How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers

10:08Alexandra Schwartz:So, Katie, you have helped guide our journey into the Romanticiverse by sending us in a few different directions to explore. We all read a different book at your instruction that is contributing to this genre in a big way. So we're going to talk through those with you. Is that OK? That sounds amazing. My little pretties. There we go. It's important to ask for consent. Not always in Romanticiverse, by the way. Well, you know, well, they are. Animals. There's some mind control, some sexy mind control. There's all kinds of weird stuff happening. Alex, would you kick us off? My lord. My lady, would you kick us off?

10:48Vinson Cunningham:It would be my greatest honor. All right. So this assignment clearly depended on us all getting matched with a book that might or might not have suited us. And I'm very curious to find out if Noam and Vincent's book suited them. My book is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Moss. this assignment could not have found a better reader god i just love this i got acotar pilled yeah we should know that got that acotar is the acronym for a court of thorn and roses which okay so acotar is now now consists of four books five books i don't know will i find out i might i might be ordering the next one a court of moss and fury i think it's called great even better well All right.

11:38Vinson Cunningham:So let me just give you a little breakdown here. We got, of course, a mortal girl, Feyre. She lives in poverty, very picturesque, very sad, in a little hovel with her father. Poor man. He used to be a merchant, but he got kneecapped, and now he's just no good.

11:54Naomi Fry:Is this contemporary? Well— Or is it kind of vague when this is— Vague. Super vague.

11:59Vinson Cunningham:It seems to be pre-industrial. I hear that later industrial – like I was reading a Reddit about it and someone was like, she vomits into a modern toilet. Like, you know, so – There is so much vomiting in these books, by the way. You have to – well, emptying your stomach, of course. All right. So Feyre lives in picturesque poverty with daddy, used to be a merchant, got kneecapped, now is no good. Her two younger sisters, one of whom is a bit of a bitch, the other whom is a bit of a simpleton. And of course it depends on Feyre, who we discover is 19. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and say it. She's legal, everyone.

12:33Vinson Cunningham:She's a huntress. She goes into the miserable woods to hunt for her family on one of these expeditions. Oops, she kills a wolf who actually was a fairy. And she's taken over the wall, north of the mortal lands, to Brythian. That is where the fairies live. They all have different little kingdoms. And she's taken by a high fae Tamlin. And it soon becomes apparent both that not as all well in his kingdom. There is a blight. There are some problems. His magic has suffered. Something bad is going on. It may come to infect the mortal world. And also, and here's one of the tropes that Katie is talking about, Feyre doesn't want anything to do with the fairies.

13:13Vinson Cunningham:She's been told they're bad, they're evil. These two enemies might become lovers and enemies to lovers. Major romantic trope.

13:23Alexandra Schwartz:Big one. Yeah. So I love this. I do have to make a correction because when we were fact-checking my piece, Sarah J. Moss through her people also made this correction. Oh, my God. I described Tamlin as a fairy lord. He is not only high fay. He's high fay. Well, he's high fay, but he is a high fay high lord. Oh, my God. So two highs. Oh, my God. And so the copy editors are like, do we have to say this? It's like high fay high lord. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's it, man. Like not only is there the high fae, which is sort of like the upper class of the fairy lord, but he's the high lord of the high fae.

13:58Alexandra Schwartz:So we're learning that Sarah J. Maas, we're learning – you kind of broke some news here that like this is a person who's very interested in and devoted to her own taxonomies. And to the hierarchy of the fairy world because these books are all about status, status and power. And, like, if you try to drain away some of, like, the kick-ass magic awesomeness dominance of any of these very attractive fairy men, you're in trouble. In the firmament of the romanticcy world, like, what is ACOTAR's place in that crown? It is the one that sort of started the boom off. It popularized all of these big tropes.

14:36And, like, Alex did such a great job of talking about them. But I would add that, like, once the ordinary girl goes into the rarefied world and she's surrounded by all of these, like, devastatingly handsome supernatural creatures, they engage in witty banter and taste ambrosial food and there's lots of intrigue.

14:55Naomi Fry:It's a bit of the kind of the perfect boyfriend fantasy.

15:02Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, totally. I mean, do you guys want to know how I felt about it? I mean, I already told you a little bit. I need to just narrate my own journey for a second. Can I tell you about my own journey here? How did you become pilled? Well, I became pilled when I realized that I couldn't put this goddamn book down, even though it was 11.45 at night. And my own human child would be waking, you know, in a number of hours. And I was like, must keep going. So that's how I knew that this book had me good. And what was it about it? Like, why could you not stop? All right. So one is the narrative ease of this book.

15:39Vinson Cunningham:It is impressive. Like, could I make a critical case for it? The writing is repetitive. It's not the highest of literary experiences, that's for sure. But it did bring me back to this deep childhood state of total absorption and pleasure. And some of these tropes that we're talking about really do remind me of books that I read as a tween, not just the Tamora Pierce books, but also a book like Ella Enchanted. I don't know if anyone here knows that by Gail Carson Levine because both of them are Cinderella stories. They're both about being totally poor in a very picturesque way, in a way that has nothing to do with modern poverty.

16:18Vinson Cunningham:and I, in my bedroom as a child, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with nothing to want for, loved to pretend that I was in a wood. You know, my whole family depended on what mushrooms I could pick that day and if I would, you know, run into the wizard or whatever. And she's made bank on that conceit. Good for her. Good for her. I'm kicking myself.

16:36Alexandra Schwartz:There you go. I think we have some voicemails that might further open up the rose of Sarah J. Moss.

16:44Vinson Cunningham:Hells yes. Come to me, listeners. Let me hear you. Hi, critics. So my experience with Romanticy was that in 2020, I sort of lost my ability to read. I think it was just isolation kind of messed up my brain. And I just kind of gave up on reading because I couldn't do it. And then in 2021 on social media, I'd been hearing some buzz about these like horny fairy books. So I get ACOTAR and I'm reading it and I'm like, this is so, cheesy but I also couldn't put it down like I was embarrassed to be reading it but I also like like had this thank you I don't know primal part of me that was like oh I love it I love how horny they are I love how like predictable this is like I love how um kind of idealized the characters are and how self-inserty the main character is.

17:45Now I'm kind of able to read again and romanticy is a regular part of my reading activity. I love it.

17:58Vinson Cunningham:I don't know. Yeah, I totally get that. I mean, there's a certain kind of pleasure from just binging a book that is very different than sitting and passively binging a television show. And I do think it's about that childhood, long summers in the hammock, whatever it might be, under the covers, pleasure. And I can totally understand why ACOTAR brought that back for this reader.

18:20Alexandra Schwartz:We got another voicemail. I think we're going to cut to that. Hello. This is very exciting. Also, hello, my name is Mel. My venture into romance-y is that I had a friend recommend ACOTAR to me during COVID. There is so much I have to say about the romance and romanticity genre, but I think it like all boils down to the fact that it's empowering. Like women should be allowed to want strength and pleasure for themselves. And that is what these characters often want. I also personally realized that I'd never read an intimate scene written by a woman. Like, I'd never read a smut scene in my life before, and it was kind of like having an older sister tell me, this is how it should go.

19:06This is how it could go.

19:07Vinson Cunningham:These are some things you could ask for. I totally get this about the empowerment angle. And I will just say, to complicate Mel's point a little bit, I don't know if this changes in the ACOTAR, the six books that I have yet to go through on my journey. And surely you will. And surely I will. But there is a very distinctive element, which is the girl can really be the only one of her kind. And that part is not feminist. A lot of it is the sense of I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it by myself. And, you know, I can be as tough as a man, but also soft as a woman.

19:40Alexandra Schwartz:Right. Yeah. And just before we move on, I think we should also acknowledge the growing theme here. One of the early stats we talked about is a doubling between 2020 and 2023 and the market share of this. And both of our listeners have talked about COVID already, that there's something about community, something about, to use a different growing industry term, coziness. There is some aspect of salving loneliness that this is sort of making a kind of intervention in, I think.

20:23Alexandra Schwartz:In a minute, Romantic Book Club continues. That's right. After the break, on Critics at Large, from The New Yorker.

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21:09Alexandra Schwartz:What if I told you you only have 12 hours to legally have sex? To finding true love. Or just like a good guy. From the director of Easy A and Anyone But You.

21:20Vinson Cunningham:This whole thing is nuts.

21:21Alexandra Schwartz:There's nothing traditional about this line. On August 7th, the clock starts on the summer's biggest rom-com. I'm Owen.

21:29Vinson Cunningham:Allie.

21:29Alexandra Schwartz:What about me and me? Monica Barbaro. Callum Turner.

21:32Vinson Cunningham:I've been told I'm a seven. By who? Your mom? No. She thinks I'm a ten.

21:36Alexandra Schwartz:One Night Only. Rated R. Only in theaters August 7th.

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22:47Alexandra Schwartz:Before we get back to the conversation, listeners, it's that time again. We're working on another I Need a Critic episode. We've come to really love this series because it gives us a chance to hear from you.

22:59Vinson Cunningham:Oh, yeah, you all know the drill at this point. But for anyone who doesn't, don't fear. All you have to do is record a voice memo on your phone with a specific cultural question that we can help you with. Maybe you're looking for the perfect book to read after you just had a baby and you have no attention span or time. Maybe you want to know whether book clubs are actually helpful. Maybe you want an example in media, the movies, what have you, of an actually happy relationship.

23:25Naomi Fry:I mean, who can tell really what you come up with? And we can't wait to find out. You've got questions. We've got answers. Hit us up. Send your voice memos, as always, to themailatnewyorker.com with the subject line, Critics. And now, back to the episode.

23:47Naomi Fry:Okay, so we've gotten the taste of ACOTAR. Vincent, you had your own assignment. Tell us about your book.

23:55Alexandra Schwartz:Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros.

23:58Naomi Fry:Wow.

23:59Alexandra Schwartz:Fourth Wing is about a 20-year-old young woman named Violet Sorengale, And she is kind of a warrior Nepo baby. Her mother is a high general in the warrior class of a kingdom named Navarre that has been at sort of perpetual war, we are told, for about 400 years. And you have to sort of choose a lane in this world. You can be an infantry person. You can be a scribe, a medic or a warrior. Her father was a scribe and Violet has been trained to be a scribe all her life until her mother capriciously says, nope, we Sorengales are warriors. We are riders, riders that is, of dragons. And therefore, you will be one too.

24:48Alexandra Schwartz:And she makes it through various trials. But because she is a Sorengale, has many enemies in the rider-like academy. One of them is a huge, hulking, tall, sexy enemy. I'll tell you that. Zayden.

25:04Naomi Fry:He's a bit of a bad boy.

25:05Alexandra Schwartz:He's a bad boy who she assumes is going to try to kill her at every step, but weirdly keeps on helping her. And we see her sometimes, and the diction is very contemporary. So there's a lot like double standard for the win, like stuff like that. Or like there's a moment when she has to – she's looking at this Zayden character in their second or third kind of weirdly flirtatious negative encounter. And she has to remind herself in italicized thought, I do not like toxic men. So there's a lot of contemporary diction happening in this dragon-y world. I do love the name Zayden. it's it's like it's kind of like a zoomer like he would have zuckerberg hair right yeah um let me just say this you don't sound uninvested it's you know it's got it follows a template that we all kind of know there's somebody who a lot of fantasy has a like you know harry potter has this the nepo baby angle my my parents are somebody special but i'm just this little quizzling and the sort of ancestral power has to rise within me, the sort of specialness of one figure, or, you know, weirdly, the most powerful dragon chose me.

26:26It really, when I was reading these books, the theme that kept cropping up was like, I am special, I am unique. And like, they felt like kind of security blankets that were about like propping up self-esteem. And the reason that I think that they're so powerful and they provide such solace to us in these times of loneliness and vulnerability is because they tell us, like, you know, you're perfect. You're always right. You have the hottest mate. You have the sickest powers. You have, like, you know, the most beautiful dresses. And, like, I totally get it. Like, I fall into those reveries, too. I think we all do.

27:04Alexandra Schwartz:And the pages just fly by. So, yeah, you know, by mid-book, I wanted to know what happened, you know.

27:09Vinson Cunningham:So I learned something interesting about this book, which is Rebecca Jessica Yaros had published 20 books before she wrote Fourth Wing and before she started this series. And none of them, I think, did particularly well. This book comes out, it debuts at the very top of the New York Times bestseller list. It's absolutely huge. Of course, as we noted in the introduction, the latest in the series Onyx Storm is the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years. So, you know—

27:34Alexandra Schwartz:Plot twist. Zayden's still in the picture.

27:35Vinson Cunningham:There you go. So, Katie, can you situate this a bit for us in the world of romanticcy? I mean, is this happening at the same time as ACOTAR? Are Yeros and Moss kind of feeding each other success? Are they seeing, you know, what's the story here? Are they enemies to lovers? Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh, a crossover universe. I mean, I think that's a really, it's a really interesting question, like how they interlock, because Sarah J. Moss's books sort of popularized these tropes, showed that there was like a really powerful market for them. And then sort of savvy marketers and publishers saw those tropes being celebrated and embraced on social media and basically like stringed them into their petri dishes.

28:22And I think like another – your observation that the sort of – there's the irony-pilled internet diction that – that is true of Rebecca Yeros. It is not true of Sarah J. Moss.

28:33Alexandra Schwartz:Sarah J. Moss is not talking about toxic manner. No, absolutely not. Cool. Yeah. Let's go to the viewers. What are we thinking? Hi there. My name is Cece. I wanted to share my perspective on the Fourth Wing series. I first heard about it through a friend of mine, and I was asking her what she was reading, and she was kind of sheepish, and she said, oh, I've been reading Romanticy, but actually, I think you would really like this series. And the reason she gave was because I am a horse lover. I'm an equestrian. I ride multiple times a week. And she said, you know, these characters, their relationship with the dragons in the story, it kind of reminds me of maybe what it would feel like, you know, having a relationship with the horse.

29:22And so I picked up the books and I love them. You know, when you're galloping, when you're flying, when you're not flying literally, but when you're jumping over jumps, it does feel like you're flying. So there's that element of magic, quote unquote, that for me was really evocative. I think that was certainly something that hooked me onto it, you know, more than other YA or romantic novels.

29:51Naomi Fry:I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, the relationship between humans and animals and the way it's depicted in literature. You know, I feel it's a rare thing to find kind of like a representation of that that speaks to one as an animal lover. And so, yeah, it totally makes sense to me. And the fact that it comes in as a kind of fantasy element, you know, animals are magic in a way. All right.

30:19Alexandra Schwartz:Here goes another one.

30:20Naomi Fry:Hi, my name is Ella. I'm 24 and I'm from New Zealand. And so I got into reading romanticy books, which is either, for me, the Imperium series or ACOTAR, maybe like a year ago. But one of the things for me anyway with both ACOTAR and the Imperium series is the community that it brings with it and the world building. For me, it feels a lot like kind of how people used to go on Tumblr and create series for their favorite TV shows. There's Reddit pages, there's TikTok,

30:59Vinson Cunningham:and being part of a community, again, that theorizes about all the possible things and is so deeply connected and understanding of one particular character, a few characters. It's just so much fun. That's me. Thanks, guys. Bye. This is so spot on that another part of the rise of romanticity, and I think a really big part, is that it's about community. It's a way of uniting people. Romance bookstores, absolutely huge right now. And their rise, I think, is being fueled in large part on romantic readers. You know, these are places where people are coming together, often in costume, like they did at the release of Onyx Storm.

31:32Vinson Cunningham:It's really like I'm very interested in that and how people are leaving the hammock and getting out there because you want to connect with other readers of these books because I think it, you know, you feel that something about yourself has been expressed. Definitely. It's a kind of like, it's a bit of an underdoggy kind of phenomenon, right?

31:53Naomi Fry:Where it's like, oh, I'm, which I totally identify with, right? As a reader, like, I misunderstood. Nobody has ever felt these things I've felt before, especially as a young person, you know, when you read a book and you're like, oh, wow. And then you talk to other people who felt similarly. And there's something beautiful about it, for sure.

32:12Alexandra Schwartz:You know what?

32:13Naomi Fry:I think it's time for Nomi to step up and tell us all about Crave.

32:19Alexandra Schwartz:It's all right there in the name, isn't it?

32:21Naomi Fry:Oh, it really is. It really is. Okay. So the book I was assigned by the group is Crave by Tracy Wolf. It came out in 2020, the first in a series of six books, I believe, called like Crave, Crush, Court. But it's the Crave series. Basically, the plot is there's a young 17-year-old girl named Grace, hails from San Diego. Her parents die in a shocking car accident and she is left all alone in the world except for her uncle Finn. and Uncle Finn also happens to run a very mysterious boarding school in the wilds of Alaska. And the school is, shall we say, from the jump, a little bit odd, right? All sorts of weird things are happening.

33:12Naomi Fry:You know, there's like chandeliers of bone, of human bone, you know, And like a chess set of, you know, with gargoyles and dragons. And she keeps being like, this seems a bit strange, but I'm not sure what's going on. Like for like literally 200 pages. It's kind of like, and it's like her cousin is like, don't talk to him. He's a drah. And she's like, and her cousin is like, oh, I meant there's a lot of drama with him. You know, stuff like that. So it's just like a queen. I love those. So it's a bit humorous, but also extremely clunky. And much like your book, the Rebecca Harris book that you read, Vincent, uses a lot of contemporary references.

34:01Naomi Fry:So like, you know, like apropos of nothing, suddenly her cousin puts on Harry Styles' watermelon sugar in their dorm room. Stuff like that, you know.

34:11Alexandra Schwartz:So, yeah, it's like it's for the it's for today.

34:13Naomi Fry:It's for today. Basically, the main thing that happens is that she falls in love with this very mysterious, extremely hunky, you know, strong of jaw, you know, dark of hair. Scarred of face. He has a scar, which is, you know, mysterious, but also weirdly appealing. And his name, guys, is Jackson with an X.

34:38Alexandra Schwartz:Okay. Makes all the difference.

34:40Naomi Fry:It makes all the difference. So we have she falls in love with him. It's very Vanderpump. It's very bartender on Vanderpump rules. Okay. It turns out Jackson is a vampire and not just a vampire, but the heir to become the king vampire because he also killed his brother, Hudson, because Hudson was an evil vampire. and not only that, there's a lot of different cliques in this school because it's not just vampires. We have dragons. Okay. One of the main dragons is named Flint and he has, you know, beautiful curly hair and warm brown eyes. The dragon does. Yeah. In his human form. In his human form, he's a hottie.

35:28Naomi Fry:They're all like hotties. They're all hotties. So, and then there's the kind of wolf shapeshifters. There's witches and wizards. I can't emphasize enough how repetitive it is. Like every 10 pages, Grace almost gets killed and Jackson saves her.

35:49Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

35:50Naomi Fry:And it's like, it's either like a falling branch or an earthquake or no, it's crazy. Yeah. I just, I have like some trivia to add to that glorious recap. There is a trope that I stumbled upon in reporting this piece called the too dumb to live trope. Oh, wow. Grace falls into the like, and it's sort of like a joke, like a frustration. Like, why are these ingenues like so naive and like so stupid? And like, we, why do we have to keep this simmering for so long? Don't you have any other ideas? So long.

36:20Alexandra Schwartz:Now that we've kind of gotten back into the sort of whole paraliterary aspect of this, Could you give us just a sense of where social media and specifically BookTok plays into all of this? What is that community like? What's going on over there? Yeah, I mean, it's really fascinating. On the sort of consumer side, there are readers who are really, like, championing these books. And, like, if they like something, they'll make a video about it and they'll, like, cry. And the other thing about these videos is often they're marked and sorted by hashtags that correspond to particular tropes like dagger to the throat or enemies to lovers.

37:00And I talked to some especially self-publishing authors in Romanticy who say, like, TikTok is such a resource for me because this is where readers are telling me exactly what they want to read. and like I see the things that are being celebrated and uplifted on social media and I say oh all right I'm gonna put this in my book.

37:21Alexandra Schwartz:Well this goes to in which direction the kind of like owing flows right? Do they owe us certain actions or certain affects like or do we owe something like attention or like giving up ourselves to new experiences? It seems like the sort of like I don't know, social media as a marketplace, as like, I don't know, a place for like haggling almost kind of further confuses that relationship between reader and character and reader and sort of even action.

37:56Naomi Fry:It's crazy to me, I have to say. Like, I'm not for this. On this level, I'm not against, of course, you know, readers engaging with books they love and encouraging other people to read them and hashtagging even tropes. But the idea that a writer needs to chase the dragon's tail of the completely shifting and changing fashions or, you know, preferences of like an amorphous reading audience is like nuts to me. Yeah. And I would add that the specificity of the tropes, the way that like a reader can shop by very specific pleasure points, the thing I like to read about forced proximity plus love triangle plus like marriage of convenience, whatever.

38:49Like there is this sort of like customization, like Netflix, customer service aspect to this that like makes me think, especially when coupled with the notion that Vincent was alluding to, that like these books are about bolstering self -esteem and providing validation and sort of like bringing you deeper into yourself and feeling affirmed. Like it's sort of like these books are they're like customer service wrapped in self-care, wrapped in literature. Like they're not.

39:21Naomi Fry:Well, it's not even literature anymore. You know what it is? It's AI. It's exactly made for AI. Yeah. This is what AI should be for in justice. Yeah. Right. Like if you want a book that's about like all of these like highly, highly specific like fan service things, then yeah, just go to ChadGP. I don't know. Like, it seems like that would be a solution. Let's, like, solve that problem.

39:46Vinson Cunningham:I'm not quite as concerned as you are, I've got to say. I mean, I'm not concerned.

39:49Naomi Fry:I'm not losing sleep. But I do think it's, like, not—this is not what I think literature is.

40:01Alexandra Schwartz:Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a break. And when we're back, we're going to talk about why this genre is exploding right now. But we also have to say thank you so much to the illustrious Katie Wallman. Thank you, Katie. This was so fun. I want to continue talking about this with you guys forever. It's really interesting. Thank you for joining us. Okay. Bye. Critics at large from The New Yorker will be right back.

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41:09How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

41:26Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

41:27Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

41:31Alexandra 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.

41:41Vinson 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.

41:54Naomi Fry:We go highbrow. We go lowbrow. We go everything in between.

41:57Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture. Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison.

42:02Naomi Fry:K-pop to the Kennedys.

42:04Vinson Cunningham:From horror movies to heated rivalry. From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights. Great expectations to Desperate Housewives.

42:11Alexandra Schwartz:That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

42:17Naomi Fry:Every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

42:29Alexandra Schwartz:We've already gotten a lot of these theories about why this genre is kind of taking off in the way it is, but I think we should also just try to maybe synthesize them. But first, we're just going to hear from a few more listeners. So, when I started reading, I was just consuming all these stories about spunky, brave girls who stow away in ships or cross the prairie, pretend to be boys and become knights, fall in love,

43:02Naomi Fry:and bring justice to the realm and the kingdom. Alex is nodding. And so for, you know, a magical girl from the 90s,

43:10Vinson Cunningham:the message was very clear in a lot of that literature. You know, girl power, try hard, work hard, be brave. But when you cross the threshold into adulthood, you know, it changes. You know, I now work in a field where I see a lot of inequality. And I work with people who have spent their entire careers fighting for smaller forms and larger systems and making absolutely no progress. Yes. So isn't it nice to spend some time in a magical realm where, you know, real darkness and pain and danger and stakes exist, but you can get stronger by being true to yourself and you can grow and cleave to your friends and make real change.

44:00You know, isn't that nice? Just with these stories, I think that you're going to get a lot of the experience and the life that maybe you were prepared for as a 90s girl, as a millennial.

44:13Vinson Cunningham:The 90s girl becomes a disappointed woman and seeks refuge in romanticcy.

44:18Naomi Fry:I love our listeners, I just want to say.

44:20Alexandra Schwartz:So good.

44:22Naomi Fry:So intelligent and so, like, articulate. Okay.

44:25Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, I think it's a good theory. I think that, you know, this is why I keep coming back to these books that I read in my own younger years. I think this was absolutely a huge thing. It was the girls can do anything moment. You were getting that messaging. Yeah, I think this listener has brought up the interesting point that reality does not always live up to these expectations. And so in a fantasy world, you don't have to deal with those problems.

44:50Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a question, though, because to the listener's point, I have wondered why it's not just about like an amazing career woman making her way to the top of the ladder and, oh, also her male secretary creeps under her desk every once in a while or whatever. You're like, why isn't it baby girl? Why can't romance and like a sort of way around the real world happen within realism? I'm just wondering why it has to be dragons.

45:17Naomi Fry:That's a really good question. I think maybe, I mean, yeah, just to go back to the insight from our listener and the voicemail we just heard, I think maybe many people right now, many women perhaps especially, feel as if the real world and the expectations we had of the real world have been tainted. I'm not going to say beyond repair, but tainted at least at this moment. And there's a real need to escape.

45:55Vinson Cunningham:Vincent, I have a slightly different answer for you, I have to say. I think you answered your own question when you asked why we couldn't read a thrilling story about going up the corporate ladder. I mean, come on. Like, yes, there have been – we know that we love Working Girl on this podcast.

46:10Naomi Fry:Let the river run.

46:12Vinson Cunningham:Mike Nichols' movie about exactly that, about a Cinderella story that does not take place in a fairy world but actually in a corporate office in downtown Manhattan.

46:22Naomi Fry:The only capitalist movie that I accept is like, you know, Mana.

46:27Vinson Cunningham:But I will say this is not just a women's issue. We have been hearing all over also in like the not just men's world but specifically in the men's rights world that there are not enough opportunities in our culture for valor, for heroism, for showing character, for excelling not in a capitalistic way but in a kind of older honor-bound way. The fantasy genre is really, really big for these reasons. And I think that some of this – I do think that these are legitimate – there is a legitimate sense of lacking in the society that some of these fantasies can fill. And like on the whole, I do buy that readers can find these fantasies empowering.

47:08Vinson Cunningham:I also buy that if you put this into a more male-lensed world, you get men's rights stuff. I think there is a problem. We have a problem. and innocent fun fantasy is responding in the same way that, you know, some really like legitimately dark figures in our own world are responding in their own way. And those things probably stem from the same place.

47:32Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Well, yeah. In the men's rights context, they're, you know, going back to like, you know, classical times and there is a sort of return to the classics as a way to express this. But then there's like Game of Thrones, which is also huge entertainment, which is about also these kinds of, I don't know, a time of more, a time, a place, a dimension, a galaxy of more sort of strenuous way through the world that you have to sort of earn your way not just by, to your point, corporate conquest or whatever, but by like strength and honor and dignity. A hundred percent.

48:12Vinson Cunningham:I think Game of Thrones is absolutely the other crucial thing to mention. The enormous popularity of Game of Thrones, I will never forget just like hearing the theme music waft through my window if I happened to open it at the right time. You know what I mean? Everyone watching this show, which was exactly that. It was about hand-to-hand combat. It was about dragons. It was about valor. It was, yes, about rape and sex. all of those kind of elemental things being packaged in a very safe but exciting way. And so when these things kind of come up in the society, we do have to ask why. Like, a lot of this has gotten me thinking about vampires in general.

48:52Naomi Fry:Okay.

48:53Vinson Cunningham:Say more. Well, you know, vampires are a Victorian phenomenon, but they're also a romantic phenomenon, capital R. You know, we first get vampires, really, when in summer of 1816, that kind of famous summer, when Lord Byron and Shelley and Mary Shelley, you know, and others are all sitting around Lake Geneva feeling like it's too rainy and come up with their stories. That's how we get Frankenstein. And it's also how we get the vampire, which is an 1819 book by one John Polidori, who happened to be Byron's doctor. It's like, why are you here, John Polidori? Oh, because Lord Byron needed, you know, his club foot to be attended to.

49:38Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, exactly. Get Polidori in the house. Never forget the club foot. Oh, my God. Get Polidori in the house and write about some vampires. And, you know, the Polidori vampire, he only wanted virgins. He sucks their necks. You know, they die. He lives. Like, hooray, we now have this. It's a great idea. It's a great idea.

49:55Alexandra Schwartz:Polidori, shout out to you. Yes.

49:56Vinson Cunningham:And then you get Dracula, and Dracula has never left us. And I think Dracula has to do so many things, so many social issues. It has to do with contagion. It has to do with, you know, problems between men and women. It has to do with immigration, this foreigner from the east with an accent who may be coming through your window. I bond. Yes.

50:13Alexandra Schwartz:Yes.

50:14Vinson Cunningham:At a time when all these societies are blending and mixing and becoming industrialized, great change. You know, it's the anxieties are all wrapped up there. Yeah. And so I do think romanticcy, I've gone far afield here. but I think Romanticist is speaking to some of that but also making it cozy yes

50:33Alexandra Schwartz:and because these are all what's so interesting to me about yes this genealogy that you mentioned but also kind of the way that Romanticist is so hyper aware of the tropes that make it up right it's not just a development it's plucking from this and this and maybe that is the coziness sometimes cliche is just because somebody can't think up anything better. Here it's almost like cliche is weaponized toward comfort. It's like here's something you recognize and another thing you recognize and another thing you recognize and we can bring them in closer Congress with another, which is like a, it seems, it's not a novel.

51:14Alexandra Schwartz:I mean, I guess like the B movie is something that does this as well, but it sort of takes the uncanny out of its, out of the context that made it truly like address certain tensions and anxieties and puts it in a place where it's almost like hyper canny like you know exactly what this is and this is the thing with fan so much of the utility of and we talked about this when we've talked about sci-fi and other um vehicles of travel away from realism um we're always asking you know what it has to do with the real world and i guess there's a question of like um is the only value of fantasy its correspondences with the real world or is there a pure fantasy in the way that at the beginning of the 20th century we were asking, is there a pure abstraction in literature?

52:02Alexandra Schwartz:Or does Gertrude Stein, despite herself always, with nonsense words and repetitions, is that always bringing us back to the world of signs and reference? In a similar way, are we missing a point here by trying to diagnose social ills or social anxieties by way of this literature? Is it just like – is the point that it's just away?

52:27Vinson Cunningham:Well, I think –

52:28Alexandra Schwartz:Does that make sense as a question? It totally makes sense.

52:30Vinson Cunningham:And, you know, I – of course, because I'm so lily-livered, I'm like both. I don't want to commit. No, but I think the listener before who was making the point about the disappointments of modern romance, like you can find answers to that outside of romanticcy, also in fiction that seems maybe a bit more realist to us. You know, you can watch a Nora Ephron movie or whatever. Totally. And find that person.

52:53Naomi Fry:Which would be my preference. Exactly.

52:55Vinson Cunningham:Because, you know, we love reality. We love reality. Yeah. We just love it. Or Rooney as well. I mean— I think Rooney, guys— It's crucial, I think. I mean, people have been saying this, but not until I read Romanticy did I understand how close she is. She is right there in—

53:11Alexandra Schwartz:She's on the cusp of the—

53:12Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, because you're getting soulful sex with often lots of – and hot sex with lots of disagreements between people but a kind of fundamental can't quit you thing. And the intensity of it, the sheer intensity of it. Yeah. And a fundamental knowing of each other. That's right.

53:31Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Yeah. So given all that we've been through, given all of the rivers we've crossed and dragon burns, will you continue your immersion in this genre? Can I tell you something quickly to answer this question a little bit for myself? And then the other night I watched the first episode of a series called Outlander.

54:02Vinson Cunningham:Oh, and there it is.

54:07Alexandra Schwartz:Which is like it started back in 2014 on Starz. And it is about a World War II nurse after World War II who is suddenly, you know, reunited with her husband. And shortly thereafter, by some pagan magic, she's transported back in time to 1743. And after all this, like, make back up sex with her husband, starts to clearly have a romance with some, like, 18th century Scottish soldier. And I was like, wow, am I back in the fields of romanticcy? Because this is very much romanticcy. So the answer for me is I'm not sure.

54:46Vinson Cunningham:But you might be staying with Outlander, it sounds like.

54:48Alexandra Schwartz:I might be staying with Outlander. Oh, yeah. But how about the rest of you guys?

54:52Naomi Fry:I have to say I'm curious about Alex's book. I'm curious about the Moss book.

54:57Alexandra Schwartz:You might get Akatarified.

54:59Naomi Fry:I might get Akatarified.

55:00Vinson Cunningham:Nomi's going to hate it and she's going to be like, what is wrong with you?

55:03Naomi Fry:No, no, no. But it's piqued my curiosity for sure.

55:08Vinson Cunningham:I mean, I'm disturbed. I'm disturbed by the degree to which even after I knew exactly what was going to happen in this book, I just kept flipping those pages. So it all comes down to this. Will I be going to a court of stones and sapphires, whatever the next one happens to be?

55:30Alexandra Schwartz:Mist and a wrap.

55:31Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, a court of, right, grass and loathing. I might be. You might. I might be.

55:38Alexandra Schwartz:We might have to check back in.

55:39Vinson Cunningham:I might be going there because that kind of gulping down feeling, it does reconnect me with my 90s girl self.

55:48Naomi Fry:And that's a beautiful thing.

55:54Alexandra Schwartz:This has been a very fantastical, very sexy Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby, and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker.com slash critics.

56:34The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

57:09Vinson 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.

57:40Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

57:41Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

57:46Alexandra 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.

57:55Vinson 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.

58:08Naomi Fry:We go highbrow, we go lowbrow, we go everything in between.

58:11Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture. Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison.

58:16Naomi Fry:K-pop to the Kennedys.

58:18Vinson Cunningham:From horror movies to heated rivalry. From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights. Great Expectations to Desperate Housewives.

58:25Alexandra 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.