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- [00:06]
A
This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.
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B
I'm Nomi Frye.
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C
And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. How are you guys?
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A
Absolutely hanging on by a thread.
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C
That's it.
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B
I came into the studio today and I said, is, quote, unquote, Mercury in quote, unquote, retrograde, because things have just been going. Going wrong.
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C
October in New York, baby.
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A
It's not, by the way. I mean, it's not Mercury.
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B
It's not.
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A
Whatever that is. It's not.
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B
Nonetheless, we are fighting for our lives.
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C
Fighting for our lives. And yet. And yet gathered here once again for what is really becoming a tradition here at Critics at Large. My friends, it's time for the franchise. I need a critic.
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B
Oh, yes.
- [01:01]
A
Thank goodness.
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C
I've been trying to figure out why we love doing these so much. I think it's, first of all, hearing the wonderful voices and minds of our listeners, which is just the best thing in the world. But, I mean, what's so great about it?
- [01:14]
A
Oh, I know. What's so great about it? There are a few things. One is, as you say, just being in communion with the listeners. The second thing I think is that it's really fun to just stretch our minds in all these different directions. It's like a little like rapid fire challenge. Go, go, go, go. That's fun. And then I think the third thing is that right now, when everybody wants to put questions into chatgpt and just seek answers from the great AI, there is something wonderful about humans talking to and helping humans. We believe in it.
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C
I like that.
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B
Yeah.
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C
This is bespoke advice. So here's what's on the docket for today. As you know, if you're a longtime listener, we've been collecting submissions about the specific cultural dilemmas that are coming up in your lives right now. And today we get to hear what you sent in. And altogether, we're gonna try to figure out some answers. We also, though, have. I can't even. It's impossible to say how special a guest. A very special guest, let's say. Dialing in on the Critics at Large hotline. And that's today on Critics at Large, another scintillating of I need a critic. All right, the Critics at Large hotline is open. And is that. I think we're getting a call.
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B
Ring, ring.
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C
Hello?
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B
Who's on the line?
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D
Hello?
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B
Oh, my God. As I live and breathe.
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C
Wow.
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B
It is Actor Morgan Spector, known to many of you as Mr. Russell on HBO's wonderful show, the Gilded Age.
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C
Look what the horse and buggy dragged in.
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A
Exactly. To which all three of us are addicted.
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B
We should love the Gilded Age. We love Morgan. We even love Mr. Russell, even though he is a pitiless capitalist. Although he does have some pity. Right, Morgan? Would you say?
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D
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, he's not entirely up for just wholesale slaughter of his workers. That's a redeeming feature.
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B
Right. And he's a girl dad.
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D
He's a girl dad. Yeah, that's right. That's right. As a father of daughters, as a.
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B
Father to a daughter, Mr. Russell is a sympathetic character. Anyway, Morgan, we're so excited to have you here. I should note I am proud to be a close personal friend of yours in real life, irl. But I also know that you are an avid listener to critics at large.
- [03:59]
D
That is, in fact, the case. I think I'm a completist. I think I've listened to every episode.
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C
Wow.
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D
And I love the advice episodes. I think they're so beautiful.
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B
Yeah. And so when we were planning to do this iteration of I Need a Critic, I said, why shouldn't Mr. Russell call in? Because I should reveal that we call you amongst ourselves Mr. Russell, even though we do know your actual name.
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A
We understand what acting is. We get it.
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B
No, what if we don't get it?
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A
We barely get it, but we try.
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D
You can continue. That's fine. Whatever feels more comfortable.
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B
Right, right. Well, okay, we're gonna. Yeah, we're gonna refer to you as Morgan today. And, Morgan, you have a cultural question for us, do you not?
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D
I do. I do. My question is, how do I know if a poem that I write is actually a poem or if it's just, like, some emo scribbling that I've done? I guess I should get some context for this question, which is, did you see this clip of Ethan Hawke that was going around a few years ago where he's talking about the necessity for human creativity? Do you know what I'm talking about?
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A
This is interesting, but it sounds very much like Ethan Hawke.
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D
Yeah, yeah.
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A
Like I can imagine it.
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D
In preparation for this call, I looked up the text of it. Can I just read it to you briefly?
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A
Absolutely.
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D
Okay, great. I feel like this is kind of up your alley. So this is the quote. Do you think human creativity matters? Well, most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about poetry. Right. They have a life to live, and they're really not that concerned with Allen Ginsberg's poems or anyone's poems until their father dies. They go to a funeral, you lose a child, someone breaks your heart, and all of a sudden you're desperate for making sense out of this life. Has anybody felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud? Or the inverse? Something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much you can't even see straight. You're dizzy. Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me? And that's when art's not a luxury. It's actually sustenance. We need it. That's the end of the quote.
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B
Ethan. That's pretty good.
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A
That's very good.
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D
Yeah, it is pretty good. And I loved it. And I loved him for saying it. And it sort of reflects what I'm talking about, which is this sense that there are moments in life where one reaches for poetry. And when that happens to me, I often have the impulse to write it. But I am not someone who often has the impulse to read it.
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B
Oh, that's interesting.
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D
So that's where my question really comes from, is I don't read a lot of poetry. I read a lot of fiction. I read a lot of nonfiction. Like, I care about writing, but I don't read a lot of poetry. And when I do read poetry, I often find it. I struggle to connect with it sometimes because I think sometimes it's very densely elusive. Sometimes it feels like it's being written for a sort of small circle of poets who only. Who understand each other's gestures in a way that I don't. And I will also concede that I'm just like, you know, ill read in poetry. Like, there's a lot of ignorance that I'm bringing to this question.
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B
That makes two of us, Morgan.
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D
Well, fair. Good.
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B
I'm not a poetry person, but I.
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D
Do think it's incredibly necessary. I do think it's something that we reach for, especially in these moments of great loss or great tumult and almost as a kind of ritual, like we need language to give us something more out of those kinds of moments than we get from quotidian speech. And. Yeah, so I just. I don't know. How do I. How do you know when something is a poem? How do you know when it actually contains enough meaning to really articulate some of those moments in life when one reaches for poetry? I don't know. Do you guys have any.
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C
Have any thoughts on one level? First of all, everything you said about poetry is true. There is this sort of mystique. And I don't think it's the. I think it's the fault of largely the interpreters of poetry that make it seem like this sort of like, occult system of codes that only someone sort of like who's been initiated into the rites can, like, approach the holy place or whatever. But I think that the first qualifier is. If you have termed it a poem, then already you're thinking in a different register, which is like. Leads me maybe to the second thing, which is I think poems are evidence of overflow, is my feeling. Which is why even poets, they all talk about, like, you know, if I get a couple great poems a year, then that's a good year. Because you can't force, like an overflow. It's like they build up, is my, like, theory of the case. And then sometimes you have to sing. I think the classic example of this is just look at the structure of Morgan as an actor. In your training, did you do a lot of Shakespeare?
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D
In my training, yeah. I haven't actually done any professionally, but yeah, I've done Shakespeare.
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C
Yeah, but like, you know the sound of it, right? We talk, we talk, we talk, you know, a lot of dialogue. And then at a certain point, somebody's feeling too much and Hamlet has to.
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D
Be like, let me tell the audience.
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A
Oh, that there's two. Two songs left with.
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C
No, there's two. Two. So all that stuff. And all of a sudden somebody has to sing. And then the third way I would be like, this is definitely a poem, is if you are suddenly thinking in sounds as well as in the usual things that language contains. I think, Morgan, that you're a poet. And I also think that this thing of, like, being well read in poetry, while great poetry, is a part of the system of sustaining my own. Like, I read poetry a lot, but I think classically people weren't like, sitting around being well read and poet. They're like, around a campfire. And this guy, fucking Homer, like the guy in your dorm room who always has a guitar is like, guys, can I tell you about the anger of Achilles, the son of Atreus, Agamemnon? I got a story about these dudes. And people sat around listening to it and memorized this stuff and probably said it more often than they ever heard it. So for all these reasons, Moria, I think we all just learned that you are a poet.
- [10:08]
A
I love everything Vincent said, but I'm gonna come at this from a slightly different angle, which is, you know, I'm going back to your original question. Which is, how do you know that what you're writing is good and not terrible? And I think the real question is, why does it matter? Because I think maybe it matters to you. Here I'm going to. Within three minutes of meeting you, I'm now going to assert why I think it might matter to you. But because you're an artist and because you've achieved a high level at your own craft, you may be concerned about creating art or even creating something that you're not sure is art without it being at a similar level. But also, like, unless you're now planning to send out your collected works for publication, and maybe you are.
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D
I'm not.
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A
Free yourself. If you can get free, get free.
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B
Yeah. I think what Alex is saying is really right. I think writing in general is extremely embarrassing. Writing poetry is probably even more embarrassing than writing prose.
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D
Exactly.
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B
So there's just something, like, inherently just so shameful about it, you know, there's nothing more embarrassing than being a poet, you know, and yet there are.
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C
But nothing more noble. We should have more.
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B
But there's nothing more.
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D
Exactly. When it's right, it's nothing more noble.
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B
Yeah. No. And so just. Yeah. Why just, like, set yourself, you know, free on the ocean of poetry?
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D
Morgan, listen, I love everything all of you are saying, but it makes me think, as we're talking, if you were not trying to make me feel better about my obvious insecurities, how do you answer that question more sort of in the abstract? Like, I don't know if I remember, there was the Internet phenomenon of Rupi Kaur.
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B
Yes.
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D
She was very popular. Her books sold well. She was like an Internet poet. And she was treated to some extent, I think fairly, with a certain amount of derision by some quarters of the Internet and the literary community. And I'm curious, like, why isn't that a poem? I mean, I guess it's one thing to say it's not good and you don't like it. I mean, that's always an option with anything. But, yeah, with poetry, it seems particularly slippery to me just because of the concision of the form. And you aren't constrained necessarily by form or by meter. What transforms something from, like, an artfully arranged list into a poem?
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A
I mean, an artfully arranged list might be a poem. It's the same as with visual. It is the same as with visual art, like Post Duchamp, basically, someone could sign a urinal and someone could declare it art, and then that argument goes on forever. I think Rupi Kaur writes poems. I don't think most of them are good poems. And the reason I would say that is because when I look at the poems and I'm looking at a couple right now, I don't see a kind of originality of language or freshness of language that I would want to see in a poem. And it doesn't have to be. And often it really isn't a kind of high archaic language, not at all, but a kind of originality of putting together words to create something new in image and meaning. I think might be an underlying quality of what a good poem is. And as Vincent was saying, an inherent sense of the musicality of language which can be used to all different kinds of ends.
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C
One of my favorite poets working today, Diane Seuss, these long, long post Whitman, just maximalist lines. They had to design the book differently to make all the lines fit. And, you know, there's a certain kind of poet that says, this is just a paragraph. And part of the function of the poet is to say, oh, no, no, no, this too can be a poem. There's a book that I really like right now. It is by Rainer Diana Hamilton, a poet who I just love. And she's got this book of poems called Lilacs. And it's really a book about sense memory and whether poetry can be used to aid us in remembering the information of the senses. It's like, how can I remember smells? How can I remember sounds, et cetera. They read like essays, and some of them were initially published as prose. But part of the point of the book is, oh, poetry isn't just an artifact. It helps us to do things. And so turning this into a poem might, you know, whether it's to remember things, which is like the classical function of like, I'm gonna put it in a rhythm and then you'll remember the song. You know, what if poetry is the way to, like, sort of keep up with the onrush of life. And so if the poem is helping you to do something that other kinds of language couldn't do, my contention would be you got yourself a poem.
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D
I love that answer. Thank you.
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A
You are welcome.
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D
You guys are really good at this.
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A
Another happy, satisfied customer.
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C
You know, such as we. Yeah, we're so happy you did this. This is the coolest thing in the world.
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A
Morgan, thank you so much.
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D
It was my total pleasure. Thank you guys so much.
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B
You're the best.
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A
And if you want to share your poems with us, we would be honored.
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D
I did think of that, but I probably would rather peel my eyes off with some kind of dull implement, but yeah.
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A
Thank you. Don't do that.
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C
In a minute. More questions from listeners like you. Yes, you. This is. I need a critic on critics at large from the New Yorker. Don't go away. Get real. Stick with us.
- [15:37]
A
What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too, Katie. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview Conversations are fun.
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D
I want a shark that.
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A
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
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D
So in a lot of ways, I.
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C
Try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [16:19]
A
Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, One day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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C
Here's the thing. Once upon a time, a young boy named Vincent Cunningham watched a movie he never should have saw. It's called the Ring. You've heard it. It turns the seven days of the week into a goddamn nightmare. From which will you recover? I don't know. I haven't. So we wanna talk about horror movies on critics at large. We wanna hear from you, and it could be anything. Is there a horror movie that you want us to watch? Do you think we would like. Is there a director, a subgenre that you're sort of particularly drawn to, or it changed things for you? Anything about horror? Question, comment, directive. We wanna hear it. Send us a Voice memo to themailewyorker.com that's themailewyorker.Com with the subject line critics. Ooh. So here's how this is gonna go. We each have a batch of voicemails. You know, we've all got clients to bring to the table, so we're gonna take turns sharing those with the group. Who wants to start?
- [18:02]
B
I can start.
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C
There we go.
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B
I can start. This voicemail is from Gabriella, a listener who needs our help.
- [18:10]
A
Hi, critics. I broke My ankle two weeks ago in an adult women's amateur rugby league game and I had to have surgery last week to put a metal plate.
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D
In my ankle to hold everything in place.
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C
Oh, boy.
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D
So I'm looking at a long and very boring recovery.
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A
I'm looking for a recommendation for a.
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D
Really all consuming TV show that can.
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A
Get me glued to that couch where I really need to be. I really appreciate your help at this time because I am bored and trapped in New Jersey.
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B
Oh, no. Gabriela, we're. First of all, so sorry to hear of your predicament, but I personally am very impressed.
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C
A badass predicament?
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B
Yeah. I mean, good God, 100%. Guys, what do you think? How can we help?
- [18:55]
C
All encompassing televisual experience. You could go in so many directions, Gabrielle, if you're a longtime listener. You know, I recently binged Sex and the City. It was the most important thing that's happened to me over the last three years. I don't know. Really great. I think, though, that the most bingeable show that I have ever watched is the Wire, because it's got a million characters. It's like Balzac or something. It's got docks, it's got schools, it's got newsrooms, it's got the police, it's got 1,000 milieus into which one can sink one's teeth. Also, in terms of noir, crime, et cetera. The Americans, the spy thriller starring Keri Russell, is a binge watch that recently is still burned across my brain. Lighter fare, the Billy Joel duck. Oh, yeah, the new Billy Joel duck is immersive. It's not gonna last through the healing of your leg, but God damn, what a guy. Still rock and roll to me.
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A
Still rock and roll to me, too. Great. Doc.
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B
He did not start the fire.
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C
I know a guy who did that.
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A
Nor did we, we hasten to add. Okay, I got a recommendation, too. I'm just gonna recommend the show that I watched at the end of my pregnancy and through my immediate postpartum period, which I was late to. If you wanna understand American culture as it is now, if you wanna see where it all began, because you know where it was going. If you want to engage with the big issues of the day with big tech, with AI, with the law, with order, if you want great personal drama.
- [20:36]
B
You'Re going to recommend Entourage, right?
- [20:38]
A
No. Okay. Thank you, though. If you want interpersonal drama, if you want a little bit of romance, if you want the comforting serial sequencing of regular network television, you can do no better than the Good Wife. A sublime televisual experience.
- [21:00]
B
I know.
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A
Me.
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B
Not me either.
- [21:02]
A
Well, unless you have a broken ankle or you're, you know, heavily pregnant, can't really move, and then have a little baby and also can't really move, it's gonna be very hard to go back to the beginning of eight or whatever seasons of, you know, 70 episodes a season. Whatever it is, it's literally endless. And you're gonna thank me.
- [21:19]
B
That's a great. I've never watched it. I've always wanted to. Maybe at some point I will do that. But now I'm going to offer some lighter fare. Something that is happening right now in my household and is bringing all of us, myself, my husband, and our daughter, a lot of pleasure.
- [21:40]
C
A little BTS, we.
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B
A little BTS, yes. Somehow we had never watched 30 Rock, and my daughter is a big comedy person and a big SNL person, and she said, oh, we should, you know, we should watch 30 Rock. And I was like, I'm just here to say that this is, like, the most pleasurable watching experience and, like, immersive in a world of characters and jokes and bits that are just, like, so impressive on the comedic level. Yeah. Tina Fey. Love you.
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C
She's got the stuff.
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B
Yeah.
- [22:21]
C
Gabriela, be well. Heal up.
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B
Heal up.
- [22:26]
C
I got somebody. Her name's Carolyn. From Germany. From Bonn, Germany. Let's take it away, Carolyn.
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A
Dear critics, I loved reading some night's piece on Sotheby's a few weeks ago in the New Yorker, and it got me interested in this world of the auction house where billionaires meet art connoisseurs. So what are your recommendations for fiction movies or television series that explore the discourse on the price versus the value of art, that depict the slightly illegal art market, gambling or shady finances, and that have an aesthetic sensitivity for the art pieces at play or that celebrate the glamour of the art world? I'm also interested in the dramatic value of the auction. So the adrenaline, the rituality, and the many ways in which such an auction house can become a theater. I love this question.
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C
Beautiful question, Beautiful question. Beautifully said. But also, the meat of it is so good.
- [23:25]
A
Love it. So, Carolyn, you're absolutely right about the high drama of the auction. And in fact, auctions do feature in a variety of film and TV shows. Precisely for that reason, I'm actually thinking the first thing that came to mind when I heard your question was the first episode of the recent Netflix series Lupin or Lupin, where there's a heist at a very fancy auction in the Louvre. And that's just kind of fun to see a heist at an auction. My personal favorite auction scene is of course from the First Wives Club where the Sarah Jessica Parker character is kind of goaded into overpaying for some hideous item because she's told that Jackie O has one just like it. Great scene. If you haven't also Caroline Lynn's seen the First Wives Club, you simply must.
- [24:14]
C
That is great.
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B
I have something which is a little bit further afield. It's not about an auction house, it's not about auctions, but it is about the art market and about what, Caroline, you referred to as the kind of meeting point between actual value, you know, artistic value and market value. This is a biography of Jean Michel Basquiat called A Quick Killing in Art by Phoebe hoban. It's from 1998. And as you probably know, Basquiat, who died very young, still in his 20s, had a kind of like meteoric ascent. Of course, since his death, his market value only rose more. And so it's a really interesting depiction. It's a very tumultuous, you know, short, scandalous life. But that question of what is the value of art and also the kind of glamorous surroundings of an art world that preys on its young, you know, young and talented is very much top of mind in this book.
- [25:19]
C
Cool.
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A
I want to read that.
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C
My favorite art world text is so much more low rent than all of this. And yet I cannot help but speak. What I would like you to do, Carolyn, is just pull up the search engine of your choice. Maybe it's Google. I don't know what they do in bond and search. Mugrabi. New York Post. M U G R U A B I New York Post. It is the best thing in the world. A series of headlines. Will Libby Mugrabie, who was the was the wife of a sort of art collector scion named David Mugrabi. These two people, David and Libby Mugrabi, had what some people called the art world's or New York high society's nastiest divorce in 2018.
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B
And you know how much we love reading about that.
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C
We love that. And so part of the site of the Source was the house and all of the art in it. You'll read these pieces. Did David try to talk to a hitman to get his services? Libby says that happened. Did a housekeeper take over the compound in the Hamptons in Southampton and glamp in it with her friends who shunting Libby's mother into the pool house and making her not Leave there. Was there an attack on Libby Mugrabie by David Mugrab's housekeeper?
- [26:52]
B
Libby says so was there ecstasy and couple swapping? Maybe.
- [26:58]
C
May be. It is a great freaking story. It's like the Hamptons version of the Wolf of Wall street, but the tawdriest thing in the world. Just look at the pieces. One leads to another. It's not tv, it's not a movie. But goddamn it, cinematic in scope and scale. You gotta check out the Mugrabi epic.
- [27:22]
B
Okay, you guys, I feel like we really need to put our heads together and help our next listener, whose name is Lee. Let's go to the tape and listen to his quandary.
- [27:33]
C
Dear critics, I'm now 44, with school age kids, a rewarding job, and a lovely family. Though warm and broad, the picture of my life feels incomplete. I feel a lack of close friendships. I live in a different city than where I grew up. Most of my oldest friends are scattered across the country, and those that are in my town show little interest in socializing nowadays. Some of this can be explained by them also having family demands on their time. But some I cannot help but imagine is just that they aren't interested in hanging out with me. What do you think I should do? Is this a common phenomenon of middle age that nobody speaks about? Is there some guidance in literature or other texts that you can share with me that could give me insight?
- [28:30]
B
Olie, first of all, I would like to reassure you, you are not alone. You know, we are having a crisis of male loneliness, and I'm really glad you called us. The first thing that came to mind is that recently, a few months ago, there was a long essay in the New York Times Magazine by Sam Gramfelson, a writer who is about your age, I believe, also has children, is married, and it was about exactly this problem. Right. And so I would. If you haven't read that essay, I would direct you towards it because first of all, I think it'll help you feel less alone. And second of all, he has some. A variety of kind of recommendations. One recommendation I haven't listened to this myself is a podcast that he started listening to called man of the Year, hosted by comedy writers Aaron Caro and Matt Ritter, who talk about this problem of social fitness among men around, you know, the age that you are and Sam is. And these hosts are. And basically they provide a variety of kind of like, tips and tricks for men who have perhaps lost their way on the path to friendship.
- [29:55]
C
To Nomi's point, this is such a common phenomenon first of all, there's the male sociality, and then there's also middle aged people with kids and how that changes the sort of aperture of your life, how much you're able to do. One thing that I would say that is art related is that there are so many here in New York. For instance, the New York Philharmonic has a series every year of young people's concerts. So I don't know, you know, what that situation is in the city where you live, but let me tell you something, which is I remember from my first kid and I'm learning again now. Any dad who is taking their kid to an art thing is desperate for connection. And not in a bad way, not like in an isolated way. It's just, oh, I'm trying to convey something to my kid. And maybe you are too. And it's just like, if you're the kind of guy who's gonna take your kid to a thing that has music or art or whatever to it, I'm telling you that dad is open to talking. I'm telling you, I love this. Even if it's just like, oh, like, how did you introduce this to your kid? That guy will answer. And if you make each other laugh or something like that, that guy will want to be friends. Critics at large will be back in just a minute with even more advice. Stick. In a world that's on fire, what can art do?
- [31:45]
B
Can music actually change the world?
- [31:49]
D
I'm Jed Abumrad.
- [31:50]
C
Join me for my new show where we explore the legacy of one of the most influential musical warriors of the 20th century. Fela has to be the epicenter. Fela Kuti. What does rebellion look like, sound like, when the weapon is not guns, but music?
- [32:09]
B
Fela Kuti, Fear no man.
- [32:10]
C
On audible and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:19]
A
All right, next up, we have Elena. Let's hear from Alaina. Hi, critics. I love to cook. So every year I very bravely, very selflessly cook Thanksgiving dinner for my whole family.
- [32:31]
B
Bravo.
- [32:31]
A
And I've got a great family, so, you know, they hang out with me a lot and make sure dicing onions isn't just torture for me. But I'm looking for something, an audiobook or a podcast maybe to keep me company in between those times, for those long stretches where I'm alone cooking in the kitchen. But nothing that requires too, too much attention since I will be over hot flames and sharp objects. Thanks so much. Excited to hear. Love the podcast. Thank you, Laina.
- [33:00]
B
Thank you.
- [33:01]
C
I got something for you.
- [33:02]
B
Ooh.
- [33:03]
C
It's great for cooking and great for just like any kind of house thing because it's got narrative, but it's kind of gentle on the ears. And it's also incredibly immersive in a strange way. It is a long running British radio show, soap opera, slash now podcast. It's been broadcast since 1951. It's called the Archers. I don't know if anybody's ever listened to the Archers. It is set in a sort of lightly fictionalized rural Britain and it has many, many listeners over, you know, over decades, like sort of heritage listeners in Britain. And it's still running. And it's like one of the characters is really interested in rewilding and is going to a group to do that. And then all of a sudden there's like, George, Is he still in jail? It's like, who the fuck is George? It's like really disorienting because you can't go back to the beginning to catch up. But that immediately depressurizes the sort of completest urge of plot. And everybody's got a great accent and it's so soft and beautiful. And you will want to know what Georgia did to get in there. It just brings new characters in and wafts them out. Because it's set in the very close to the present, it also just feels like you're walking around in this new world. The Archers is great.
- [34:27]
B
I love. One of the things I love most is reading while eating. The thing I like even better is reading about food while eating. And so I'm thinking, if you're cooking, how about listening to something about food, writing about food. So there are many lovely options in this genre of, not cookbooks per se, but writing about food. For instance, MFK Fisher's how to Cook a Wolf. Lori Colwyn's books, or Elizabeth David. Anything that has some level of narrative to it but is focused on the art of cookery, I think would be great to listen to while you are yourself pursuing the art of cookery, the.
- [35:26]
C
Sweet science of cookery.
- [35:27]
B
The sweet science.
- [35:28]
A
The sweet science. Our minds are melded. And I'll tell you why, because I have in my notebook right here as a suggestion for Elena, I have Laurie Colwyn's Home Cooking. And I think it would make an excellent audiobook. And a glance at the reviews for the audiobook suggest that indeed the narrator is very talented. So I think you'd have a lot of fun with that. I totally agree, Noemi. My only other suggestion, Elena, is I'm just gonna come out and say it. I worship at the altar of Terry Gross. I love Terry. I love Fresh Air. And I don't know, Elena, if you're a Fresh Air listener again, the show has been on for a long time.
- [36:05]
B
Much like the Archers.
- [36:06]
A
Much like the Archers. The archives are pure and solid gold. You could either just go into the recent feed and see what catches your eye, or you could go back. They recently. Fresh Air recently did. Before Labor Day, they had a whole series where they played archival interviews with some of the founders of R and B and Soul. And it was just. It was just like. I mean, it was incredible. It's incredible the people Terry Gross has spoken to. So if you're like me and you like that, dip in.
- [36:36]
B
Okay, our next listener has an interesting question that I think we should, you know, by rights, have answers. Do I hope. Let's go to Rafe.
- [36:49]
D
Hi, critics. So, as an illustrator, I spend way too much time thinking about the AI threat to creative industries and working artists. I am wondering, can you recommend movies or books that foreground the inherently human, messy nature of creative practice? Ideally, I'm looking for something a little more uplifting than art. Monsters and Descents into madness. So more showing up than tar or hearts of darkness or something like that.
- [37:20]
B
I think this is such an important question right now. I mean, one thing that I'm completely, like, unabashed about is how strongly I feel about exactly what Rafe is talking about, the threat to human. Goddamn human creativity and creation, you know, by AI Because I really do think that the basis of, like, a kind of secular humanism. Right. Is to kind of worship in the shrine of human possibility via art. Right. I mean, you know, looked at from one position, any good book or good movie, no matter its theme or protagonist or whatever, is a testament to the kind of, like, creative human ability and possibility, you know? But, Rafe, if you're looking for something that's specifically about that issue, thematically, one thing that has aroused my curiosity and interest recently, our very own Alex Schwartz reviewed this book quite recently for the New Yorker, which is what initially aroused this curiosity I love to arouse.
- [38:38]
A
Especially you.
- [38:38]
B
Yeah. The biography of Paul.
- [38:43]
A
Oh, damn.
- [38:44]
B
Yeah.
- [38:45]
A
What an artist life.
- [38:46]
B
Right. Not necessarily uplifting, but certainly it kind of is. But certainly. I mean, it's, you know, the miracle of artistic creation and the, you know, kind of like scandalous tumult that accompanied that life of creation.
- [39:07]
A
Yeah. This is just to be clear, Nomi, you're talking about the new biography in English of Gauguin called Wild Thing by the English writer Sue Priddo.
- [39:14]
B
Yes, yes, exactly.
- [39:15]
A
Okay. I Got a few things for you, Rafe. The first are a pair of movies by the English Director Mike Lee, Mr. Turner from 2014. Let's start there. It is, of course, the life of JMW Turner himself. This Turner movie is really fascinating because it engages. You mentioned Kelly Reichardt's movie Showing up, which also engages with the tactility of art making and what it is just to kind of day in, day out, have an art practice. That movie is about our current time, but this is about doing that in the 19th century. So I think you really might like that. Another movie I'm just gonna throw out there, also by Mike Lee, is Topsy Turvy from 1999, which is about Gilbert and Sullivan. I love that movie and it's great. It's about a duo, you know, Gilbert and Sullivan, and they're trying to make the Mikado. They're kind of at this like, stale point in their creative life and they are going in a totally different direction. It's fun, it's wonderful. I highly recommend it. And then, you know, I recently read and I wrote about by the former New York magazine editor, Adam Moss. It's called the Work of Art. And it's this big book, but it's a big compendium where Adam Moss talked to many, many different artists across media about how they made a particular work. And I think what you see there is again the kind of combination of hard work, epiphany, getting it wrong, all of which leads to eventually, hopefully getting it right.
- [40:36]
C
Beautiful. I would just add to the pile an interesting, I don't know, project that I've sort of like engaged with here and there over the years. I think it's kind of a performance piece as well by one of the artists who's probably most influential over my life and like caring about art, Susan Laurie Parks. She, the playwright has a long running thing that she does. It's called Watch Me Work. And it happens sort of at and under the auspices of the Public Theater. And you can find several of the sessions on YouTube. And sometimes I put them on when I do my work. She's doing her work, which is sometimes like working on a play. Sometimes she's just playing the guitar and anybody can jump on this zoom with her. And the idea is like it's an hour, 20 minutes of just all these other people, hardeningly, other human beings who are just trying to do creative things. They're not famous. They're not. It is people trying to do their work alongside Susan Laurie Parks, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who wrote one of my favorite works of theatrical art, Top Dog, Underdog. And you do your work for 20 minutes, and then for 40 minutes people just ask her questions. Not about her work and not workshopping the stuff that they did, but just about creative practice in general. Like just how do you get your work done? How do you build a life in the arts? And I find it really moving and heartening. And I've never done it live, but sometimes I put on old editions of it when I'm desperate to just do 20 minutes of work and I'm trying to make myself do it. Sometimes I just like make Susan Laurie Parks watch me. And I watch her and it's great. Cause this question to me has so much to do with like community. It reminds me that there are a lot of other people trying to do their work for real as human beings.
- [42:24]
A
Oh yeah, I'm right now actually on the Public Theater website, which is just publictheater.org, and I'm on a page called Watch me Work where you can sign up for future zoom sessions sessions, which is really cool.
- [42:34]
C
Very cool.
- [42:35]
A
Okay, so we actually got a few questions that had to do with this creative quandary zone. And I have another one from a listener called Mariah.
- [42:45]
B
Dearest critics, I'm a mid career visual artist. I had some successes and some disappointments and then a two year thumb injury that kept me from making. I'm now able to use my hands again, albeit differently than before. But more than my physical limitations, my greatest struggle is that I cannot get traction with my own ideas. So my question to you, what do you consume that inspires you to think differently? What do you do when you're artistically stuck? What should I see, read and watch to help me figure out my own ideas again?
- [43:17]
A
I feel like Vincent's answer of watch me work would be perfect in this case too.
- [43:22]
C
That's a great thing. Also, though, I find that when you are engaged in creative practice, to me, being good at writing means also being the person that is kind of worst at writing. Thinks about it way too much, has thought about it so much that it's almost like I don't know what writing is. And the way to revivify that thing that falls apart when you pay too much attention to one medium is to engage with a medium that gives you no trouble. But that also kind of feeds, is part of your deep sort of architecture. So for me, I make a lot of playlists and engaging with music and noticing what I'm listening to and what I care about suddenly I will realize, oh, I'm listening to this song and this one and this one and this one. Because of my deep interest in X. There's always a link to the thing that's actually giving you a problem. And it's not a way to solve execution issues. It's not even a way to solve the things that bedevil us, perfectionism, et cetera. But it is a way to reawaken the self consciousness that is part of the sort of toolbox of every artist knowing what it is that you actually care about and not what you want to care about, because you want to make capital a art. But what you are actually thinking about, I think, comes through those things that we sometimes ingest as simple pleasures, but are actually really deep hints to our deeper and most like, pure desires.
- [44:51]
B
That's really good, Vincent. I think going to another medium that doesn't give you trouble is a good way to say it. I would say go back to something that was meaningful to you in your past, whether it's a book that you loved when you were a teenager or like a song, I don't know how old you are, Mariah, but like a song that you listened to in your 20s when you were going through something particular, you know? And I think similarly to what Vincent was saying about it, kind of awakening on a more kind of base, primal level. What is interesting to you, what it is that you care about. It's almost like a kind of meditation, right? Like, close your eyes and think, like, what is it about this that was so important to me? And are these things still important to me in the same way? Possibly, yes. And then you're like, okay, maybe that is still something that is important for me to mine. If no, then why not? You know, maybe you've grown past whatever it is that the work aroused in you that will lead you to another direction, possibly.
- [46:06]
A
I think these are great answers. And I will add a third strategy that you could attempt to employ, and it's to copy. You know you're not gonna copy, and then present it as your own work. Sometimes when I'm really stuck, I look at something I love. I look at a piece of writing I love, and I just start typing it on the page. And it's very freeing to just let your brain go. And interestingly enough, I don't start sounding like that person when I'm done with this. And usually I just stop it pretty soon after I start because it's like, enough already. I want to do my own thing. But when you need to get the mechanism going, you need to just go back to the source of pleasure. And in your case, it might just be remembering how you see things again. So copy. Go take some drawing paper and just copy out something else, someone else's thing, and let it jog some new ideas for you critics.
- [47:00]
C
Let me check back in with you. How are you feeling? Having dispensed the advice, having done the thing that we sometimes do, are you feeling reconnected with what matters to you?
- [47:10]
B
Yes. Honestly. I mean, I'm gonna say something grand, but my faith, as always, after we do this kind of show, my faith in humankind is restored. I'm like, these people are so smart. Our listeners are like, they want to connect. They wanna grow. They're looking to pass through life, not just kind of on autopilot, but to look to culture for meaning. And it's honestly, like, invigorating to me and deeply moving. I don't mind saying I agree.
- [47:48]
A
Yeah. I mean, we believe art matters. It's the reason we do what we do. We're here to do that.
- [47:53]
C
Yeah. People are looking for connection. I think that's brilliant. It's beautiful. And it also makes me. It reminds me that, like, we're so lucky. We get this. Like, we get to do this every week, sort of connect in this way. And so it also makes me feel grateful for you.
- [48:07]
A
Likewise.
- [48:08]
B
Likewise.
- [48:12]
A
And to anyone we didn't get to, please know we know you're there. We didn't have time for every email or call we got today. But we want to help.
- [48:23]
C
Even if we're not actively working on an episode of I Need a Critic, you can always send a us an email or voice memo asking for advice. So, I mean, don't hoard your questions freely. Dispense them. This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle o'. Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Barrier. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kushman. You can find every episode of Critics at large@newyorker.com Critics, listeners, thank you so much. We can't thank you enough for sending in your questions and trusting us to give you advice. It's an honor. A pleasure.
- [49:31]
B
Lights, camera.
- [49:32]
A
Fashion.
- [49:33]
B
This year, Vogue World is heading to Hollywood.
- [49:36]
A
The scene.
- [49:37]
B
The legendary Paramount Pictures Studios lot.
- [49:40]
C
The plot.
- [49:41]
B
Cinema's most iconic costumes meet fashion's biggest designers. They think Edward Scissorhands tailoring and Marie Antoinette opulence.
- [49:50]
A
It's drama.
- [49:51]
B
It's decadence. It's a costume department come to life.
- [49:54]
A
The countdown starts now. Watch the livestream on vogueworld.com at 6pm Pacific Standard Time on October 26th. And cut.
- [50:08]
B
From PRX.