I Need a Critic: June, 2026, Edition

6:26Alexandra Schwartz:I think Nomi did it.

6:27Vinson Cunningham:Okay. Wow. Great, guys. Consensus. Okay. Vincent, on to you. What do you got?

6:33Alexandra Schwartz:Let's do it. I got somebody. I've got Elise. Hi, critics. My name is Elise, and I'm calling from New York City. After having a quarter-life crisis at the age of 26, I decided I needed to do something completely different with my life and will soon be beginning a master's program in architecture. a field in which I have absolutely no experience. I am curious if you have any favorite books or movies about architecture and the built environment. A personal favorite of mine, for example, is Sebald's Austerlitz. Thanks.

7:05Naomi Fry:Congrats, Elise, on your change of career path. Very cool. You know, it's always great to do that. I, for instance, have decided recently that I should do more crafts. Hmm. I know it's not exactly the same thing.

7:19Alexandra Schwartz:And what is architecture?

7:20Vinson Cunningham:This is a revelation to me. I learn something new every day. Delighted. Delighted to know that about you, Nomi. And Elise, I think that there are few paths. I agree with George Costanza. And if you at 26 don't know who that is, please look it up. That there is no nobler profession than that of architecture. So here's what I got for you. Okay. The first is called My Architect. That was mine too. Oh, it's by Nathaniel Kahn. I love that movie. It's about his father, the architect, Louis Kahn. Louis Kahn was one of the most significant American architects of the 20th century. He died in, I think, 1974 in Penn Station.

8:00Vinson Cunningham:He had a heart attack in the men's room at Penn Station. Died. It took three days for his body to be reclaimed. So already this kind of fascinating story of major public presence. And Nathaniel Kahn was Louis Kahn's son, but part of a secret family. And it turned out that Louis Kahn had three families, the one he lived with and then two others. So Nathaniel Kahn in this documentary, which was from 2006, goes through archives and goes to compatriots of his father's, some very significant fellow architects, and tries to understand who his father was as an artist and also as a man. And it is fascinating.

8:40Vinson Cunningham:It's a great movie that works really well as an exposure to buildings and the built environment, as you say, and also to understanding the mysterious human element behind these major and imposing facades.

8:54Naomi Fry:Yeah, I think it also, just to, I co-assign everything you said about my architect, Alex, the other thing I would say is that it kind of like investigates this like great man myth or notion, I guess, about kind of like important architects, right? Which as we know is something that kind of informs our idea of what makes for significant architecture the usually the man behind the buildings. Yeah.

9:22Vinson Cunningham:So the other film recommendation I have for you is a very short film. It's less than 20 minutes long, and it's called Les Dites Cariatides by Agnes Varda, which means the so-called cariatids. Cariatids are carved figures of naked ladies on buildings. And what Agnes Varda, who's one of my absolute favorite filmmakers, did was go around the streets of Paris and point her camera up to see where she could find cariatids on all kinds of Parisian buildings. If you know Paris, if you don't, it doesn't matter. It gives you a completely different, totally idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind view of this city.

9:58Vinson Cunningham:It's a beautiful, short jewel of a film. Love it. Take 20 minutes out of your day. Go watch it. That sounds awesome.

10:04Alexandra Schwartz:I feel like I would love that.

10:05Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, me too. I don't know it.

10:06Alexandra Schwartz:I only have a couple of short things to add to this. Please. I love those, and I'm going to hunt them down. One is a book by, for my money, the greatest American architecture critic, Michael Sorkin. and he wrote a great book it's called 20 minutes in manhattan and it is this incredibly kind of slow and assured but in in the end very exciting like sort of thrilling illustration he's like writing through his walk he was also an architect um from his apartment in chelsea to his studio that's it it's like the 20 minute walk and from the moment he leaves his door he's talking about the design of the staircases in his building and what era they belong to and talking about the New York City streetscape.

10:51Alexandra Schwartz:It's this highly informed, almost auto fiction of moving through Manhattan that I just, I adore this book. The other is a body of work of photography, which is the photography of Eugène Ache, The late 19th century French sort of failed actor turned almost gig photographer. He would do studies for architects and for draftsmen and other kinds of artists. But what resulted was just this incredibly complex view of the streets, the parks, the public art, the statuary of Paris in this incredibly, you know, theatrical way. If you want to read something about this work as you look at it, the former MoMA photography curator, John Sarkovsky, has a great, great, great essay about Aceh.

11:53Alexandra Schwartz:It's one of my favorite essays about photography. So Aceh, Michael Sorkin.

11:57Vinson Cunningham:Love it. Love it. Love it all. We're rolling. Okay, here's what I got for you guys. So this one, we only got text. If you'll forgive me, I will read it. I am Charlie. Charlie is a woman, so just imagine that I'm Charlie. Here we go. Charlie writes, So my question is, Where can I find big XL plus guys who are portrayed as genuinely, shamelessly hot male characters? Charlie adds, I'm a 34-year-old lady living in Sydney, Australia, and am exclusively attracted to super chubby handsome guys. For context, I'm 5 '1", skinny, and get hit on a lot. When I realized this at the ripe age of 21, it was really confusing to me at first because nowhere on screen or in books or anywhere did I see big, i.e.

12:45Vinson Cunningham:fat, a loaded word I know but accurate, guys portrayed sincerely as a viable sexual interest. I would personally love to see a film, just one film, where a leading man is handsome and fat, and his innate attractiveness is portrayed as a given without any hesitation or shame or humor or overt comment attached to it. That would be so cool and hot. Charlie, I'm throwing this to my co-hosts because I'm sorry to say that I think you have a real cultural conundrum and the culture that I know is not forthcoming with an answer for you.

13:18Naomi Fry:Yeah, this is a really, I mean, this is a great question, Charlie, and it's also a rough one because I totally agree with you with the thrust of the question that, yeah, I mean, just having like a regular guy who's a leading man who is of extra large size and it's portrayed without comment is, I think, kind of a pretty way too rare thing.

13:43Alexandra Schwartz:You know where they make sexy fat guys? Hip hop. my favorite rapper the Notorious B.I.G. a.k.a. Biggie Smalls

13:51Naomi Fry:well yeah that's absolutely

13:52Alexandra Schwartz:if you let him tell it is Helen of Troy he's the face that launched a thousand oh my god he's always and he says it you know you know from Faith Evans

14:00Naomi Fry:to Lil' Kim

14:01Alexandra Schwartz:he's and and in his lyrics it's just like girls pee pee when they see me

14:05Naomi Fry:yeah

14:07Alexandra Schwartz:that's what according to him I'm the hottest I'm the coolest I do I put the most of the NY

14:13Naomi Fry:on to seek NY Miami DC prefer Versace

14:16Alexandra Schwartz:He's talking about his clothes. He's talking about his money. He's talking about bottles in the club. The whole, you can't listen to his music. None of it makes sense if he's not also, he's like not fat, but also the hottest person on the planet. Heavy D is an early archetype of, he's got like, you know, the songs are a little bit more popcorn-y. They're a little bit more primary color songs, but it only works if he's the coolest. So... Fat Joe, literally in the name. Fat Joe, it's in the name. Before him, Big Pong, who was an incredible... Seriously, in rap, that's where... It's true. I just didn't...

14:56Naomi Fry:I guess my... I'm skewing the question. We got there. And that's what counts.

15:01Alexandra Schwartz:Charlie, there you got it. Put on some biggie and get yourself ready to find the love of your life, Charlie.

15:04Vinson Cunningham:Love it. Yeah. Vincent, what's your next question for us?

15:08Alexandra Schwartz:Here we go. Let's find out. here we have a really great question from seema and it's email only so i'm going to read it hello critics i'm a devoted listener from iran and i've listened to almost every episode despite our terrible internet situation here right now life in iran feels like living in constant anticipation of a full-scale catastrophe it's hard to concentrate hard to plan for the future hard to fully commit to anything at all when everything feels uncertain and fragile all the time. So my question for I Need a Critic is, which books or films or other cultural works have helped people endure periods of instability, fear, or historical uncertainty?

15:57Alexandra Schwartz:What helps us continue living fully inside difficult realities, not by offering escapism or false hope, but by making uncertainty emotionally survivable? Thank you, Seema.

16:10Vinson Cunningham:Seema, what an amazing question.

16:12Alexandra Schwartz:What a question.

16:13Vinson Cunningham:Yeah. Seema, thank you for listening. Yeah, Seema. We send you love and strength. I got an answer, and I'm sure I've brought it up on this show before. But as my co-hosts may know, one of my favorite books ever is Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, which deals with a young man, Frédéric Moreau, who goes to Paris from the provinces in the late 1840s and falls in love with a married woman, has all kinds of adventures in art and living and romance, only to stumble right into the revolution of 1848. I love this novel because when I read it, I read it for the first time, I think right before the pandemic.

16:57Vinson Cunningham:And it felt, living in the age of Trump here, it felt so recognizable, the sense of youth and uncertainty and life going on anyway while being totally affected by bigger things, But still, these concerns of the heart are happening because we're humans living human lives. So I love that book. And I will tell you, it definitely made me feel less alone to read about someone else in a totally different time and place going through major upheaval.

17:25Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

17:26Vinson Cunningham:Vincent, sounds like you got something.

17:27Alexandra Schwartz:I do. One of my favorite playwrights is the Czech writer, dissident, but also statesman eventually, Václav Havel. and his play Audience is about a man named Vanik who is like Havel, a playwright. And he's forced because of the brutalities of the regime to basically start his life over at a brewery. And in the fullness of time, he realizes that much of the brewery's political machinations are how they're set up because he's being spied upon by the regime. it's funny and very intense and it is precisely about this the way that we work specifically but also make humor and in all these kind of cany ways survive even under the worst sort of political circumstances

18:22Vinson Cunningham:definitely Seema

18:24Alexandra Schwartz:thank you our thoughts stay with you and

18:28Vinson Cunningham:that you make time

18:29Alexandra Schwartz:to listen to us is a great honor I know

18:31Vinson Cunningham:No, we are honored. So we've been through some questions. We have more to come. Thoughts at this point? I love taking a moment to process. Themes that are emerging?

18:42Naomi Fry:Just the fact that people trust us with their kind of like quandaries is always, you know, quite moving to me, I have to say. Totally.

18:52Alexandra Schwartz:For me, you know, not only do they bring their quandaries to us, but like part of the implicit logic of some of these questions is that is this understanding, which I totally share as part of my, like, I don't know, belief about art is that art belongs in the mix with precisely our quandaries. Like that art is not a thing separate from our troubles or from our awareness of the insane contingencies of life, but it is meant as a companion and a response to those. I think that is shining through in some of these questions.

19:28Vinson Cunningham:In a minute, we're talking what to read while serving in the military, the best songs to sing your baby to sleep, and lots more. Critics at large from The New Yorker will be right back.

19:52Vinson Cunningham:Okay, we're back. Let's get to more of these questions. Who's next?

19:56Naomi Fry:It's me. It's you. And it is Fiona and Sophia, two friends who want to ask us a question.

20:06Vinson Cunningham:Yay! Let's listen. We love friends. Hi, critics. This is Fiona. This is Sophia.

20:12Naomi Fry:We are at a really crazy time in our lives right now because we're graduating from college in a week. and we are looking to read watch or just consume any sort of media that can give us confidence and inspire us in the next chapter of our lives you guys have been here before so and ended up in a

20:38Alexandra Schwartz:really amazing place so we're just excited to hear what you have to say we love you bye

20:44Naomi Fry:Oh, my God. That is absolutely the most heartwarming thing.

20:48Vinson Cunningham:It is we who love you, Fiona and Sophia.

20:51Naomi Fry:Exactly.

20:52Vinson Cunningham:Love it. Nomi, do you have an answer for this? Yeah. I bet you do. Yeah.

20:56Naomi Fry:I mean, I was thinking about this. I have a couple of thoughts. I don't know if you guys have read The Best of Everything, the Rana Jaffe novel from 1958. It's about five young women in New York all working in publishing. And they're all this is very much pre-Me Too. And yet they are, spoiler alert, navigating issues that might sound familiar to, you know, even contemporary ladies like yourselves. It's a total like page turner. And it just gives a sense of kind of like a mid-century Manhattan and what it was like then to be like exactly where you are, like post-college, young women trying to kind of like navigate life.

21:47Naomi Fry:Another thing I was thinking about is if it might be interesting for you to read a kind of like anti-manual or kind of like books like you can read it in order to know what not to do, basically. One book is the memoir How to Murder Your Life by Kat Marnell, which is about the period of her life, post-college, working, much like the women in The Best of Everything, working and publishing in New York and magazine publishing, specifically at Condé Nast, the very company that we work for, but at a different time. and how she kind of rose in the ranks in fashion publications while also battling a drug addiction.

22:36Naomi Fry:Just a great book for a young college graduate to read in order to know what not to do, basically. Love it.

22:46Alexandra Schwartz:What I would say to you guys, and thank you so much for the question, it's great, is that actually life has many of these moments. these kind of new births from one area of life into another these moments where you can kind of see your past life as its own unity and you have this very harrowing realization that you have to like step into something else happens over and over the passage into middle midlife is one of those things i feel like this right now i feel like i am in a new adolescence in my life and And one thing that's been helpful to me is to read about other stages of life that are different from my own that have that same character of like the leap of faith.

23:30And so I love to read people about the shock of becoming old.

23:36Alexandra Schwartz:Our magazine, The New Yorker, has, because so many people spend a long time working at this magazine, it's become kind of a specialty of ours, like the sort of the old man essay. our recently departed colleague Calvin Tompkins wrote like a journal of basically his final years which is very moving to me also our colleague Roger Angel did a similar essay it's called This Old Man John McPhee has written just look up his most recent pieces in The New Yorker and you'll find someone puzzling through what it has meant to do what they've done and what to do now so I would look for for works that correspond to different moments of life that just seem like passages.

24:22Alexandra Schwartz:You know what's great for this? Kramer versus Kramer. Oh, man, man. Divorce is the great metaphor of life change in American, especially like mid-century American cinema. It's everybody trying to like place adolescence, old age, middle age, all these moments. Divorce becomes the novel divorcing Susan Taubes. Great for this. It's like, how do adults not change on purpose? That's easy to do. But deal with change that forces itself on you. There are so many such moments in life that the sort of settled nature of a life that you look at from afar is, trust me, anything but that.

25:02Vinson Cunningham:Vincent, please give us our next question.

25:06Alexandra Schwartz:I sure will. Here is a question. And this is such a good one because I still deal with it. So thank you. This is Andrew.

25:18Vinson Cunningham:Hi, critics. My name's Andrew, and I live out in Portland, Oregon. I'm relatively new to reading and consuming criticism in general. It really came out of a love for your podcast. But I've noticed that sometimes when I read criticism before consuming the primary text or piece, usually it's movies, actually, my opinion of those pieces can be really influenced or biased to just kind of agree with the critiquer. So I'm wondering if you have any strategies for listening to criticism before consuming the reference media, or are there some instances you avoid criticism completely before watching or reading something?

26:00Vinson Cunningham:Thanks so much. Totally. Flip that script, Andrew. Flip that script. If you know what the thing is going to be about, read no more, watch the movie, and carry on. So you're saying boo criticism. No, me. Please. No, no. Never would I say such a thing. No, I know. I'm not saying boo criticism. What I'm saying is, yeah, of course, like someone else's reaction is going to, and this is the beautiful thing about criticism, it will give you a different point of view. It will give you a point of view. I also find it very hard to shake other people's reactions to things, for sure. And that's great. But it doesn't mean that I want that necessarily.

26:39Vinson Cunningham:You know, in the same way that I will not read a forward before I read the book. You want to find out for yourself. What do you think, guys? I agree. I just, here's the thing.

26:51Alexandra Schwartz:And part of what you said is so relatable to me, like the I want to read about something I'm not going to see. I would challenge you to do that a lot. Like if you're new to criticism and you're kind of into reading it, choose something, you know, a ballet in a city that you can't go to. or an art show

27:12Naomi Fry:or an art show somewhere else

27:15Alexandra Schwartz:and it really first of all it brings home the function of criticism or one of the many functions of criticism which is to on some level put on the show for you to invite you by sort of some transitive property into an experience that you can't at least at the moment have when Alex and I were co-theater critics of the New Yorker I thought about this all the time. The fact that these plays are going up in New York, and 90 % of the people who read this piece or encounter it in a magazine are not going to have seen the show. And therefore, I'm doing something else for them that involves the details of this show but also kind of transcends them.

27:58Alexandra Schwartz:And I find that to be intensely pleasurable. And even if it's something like a movie, which you're definitely going to see, if it's before, the critic has an amazing amount of power over you. And sometimes it's okay to just surrender that and then read a bunch of other pieces about the same work of art so that you can re-scramble yourself and then go see it. But play around with it. Play around with it. I always have this problem and worry about it still. Okay. Here we go.

28:28Vinson Cunningham:Here is Evan. Hi, critics. This is Evan living in Brooklyn. And I have a question regarding an experience that I've had over the past two years. And I know a lot of other people around me have also experienced, but don't find a lot of media, books, television shows, otherwise related to friend breakups. and I know that these can be just as painful if not more painful than romantic breakups and I'm wondering if you have any references for understanding this problem that can kind of happen at any phase of life. Love your work. Thanks.

29:15Naomi Fry:Evan, yes. A painful experience of having a friendship breakup. Obviously, I'm going to bring up this is an obvious recommendation. I believe we've raised it before in the past, the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan novels about Lila and Laino. Over four novels. They come together. They break apart. They, you know, betray each other. They trust each other. So many things happen. Another book and a movie that was based on this book that came to mind about another season of life in which a friendship breakup happens is Ghost World, the graphic novel by Daniel Klaus. And the movie, the Terry Zweigov movie that was based on this novel.

30:14Naomi Fry:Enid and Rebecca are two friends who finish high school. and they are kind of like uncertain what to do with their lives until they, by the end of the book, they kind of like come apart. Their kind of very close friendship comes apart. I think that's another wonderful text to peruse in relation to this evergreen issue.

30:39Vinson Cunningham:Frances Ha. Have you seen Frances Ha? I wonder. From 2012, Noah Baumbach's movie starring, of course, Greta Gerwig as Frances Halliday, Frances Ha, who is just a kind of a mess, but with a good spirit about her in New York and her best friend who she really thinks she's going to spend life beside forever, only to discover that people in their mid-20s very often have other plans and fall in love and move into other kinds of lives than the one that you were leading with your previously closest person in the world. Francis Ha is great for this. Vincent, you got anything?

31:17Alexandra Schwartz:You guys did it.

31:18Vinson Cunningham:We did it.

31:19Alexandra Schwartz:You did it.

31:19Naomi Fry:We did it. Okay. I'm up again. And I have a question from Shane.

31:27Alexandra Schwartz:I'm looking for something to play for people who are on drugs. So I'm looking for something that is visually stimulating, but you don't have to pay super close attention to that you can sort of like zone in and out on. and then also something that is going to not have any sort of like crazy violent imagery or anything that's going to have like, you know, jump scares or gross things that pop up on the screen unexpectedly. But also ideally something that is like entertaining to watch. I'm looking for kind of the sweet spot between something that is like visually abstract and not that intense, but also like beautiful, but also not just like, you know, a screensaver.

32:03Alexandra Schwartz:What should I play for people on drugs? Wow.

32:06Vinson Cunningham:I wish you would say what kind of drugs. I know. It's like what kind of drugs? I think it makes a difference because I actually have a crazy immediate instinct, but it could drive someone to a point of no return depending on what the drugs are. Yeah, exactly. Ever heard of it? Okay. Why not try the 1979 experimental American short film Asparagus directed by Susie Pitt? It's an animated film. I literally have never heard of this.

32:33Naomi Fry:Oh.

32:34Vinson Cunningham:No me. No me. Here, I'm just going to start by reading you the first two sentences of the Wikipedia synopsis. And I quote, a serpent is seen slithering down a woman's leg. A woman then defecates two stalks of asparagus into a toilet. Okay? And we're off. It's asparagus. There are masks. There are handbags. Things change shape. You might be freaked out. You might love it. So, asparagus.

33:01Naomi Fry:Vincent, do you have any thoughts?

33:03Alexandra Schwartz:Couple. here's the real answer I don't know if you like sportsman but here's the real answer put on basketball put it on mute and put on some music

33:17Vinson Cunningham:great answer

33:18Alexandra Schwartz:it will just make you alive to the beauty of the human body and all of its great exploits that is my favorite thing to do also the album Songs of the Humpback Whale which is exactly what it sounds like it's great Okay, I want to play us a question from Ethan. Ethan, here we go.

33:38Vinson Cunningham:Hi, critics. My name is Ethan. My friend is going off to the military soon. It's a one-year military service. And he was asking me what sort of books to bring into the barracks. And I think this is a great opportunity for a diverse set of literature and a reading list. So, critics, what do you think are good books, novels, or essays to read while serving the military?

34:14Alexandra Schwartz:Ethan, that's so interesting. That's such a great question. To me, even though the military is never overtly portrayed, the body of work of someone who I think is now unfairly maligned, J.D. Salinger, is all about having served in the military. I would recommend my favorite Salinger text, which is, I guess it's two novellas smashed together. But I think of it as a sort of novel in two parts. It's called Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour, an introduction. One is the funniest narration of the day of a funeral that you will ever read. Also one of the great people stuck in a car texts.

35:07Alexandra Schwartz:And then Seymour is just a brother talking about his brother in an obsessive, sort of fanatic, almost evangelistic way. But it's about sociality between young men, how brothers think of other brothers, how susceptible we are to the manners and the attitudes and the tastes of other people. All the kinds of things that I think might be interesting for sort of like a young man surrounded by other young men in a novel environment. That's what I'll say for now.

35:42Vinson Cunningham:Critics at Large will be back in just a minute with more advice. Stick around.

36:01Vinson Cunningham:All right, here's what I got for you guys. It comes from Sophie. Hi, critics. My question is twofold and adds a new facet, I think, to the episode you did on art and grief. Here's my situation. Last summer, my son Felix was stillborn at full term, and navigating this grief, obviously, has been indescribably challenging. Amongst other things, I was drawn to literature of all kinds, and Yu and Li's book, Things in Nature Merely Grow, truly spoke to me, for example. So that was a great recommendation. Thank you for that. But lately, I find myself seeking books that talk about the challenging nature of friendships, because this enormous grief has affected some of my friendships.

36:48Vinson Cunningham:And I finally finished reading the Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend series, which made me reflect more on this topic in relation to grief. So here's my question. Do you have any suggestions on books and other kinds of art that talk about changing friendships in times of grief? Thank you and hello from Canada. Sophie, it's great to hear from you. I'm just glad to hear you and to be on the other end for you sometimes I want to know if my co-hosts have an answer because this question brought to mind a few different answers but none of them is maybe enough about friendship

37:33Alexandra Schwartz:the one thing I'll say is that, you know, I don't know I don't know if this satisfies the brief, say that but I have found that the poems of Sylvia Plath makes so much more sense to me after my own encounters with, like, livid grief. And they're often about the way that our perceptions change. Some of the images of these poems is, like, you know, friends coming into and out of the room at a sanatorium and bringing flowers and the sort of almost like sickly, sweet way that she describes the flowers as of like a sort of ruined beauty. And in the same way, these people, she's like, I love you, but please leave.

38:20Alexandra Schwartz:You know, there's this change in attitude that is aesthetic, but also sort of like communal or something like that. And then, you know, this is a big swing, but I would say, First of all, I think so much of the literature of the AIDS crisis is about precisely this. The way that we just sort of see not only societies but other people differently when encountered by a great grief. And if you look at some of the relationships in Tony Kushner's great masterwork, Angels in America, what happens to Pryor's relationships, for instance, in that play. it's all about a world gone wrong and how that can change how you see

39:09Vinson Cunningham:I think that's such a good recommendation here is Daphna hi critics, my name is Daphna and I have a question that I constantly think about as a reader and that is, when is it actually okay to DNF a book by the way, DNF stands for did not finish I read a lot for pleasure and escapism I really don't want my reading to feel like homework and yet I dabble with this question a lot especially when picking up either classics or popular reads so for example I DNF'd my brilliant friend at around 60 % and I just never regretted it I could not connect to that book as popular as it may be but more recently I read The Secret History and I almost quit it multiple times but I went through with it, I finished it and I'm really happy I did, I learned a lot from that book so how do you go about deciding when to push through versus when to let it go when picking up a book?

40:21Naomi Fry:Thank you. That's a good question. Thank you, Dufna. It's – I mean I think I'm kind of like self – a little self-punishing. Like I have a streak of like no, I have to finish. Yeah. Especially when it comes to classics. I think a certain amount of difficulty or a certain amount of kind of like friction with a book you're reading is normal. and it's not always meant to be completely like, you know, page turnery. However, sometimes you just don't like the cut of a book's jib. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I do. You're like, I fucking hate this narrator. Get the fuck out of here, man. I hate this language.

41:11Naomi Fry:This is fake. This is, I don't like this. Okay, goodbye.

41:16Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Yeah.

41:17Naomi Fry:Yeah.

41:18Alexandra Schwartz:That was a great, like, that is exactly how I feel. And sometimes it comes down to me being honest with myself. Why is this happening? Why is this happening? Why? Like an examination of conscience. Like, is it because my brain has been ravaged by whatever, the internet, my phone, and this becomes a way to, like, get myself back into the sort of rigorous depths of reading? Then I got to fight it. But if it's truly, this is not, this is not working. It's bad writing. It's, you know, I just don't respect this or like it. then I will allow myself. But there are times, you know, because the common answer is, of course, whenever you want.

41:59Alexandra Schwartz:Do what you want. But there are times that I'm like, hmm, this is something wrong. Yes. You, and you got to fix it, and it has to happen with this text. So I ask myself these questions, I try to be honest, and then I act.

42:11Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, I like that, Vincent. I think it's a real know thyself. What's going on here? What an opportunity for further introspection and self-analysis is presented to us before our own failures in any category, let alone this one. And yeah, my instinct is to say, whatever, move on. I had a piano teacher once who just said, do you like this piece? Because if you don't, life is too short. There's so much music to play. Let's find something you do like. But as one is older, yeah, there is a question about why and what's happening. Often I just think if this is going on, first of all, I don't feel a great deal of guilt around this question.

42:42Vinson Cunningham:Basically zero. Like I'm in charge here and I got to choose how I want to spend my time. But sometimes I just know it's a question of moment. This is not working for me right now. And I'm going to return.

42:56Naomi Fry:Okay, guys, it's back to me. And this is actually, this is a really lovely question that I think will make us feel good because it's kind of, you'll see, it's like, it's kind of like we're growing and living with our listeners. We're side by side with them holding their hands through various seasons of their lives. My curiosity is piqued. Yes. So please let's hear from Sophie. Hi, critics. This is Sophie calling from New Orleans. I actually called in for your first I Need a Critic episode because I was pregnant at the time looking for a positive book about being an artist and being a mother. You recommended Catherine Rickett's book, The Artist's Mother.

43:41Naomi Fry:And I just wanted to let you know that from there, I read it. I loved it. She and I connected on Instagram. We then got coffee, during which I cried telling her how much I loved the book. Oh, my God. That led to a virtual book club that I put together with people online and a friendship. So thank you.

43:59Vinson Cunningham:Oh, my God, Sophie.

44:00Naomi Fry:My new question is I am looking for a new song to sing my son to sleep with every night. Right now, I mainly sing him The Nearness of You by Louis Armstrong or Deeper Than the Holler by Randy Travis. Before I learn the lyrics to a new song and add it to my repertoire that I will sing for the next five years, I just wanted some recommendations. What did you guys sing to your kids and what should I practice for my son, Lorenzo? Thanks so much, guys. Love, love, love listening every week.

44:37Vinson Cunningham:I remember Lorenzo. I totally remember, yeah. There's one person I want to hear from this immediately on and that's Vincent, of course.

44:45Alexandra Schwartz:You know, it's so hard because, especially as the baby gains in consciousness and therefore develops taste, which sometimes they accept the song, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the song comes to signal bedtime and therefore a wholesale rejection of songs. It is a, it's terrible. It's terrible. And so what we've started to do is to sing about the surroundings in the day. We try to improvise a song. In my daughter's nursery, we put up these decal stickers of underwater life on the walls. And so there are lots of songs that are based on what's a whale, do you see the narwhal, say goodnight to the squid, and to the stingray.

45:36Alexandra Schwartz:There's a lot of description of what happens. One of the first songs I made up for my daughter was all about the trees that you can see outside our window. All these plants, all these green, forest green outside our window. Songs like that, that are just like frank descriptions of what's happening. And then like sort of confirming the reality of life for the child.

45:58Vinson Cunningham:I mean, again, I must say it again. I love learning about my fellow critics through the answers. Who knew that this was going on? Who knew this was going on? But it's happening. Okay, so I have an answer for you, Sophie. First of all, I'm absolutely thrilled by everything you described. I'm very touched. I'm very moved. This is really wonderful. So when my son was born, I had two songs teed up to be his songs. One was I Will by the Beatles, sung very sweetly by Paul, who knows how long I've loved you. Beautiful song, gorgeous song. The other one was St. Judy's Comet by Paul Simon, which is about singing your kid to sleep.

46:36Vinson Cunningham:Specifically, it's about singing your kid to sleep if you're Paul Simon, and it's a little bit of an ego challenge. If I can't sing My Boy to Sleep, well, it makes your famous daddy feel so dumb. It's something that Paul Simon sings that makes no sense when anybody else sings it. So this worked fine when this child was teeny, teeny baby. And then it kind of came to seem that he didn't care for these songs in at least my version of it. So here's where we are now. The song that works the best is one of my favorite songs ever. It's Sail Away Ladies, as sung by Odetta, as sung by me. It's a beautiful song.

47:12Vinson Cunningham:It is very lyrically simple. In fact, it's so lyrically simple that when I was looking it up today, I realized that I had just simply cut out a full verse that seems to have to do with death, which is like, you know, that's all for the best. It's gone now. And you can just sing it around and around and around again. I'm happy to play it if anyone wants to hear it. a little snippet of it right now. Sure. I have it on my phone.

47:36Alexandra Schwartz:Ain't no use to sit and cry. You'll be an angel by and by.

47:46Vinson Cunningham:Don't you rock. Don't you rock.

47:51Alexandra Schwartz:Don't you rock.

47:53Vinson Cunningham:It's just very relaxing and very beautiful, and Odette has one of my absolute favorite voices ever. So I hope that helps.

48:00Alexandra Schwartz:I've got a home in Tennessee

48:02Vinson Cunningham:What a show. What a show. What listeners. We've been stirred. We've been moved. We've been excited. We've been motivated. I hope you feel the same. Listeners, we're here for you. We love you.

48:19Vinson Cunningham:This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy, with music by Alexis Quadrado. Coming up on the pod, we are working on an episode about the man, the legend, the Steven Spielberg. We're all excited to talk about Disclosure Day, but we're getting into the oldies, too. Vincent, is this going to be your first time seeing Jaws at last?

48:50Alexandra Schwartz:Finally, I'm going to watch the movie Jaws.

48:52Vinson Cunningham:Consider it a sign.

48:53Alexandra Schwartz:I can't wait.

48:55Vinson Cunningham:I'm going back to E.T. We're talking Jurassic Park. Where, no me, any...

48:59Naomi Fry:Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

49:01Vinson Cunningham:We're there. And we're going to spend the next week or two catching up on these stone-cold classics. Maybe you want to join us and watch along. It's never a bad time to re-watch E.T. I have not seen it in years, my friends. Oh my God, so good. In the meantime, you can find each and every one of our episodes anytime at newyorker.com slash critics.

49:26Thank you.