coverage, differently based on who's buying from you. And if publishers aren't buying advertising against book coverage in places, that book coverage will go away because advertisers will pay more as much, if not more than the subscriber or the click will for that coverage. And so much money is flowing into Amazon, is flowing into Instagram, is flowing into TikTok, is flowing into Meta. I guess that's Instagram too. And away from the kinds of coverage that this can support. And I think the analog is pretty straightforward between why someone like me would spend a meaningful amount of my dollars at independent bookstore when I can get the Same book for 30% less somewhere else is because I want to support that thing and that thing is good in itself. And I would ask and as some people are listening here and it's not just because it's in my interest though, it is to think about what that I think it's penny wise and pound foolish to spend on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok right now. I know you can get clicks, I know you can see conversions, whatever. But I can tell you this. They do not care about books. They don't. And that is just not something that's going to be. You're pulling up root and stem the seed corn from future generations of book coverage. And as much as the TikTok and Instagram, what I now individual creators may be ascended now that's not going to be forever. There's going to be other ways of this happening. And these institutions and Book Riot aspires to be one of those now into the future and forever. But certainly the Washington Post, Book World or the Atlantic or the New Yorker or the New York Times, it is not fait accompli that those things are going to stick around and not supporting them and deciding to spend some of your ad dollars that maybe doesn't show up on this campaign's P and L but goes to further book outlets book coverage into the future. I think you come out ahead. I just think you do. I don't think it's necessarily even about, you know, giving it away or tithing or something like that. I think actually you do come out in the head if more of These places are going to have interesting or even just extant book coverage into the intermediate and long term future.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think we share the opinion that telling people to support independent media just because independent media is good is never effective. And in fact Book Riot has a membership platform and when we tested messaging for the membership platform support us because we're independent media was the least effective of the forms of messaging for that. It does not actually compel people to join your thing and to give you money. The independent media has to do something. It has to serve a purpose. And we hear from publicists and folks in the industry all the time that every time something like this happens, the Washington Post closes their books coverage or somebody else contracts. This is really hard and challenging for people in publishing because there are fewer places not just to try to sell their books, but a huge part of what publishers do is author care. They want their authors to know that they have gotten their books in front of readers and at least given them the chance to discover it, whether that's in an ad or in a roundup of new romances or you know, whatever it is. So fewer outlets for that mean that these publicists are all competing for fewer places and that it's harder for them to do their jobs if they want. I think you're right that if the industry wants media to continue existing as places that they can perform this author care, places that they can try to reach readers, then the industry does need to take a look at how what they are doing and how they are engaging with independent media. Not because independent media is just a good in its own. We're not talking about you're just an end unto yourself, but because that independent media serves a purpose for you.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, it's a kind of ecosystem. If one part of that ecosystem goes away or severely impaired, a lot of other things happen. And it is the Amazon, it is the Instagram, it is the Facebook, it's easy to buy, no one can audit the clicks. So you don't know what's happening. I mean there's a whole, there's a whole rat's nest of stuff going on over there. But I do think a part of this is if they were getting better CPMs from direct sold book coverage, some of these decisions would be differently. I was telling, I was in New York while this new, while this news broke and talked about it with some people specifically. And I'm to the point where I've been doing this longer than some of my counterparties, especially in the imprint and level.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We are ancient in the Years.

[Vanessa]

But also like I was talking about, if you look at the print New York Times Book Review today compared to the print New York Times Book Review in like 1995, the. The ads are shocking and maybe tells the story in one go. And the New York Times Book Review is the gold standard, but it is by no means untarnishable. There are things that can happen, business cases, whatever. But you can see right there the economics of book coverage are sort of visible in the face. If you get your microfiche out and you look at this week's printed New York Times Book Review, even in the gold standard, to a first approximation, there are no, you know, maybe there's one Amazon, like a Dean Koontz thing and they're using it to. Because it, you know, the people who read the book as part of their Sunday paper, I think a lot of people like just to know it's there. Kind of like the gym in your building. Even if you don't go there, you like to know it's there. And then some people really do read it. And I know some of the book coverage is really, really popular and can break out. But just look at where the dollars are flowing and some of this flown digitally. And if you're going to decide between buying on the New York Times Book Review or the Washington Post, be curious to see what those metrics and what those inventories look like. Not an amazing day. I'm not surprised. I also, I can't say that I'm surprised by any stretch of the imagination. Publishing was flat last year, essentially. Rebecca, what else can we say about this? Moving on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's it. Just worth noting, publishing was flat last.

[Vanessa]

Year, down 9% in total dollars. Not just units, dollars as well.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Trade paperbacks were the main offender. This is reporting from publishers that book sales in 2025 were down.09 or sorry, 0.9% over 2024. $80 million light of the 2024 total sales. And it was trade paperbacks came down by 9%. They didn't get into specifics of that. Could be something to do with more readers picking up like these deluxe hardcovers of Romantasy, the spread situation. But also like everything in romance is a trade paperback right now and they're all competing with each other on the heels of stories about mass backs going away. So we will just continue to see. But flat, flat in this media ecosystem. I guess I will take.

[Vanessa]

Well, you're down 0.9% in a 3% inflationary environment, which means there's not great purchasing power in the book industry right now there just is. I was like this, this paragraph, you have your. Sounds familiar. I wrote this. You copied this from today in books. I was like, wait, this sounds familiar. I thought it was the publishers because I did note I put a line on this though I don't think Publishers Weekly did. Audiobook growth slowed to just 2.3%. So faster by a lot than industry. But we had been seeing high single to double digit growth really for the last five to seven years. So this deceleration in growth, I want to keep an eye on that because that has been supporting a lot of the softness across the board. And that's really going to be important to keep an eye on to see how much that happens. Okay there. So this story, this next one, I'm going to be very careful because I wrote about this, it was on our Instagram and some people who read and write romance were not happy with my framing of this particular story. And I want to, I don't want to reframe. I want to explain because like not the whole thing came out. So this is a story in the New York Times about a single romance. I'm going to use the word author here very carefully because I'm not sure what terms we're using, but it's about a woman, her name is Coral Hart, who is a romance. Was a romance author, but who has gone, I think we'd say back home whole hog into AI generation of romance novels to the point of developing a proprietary LLMM LLM, having classes to help other people use these tools to generate books. Publish dozens of novels of her different pen names. And this piece by the great Alexander Alter in the Times that came over the weekend, I labeled this, I did a whole piece on this in today's book saying the future of the books is here and it's terrible. Basically, like this is the thing we're afraid of, Rebecca, is that we're going to get inundated with AI generated stuff that's going to either because of quality or just volume, choke out human made interesting books that we, I'll say you and I and I think most book readers want to support. My framing of that piece was this is as I was not surprised to see a first big profile of someone doing this to come from the romance industry. And this is, I'm going to do 30 more minutes, seconds of monologue. Then we turn up to you, Rebecca, to see if I was out over my skis here. And I will say this. I think romance authors are no more or less virtuous than any other kind of writer. Nor do I think romance readers are more or less virtuous than any other kind of of reader. I think the romance market has its own structural thing and has historical has historically that makes it more likely that someone's going to really try this in a real way than other kinds of genres. And the two things are essentially this. One is that because of its long standing unfair outsider status in the publishing and reading industry, romance has been more willing to try stuff for a long time really since we've been doing this. And that goes for all fanfic to erotica to self published on and on down the line, leading to things frankly that have been good for books and reading. I think you draw a straight line of like alchemize is one of the big hits of last year or heated rivalry. Those things don't happen if romance writers and authors champion them, read them and they sort of show the market power of them. So I think they're kind of like the Silicon Valley. Like sometimes they produce stuff that maybe isn't amazing, but they really are innovating. And then the second thing is cadence, the demand, the appetite for romance books is ravenous. So you were incentivized to make as many as you can. So when I say that's why I wasn't surprised to see a romance author be one of these first profiles of someone really jumping in full throatedly, not hiding like there's a big beautiful picture here. You know they sent the New York Times out to photograph Coral Hart. I wasn't surprised by that. And some people think that I'm being unfair. But Rebecca, I, I, I'm not really trying to be unfair. I'm just looking at from the business case like it's its own market and there's industry things going on here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The headline here is Romance Industry embraces AI. And I think industry is a really important word. Yes, is a really critical word choice here. The response to your piece on Instagram, I saw that as well, I think is largely a product of people not going past the first slide. And that romance readers do so often get the shaft that they're ready, they're ready to be attacked.

[Vanessa]

Understandably defensive.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So often they are being attacked. But as you were saying, romance writers have been at the forefront of many innovations in publishing. That's usually for better, sometimes it is for worse. The reason that they are often at the forefront, the reasons are what you just listed, that there is a huge demand and they haven't always had the structural support of the institutions of publishing. So they've been scrappy. Romance is really scrappy. Unfortunately, the latest technology innovation is one that has negative consequences. But all of the same incentives still exist and the same environment still exists where romance needs to be scrappy, where it doesn't get a lot of institutional support. It gets more now than it used to, but it's still hard out there and where you've got to try stuff to meet reader demand because it is just, just like romance. Readers are incredible in their appetite for books. There's also like this. There are going to be writers who are willing to take advantage of the situation. And I think that in my reading is what Coralheart has done. This I'm sure exists in every other genre. But there is something about romance that makes it especially susceptible to like, let me just crank out a million of these because people will keep reading them.

[Vanessa]

Whereas the demand is so much. Yes, it's 20% of all book sales right now. Like this is where the opportunity for, for the scammer or the first mover to really rake it in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The thing that I've really been thinking about having read this piece is that this is all, this is just a moment where it's easy to take advantage of this. Because while Amazon requires that writers disclose to Amazon that books they've written have used AI, there's no requirement that it be disclosed to read. So there are people who are taking advantage of that.

[Vanessa]

And is Amazon checking, like, who's like, okay, you have to. But no one's checking this. Like you could just say whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. And I know from little birdies that like, I mean, Amazon doesn't care. Not only do they not really care, but Amazon is actively trying to develop technology like algorithm based technology that can pay attention to what you like to read and AI generate you the exact kind of book, especially genre fiction, because formulas make it easier for AI to generate and, and just put those in front of you in like your Kindle unlimited screen. Like this is coming. And indeed it might already exist where if you don't know, if you just see an author's name on a book cover, you know, we're all, I think pretty programmed to just assume that author is a real person. But Amazon doesn't have to disclose to you if the author is not a real person. They can, they can print a million AI generated books and put fake people's names on them and readers will not know the difference. And it's that disclosure piece is what I want us to home in on as an industry this is here. It is not going anywhere. As long as it's here, there will be people who use it and people who take advantage of the situation. And I think this is taking advantage of readers. It's a bad faith use of a technology that like technologies. Our stance on this show is that technologies themselves are generally morally neutral. But then how you use the technology makes a difference. Like, we're not talking about the atomic bomb. There are readers deserve to know, I think, if this book is generated by AI or in part by AI. Coral Hart did not do herself any favors by outing herself here.

[Vanessa]

And she has retired this pen name, by the way, because of the blowback. I mean, it happened sort of in the course of the piece.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And she claims that she'll be adding three new pen names that will say that they are openly AI, that will openly say that they're AI assisted. But she made that claim before she got this blowback. Now. Now, unfortunately, the blowback is a thing that happens online with a very small subset of people who pay attention to books or people who pay attention to romance. And that's a pretty small drop in the ocean of everyone who opens up a Kindle app and is just looking for their next read. Like, she's continued to do this because it's been successful for her and the ecosystem that allows that to be possible is the thing that I want us to look at.

[Vanessa]

And this is not going to be contained. Even if it makes sense to me that romance would be especially, you know, someone in the romance community might see this as an opportunity, that the same incentives exist in all parts of book publishing. It just the stakes may be lower, at least immediately. Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, I'm sure it's sci fi.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, right, exactly. It's self help and business books and whatever else you can imagine. Like I've said on the show that I bought an AI generated text that I didn't understand it was AI generated until I was noticing the repetition and the repeats of errors. That was in a, you know, SAT test prep book, which you would think is pretty structured and you're pulling from a bunch of stuff. And I think here that both the. Again, it wasn't everybody, but there are a couple of people that seemed genuinely upset that I was somehow implying that this is a romance problem. I think the romance tends to be early adopters for reasons you talked about. And this is the early adopting thing. That's next.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

Realized you were the son of a president? I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before.

[Vanessa]

FX's love story John F. Kennedy Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette I didn't think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I could love someone like this until you.

[Vanessa]

From Executive Producer Ryan Murphy it's not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A question of if I want to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Spend the rest of my life with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's if I'm cut out to be Mrs. JFK Jr. FX's love story John.

[Vanessa]

F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bassette. Watch now on FX, Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. Ever since I started serving cut water canned cocktails to my guests hey.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Hi. How are you?

[Vanessa]

Yeah, going through True I've gone from host to hero thanks to Cutwater. I can make real, perfectly mixed cocktails in seconds. It's as simple as garnishing a glass, cracking my can of cut water open and pouring it over ice.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cut water, real cocktails, perfectly mixed.

[Vanessa]

Copyright 2025 Cut Water Spirits, San Diego, CA Enjoy responsibly. And I will say this too. As much as I am not interested in the generated AI world, people were having not dissimilar reactions, not within romance, but outside. When romance is doing erotica or doing fanfic or self publishing, none of those things were welcomed with open arms, Rebecca. They just weren't. And there's a world in which 10 years we're going to be look back at this sort of nervousness about Gen AI as being naive and prudish in some way. So like, that's also been a track record that I want to keep. That maybe we're going to feel differently in five or 10 years as these things evolve. I don't know. Seems hard to imagine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the truth is, though, that there are people who feel differently about it now. There are people who are consuming hours of AI generated video every day and they know it's AI generated and they don't care because it's entertaining to them. And I'm sure that if Coral Hart put, you know, partially written by AI on her book covers in the Kindle app, she would lose some sales. But she'd probably not lose as many sales as all of us hope because there are people who like what is the mantra that we've heard the most in the time we've been working in books? I just want to read a good story.

[Vanessa]

I just want to read a good story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And if that's the truth, then which I believe to many people it is, then there are a lot of folks who are going to be much more open to this than than we are. And then the kinds of people who are engaged in literary culture for any kind of genre online are. We're talking just like tip, like really casual rank and file readers. Maybe not even people who think of themselves as readers, but who just like, you know, have to kill a couple hours on a flight. They don't care. And we have got to be honest about the fact that not only like this is serving some kind of market. And that's unfortunate, but it's true. And how do the rest of us want to try to work around it? What kind of pressures can we put on the industry to make the disclosure happen, at least so that people know what they're buying? I do believe that consumers have a right to know what they're getting.

[Vanessa]

Yeah. And the fear, and it comes here at the end. It's worth reading this whole thing because alter talks to some other authors. This particular author talked about how it's not good at writing, say plus size authors because the LLMs it's generating from don't have a lot of in there. So there's a lot of nooks and crannies that are interesting to think about. But I think the real terrifying takeaway, it comes at the very end which eventually readers will not care. This is something that Elizabeth west, who is using used AI to make this book. And that is the fear. I think people, if people really didn't think. If you. And I didn't really think there is a possibility that eventually authors. And here's the other thing that I think Coral west and the other authors that think they're using AI in their own. This will be available to any. You don't. You won't have to be an author to generate your own book at some point. Like, I don't think they realize that eventually it'll be. You can just put it in yourself and get the book you want. That's the end.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There was a book talker who went viral a couple of months ago because she said that she had been in a reading slump. So she put in all the tropes that she likes. I don't remember which genre, but she like loaded all of her favorite tropes into an LLM and asked it to write stories for her. And those were making her really happy because they were giving her exactly what she wanted. And she got dragged to hell and back, as you would expect for admitting that on the Internet. But people are already doing that like, like right now. The author as like in the coral heart model, as sort of middleman between large language model and consum is a viable mode of engagement. But when, if readers get to the point where they don't care that an author used AI, they will get to the point where they realize they don't need an author to use AI.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so as I said in the Today in Books piece, usually I try to think of any new technology or development as sort of being a set of trade offs or one thing. You get one thing, but you have to come up and you hope on the whole that you make a series of trade offs that's to the good and to the beautiful and useful that we want. I'm having a hard time today, Rebecca. I'm having a hard time with this one today where I guess, and I don't believe this. I guess if I sort of made it on if I was assigned the opposite end in the in like in high school debater, I would say if eventually I can get to the point where I can have my own personal ll generate exactly what I want or what stimul or I don't know, serve. The use that the whole publishing industry serves for me right now is presenting to me interesting psychologically rich sustaining reading experiences for essentially free immediately me as the user of that thing, my reading life will be infinitely improved. But I can barely choke those words out. Like I just don't see that as being a world we're going to live in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't either. I mean I think that a possibility here is we lose some current book buyers into this market. A different possibility is that there are people who are currently not paying for books and they're just gonna switch to maybe getting LLM generated stuff. I have like, I share this fear. Like the bottom of this slippery slope is gross and Alter has identified it in this piece. But I have a lot of faith in humans desire and appetite for art created by other humans. And that having been created by a person, like that connection that we feel when we read, when you go to the movies or you listen to music and you know that another person created this out of their ideas and their feelings and their experiences that's part of what makes it art. And I, I have actually quite a bit of faith that people are always going to desire something like that. It doesn't mean that it might not shrink the industry in ways that we don't like. Will certainly have negative effects. It's already having them. I guess. I'm not, I'm not actually really worried that we end up all the way at the bottom of that slope.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, there's a lot of stairs we can, there's a lot of slide for us to get burnt on on the way down, even if we don't hit it all the way there. But, you know, do read it and you know, if you, if you were seeing stuff. My case is not that the romance industry is even embracing AI. This is one particular user who may or may not represent other people. But this is the story we have in front of us. And frankly, it makes sense to try. I mean, the incentives are there. I don't know if it's going to happen. And for those people who think that you can use AI to detect AI, just think about what you're saying when you say that. Just. I'm not going to say any more about that, but just think about what you're saying and what you're relying upon there. All right, we better get to frontless foyer because we've gone a little bit long here already. I was thrilled to see your pick, but let me save that. I'll go first just because. Please do the stinger spot. While I was traveling, I read the Correspondent by Virgin Evans, which came out from Crown this year, an indie darling pick debut novel from Virginia Evans. It is written from the perspective of an older woman who has been. Who has remained an adherent of written letters. And she writes letters to neighbors and friends and families and community board members and all kinds of situations. And she is forthright, a little cantankerous. She has her opinions, which is great. She also has a fair amount of mini drama going on in her life. Being courted by two different people, estranged from her daughter. She's getting kicked out of her gardening club also, you know, all this sort of normal drama of a upper middle class life. She has a backstory that's pretty interesting and there's. I see why it's a hit. I enjoyed reading it quite a bit. I think in the era where people, some people are looking for books and also looking to get off their phones, reading a book about someone who's stubbornly analog is fun. And even I thought, what if I were the kind of person that wrote letters. I'm never going to be that person for a variety of reasons that don't bear going into here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can I please be on the list though? If you decide to try?

[Vanessa]

Yeah. The allure is there. And it also unfolds a little bit by a mystery because it is the letters in correspondence. Sometimes her, sometimes the correspondent. So you don't, you don't get everything right. Evans does not make a sentence as like, well, you remember how back in the day we used to do X just so to fill you back in. So part of it is a mystery to figure out what the dynamics are between these people, which is pretty fun. And then I don't want to spoil anything here, but it's sort of satisfying, maybe fantastically so. Not in terms of speculate, but things break pretty well on the whole for, for our protagonist. And it's satisfying and charming and really smart and beautiful. And I do, I don't want to underrate that. You go through it pretty quickly because it's, it's a letter. So you know, you get through one, you move on to the next. So there maybe is an attention span thing. It's playing upon here a little bit. Even it's purporting to be analog. I thought it was really fascinating. It's going to be wonderfully, generically recommendable to me. I so look forward to having it available to me to recommend to other people. So that's the correspondent Piper James Evans.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. I read Half his age by Jeanette McCurdy.

[Vanessa]

Both of my hands, I'm strapped in. I know nothing. I didn't know it was happening. Tell me about Half His Age.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was really good and I'm really glad that I read it. Yeah, I read it on flights. I started it on flight one and I was done by the time the layover was over. I didn't want to put it down for folks who are just catching up with us. Half his age is Jeanette McCurdy's debut novel coming on the heels of her her like sold like hotcakes memoir. I'm glad my mom died. She was a child star on I believe the Disney Channel. And this is a story about a teenage girl who has an affair with her creative writing teacher. But it is like not that kind of story about that. I took notes because it's been a few weeks and I like, I took notes when it was fresh. So Waldo is her name. She is like ragey and the rage is the like the driving emotion of this story. She's Disillusioned with teenage boys.

[Vanessa]

Wait, can I ask you something there? Is it told in the present test or is she looking back on the affair? Like how is that put together? Do you remember?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it's present tense.

[Vanessa]

Okay. She's mad in the moment. So not she's mad in the moment.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She'S mad at the moment. Like one of the very early scenes we are with Waldo while she's having really, really underwhelming sex with a teenage boy. I did read that part maybe first five pages. So she's just disillusioned with the experiences that are available to her as a teenager. Hungry for everything. She's self aware, but in that way that some teenagers are where it's like you're self aware but you're still really at the mercy of being a teenager. Her mom's a single mom and her mom had her when she was young and they're like closer than they should be, but in a way that's quite toxic. So she can see her mom's patterns and her mom's reliance on men for self esteem and for her own emotional regulation. But Waldo cannot see that she herself is doing the same thing. She's the instigator in this relationship with her creative writing teacher. And when she instigates it, he is like completely blindsided that this is a thing that has happened and he tries to resist, but not hard enough to keep it from happening. He's also a mess. It's an interesting portrait of and I think a creative of on point imagining of what kind of middle aged man is susceptible to go along with it. When his 17 year old student corners him in a classroom and kisses him one night, she, and then she's disappointed. Like it's intoxicating when she gets him. But ultimately that's disappointing as well because she has watched her mother try to be this woman who like, is just breezy and doesn't need anything and gives men whatever they want. And so she's performing that. But of course it's dissonant and it's empty and she is choosing these unavailable people. She says at one point, nothing turns me on like a man who isn't really there. There's this like unspoken and maybe even unrealized rage at her mother for teaching her these things. And then she's also aware enough of the dynamics of these kinds of relationships that young girls end up having with men who are preying on them to be. She's suspicious of her teacher's motives and of the way that he engages with her. Like, is he really complimenting her or is he using it to just try to make her behave in a more manageable way? That just like real awareness, I thought was a powerful tool in the text. And then there's this moment that really, for me, kind of captured everything where he's telling her, I love that you let me be who I am. As he's hanging his Clockwork Orange movie poster, like from the 70s, and working on his long abandoned novel and teaching her all about David Foster Wallace. And it's like the Jeanette McCurdy novel version of all the Kens singing Push in the Barbie movie of like, just let. The thing this man wants more than anything is just to tell you what he thinks is important. I mean, and there's all the stuff that the synopsis tells you there's going to be like, they have sex and it's uncomfortable and all sorts of things happen. But she really thinks of herself as the instigator and does not see herself as, as a victim or as someone who had been groomed. And even at one point a character says, dude, it sounds like you're pretty groomed. She wants to believe that she's in control of it. And that agency I found to be really compelling and a perspective in a story like this that I hadn't seen before. Probably the best possible version of it that it could have been. I don't want to spoil too much. Like the resolution is interesting. What Waldo comes through, or maybe out of the relationship thinking and having learned is interesting. But we don't get like 45 year old Waldo thinking back going like, oh man, maybe it was his fault all along. And the anger and the agency, what.

[Vanessa]

Made it really compelling, fascinating. A couple follow up questions. One is, does it help me feel better about Cormac McCarthy and his paramour?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh.

[Vanessa]

What can it do for me? Because remember, that's a great question. Actually, one of these questions we've been having is there's legal ages and I don't want to trouble any of that stuff, but how do we think about the agency of young people and especially young women? Is it the case? Is McCurdy making the case that does it feel like she's making one particular case or other about how to think about these kinds of relationship? Like, clearly not amazing, but also maybe not jailable or counselable in some way. Like, what is she adding to this complex understanding of dynamics and age and gender? Does it feel like there's moving the ball forward or is the point like this Just kind of sucks. I mean and maybe those two things can go together at the same time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm not sure she's making an argument for something like. I don't think that Jennette McCurdy the writer would sign off on. Yeah, yes, 17 year old girls should have relationships with middle aged men. It's all fine. But I think she really effectively gets into the head and the experience of a girl who instigated it and who enjoyed a lot of the parts of the relationship and just that acknowledgement that there are upsides for some girls who have this kind of relationship. That's risky.

[Vanessa]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I thought that was a really. I thought it was a brave choice to make like because she also then sees the downsides of made me more open to the idea that there are. That there are upsides that some teenage girl might pursue this. I still think a 40 year old man should not allow it to happen.

[Vanessa]

I mean that, that didn't frame. That's. I'm not trying to feel better about. Oh yeah, no, no. I do find interesting about where agents the blurry lines of agency is very interesting in all walks of life.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It is really interesting. And with the McCarthy question, the place that I have landed on that is that the woman is well into middle age now and she continues to frame that experience and that relationship with him as something that she desired and that was positive and generative in her life. And I don't know another woman's life better than she does. So I can think that McCarthy had questionable judgment.

[Vanessa]

But.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But her experience is what it is.

[Vanessa]

Yeah. Please don't do it. Please don't. Please don't do this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Really different from like the inverse of that was a book a couple years ago called Consent. I think Jill Clement was the writer who she had a relationship with a teacher when she was a young woman that in the moment was positive and they were married for decades. And after he died she started sort of looking at. Looking at it through a different lens kind of through a me too lens and wondering did she actually give consent? Was that the kind of relationship that she had told herself for decades that it was and reframing it. And I guess it's possible for waldo in the McCurdy book that as she gets older she might reframe it as well. But letting it be messy that McCurdy.

[Vanessa]

I think the messiness is the only right representation. Right. Like it's not universally one thing or universally the other. But please do not stay, you know, stay away from teenagers. Don't do that. You don't need to do this. This stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So to follow messy, stick around for Wuthering Heights.

[Vanessa]

Well, I guess I have two more questions. One would do you think I would find it interesting? And two, are you more or less interested in whatever McCurdy does next?

[Jeff O'Neill]

After reading oh more, I will pick up Jeanette McCurdy's next novel. I'll be curious about that. Just the willingness to dwell in this is messy. And to let the character be that messy. It was. It felt similar to, like Ottessa Moshfegh. In some ways.

[Vanessa]

That makes sense.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Vanessa]

What a comp for McCurdy. Best possible comp, really, for this kind of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Except I personally find Ottessa Moshfegh kind of performatively messy. And McCurdy felt more organic to me.

[Vanessa]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What was the other question?

[Vanessa]

Would I like, would I find it interesting to read? Or did I get enough from talking to you about it?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You reading this fills me with vicarious cringe.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So.

[Vanessa]

So you want me to read it is what I'm hearing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just. No, I don't. I don't like. I think I will be uncomfortable for 48 hours if I know you're reading it.

[Vanessa]

Okay. I'm thrilled to hear it's good and interesting. That's. That's good for books, that's good for McCurdy. That's good for all kinds of things and. Sounds like a welcome. A welcome addition to the discourse of a female sexuality, especially adolescent.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's complicated. The way that Waldo sees all of the men in her life is sharp and ragey. Like nobody gets, you know, off easy.

[Vanessa]

Are you saying that McCurdy may be charting on authors we don't want to be perceived by? She's. She's making a case.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think. I think I might do okay as a woman, but maybe you want to duck.

[Vanessa]

And I don't like. I, I. My first thought was, I hope Jeanette McCurdy has never hesitation to know my name, name what I look like. Anything related to that. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She'd come for your collection of Harold Bloom books from your teenage.

[Vanessa]

I've got two Harold Blue books. Let's be careful out there, too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Too many for a teenage boy.

[Vanessa]

I want to say this Harold Bloom books is not equivalent to your Clockwork Orange poster. It's just not people. It's not. That's a degree of nerdiness that goes beyond beyond.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right.

[Vanessa]

I also had Camille Paglia. Come on. Let's go. So stick around for Rebecca and Vanessa. Talking about the film of Wuthering Heights. She has no idea what she's about to say, which is very exciting for all of us. Yeah, gonna be Rebecca.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thank you.

[Vanessa]

We'll talk to you soon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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Maybe it's Maybelline.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, Vanessa, here we are. Last night from opposite sides of the continent, very sadly for us, we both went to see Wuthering Heights. How are you doing?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm Wuthering. I'm. I'm fine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know folks are really curious. It's been killing us over less than 24 hours to not talk to each other about this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't even think I've messaged you on slack today almost at all. Just in the like sense that what if something I say betrays these feelings? So.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, let's just jump right into it then, because I know we've got folks who are just trying to decide are they gonna go see it or not. So let's start at the for the purists, is this a faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights? If you like the book, what do you think is in store for people?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is about as faithful to Wuthering Heights as like, I am still Catholic, which is took some of the sparkly bits with me and moved on. No, it is absolutely not a faithful adaptation. It is very loose.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I Agree. I think there's actually maybe an inverse correlation between your attachment to the book and how much you can enjoy this movie in the bathroom afterwards. So my theater was full and it was mostly women in groups. It was like a girls night situation. There were a couple men, like maybe some early Valentine's Day dates. But in the restroom afterwards, the chatter, it was just all chatter. Like there was a lot of talk and a couple. I overheard a couple of people. I was washing my hands and one of them went, that was horny as hell. I have to read this book. And before I knew what I was doing, I turned with wet hands to the whole bathroom to go. That's not. I'm so sorry to tell you that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is my sister in science. No, I thought my theater was packed. And it turns out, which makes sense, like, because of our time zones. I went to see it really early. It was only like a 320 showing. And it was actually the one right after that was like sold out. So it was me and like four people, which made it really like, I want. I kept looking around like someone react with me, but there was just no way because we were sitting so globally far apart from each other at this theater. But yeah, it is. It was an experience. I'm so excited to get to talk more about this. But yeah, right off the top. And I actually have a little down the line in the conversation some thoughts from one of our book Riot contributors who is a purist.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It is her favorite book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She has a PhD in English. And like Emily Bronte.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, God, I'm so sorry for her.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Correct. So anyway, there's gonna be. This will be a juicy conversation, I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Think is the answer for that. So my headline on Wuthering Heights is that it's wet, cold and surprisingly slimy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I saw a review that said this is a very moist film. And like, yeah, we could leave. That does it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There are. There are egg yolks. There is rain. There are blood, all kinds of bodily fluids. There's a snail that is doing some symbolic work.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's really Jacob Elordi standing in the rain. And I really desperately wanted the old Maroon 5 song about, like, I don't mind spending every day out on your corner in the pouring rain. I wanted that to come on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Given the anachronism of some of the soundtrack, that would have actually been kind of welcomed in this moment. But I don't think it was broody enough. Songs about Jane doesn't hit the brood factor.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So if it's not a faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights. What is it?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think we. Shortly before this, we only shared one thought with each other, and that is that we both had a verbatim, verbatim summation of what this book is and that it is essentially BDSM fanfiction. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Like, go with gods, like, and have fun out there. Yeah, Weirdly, I landed at a place of, like, it's not that I hated it, it's just in the context of what it is supposed to be an adaptation of. This is a really interesting conversation with respect to, like, who has attempted to adapt it. The common thing we see when this book is adapted, the fact that I am still convinced that the primary stars of this book who claim in interviews to have read it as part of the research, like, either you didn't and you're lying, or you only finished half of it. I don't know. But, like, there's. There's just no way. This is not the love story that it is being pitched at.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It is not. It is. So for folks who do know Wuthering Heights, or maybe if you don't, like, if you want to do the whole deep dive, we did that on zero to well read this week. So you can find that in the feed of what actually happens in this book and why it is, in fact, not a romance. But the headline is that Catherine and Heathcliff grow up as, like, pseudo siblings. Her father takes Heathcliff in when he's been abandoned by his family. And as adults, they realize that they want each other, but they can't be together for reasons both social, but mostly economic. Heathcliff has no money. Catherine's family is falling into ruin because her father is bad at being a person who has money. And so she strategically marries the neighbor who is very rich. This ruins Heathcliff. He then strategically marries the neighbor's sister, also to get money, but all but to punish Catherine. And then Catherine dies at the halfway mark of the book, and Heathcliff spends the rest of the book punishing people and, like, literally abusing people and just being a. An asshole.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cruel and unusual like it is. It is dark stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Cruel and unusual. Yeah, it's really dark. In the movie, some of that happens, but they do have an affair with each other. So the book is all unrequited love and yearning. And the movie is. It's very requited. They requite it quite a bit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's requited in here, there and everywhere. It is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's requited. And there, like, all of the relationships in the movie are defined by, like, shifting power dynamics. Domination, humiliation, submission, pain. The need to feel something to distract yourself from pain, and the need to make someone else hurt. And who's doing this and who's subject to it shifts around constantly. Everyone does it and everyone is subject to it. And then that dynamic infuses the sexuality of the, like all the way through the film. I think that, as I, like, after I got through, like, wow, that is really not a Wuthering Heights movie. I have a lot of respect for Emerald Fennell. I think this is kind of genius. Like, Wuthering Heights has this cultural cachet where people think of it as, like, I think the idea of Wuthering Heights is bigger than the book itself. And people think of it as this great romantic story. And so she got people in the door with the idea of Wuthering Heights, and then she's getting to tell them, yeah, this fanfic that she is pretty honest about, having been writing in her head since she was a teenager. Like, there are interviews with Emerald Fennell where she says that the reason that the title of the film has quotation marks around it, it's Wuthering Heights, is that it's not necessarily the story of the book, but this is the story as she read it and imagined it when she was a kid.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I kind of want to be like, just do Jane Austen next and, like, really piss people off.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, Like, I, I, I can't actually decide 100% where I land here, especially after talking to. And the person I was talking about earlier is Emily Martin, who, like, we had very different reactions to watching, like, she was like, oh, my gosh. I cried when I left because I was so sad because it's my favorite book. And, like, this was really tragically bad in so many ways, you know? And I, it is. I'm not on the Jeff Rebecca, where, like, I'm not a person who I, I'm not Emily. I'm right in the middle. Like, I, I enjoyed the book. I thought it was really and weird when I was reading it in a way that I was like, this clergyman's daughter wrote it. Like, this is kind of sick. So, like, I dug it for those reasons. But a piece of me is just like, then go, like, just do the fanfic of it and say that it was inspired by this fever dream half remembrance you have of Wuthering Heights, but don't call it Wuthering Heights. And obviously that's also, I think, a marketing, Like, I get that There's a reason why all this happens. But I'm like, just go off and say, you wrote this smutty fanfic in the way that you wanted to write it. And that would take away part of. Cause the. There are bits of it that I take issue with. There's bits of it that I'm like, you delightful weirdo. I only recently saw Salt. Saltburn. And so the combination of, like, those two things in juxtaposition, like, yeah, Emerald.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Fennel is weird and edgy, and the sex is not the weirdest part of the movie, you know, and we're not here to kink shame anybody. These are consenting adults. Go with God, whatever. But I think she owes a huge debt to EL James for normalizing this kind of storytelling and pitching it towards a literary audience. Even if my impression was that most of the people who were there on the day before the technical release day, these people had bought advanced tickets. I think they were there because of the trailers and the Jacob Elordi of it all. My experience in the bathroom afterwards was not that people knew what they were getting into with the store. And that was kind of fascinating. Like, oh, this has superseded its own reputation in a lot of ways. Is it a good movie?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is the part I cannot come up with a great answer for, because if you just, like, if in my brain, which I know I can't do, but I'm like, okay, remove the Wuthering heights of it. Like, just. Just kind of go with the film. I do think for people that like Emerald Fennel, like, I think there's. There's something there where it is, like, an. It's hard to call it enjoyable because some of the stuff that happens in this book is not enjoyable. Right. But as far as, like, whether it's good, yeah, I think I did have, like, a good time. If nothing from the WTF of it all, the. The approach that she takes to imagery, the anachronism, which is both. I don't know. I feel like if you're gonna go anachronistic, I think I almost would have wanted her to go, like, full freaking throttle, like, you know, a la Sofia Coppola, Marie Antoinette. Like, there was the. The half classical music, half Charlie X was a funny vibe. And then again, the parts that relate to the book itself. Like, the part that I keep coming back to because, like, I agree what you said, that she, like, did this really brilliant thing where she got people in the door and was very, you know, vocal about the fact that she was not going to Be faithful to this text. So, like, in that sense, she never lied. But I've seen so many interviews with the cast. I watched a ton of them in preparation for the show between. And some of them were just her, and some of them were her with the two main stars, Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie. And when asked, the actors consistently answer with some version of like, yes, we absolutely read this book, you know, as prep. And, like, we wanted to tell the love story. I'm like, okay, so either you're lying or, like, lying about which part? Did you just not read it, or did you read it and misunderstand it? Like, I don't understand. Because at that point would have been the place to jump in and be like, hey, y', all, we are telling this love story that, like, we absolutely understand is not at all, like, a central theme to this. Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. There's a totally other way of marketing this that I think would have also been successful. That was, like, Wuthering. Like, this is the version of Wuthering Heights that you've been wanting since you were a teenager, because so many of the people who are really attached to it, like, wish that Catherine and Heathcliff could have gotten together. And this is like the alternate. The what if? The alternate universe, I think. But to market it that way would rely on people's familiarity with the story. And this way, you just get to rely on the. The aura of Wuthering Heights. I felt like, technically it was a good movie, but spiritually it was kind of hollow, if that makes sense.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's probably what I'm trying to get at. Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, the houses look like contemporary art museums.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

My notes say, are these the Mines of Moria? Like, at one point, the, like, weird version they did with the actual Wuthering Heights estate is, like. It at times looks like the Ministry of Magic from the Harry Potter movies with, like, the black shiny tiles. And then, like, the next minute, you're in that weird, like, volcanic.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know, like, a sculptural thing coming down through a fireplace that was like, oh, that really looks like a contemporary art museum installation. And when Catherine goes back to Wuthering Heights when her father has died and he's drunk himself to death, it appears there are stacks of beer bottles up against. Or gin bottles. I think it is up against the wall. And the way that those are avalanching and just, like, set up to be that way also. It looks like the broad art museum stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, the set design was beautiful. The costuming is really beautiful. I think the costume designer is probably going to get an Oscar nomination for this, but it is like, it's balls out weird. I just had a hard time connecting to all of that because so much is happening. So much you sort of can't take it all in. And that felt like that wasn't what Fennell was going for. Did you see Marty Supreme? Have you seen that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, but that's every time I. Yeah, people keep bringing this up. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, that's also just like, sensory overload, and you kind of feel like you're hanging on by your fingertips the whole time, but it's intentionally. And I felt like I couldn't quite get up my arms around Wuthering Heights, but I didn't think that that was on purpose. Like, there's just too much happening.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The. Everything from the. So the opening scene, which I think is, you know, meant to set a tone. I just don't know that I liked it. But, like, you know, you're. It's quiet. You're hearing sounds that could go in many directions that for a second maybe sound like sexy times on a bed, whether with a person or solo, we're not sure. And then the, you know, screen opens up and you realize that everybody's witnessing hanging and the sounds you've been hearing are somebody, you know, essentially. Yeah. Like, hanging and dying in real time. And you see this young little Kathy, like, gleefully and joyfully, like, cheer. Everybody's so excited, which is not, you know, ahistorical. Like, people really did attend hangings in this way, and it was, you know, gross and voyeuristic. But, like, the person that's hanging has. Has a stiff member. And, like, everybody's kind of gawking at the, like, look at that of it. And, like, I get. I get if I'm trying to my art hat on, right, that it's like you're about to watch a film that really blurs the line between, like, sexual titillation and, like, violence and obsession or something. And, like, here you go. But then the. I think I say this every time we talk about any old book. And so I'm sorry, this is just who I am. I'm a plot girl. But the, like, build that we get between the time that they're children to, like, okay, now we're adults who are, like, weirdly obsessed with each other is kind of quick. Like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And actually that's faithful to the book because one of them, which it is. Complaints about the book was, okay, so people are obsessed with each other, but we never see Them fall in love. We never understand where that comes from.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I thought, based on the way Emerald Fennell was setting this up, that she was going to lean into that. And it feels like she should have almost, because that is the whole setup, right. Is that you're building this love story and it's like. I don't know, it just felt very. What's the favorite Rebecca ism. Like, there's a lot of telling versus showing. It's like, I will follow you anywhere, no matter what happens at any time, even if I'm used, because I love you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it's like, oh, but don't follow me when I'm just trying to have a wank out on the moors. Thank you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Please, please. Thanks. I just need some solo time. Yeah. And then they said, visually, it's just. You're so. It's arresting visually, which is something. It's beautiful. But your. Your eyes are. I was trying to feel some of the moments and instead was like, look at this Heidi looking mother effort, like, just in her funny little plaid, like, corset. I by way.

[Vanessa]

The.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The way died of laughter. When she goes. When Kathy goes. Which in, you know, this version of the. In the film, it's not. She's not a young Kathy who sprained her ankle peeping on them. She's an adult who, like, you know, looked over the hedge and fell. And so she stays at Thrush Cross Thrust Cross Grange for six weeks. When she gets back, her hair is tied back and she's got some jazzier outfits on. But the way everybody. When she gets down from the carriage is like, you are transformed. I'm like, oh, hot. Margot Robbie is still hot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Suddenly got hot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, no. Oh, her hair is pulled back from her face. She is unrecognizable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I think also, like, to that point, a large degree of your enjoyment of this will be. How hot do you think Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are? I saw this in imax, and that is Jacob Elordi. Yeah, he's already too tall. But IMAX was too much Jacob Elordi.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He was towering over people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He's not my flavor. And so. And I think that doomed me. Like, I spent a lot of time. I'm thinking, if somebody else that I find attractive had been cast as Heathcliff, would I be having a different experience of this movie?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's possible, because I did definitely get that reaction from other people. Like, but he's so hot. No, not. He's a lovely human. It's just. He said he's maybe my flavor, but I was like, sure, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I like to be very talented, but this is. I mean, it is softcore porn adjacent. And so, like, if you're. If it's supposed to serve the function that that kind of art and media serves of, like, imagine yourself into these moments. Jacob Elordi was just not gonna do it for me. Like, no matter how good the movie was or not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, especially in the beginning when he was really giving White Jesus with that haircut. Yeah, too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, when are we gonna get this generation's Jesus movie? And it needs to be Jacob Elordi.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Especially in, you know, whatever. We're full blown spoiler territories. But there's this scene where he, you know, Catherine essentially voyeuristically ends up stumbling upon a liaison between. Who in the book are these, like, two older characters? And in this version with one of the brothers from House of the Dragon, Ewan Mitchell, which is a very different role for him, there's a little pony.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Play happening in the barn with the.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Stuff like the ant, the accoutrement that one uses in, like, butchery and like, bridling of a horse. And so when Jacob Lordy's character, you know, Heathcliff is like, basically comes to shut her up before she makes a noise and that comes up behind her and puts one hand over her mouth and like one over her. Her eyes. And it's just this whole of her hearing these people get it on. But he has the full blown white Jesus look about him in those moments still. And I was like, I need to look. This is so much.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He just is so sweaty through so much.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is a moist film. Like, my notes from the first few minutes are like, ew, albumin.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. There is a very viscous moment of him dragging a finger through an egg yolk and then there's somebody kneading bread in a way that's like whatever the inverse of ASMR is. It's that where you're like, yeah, it's juicy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Juicy, it is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And there's even a moment, and I don't know if it was intentional or not, but there's a moment where, like, they're having a fight out in the rain and he's chasing after her, trying to cover her up with his jacket, and she's like, what are you doing? And he goes, you're wet. And my whole theater erupted in laughter.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yep. I absolutely cracked up. I was like, oh, this is. We're going for it. I know entirely too much between this film and Saltburn about how Emerald Fennell feels about sexual secretions in a way that I am not 100% comfortable. But again, in not a non king shamy way. I'm just like, girl, you are working this theme in. I was waiting with baited breath about like, are we going to get the. The disinterring of Kathy? Cuz what I know about Saltburn makes me extremely trepidatious. But we did not care because as said, this does not cover that second half.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We did not go there. This ends after Catherine dies, which is the midway point of the book. And it ends with him, you know, with. With Heathcliff weeping over her. The woman two seats down from me was crying, which I was kind of surprised by.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But Rebecca, I have a sad confession which is in spite of sitting through that whole film going, oh my God.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did it get you?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I started sobbing and then I got angry at myself because I was like, I'm not supposed to like these people. Which is, which is one of my gripes, right, is I'm not supposed to like these people. People, they are horrible. Like again, we can have so much conversation about the creative ballad of the film. But like the book is the. Some of those like core themes of this book are just so flattened by this story. Like we really don't get any of that discussion of like what obsessive love and like the racism, the class. So I was angry at myself for having this reaction.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I would sit there like I think that happens. And I think you people, like, you need an outlet at the end of a film like that. There's just so much build up, frankly. And it was really interesting that woman was crying. But then when the lights, when the movie ended and the lights came up, everybody in my theater just had the giggles.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's amazing. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I was like, this is fascinating because it is not a funny scene, it's not a funny note, but you could feel that sort of collective tension. Yeah, the room just needed somewhere to go. And then everybody giggled it out. And then it was just constantly right into the bathroom line and that like, okay, we all just like. I turned to the woman next to me and I couldn't tell what her take had been. And I was like, that was a movie we saw.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And again the fact that you were all giggling when the literal final scene is like a fade to black of him gripping her corpse, like just laying in bed next to her, her dead body and everything.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And for me at least that's maybe also a reflection of like that. I thought the individual performances were good. Jacob Elordi is good. Margot Robbie is good. But they lacked, like, a friction. I didn't believe them together. Like, the chemistry didn't quite work for me. Or maybe I felt like there wasn't much chemistry between them.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I couldn't tell. Again, I got to that place where it's like, now we're one minute we're kids and like, killer, we care about each other. And then in the next, it's like, oh, we're slapping each other and pushing each other around and teasing each other on the moors. There's like, I. I also maybe the. Watching as many interviews as I did soured me from the fact that they seem really just like friends, like, friendly. And so all I kept seeing was more of, like a bantery, brother, sister relationship. And so when it got down to, like, the get down of it all, I don't. I don't know. I'm not. I don't know if I'm full on the. Rebecca, There is. There is. There is tongue, like a lot of it. And you waving in the. Yeah, there's, you know, whatever the asmr. Like you said of it all is. It's. It's there. Yeah. In a way that again, requited.

[Vanessa]

Great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But thoughts?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do want to shout out some of the supporting performances.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

These are my favorite.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Hong Chao as Nelly Dean, who in the book is the maid but gets sort of converted into a companion here. She was wonderful. Alison Oliver plays Isabella, who becomes Catherine's sister in law and eventually Heathcliff's wife. The best comic relief in the film. And she just goes for it. She was really funn. She was. Did you watch Task?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was gonna say she is in Saltburn and in Task. And the juxtaposition of all three of those characters give this lady a prize.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, wow, real range on her. And then Owen Cooper from adolescence.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Adolescence.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. He's young Heathcliff. So that was cool to see the. I thought the side characters were really wonderful. I think my note for people. And if Emerald. If I get to be the studio and give Emerald Fennell a note, it's. Don't mistake weird for substance. Substantive. Like, the weird of it all is doing a lot of work.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So much work.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. That can come across as, like, this must be deeper than you're capable of grasping. And sometimes it's just weird for weird sake.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's just weird for the sake of weird sake, which is a thing I. You know what's my favorite word? Something needs to feel organic. And there were parts of this that just felt Weird for the sake of weird. Like, what about, you know, there's this Satan's jello mold scene.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was gonna say let's talk about our unhinder hinge notes for a minute before we get out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, you're gonna get the notebook out. But Margot Robbie just, like, sticks her finger in this terrible. There's also a review I saw that was like, I've never seen aspect more times in a film than I have, like, in this movie, which is also true. And she just, like, sticks her finger in this terrible jello mold that has a fish inside. And it's just, like, prodding her finger through the sticky of the aspect to, like, put it in the fish's mouth. I'm like, there is nothing about that scene that really needed that. It just felt like this would be weird and okay, but I. I don't know. It. A lot of this felt like shock for shock's sake in a way that I was like, ah, okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's my unhinged. My most unhinged note was, this is Satan's jello mold. Like, she's just. Fingers go into all kinds of things here. And, like, what you saw Emerald Fennell say in that interview before the film of, like, that there's not much nudity. That's true.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's true. 100%. But there's like a really weird soup. Like, pan over to, like, pig's feet that look right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, everything happens under skirts and, like, you know, and really up close, like, as you were saying, it's like their tongues and their faces with, like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

His hair's Yorkshire. Like, do you like that? I gotta go. I mean, I think he did a pretty decent Yorkshire accent, but there was just. I don't know. I look at him and I think I'm just also at that place where, like, oh, I'm older than, like, the current cast of Hotties, right? And so there's a big bit of, like, the outrage that maybe goes into that. The side character thing. I wanted to go back to her for a second because I'm really conflicted about how I feel about Alison Oliver. I love her performance. The. The. The whole part up until she gets with Heathcliff is like, the best comic relief. She's such a weirdo. One of my unhinged notes is, oh, I didn't know I was signing up for the Dollhouse Murders Yorkshire edition. Like, that door, the Dollhouse thing is, like, super funky, and she's just a little weirdo. I love her.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The recasting or you Know, rewriting of Isabella Linton's character, who, as we said, Heathcliff, marries her to basically make Kathy jealous. On the one hand, I was like, okay, because it's very consensual, which feels like a kind of. I was gonna say feels is the active word here. Right where he straight up, like, goes into her bedroom dripping. Like he always is talking about. I am specifically going to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Always dripping.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Stays dripping, stays dripping. Stripping. It's like, can I. I'm gonna. I can do these things to you if you like. By the way, I'm never gonna like it. I'm doing this specifically to make her jealous. Should I stop? There's this whole scene where that continues. He keeps asking her if he wants her to stop. And then they do get married, and then their relationship is cast as this, like, funky, sadomasochistic thing where she's into it. She's into the abuse.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She partakes in it as well. She feels empowered by it. There is a weird little dog collar seed. And I say weird, not in a kink shame weird. Like, it's jarring to Nellie, who comes back thinking that because all the while, the, like, kink of it is that they're writing letters together that are supposed to be on his behalf to Kathy to be like, give up the charade already. Like, let's. Like, why are we ignoring each other the whole time Nelly is burning these letters? Or Nellie comes to save her, thinking that she's suffering, and she's like, wink, wink. I'm fine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And she literally winks.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Literally winks. And the part of me that does know the source material, that knows the she, she is a domestic abuse victim in, like, the cruelest, most draconian ways for the rest of the book. And as just a woman in the world who, you know, domestic violence is a thing, I had a funky feeling about that recasting. Because I think the arty or, like, the people that are going to tell me to shut up about this are like, that's just them assigning her agency. And, like, it's going to be a reclaiming. And I've seen a few takes from that, from people that I respect, but I felt icky about because it basically felt like, well, since we have to kind of acknowledge that he ends up being cruel and weird, and we're not gonna get to the whole second half of the film. We're just gonna say they both were into it. And I don't know how I feel about that. In spite of loving Alice and Oliver's performance yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Her performance is wonderful. But I agree that that's a really tricky change that they made to the plot. And just the whole setup of it. Like, Isabella is so hilariously innocent, and it's played for laughs. Like, how much she doesn't know. So it's performed consent. When he's like, this is how bad it's gonna be. Do you want me to stop? This is how evil I'm gonna be. Do you want me to stop? And she says, yes, but, like, she does not know what she's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No. What she's signing up for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And there's a real. I mean, I'm very curious about what the discourse is gonna do here, because if you remember, the discourse when 50 shades of gray was out there was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sorry.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And, like, I don't have any more faith in the Internet now than I had in 2020.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, I have. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

To have a nuanced conversation about BDSM practices and consent and. And also, like, what art does to things. Like E.L. james, you could make a case was trying to do a more straightforward presentation of that kind of relationship. And nothing is straightforward with Emerald Fennell at all. Like, she's not making an argument for anything. I think, actually, that's where I landed the most.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That might be the message, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Say, yeah, what is. Is she trying to say anything? Or is this just a, like a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A thing to look at, an experience to have?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It might be thing to look at is when I put my status on Slack yesterday that I was going to, like, leave to not slack, Google Chat, whatever, to go watch the film I initially wrote off to watch Leather and Latex, AKA Weathering Heights. And, like, if I had to give it a subtitle, that's what it would be. Because it's like, this is again, it's a visual film. Like, if. If you are a person who just really diggs visually interesting films that, like, care not for. Yeah, exactly. Is all vibes and, like, go forth because you will have a good time marveling at what looks like cellophane on a wedding night. Okay. To my other unhinged note, which was like, what in the disco Red Riding Hood, when she, like, goes to see her dad and she's wearing this, like, obnoxious red, like, Sparkle Town cape. And then underneath is almost looks like silver gilded giraffe print. Like, it's just the weirdest costume set I've ever seen. So, you know, in that sense, it's a good time. But I don't know, I just kind of walked away going, what Yeah, I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Think this is a movie you go to for the spectacle and probably a generation of teenagers are going to have sexual awakenings to it when it's on streaming.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I believe so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Be careful out there, everybody.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just feel for everybody that doesn't have the little Jiminy Rebecca on their shoulder to be like, hey, hey, this is not what you thought. Maybe don't read that book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I am kind of delighted by the bait and switch of this. Like, how many people are going to go by Wuthering Heights and be like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What is this Lockwood fella? Why is he still talking?

[Jeff O'Neill]

What do you mean she dies? What do you mean there's no sex? Like, the thing she comes back, right. Last night was. If this movie worked for you, you are not going to like the book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Nope. You're just not. You're just so. As much as I also loved Nellie's character, that was a thing that, that I also like kind of felt a little like funny buys. It kind of like blamed everything on her and just like a miscommunication. And like, as we all know, if you've ever heard me talk about like my least and best things that I like about romance, whenever the romance comes down to like a miscommunication, it had better be a good one. And not that this one wasn't good because it tracks in the sense that at least it's not modern. We're like, a simple text message could have cleared this up. It's not that, but again, almost having like an external source for like why these people were kept apart from each other. And not that they're both just terrible and manipulative people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. The thing Jeff said on the zero to well read episode is this feels like the book feels like it's Romeo and Juliet. But if everyone was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But if everybody were dicks, absolutely.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's a great pitch for this movie.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I also, by the way, love because I always tell people there are two films that when people tell. Or two bodies of work. Because I. It's not films necessarily, but when people are like, oh my God, the love story, there are two that when they tell me that, I'm like, who hurt you? One of them was Wuthering Heights and the other is Romeo and Juliet. I mean, there's many, but those are two. And I love that I got a doe eyed, nutty performance from Alison Oliver extolling the virtues of Romeo and Juliet in that garden with that, like actual.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Romeo and Juliet shout out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was like, this is that part fed me. That was Great. Just because it kind of proved my point.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I look forward to. To, like, seeing people put this on their seat back. Entertainment on planes and then be completely confused by it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And me being like, I actually want that to happen next to me. I would deeply enjoy getting to be like, hello, I'm here to talk to you about your extended warranty and also how this movie is not at all what you think it's going to be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, buckle up, sister.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Buckle up, sister. Or the Converse, where I see them reading the book and be like, real ones now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, Vanessa, any final thoughts? Anything you just have to get off your chest or out of your notebook.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm looking at all these notes. I did comment that the. Again, the haircut stylings of Mr. Heathcliff were interesting because one minute he was white Jesus. And then in the next, he kind of looked like a haircut he could have worn, like, literally right now. And because of the way they cropped it into that funky little. I don't know, it's like kind of a modern mullet. When he, like, would rip his shirt off, it would fluff out in a way that made him look like Wolverine. And that just didn't do it for me because. Especially because right after that, he was licking the walls that were design designed by Edgar to look like Catherine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, her face.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Skin walls.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, we got skin walls. I didn't know that was a thing we were going to experience.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They were veiny and weird.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They were veiny, yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's just. If it can be licked, it is licked in this film.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a takeaway. My other thing that I kept seeing in reviews is, let's just stop calling Heathcliff the bad boy of, like, literature. He's. He's a bad man. He's not a bad boy. Like, don't. Don't do that. But, like, yeah, sure. Il Albumin is definitely one of my favorite takeaways from this. Just because it was.

[Vanessa]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Overall, again, I. Yes. I especially feel bad for the purists. I was talking with Emily about it, and this is a book that, like, means so much to her. And she kind of had that same takeaway that we had early on, which is just that, like, this feels like fan fiction. And because you flattened so many of the things that, like, mean so much to me, like, this feels, like, hurtful to have called an adaptation. I don't have the same attachment to her that she does, so, like, I can maybe enjoy parts of it. But, yeah, I mean, like, girl, you succeeded if what you were making is fan fiction. But if you are a person for whom this particular body of literature is very like, near or you want to see something that like, is meaty and gets into the issues of the book not to be found in this particular book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If this is one of your sacred texts, this is going to be tough sledding for sure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Also, Emily said no ghosts and I was like, no ghosts.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No ghosts. And there's like this book. The movie is so weird. You could totally have some ghosts. Like, why not?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like you could have. Instead you got substances. Gooey.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Everything's just gooey. Yeah, secretions.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We got there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, Vanessa, thank you as always for riding along with me on these adaptation journeys.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Anytime. I don't know that anything's going to beat this one and the like how unhinged it gets. But I welcome the audience opportunity. So let's keep our eyes out for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whatever else Scarlet has been thrown has until next time. Thanks everybody for listening. You can find show notes in your podcatcher or@book riot.com. listen, you can email [e-mail] and if you appreciate the public service we have just performed for you, I wouldn't hate it if you smashed a five star review on your podcatcher helps other folks find their way to the show.

[Vanessa]

Show.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We'll be back next week. Thanks, Vanessa.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thank you.

[Vanessa]

Hello everyone.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Takui here and I'm Gabby and we are the hosts of History of Everything, a podcast which you can probably guess by the name is. Well, I mean, it's about everything. Do you want to know why people thought potatoes were evil and would give you sick syphilis? Are you curious about all the stories of the terrible and stupid ways that people have kicked the bucket over the years? Do you want to hear tales about all of the different badasses of history and the lives that they had brought to life? Well, if so, then look no further. History of Everything is just the right podcast for you. It's available on Spotify, Pandora and anywhere else that you get your podcast from. Join us for some fun and just see how weird and wacky history can be.