Critics at Large Live: “Wuthering Heights” and Its Afterlives

20:37Alexandra Schwartz:And here, he's alive for a long time, and he's a terrible alcoholic, and he physically abuses both characters. And it seems to me that this traumatized young woman, the narrator of this Wuthering Heights, is laying on her bed, furiously masturbating with a copy of Wuthering Heights. And therefore, only picking up the parts of it that that young woman would care about.

20:58Vinson Cunningham:But are you saying that Emerald Fennell is the traumatized young woman?

21:01Alexandra Schwartz:I don't know. Okay. I'm saying that her narrator is.

21:03Vinson Cunningham:Because I'm pretty sure her father is alive.

21:05Alexandra Schwartz:I don't know anything about that. And like making jewels for the aristocracy. I'm not saying that it's biographically correspondent to her life. I'm saying when the father dies, he does so in a room that has literal huge bottles piled up to the ceiling. It's what a child thinks alcoholism is. Right. the flesh walls are what a child thinks is weird but also kind of interesting romance as gesture. I think this accounts for the weird casting. Jacob Elordi is, I mean, is he Heathcliff? I don't know. But he's Heathcliff to this young woman. And also, I think it so matters that Margot Robbie was Barbie.

21:46Alexandra Schwartz:Because she's just Barbie in this movie. This narrator of this movie is just smashing plastic genitals together. Do you know what I mean? I do know what you mean. And that, thank you, I'm glad, that sort of like psychological edge to the movie is really interesting. Somebody here asked, and this is a great transition to talking about the novel, someone asked, do you think if you hadn't read the book you'd see the movie differently? Most people that I know who didn't read the book loved it and vice versa. I don't know. I kind of think it's interesting to have read the book because it's like, the book is acting in this case as clothing for a totally divergent desire.

22:27Alexandra Schwartz:It's like, I got this feeling and this feeling and this feeling and this feeling. What story can I grab to like pretty up this wild, untamed thing? It's so funny because it's what you're saying, Vincent, is that it's like one of those, you know, like one of those like books for kids, which is like, who was Barack Obama? You know what I mean? Or like, who was like Margaret Sanger? I don't know who. I mean, I don't know why that came to mind. I don't know. Can you give us one more historical person? Who was Margaret Sanger? Who belongs in that great litany? Who was RFK Jr.? I don't know. But it's just like, what you're saying is that this is basically the idiosyncratic, but in a way kind of basic, like I would say even not just like a traumatized young woman, I would just say like a teen, basically.

23:22An imaginative, perhaps lonely, perhaps horny teen who reads the book and is like, I'm going to like cliff notes my way out of this and make this kind of like drugstore version of this classic novel.

23:42Alexandra Schwartz:In a minute, why Wuthering Heights, the novel, is about a million times stranger than this new adaptation. Critics at Large from The New Yorker will be right back.

23:58Who is going to win control of Congress this November? And what is it going to mean for the final two years of Donald Trump's disruptive presidency? I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer.

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24:38Vinson Cunningham:Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. And we're the hosts of Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. And just because the Oscars are done, for now, doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

25:08Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

25:09Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

25:14Alexandra Schwartz:Each week, we pick a starting point. The new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend, and we kind of go galaxy brain with it.

25:23Vinson Cunningham:Right, we take the ideas at the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life. We go highbrow. We go lowbrow. We go everything in between.

25:40Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture. Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison. K-pop to the Kennedys. From horror movies to heated rivalry.

25:48Vinson Cunningham:From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights. Great expectations to Desperate Housewives.

25:53Alexandra Schwartz:That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics Alarge from The New Yorker, every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

26:11Vinson Cunningham:I think I would say pretty definitively, yeah, if you don't know the book, you should definitely see the movie first. Like, don't read the book in advance. Go have that experience. Hopefully enjoy it. like I'm still thinking of this dear man sitting so near to me because when he reads this book, it's all over for him. Like, oh, he thought that was crazy. Hold on. This book is so many times wilder and weirder. One thing that I love, Wuthering Heights is just, it's, I mean, I still actually remember reading it for the first time when I was probably around the age that Emerald Fenella was when she encountered it.

26:50Vinson Cunningham:And it's an explosion because there's nothing like this book. There's nothing like the intensity and of emotion, of passion. And there's nothing like the strangeness of this book. I really think it's a work of genius, like a singular work of genius. And it's crazy to me that Emily Bronte, who published this book as Ellis Bell, the same year that her sister Charlotte published Jane Eyre, like what a run for the Brontes and pour one out for Anne. But like, you know, it's crazy that this book comes, she writes it when she's in her late 20s. It is published in 1847. And the next year, she's dead of tuberculosis at 30.

27:30Vinson Cunningham:And the vehemence, the intensity, I think one thing that I love about this book that I do see Emerald Fennell going for, and we're going to talk about other adaptations, is the very strange interplay between realism and it's total opposite. For example, a lot of the book is told by a maid who has known this whole, both families, the Heathcliff family, the Earnshaw family, all three families, and the Linton family forever. It's told by a maid to this random guy, Mr. Lockwood, who's just stumbled into this insane mess. He's renting this haunted house. And for some reason insists on like staying there and then coming back there.

28:11and then arguably Mr.

28:12Alexandra Schwartz:Lockwood is the freakiest freak in this whole book. Just had an awful dream about a maybe dead little girl. Tell me about it.

28:19Vinson Cunningham:Exactly. She can't, yeah, in the beginning of the book, Kathy comes through the window at him and he's like, tell me more. I want to stay here now. But the structure device of this hearsay, of this gossip, of, and I think it's very significant that it's the lower classes gossiping about what's going on with their masters and mistresses. And I think this is something that Emerald Fennell is trying to get at. Her Nellie, the version of the maid, is a very vindictive, I think pretty flat character who really just hates Catherine and wants to take her down. But there is something fascinating between the need to serve, be obedient, facilitate the lives of these people who are living out their passions, and also to disrupt them.

29:01Vinson Cunningham:Constantly, and this is my third reread of this book, and what I'm very struck by in this reread is how meddlesome Nellie is. she's messing stuff up non-stop she's like oh yes i was not supposed to take her to take my young ward kathy jr daughter of dead kathy was not supposed to let her meet heathcliff like oops we happened to stop in his house for tea like what are you doing oops and then like we got

29:26Alexandra Schwartz:yeah my initial read of whether it always seemed to be the first time i read it it was one of the early experiences that I had that, you know, there is some sort of like hot potato with the narration between Mr. Lockwood and Nellie, especially at the beginning, that this device you say of like, someone's telling someone else the long sweep of the story. I totally associate this with the 19th century. Turgenev loves to do this. He's like, I was sitting by my hearth and then some country doctor came in and he was almost dead. And all he wanted to do was tell me about the time he met this one girl, you know, and then the stories are literally about the girl.

29:59I mean, literally every every Turgenev book is this. So I love that thing. Yeah. I was sitting thinking about my youth and then I told my, you know, the servant who came in about this one girl I knew like 40 years ago. Yeah.

30:11Alexandra Schwartz:This was the first book that I would really remember that device happening and therefore being asked to think about the difference between narrator and author. And thinking of Bronte as this like vast intelligence, like sort of like doing a bunch of puppetry. And it just seemed to me, I was just like, wow, this person seems to be so wild and so upset with something about the world. You know, the emphasis on landscape, the emphasis on the class position of the characters, it all just seemed to me to be expressing a philosophy that I couldn't really grasp, you know. But I just realized, oh, this person, this writer has a philosophy and is trying to express it through this polyphony of voices.

30:55Alexandra Schwartz:this time I don't know I guess rereading it was a big surprise to me somebody mentioned can you talk about the role race played in the novel versus the movie in the novel it's yeah Heathcliff is this racial other but it race actually plays out in these really small moments when Kathy comes back from the Lintons the first time she pulls off her gloves and it says her her hands are whitened by like disuse that the class experience of doing no labor has literally changed the color of her skin and uh there's another moment when Nellie invites Heathcliff to look at a mirror he's like you you know you gotta lighten up dude because your anger is making you look bad and a change in attitude would change your visage like bad affect bad attitude becomes on some level like bad race or something like that so those touches in this I mean I'm really interested in what you guys think about this whole racial thing too it seemed to me to be expressing something that first of all Emerald Fennell I don't think is really interested in at all she kind of uses race to delineate who matters and who doesn't in a certain way.

32:15Alexandra Schwartz:Nellie becomes a person of color, as does Edgar Linton. But I don't know. The book seems to me to be speaking in all these different tones about these issues of difference.

32:27Vinson Cunningham:I so agree. I think the timing of this novel is very interesting in that regard. I mean, this is right when Britain is becoming an empire. And there is a sense of all of these elements of exoticism. You know, there's, I want to find it if I can, but I don't want to take time on stage.

32:46Alexandra Schwartz:Take us to the text.

32:47Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, I love the text. Oh, here, guys, I underlined it. It's right here. I'm so excited. Incredible. Hand for Alex. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I feel so supported by this wonderful audience. I actually think I just found exactly the part you're talking about, and it continues in a really interesting way, Vincent. So this is Nellie, who sang I. She says, a good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad, I continued, if you were a regular black, and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing and combing and sulking, tell me whether you don't think yourself rather handsome.

33:22Vinson Cunningham:I tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up with one week's income, Wuthering Heights, and Thrushcross Grange together. And of course, that's exactly what's going to happen. But what I think is interesting here, you know, I've seen some mentions of people being like, Heathcliff's race has been debated for generations. Like, no, guys, we all know this is fiction, right? Like, there's not an answer. There's not a definitive answer. And I think the fact that there are -

33:52Alexandra Schwartz:From Trinidad. Yeah.

33:54Vinson Cunningham:Like, we found him. Yeah, we got Henry Louis Gates to, like, go into his background. Like, No. He's 19 % Ashkenazi Jewish. Yes. He's one of ours. I think the fact that Emily Bronte uses so many different racial signifiers for him is itself very significant. He is coming into this small world. This is a very remote, very rural world. There are only two families we ever hear about. We hear about a village that we never visit. Gimmerton. Gimmerton. And that, you know. But it sounds so good. Yeah, but take me to go to Gimberton. Get me the hell out of here and take me to Gimberton. Like I need to buy new shoes.

34:35Vinson Cunningham:Can someone get me out of here? But Heathcliff is this exotic other. And I think that both explains his sense of, I mean, his othering within the family. He's treated in a very straightforward way as the help by his foster brother. And it also explains a kind of vengeance. You absolutely, I think, can read this as a fascinating story of like subaltern vengeance. And at the same time, if you do read it that way, you have to ask what's going on with Kathy and what the intensity of attraction, not only do they love each other, but each thinks they are the other. What an interesting comment for Emily Bronte to make about this non-white character.

35:19Vinson Cunningham:I am Heathcliff. He is my soul, but I can't marry him because if I do, I would be degraded. And to me, the word degraded is the heart of this whole book. It comes up more than once. Kathy is trying to elevate her position. She's trying to understand what a finer, better life could be like. She can't degrade herself by association with Heathcliff, and actually very late in her life. It's not a conventional 19th century novel. Her own husband says to her, do you want to be with him? Like, just tell me. Like, it's not, we're not getting an Anna Karenina, you know, I will drive you to the ends of the earth and I will ruin your life and the life of everyone associated with you because I'm so angry.

36:00Vinson Cunningham:It's a kind of like, oh, okay, he can win. And she really doesn't go for it. She herself is totally torn and tortured. Yeah. I mean, I think she fully says, I love Edgar. You know, in the book, when Edgar proposes to her and she tells Nellie about it, she says, yes, of course I said yes. Yeah, of course I love him. He's rich, he's handsome, he's, you know, elevated. I would be a fool not to have him as my husband, but what she feels for Heathcliff is something else. Yeah, it's the superficial versus the spiritual. That's kind of what it is. Yeah.

36:44Alexandra Schwartz:We have a slide up here about some of the initial reactions, the contemporary reviews to the novel Wuthering Heights. Here, all the faults of Jane Eyre, all the faults of Jane Eyre, can you list them, are magnified a thousandfold. And the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that, get this, this is why you don't listen to critics except for here. It will never, never be generally read. James Lorimer, you're a wild boy. It does strike me that, you know, Lorimer, of course, is wrong. but I like that he acknowledges how strange the book is. You know, it's so, I was thinking about this, 1847 the book comes out.

37:29Alexandra Schwartz:The Communist Manifesto is issued 1848. You know, so Bronte is not old enough, never will she unfortunately grow old enough for this book or her later work to be a response to that work and yet it does seem to be, to me it seems like a proto - Christian criticism of Marx. It's like, no, no, no, everybody can be evil. Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's class rage and everything. But the emphasis from the very beginning on how bad Kathy is and how bad Heathcliff are, on some level, they are each other. They are a mirror across class divides. It's like not a novel of class struggle to me. It's a novel that says you don't have to be rich to be bad.

38:21Alexandra Schwartz:Let me tell you about the lower classes too.

38:29Alexandra Schwartz:When we're back, how other adaptations have approached this completely unadaptable novel. This is Critics at Large live from The New Yorker.

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41:09Alexandra Schwartz:Nomi, I have a great question from the audience, and I would love for you to take it first. Oh my goodness, okay. Kind of in this area of sort of the text of this book. In the novel, this astute observer says, the older generation, Kathy and Heathcliff, are redeemed through their children, the younger generation in the movie that there is no second generation. Did Emerald Fennell sanitize the characters of Kathy and Heathcliff because she did not have the space, perhaps, to complete the arc and address this issue of the next generation? Yeah, I mean, I think it's very complicated. It's a very complicated book to adapt.

41:47I think most adaptations haven't even attempted to deal with the second generation because just even the fact that like all the names are the same names like when I read it I'm just like wait who who's Linton Edgar Linton who what Kathy which Kathy you know it's like there's something that is I think intentionally confusing about it because there's a lot of kind of reflections and doublings between the first generation and the second generation and I think that yes I think partly what the audience member called sanitizing probably happens as a way to kind of foreshorten you know the sort of like okay we don't have time for this we need to kind of close it up but I think I feel like Emerald Fennell is also she needs to sort of like make it kind of into a fairy tale just to just to make it work you know I don't think there's any other way for her to build up the world that she does and it's too complicated it's too complicated plot wise it's too complicated emotionally it's too complicated spiritually like like how would it even work some have attempted it um I don't know if anyone has

43:08Vinson Cunningham:Has anyone in this audience seen the Ralph Fiennes-Juliette Binoche version, which does have the second generation? Some smatterings. So what you do in that case is you have Juliette Binoche play both Kathys. Like, Juliette Binoche is the last actress on Earth who should pretend to be English. Truly the last one. And you just feel for her in the struggle of pronunciation. And she really does a credible job, basically. But yeah, that is one movie within the bounds of two hours, as they get to the second generation and the redemption that this audience member is speaking of, which is a whole complicated thing involving, I mean, guys, Heathcliff is a child trafficker.

43:47Vinson Cunningham:Like, that's the other thing. And I know that we're all thinking a lot about that right now, but he arranges, he basically keeps his own son alive long enough to entrap Kathy Linton into marriage in order to ultimately revenge himself against her family. Like, he locks Kathy up to force her to get married while her dad is dying, like some really sick shit happens. And I think that's partly why it's hard to depict because who is this person? Yeah, it's hard to depict. Yeah, I think that's so true. I mean, Heathcliff is such a horrible person, okay? Like in book Heathcliff. But also hot. Well, yes, he's hot.

44:26But I think just that the book, the proportion of the book in which he is, you know, kind of a bullied child and a lover of Kathy and a great feeler of, I guess, sort of positive feelings towards her in some way is pales or is minimized in comparison to the hundreds of pages in which he is just like pure rage and anger and vindictiveness and violence and some really rough stuff, you know?

44:57Vinson Cunningham:Yeah. I mean, I would love to hear from you guys if there have been adaptations that you have seen or enjoyed. I mean, I've now, I've now been like checking off some boxes here. Like Laurence Olivier, he's a very sweeping, this was a hugely popular movie, the William Wyler version. He's a very, I mean, he's Laurence Olivier. He's playing a Laurence Olivier Heathcliff. He is a romantic, handsome man with a very deep chin cleft. And he's been misunderstood, but like Jacob Elordi is very tall and he, like you get why someone would want him. But I will say, I just watched Andrea Arnold, the English director Andrea Arnold's 2011 version.

45:41Vinson Cunningham:I found this to be a fascinating, very moving and emotional movie. Again, it isn't Wuthering Heights. It's, there's no Nelly. There's not, there's no second generation, but it does two things that I think are amazing. One is that as a film, it just works as a film. It's not just trying to like follow like behind the book and just like be like, yeah, I remember that part. The other element that's fascinating is this is the only non-White Heathcliff to my knowledge who's been committed to film. And it really depicts from his perspective. Yeah, I thought it was, I watched this adaptation as well.

46:17And Andrea Arnold is a great director. If you haven't seen And some of our other movies, Fish Tank is one and American Honey is another. Those are two very good movies. And this one I liked a lot as well. And I agree with you. You feel viscerally what you don't feel at all with the Emerald Fennell adaptation. The rejection that Heathcliff is experiencing, both from the family, but also Kathy. and why he would feel both this attraction to Kathy as well as the rage that her rejection of him brings up.

46:56Alexandra Schwartz:What do you guys think an adaptation owes to the text? What are the necessary components of relationship between adaptation and the source of adaptation? For me, it's like all I want is a sincere grounding in the presence that acknowledges some kind of parentage or heritage from the former. Like, if you're a theater goer and you, you know, off-off Broadway or whatever, when a European theater company comes to town and they do Hamlet, you know it's not going to be Hamlet. It's going to be some German guy walking into the audience being like, you know, I'm lost, you know. Which is to say, a contemporary emotion that has a history, the history of a certain feeling, and therefore that might fit into the clothes of a former thing.

47:51Alexandra Schwartz:But I do think that a lot of our angst, not only over Emerald Fennell, who loves to stir up angst, it seems to me, but generally about our feelings about adaptation are this feeling of owing. What does it owe?

48:06Vinson Cunningham:Well, I think that it owes less when so many other movies have been made. Like, I think that may also explain a certain kind of freedom that exists. It's amazing to me how often this, as you say, know me, like pretty unadaptable book has been adapted. You know, I have a real memory from years ago of there was an adaptation of the Robert Penn Warren novel, All the King's Men, which I had like read and had a huge experience reading and felt very in love with the book and connected to the book. And adaptation was coming. And it's like, hooray, I get to see. You know, I also remember even going farther back, I'm of the Harry Potter generation where Harry Potter was coming out as we were like roughly the ages of the kids.

48:49Vinson Cunningham:And suddenly there was going to be an adaptation and there was just a sense of like, oh my God, you can't make Hogwarts. Like how do you, you don't know what it looks like. There is this ownership feeling, I think, very often. And I was really disappointed by the Robert Penn Warren adaptation. I don't think it was a great movie. I haven't seen it since it came out. But, you know, I think there's, I guess paradoxically, I would say, like, the more freedom, the better, in a sense. You can see all these different attempts to tell this story because it should be a prismatic experience, like a little bit, the more the merrier.

49:21I mean, it's an audacious proposition to adapt a great novel. Like, I guess I admire the ambition of it, for sure. I don't think it needs to be faithful necessarily in any way. I just can't imagine being the person who does it, you know? I mean, more power to, but I'm just like, wow, okay, like, go ahead. Yeah.

49:50Vinson Cunningham:I legitimately think the Kate Bush song is a great adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It's a monologue in Kathy's voice that doesn't happen in the book. She's just, you know, and if you guys know the song and you know the music video and just the imploring eyes imploring imploring back from the grave good great you know it's it's kind of like what you're saying vincent of the the hamlets that yeah that i know i think it's because i think maybe it's because uh and this is what's missing for me in in this in this adaptation the song is about haunting and i don't think the movie is about haunting the movie is about an affair right and it does seem to me though that this is part of the

50:31Alexandra Schwartz:logic of and the necessity for adaptation which is that um i like to think about it in terms of cover songs it's like okay i will always love you and all of a sudden it's whitney houston and it's this it's more of a an assertion of power than uh sort of dolly parton's more it seems to me like abject song it's it's like putting a a new attitude that's often about okay what are the different what what is feminism done since the song was written uh till now what are the assertions of romance and how would this how would these words be delivered today that's such a good that's such a good point the adaptation itself becomes a portrait of of the time in which it's made yeah when you when alex told us about this guy the it was so dope guy um i was thinking okay i mean maybe he's in gen z maybe he's in his 20s and like so perhaps he went to high school during the pandemic and all i could think about was how you know this the novel is so peopled with characters and she's like there's seven people here nobody's around and the most romantic stuff that happens looks like it's happening under the conditions of social distancing.

51:45Alexandra Schwartz:You know, maybe that's why this kid thinks it's so dope. He's like, nobody's there, but guess what? There's no Zoom. And therefore, we have to fuck. It's like, all of a sudden, it can't be about that anymore. It's got to be a romance.

52:00Vinson Cunningham:Oh, I love that so much. It is the first great pandemic novel. It's like Catherine Linton, daughter of Catherine Earnshaw, her father doesn't let her leave their property. Like, she doesn't go anywhere. And for good reason, it turns out. Yeah, exactly. Like, the second she leaves, she falls into the snare of an evil maniac. So it was very smart. Edgar knew what he was doing. Yeah, Edgar knew what he was doing. I mean, I like your point, Nomi, about, and I think it's very well taken, that these adaptations have so much to do with their time. I do think the Emerald Fennell, there's so much to me that does seem, like, TikTokified, for lack of a better word.

52:35Vinson Cunningham:Like, stuff that's going to look amazing in short clips and short bursts, but at the expense of character. And I think that's one reason why this movie is really satisfying to people. And I love it too. I love being addicted to my reels, whatever. I love it. But yeah, but we want more.

52:55Alexandra Schwartz:Final question. Well. We've all talked about the casting here. If you were casting your ideal Wuthering Heights, who's Kathy who's Heathcliff Nomi seems legitimately distressed which makes me want to ask her

53:16Vinson Cunningham:she's freaking out no because I'm so bad at this it's like whenever people are like oh who would you cast is like whatever it's just fun and I'm like the only actress I can remember is like Julia Roberts or something you know what I mean okay so that's one it's like I'm like I don't know I don't know Robert Redford you know suddenly I like I like forget. Go to his grave and he's doing it. Yeah, yeah. I like forget every single actor I've ever seen in any adaptation. I'm like, okay, think young, think young. I'm like, Gracie Abrams? Like, I'm like, I don't know. That's the only name of a young person that randomly came to mind.

53:58So I don't know. But I feel like Alex has a Cheshire grin.

54:01Vinson Cunningham:No, I'm just grinning because I have no freaking idea. Like, what am I going to say? I truly don't. Vincent, do you know?

54:06Alexandra Schwartz:I sure do. Wow. Drop it. I was thinking, how could we make it even more young, yassified TikTok generation? Sabrina Carpenter is Kathy. I mean, she'd be great. Trust me, I want to see. But have you guys seen I Love L.A.? It's kind of like about the worst people in the world, just like Wuthering Heights. I'm like Rachel Sinnott. As who? As Kathy. No. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Chaos energy. She's got this thing of like, as a real person, you can tell she's got like a lot of heart or whatever. but she can access awful young person. She can make nothing be in her eyes. As a contemporary or as a period adaptation?

54:47Alexandra Schwartz:I don't know. Maybe it's contemporary. I could see it as a contemporary. As an actor, as Heathcliff, I want to cast a guy who seems to want to play black in a movie. Timothee Chalamet. You'll finally get his chance.

55:05Vinson Cunningham:Brilliant. I think that's it. I think I'll produce. We did it. I mean, Vincent did it. Vincent did it. But we only need one. We only need one.

55:13Alexandra Schwartz:This has been Critics at Large, live at the 92nd Streetwide. Nomi, Alex, thank you. Thank you all for coming. This has been great. Thank you, guys.

55:33Alexandra Schwartz:Huge thanks to everyone at the 92nd Street Y and at the New Yorker who worked to get this show off the ground. We had a great time. Critics at Large's consulting editor is Alex Barish. Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman and Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music. You can find every episode of our show at newyorker.com slash critics. And we'll be back in the studio with you all next week.

56:13This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, a Democrat and a Republican in Congress on how the immigration crackdown is changing America.

56:21Vinson Cunningham:They're going to see vast swaths of our workforce disappear. They're going to see our economy contract. Mr. President, you've got to change the way when it comes to immigration. Otherwise, we're not going to have a Republican Party. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

56:43Vinson Cunningham:I'm Jazzy Sefcik. And I'm Shilpa Oskokovic. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't works that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. And this month, we're making tiny tomato galettes.

57:18Vinson Cunningham:They're these adorable, maybe four-bite little galettes. So cute. Head to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on the Substack. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking.

57:45Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

57:47Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

57:51Alexandra Schwartz:Each week, we pick a starting point. The new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend, and we kind of go galaxy-brand with it.

58:01Vinson Cunningham:Right, we take the ideas at the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life. We go highbrow, we go lowbrow, we go everything in between.

58:17Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture. Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison. K-pop to the Kennedys. From horror movies to heated rivalry.

58:26Vinson Cunningham:From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights. Great Expectations to Desperate Housewives.

58:31Alexandra Schwartz:That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.