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1:06

I'm Stephen Mechaf and this is the Slate Culture

1:09

Gap Fest, Nathan Fielder Goes Even

1:11

Fuller Cringe Edition. It's Wednesday,

1:13

November 22nd, 2023. On

1:16

today's show, Nathan Fielder, the reality

1:18

TV postmodernist, maestro,

1:21

creator of Nathan For You and

1:23

The Rehearsal, returns with The Curse.

1:26

This one is a scripted show about a couple creating

1:28

an HGTV show in

1:30

an impoverished New Mexico town.

1:33

Its 10 episodes are on Showtime. And

1:35

then The Holdovers, it's the new movie from director

1:38

Alexander Payne. It stars Paul Giamatti

1:40

as a prep school Latin teacher who must chaperone

1:43

The Holdovers, the boys with nowhere to go over

1:45

the holiday. One Christmas break in 1970.

1:49

And finally, the great New York Times

1:51

book critic Dwight Garner joins us to

1:53

discuss his memoir, The Upstairs Delicatessen,

1:56

on eating, reading about eating,

1:59

and eating. while reading.

2:01

But first I'm joined by Julia Turner of

2:04

the LA Times. Hey Julia. Hello.

2:07

And of course Dana Stevens, the film critic for Slate.

2:09

Hey Dana. Hey Steven. Everyone

2:12

good? We're gonna make a show? Let's

2:14

do it. I'm ready. Let's do

2:17

it. All right, well the TV

2:19

show The Curse is co-created by and

2:21

co-stars Nathan Fielder, his previous

2:23

shows where, I mean they're very

2:26

hard to describe quickly, let's call them prank

2:28

reality shows with a very

2:30

heavy meta vibe. This one though

2:32

is scripted. Fielder plays Asher

2:35

Segal, a would-be real estate developer and

2:37

aspiring do-gooder looking to invest

2:39

in a small town outside of

2:41

Santa Fe, New Mexico. His

2:43

wife and partner in the venture is Whitney.

2:46

She's played by Emma Stone and in effect

2:48

together what they want to do is gentrify the town

2:50

of Española, but in a mindful

2:53

and socially conscious way to do

2:55

well, do good, and along the way to make an

2:57

HGTV show called Flipantherapy.

3:01

The show also stars its co-creator Benny

3:03

Safdie as their dirtbag producer.

3:06

In the clip we're about to hear, here's a moment after

3:08

a disastrous TV interview

3:10

where Fielder's character goes off on a local

3:13

reporter when she brings up his wife,

3:15

played by Emma Stone, her slumlord parents.

3:18

Let's listen.

3:18

All

3:28

right,

3:32

Julia, well at one point

3:34

one of the two

3:36

I can't remember,

3:38

I think it's

3:44

Fielder's

3:51

character says, we really believe that gentrification

3:55

doesn't have to be a game of winners and

3:57

losers. A version of that mantra

3:59

says over and over and over again by

4:01

this apparently loathsome couple.

4:04

What do you make of the satire that this show

4:06

is aspiring to be?

4:09

It's hard to describe

4:11

and hard to watch and not

4:14

unadmirable, but I

4:16

think I spent a lot of my time watching it trying

4:19

to figure out

4:20

what to make of the cringery of it.

4:23

I mean, it's really if you're interested

4:25

in cringe comedy at all, it's worth

4:27

watching because it makes Kirby or enthusiasm

4:30

look like a gingham

4:32

checked basket full of fluffy puppies.

4:35

Like you're

4:35

like, Oh,

4:37

that lovable brown wood curmudgeon, you

4:40

know, like these people are

4:43

despicable, obtuse

4:46

about their own despicable. And

4:48

Emma Stone's performance in particular

4:51

is dialed

4:53

in so

4:54

precisely and

4:56

is sort of tragic and

4:58

fascinating. It's fascinating to watch

5:00

within the context of the show. And it's also fascinating

5:02

to think what is Emma Stone doing on this show

5:05

that you described as a Paramount show, Steve,

5:08

but in the course of watching it, I encountered like

5:10

four different descriptions or so you described

5:12

as a Showtime show, but I

5:15

encountered like four different descriptions of what the hell

5:17

Showtime even is anymore, including the

5:19

Paramount app

5:20

with Showtime was one of them.

5:22

So like, there's a bit of

5:25

a huh, here. And

5:28

even though I found myself admiring

5:30

the concept that extreme

5:33

cringe is the only way

5:36

to tackle America's housing

5:38

problems, income inequality, racial

5:41

appropriation, and a whole host of other subjects

5:44

that this show seeks

5:47

to address.

5:48

It's like a little self-indulgent and baggy.

5:50

These episodes are so long, they're

5:53

like 50 to 60 minutes

5:55

long. And some of the length is letting the awkwardness

5:57

hang, but some of the length is letting the awkwardness hang. the

6:00

length is like a

6:02

self-indulgent lack of discipline. Like I

6:04

wish this was a

6:04

brisk 40

6:06

and I think if it

6:08

were it could maybe be quite interesting

6:11

and I can't say that I loved it.

6:13

Dana, what did you make of that?

6:15

Yeah, Julia, I agree with you on the length certainly. I mean

6:17

I think I say that about practically every show we talk

6:19

about that it could be more brisk and I keep reading

6:22

in coverage of this show of which only two hours have

6:24

aired that there's a very interesting

6:26

and meaty, it was described as meaty in one

6:28

article, Final Twist at the end and that the last

6:31

episode does a lot of unexpected things and I'm curious

6:33

to see what those things are but I'm not sure I'm willing

6:35

to put in the slag of time to

6:37

get to the ending to see what it is so that's

6:39

not a great vote for the show. But I

6:41

will say that the mood, I mean I see the comparison

6:44

to cringe comedy things like Curb Your

6:46

Enthusiasm or maybe even Veep

6:48

or something like that right I mean the kind of show where

6:50

a purportedly well-meaning

6:53

white liberals make themselves look

6:56

horrible in various social situations.

6:58

I see that comparison but I think that this

7:00

this show is up to something that's a little bit different in tone

7:03

in that it's almost it has almost a horror

7:05

element. The music which neither of you have mentioned but

7:07

I'm sure you noticed it right is straight

7:09

out of some kind of I don't know some

7:11

kind of eerie avant-garde psychological

7:14

thriller it's this really weird sort of you

7:16

know smeary atonal

7:18

sound that gets laid over these very banal

7:20

scenes of people talking in parking lots

7:23

in New Mexico and so and

7:25

the curse of the title without spoiling anything

7:27

is has this possibly supernatural

7:29

element it is an actual curse placed

7:32

on these loathsome characters by another character

7:34

in the pilot. So I am curious

7:36

how that plays out and how that will be developed

7:39

throughout the show not totally sure

7:41

that

7:41

I will stick with it for that reason.

7:43

Yeah I mean that is a tough sell right

7:45

these sort of these hour-long episodes

7:48

that are you know you say baggy

7:51

Julia I kind of wrote flaccid

7:53

in my notebook I mean there's a slackness

7:55

and in a kind of airy airlessness

7:58

to them at moments. There's very

8:01

little pace or briskness

8:03

to the show to begin with. And

8:05

to sit through nine

8:08

of those to get to a meaty twist

8:10

in the 10th strikes me as a pretty

8:12

huge ask. The thing that would prevent

8:14

me from doing that isn't its oddity

8:17

of tone or pacing. It's really that

8:19

I do not feel in the least that these are

8:21

worthy objects of satire. The show

8:24

and its metaness makes

8:26

it seem superficially cutting edge, but

8:28

the satire is in its way 10 years at

8:31

least out of date. I mean, do-gooder

8:33

yuppies who are actually self-serving

8:36

and fame-famish, that type has been dominant

8:38

in American culture since the 1980s and self-aware

8:43

and excusing itself through self-awareness

8:45

and irony and metaness since

8:48

the mid-90s. In 2023,

8:50

I don't really feel the need to go

8:53

back to that well. I know such

8:55

people. They're disgusting, right? And

8:57

the second thing is slightly more

8:59

up to date is the observation that reality

9:02

TV is built on nothing but narcissism

9:04

and lies. But there was

9:06

a moment where I sort of said to my television

9:08

out loud, does Nathan Fielder not

9:11

know that Donald Trump was president? I mean,

9:13

we've kind of we've gone so

9:15

far through the looking glass, right? Where reality

9:19

and unreality fully inverted

9:21

at the level of power

9:23

at the top, right? And for

9:26

multiple years and may repeat itself.

9:28

This is to me, it's like oddly

9:31

old fashioned. And Julia, you know, as

9:33

Sam Adams pointed out in his astute essay

9:36

on the show, in all three of his shows,

9:38

this one, Nathan for You

9:40

and The Rehearsal, there's kind

9:43

of a pattern, which is that that

9:45

for all three shows, there's a central preoccupation

9:48

by which attempting to help others

9:51

goes horribly awry. And

9:53

that's where I raise an eyebrow. The sort

9:56

of punchline is that no, no, no, no, no,

9:58

Nathan Fielder says I'm ultimately. the joke.

10:00

I'm so incapable of respecting the

10:03

needs and desires and inner lives

10:05

of others that my attempts to help them

10:07

go wrong over and over and over again. And

10:11

I find it, it's not just that I'm cringing,

10:14

I see something self-serving

10:16

in this kind of deadpan monsters,

10:20

you know, attempt to quote unquote help

10:22

others. And here he's gone meta-meta.

10:24

He's saying, oh, no, no, no, I always knew. Now

10:27

he's doing a scripted show about him as

10:29

a deadpan monster, you know, trying

10:31

to help others, but really actually only

10:33

being a self-serving jerk. It's like, it

10:36

doesn't matter how many more layers of self-awareness

10:38

you add to it. The initial impulse

10:41

is still monstrous.

10:42

Oh, I don't know.

10:44

I mean, I admire

10:47

and respect Nathan Fielder. I think he's so

10:49

unusual as a talent and a brain.

10:51

And I am glad that he

10:54

makes the things he makes because they feel like

10:56

a swath of vinegar

10:58

laid across the culture. And

11:00

I also didn't feel, I did not

11:03

feel that

11:04

this portrayal of reality

11:07

TV was tired. Like,

11:09

yes, yes, yes, Donald Trump. Yes, there was that great

11:11

show, Unreal, that turned into a not great show, Unreal.

11:13

But

11:14

I actually think we haven't had enough

11:15

scripted depictions of

11:17

the performed examinations

11:20

of or fictional depictions of performed

11:22

selfhood and to combine performed selfhood

11:25

with kind of housing

11:28

and HHEV is

11:30

great. That's new terrain and it's a rich terrain.

11:33

It's interesting terrain. I also really enjoyed

11:35

the aesthetic of the show, which like helps you

11:37

understand the

11:39

kind of Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Universe's

11:42

portrayal of New Mexico, which is

11:44

sort of pretending that it's showing you the gritty reality

11:47

of New Mexico. But every single fucking

11:50

shot could be hung on the wall as a painting

11:53

of like the gorgeous decrepitude

11:56

of the strip mall. And then this show is

11:58

just like, no, the strip mall is ugly. Like,

12:01

this is ugly and broken down.

12:05

And I

12:07

kind of thought the aesthetic of it

12:09

was interesting as well. So

12:12

I don't have the same feeling that the

12:15

underlying impulse is cruelty,

12:17

which it sounds like is what you're saying, Steve.

12:21

It's like nihilist, I think, a little bit about

12:23

humankind, which is not my jam,

12:25

but in a way that I

12:27

don't think comes from a place

12:29

of cruelty. And in some way, the

12:32

intentional obtuseness of his characters points

12:35

up that everyone else is a little bit more human.

12:38

Can I say something I really admire about the show? Even

12:40

though I agree with Julia's remarks on its bagginess

12:42

and to some degree on Steve's remarks about Nathan

12:44

Fielder, though, I don't know his other shows well enough.

12:47

I mean, I know his reputation. I've read more about

12:49

him than I've watched of him. And I do think he's

12:51

an interesting talent, but I feel no desire

12:53

to watch any of his shows to the end. So

12:55

I don't know what that says. But I will say that I think

12:57

the performances in this are quite extraordinary. All

12:59

three of the main performances. Emma Stone, playing

13:02

the kind of character that she doesn't often play,

13:05

somebody who is truly unlikable and

13:07

sort of has an empty soul. But I don't think it's

13:09

without, you know, there's a sympathy

13:11

that you feel for her character because she conveys

13:13

this character's desperate neediness to be liked

13:16

and approved of and her absolute imperviousness

13:19

to any negative feelings about herself,

13:21

which is a very unflattering note

13:23

to play. And I think he does it

13:25

extremely well. Nathan Fielder doing scripted TV for the

13:27

first time, right? I mean, he is usually literally

13:29

playing himself. And even if this

13:32

character is closely based on that, he is still

13:34

reading dialogue and he does it really well. Like

13:37

if I did not know that he had a history as

13:39

this reality TV creator and thought

13:41

he was just an actor playing a role, I would really

13:43

have praised this performance. And

13:45

Benny Safdie, who in general, I find

13:47

kind of a piece of stunt casting when he's in movies,

13:50

including in Oppenheimer, which he was just recently

13:52

in. And, you know, in the movies that he makes

13:54

with his brother, Josh Safdie, he was also

13:56

in the Are You There? Got It Me? market

13:59

this year. Benny Safdie saying

14:01

stuff and I actually didn't recognize

14:03

him in this role. He looks very different He sounds

14:06

very different and he plays again somebody extremely

14:08

unlikable and I was surprised

14:10

to realize about halfway into the pilot Wait, there's

14:13

Benny Safdie. So I will say that this

14:15

is worth watching as a kind of I think Masterclass

14:18

in playing extremely unsympathetic characters

14:20

in a way that still compels the audience's attention

14:23

Okay. Well the email lesson tell us what you

14:25

think I I'm a pretty hard thumbs down that

14:27

it looks like I'm in the minority It's the curse

14:30

it's on nominally on Showtime You

14:32

have to take sinuous byways to get

14:35

there or at least I did I got it via

14:37

Hulu I'm sure you'll find it. All right, let's

14:39

move on

14:40

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15:11

Hey, this is Mary Harris

15:12

host of slate daily news podcast

15:15

what next Slate's mission has

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always been to cut through the noise Boldly

15:20

and provocatively this election season

15:22

and Supreme Court term are no different Important

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Again, that is three months

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sign up now at slate.com slash podcast

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plus.

16:14

All right, before we go any further, this is typically where

16:16

we discuss business atypically. Julia,

16:18

you're gonna walk us through it. What do we have?

16:21

Honored, I'm sure. Today

16:23

we are taking the sad occasion of the demise

16:25

of Jezebel to talk through our own

16:27

relationship with women's

16:30

media as consumers,

16:32

as adjacent consumers. And

16:35

in our segment, Dana will reveal what style

16:37

tip from Seventeen magazine she

16:39

learned decades ago and still

16:42

employs. So sign right

16:45

up. All

16:46

right, well, Alexander Payne, he's the director

16:48

who brought us Citizen Ruth, Election, Sideways,

16:51

many, many, many such movies. He

16:53

returns now with The Holdovers. It stars

16:55

Paul Giamatti as Mr. Hunnam, a sad

16:57

sack misanthrope whose job is haranguing

17:00

rich kids in a New England prep school under

17:02

the alibi of teaching them history by

17:04

reasons of geography or maybe emotional

17:06

geography. Going home for Christmas

17:08

is impossible for a small handful

17:11

of the boys. And one unlucky teacher

17:13

every year pulls the short straw.

17:15

This year, the duty falls to Mr.

17:17

Hunnam. His disciplinary

17:20

zeal focuses in on one boy

17:22

in particular, Angus, played by Dominic

17:25

Sessa. The two bicker and snipe,

17:27

but they're each in a way orphans, leading

17:30

the viewer to wonder in what way will these two

17:33

eventually adopt one another. In

17:35

the clip, we're going to hear Giamatti as Hunnam

17:37

talking to Angus, played by Dominic

17:39

Sessa. Let's listen. No

17:41

wonder you're afraid of women. I am

17:43

not

17:45

afraid of women, Jerry. I

17:47

shouldn't have said anything. Dr.

17:49

Gertler says I don't always give consideration

17:52

to my audience.

17:53

And who is Dr. Gertler?

17:56

I shrink. Is Dr. Gertler ever going

17:58

to be a doctor?

17:59

tried a good swift kick in the ass.

18:03

Okay, now your turn. Go

18:06

ahead, tell me something about me. Something negative.

18:08

Something negative about you.

18:11

Just one thing.

18:12

Just one. Dana,

18:14

let me start with you. I cannot remember whether

18:16

you are a pain head or not, what your history

18:18

is with this director. Why don't you fill us in there and then

18:21

give us a taste of what you thought of it.

18:23

I mean, first of all, yeah, I mean, as a critic, I hate

18:25

to call myself a, you know, unabashed

18:27

head of any director, but I do love

18:29

a good Alexander Payne film. There are a few

18:32

reservations that I have about his filmography,

18:34

mainly more recent ones, but you know, I

18:36

love Citizen Ruth and Election

18:39

and Sideways. And so, I'm, and Nebraska

18:41

is one of my favorite movies of, you know, the past 10

18:44

years probably. So I was very excited for this

18:46

movie and it scratches a different itch

18:48

than some of the movies that I just mentioned. I think this

18:50

is maybe the most cuddly Alexander

18:52

Payne movie. He is deliberately

18:55

going for a very retro,

18:58

nostalgia is not quite the word because I think this movie

19:00

feels modern too in its themes and

19:02

its subject matter, but the look of it and the sound

19:04

of it and the feel of it and the soundtrack and the 35 millimeter

19:07

cinematography is all very retro

19:09

1970s. Right down to, you know, it

19:11

has one of those yellow Roman numerals

19:14

that appear at the bottom of the screen at the beginning,

19:16

sort of 70s style to mark the year. I think Brian

19:18

Johnson's series Poker Face uses that same Roman

19:20

numeral nostalgia. But anyway, it

19:22

scratches all those itches kind of aesthetically

19:25

speaking, but I also thought it

19:27

was just very successful at what it tries

19:29

to do, which is modest. It's like a holiday

19:31

comedy that wants to make you laugh, introduce

19:34

some characters and put them through some adventures

19:37

together and, you know, in the end

19:39

have something change in their world. It's

19:41

almost like it was made in a screenplay lab as

19:43

a feel-good Christmas movie for, you know, people

19:46

who have a dark sense of humor. And so

19:48

I have a feeling that both of you are gonna say bad

19:50

things about this movie because of that, but I loved

19:52

it for precisely

19:53

that reason. I was so grateful

19:56

that it made me laugh, like really laugh

19:58

loudly in the movie theater.

19:59

so that people turned around, though they were

20:02

laughing too, at Paul Giamatti's incredible

20:04

way with a put-down. Like, it's just been so long

20:06

since we saw Paul Giamatti in a lead movie

20:09

role. I know he's had a big role in that show, Billions,

20:11

but he hasn't really dominated

20:13

a movie and not just been a character actor

20:15

in one for a long time. And he hasn't

20:17

worked with Payne since Sideways, I think it was 2004. So

20:21

to me, this was just sort of like old home

20:24

week in the theaters. And I emailed

20:26

my family and a bunch of friends immediately after

20:28

seeing a press screening thing, when this movie opens, you've

20:30

got to go see it. So yeah, I'm

20:32

pretty much all in. I have a couple

20:35

questions and reservations about it that I'll save for my

20:37

next round of ranting, but what

20:39

did you two think? I loved it. I

20:42

loved it. Yay! I

20:44

really loved it. I think I'm Payne's susceptible as well. It's

20:47

very sweet. It's not a kind of movie

20:49

that people make, unless you are

20:51

in Alexander Payne. I don't

20:52

think you get to make this kind of movie, but it's sweet

20:54

and it's old fashioned and it's... I

20:57

loved your line in your review, Dana, that the

21:00

best Christmas movies understand how sad

21:02

Christmas is. It's like a hard

21:04

time emotionally

21:05

for people. Yeah, this is a Christmas movie that

21:07

almost nags on Christmas. And yet in the

21:09

end, it feels very, very cozy,

21:11

yuletide, you know, in a strange way.

21:13

Yeah, I forget if it was your review or

21:16

another one that says

21:17

it's basically a Scrooge story, which it totally

21:19

is. I feel like often movies highlight

21:21

the dissonance of Christmas

21:23

and the holidays and the feeling of like

21:26

maladjustment that they can create

21:28

in people by giving us an

21:30

odd fish at a cozy gathering

21:33

and just all of these odd

21:35

fishes in this amazing set

21:38

of this privileged prep school tableau. It's

21:41

just great. It's original and interesting

21:43

and I thought the performances were all wonderful. Steve,

21:45

what did you make of it? I was struck by,

21:48

you know, I attended a prep school and

21:50

see of these buildings, some of which I

21:52

surely passed in going

21:55

to various track meets because it was filmed in a

21:57

host of Massachusetts boarding

21:59

schools. that are different than the one I went to. Anyway,

22:02

it had a familiarity to me as someone who went

22:04

to one of those schools in the 80s and 90s, and

22:06

I wonder what you made of it as someone who went

22:09

to one of those schools for a little bit. Not quite in this

22:11

era, but a little closer to it.

22:13

I thought the atmospherics to someone like me

22:15

were very evocative

22:17

and effective in that regard. I also,

22:19

as someone who grew up as a budding cinephile

22:22

in the era where movies looked exactly

22:25

like this, that old 1970s film

22:27

stock and the kind of the sound

22:29

of a needle in the groove of a vinyl

22:31

record, but not yet playing the song, that kind

22:34

of crackle and pop of dust in the groove. And

22:37

all of that works on me like a kind of drug.

22:39

And in that sense, I really loved it. I thought his really

22:43

disciplined commitment to something

22:45

more than gimmicky nostalgia was

22:47

where it paid off, which is that all

22:50

of its effects are achieved cumulatively.

22:53

You never went for a huge

22:55

moment or a huge laugh at

22:57

any point in the film. And the idea

22:59

was to do what movies in theory

23:02

used to do, which was make them

23:05

a holistic thing to

23:07

tell a story, and then the emotional

23:09

payout can come in very small

23:11

moments later in the picture when you really

23:13

have grown to know these people and the stakes seem

23:16

really deep. In that sense, I loved

23:18

the movie. I had one commanding

23:20

problem with it. And I'm interested to hear whether this resonates

23:23

with either one of you, because it comes from sort

23:25

of the same first person experience

23:27

that makes the familiarity of it so

23:29

cozy and seductive to me, which

23:31

is that actually, I found

23:34

the character of Hanam,

23:35

Paul Giamatti's like pedantic history

23:37

teacher bore overwritten in a way

23:39

that Hollywood tends to overwrite these characters.

23:43

This takes place in 1970, assuming that he's in his 40s

23:45

or 50s. He's born in the 20s or 30s. He's

23:48

a member of the greatest generation. Not

23:51

only enough, this screenwriter has said it's based on a

23:53

real person, his own uncle, who

23:55

knew six or seven languages, had been like, I don't

23:57

know if he was in the OSS or I mean, he had been a

23:59

man of the age. of the world, who's, you

24:01

know, in addition to being like a linguist and

24:03

a brilliant person was worldly

24:06

and lovable in some deep sense, but

24:09

absolutely a relic. And the much more

24:11

interesting to me movie and

24:13

harder story to tell is, what is it about

24:15

to have the whole world around you shrink

24:18

so that you go from being one of its central

24:20

players and the kind of hero to

24:23

a big fish in a tiny pond. And

24:25

maybe that turns you into something of a self-important

24:28

pedantic bore with a vengeful

24:30

streak against these rich kids who helicopter

24:33

in and out of the campus. But that

24:35

to me was a more interesting story than this

24:37

rather broadly written sort of insult

24:40

comic who I never

24:42

took to him as a real person, frankly,

24:44

in some sense. And I felt that oddly

24:47

enough for as much as I love Giamatti Dana, that

24:49

led to a performance that I found slightly sticky.

24:52

Wow, maybe I just really am a sucker for Giamatti's

24:54

stick. But I say this

24:56

in my review, I think that his character

24:59

reveals a bunch of surprising layers

25:01

as the movie goes on, especially as you learn about his past,

25:04

right? Because his character is supposed to have attended the same

25:06

boarding school. There's some implication

25:08

that he was sort of, you know, from a less

25:11

exclusive social class than other kids at

25:13

the school. And that he was

25:15

kind of an auto didact who got very

25:18

far by virtue of his brains, but was

25:20

never liked. Not liked as a high schooler, is

25:22

now completely despised as

25:24

a teacher at the same high school. So I

25:26

did have a sense that he was somebody who

25:28

had gone through a life journey. It wasn't from being important

25:31

to not being important, but rather from sort of fighting

25:34

his way out of a difficult situation,

25:36

only to find himself kind of ironically

25:38

trapped in the same place forever. But

25:41

I'm curious too, what you both thought of Divine Joy Randolph's

25:43

character, who we haven't talked about yet, who's the third

25:46

member of this, you know, this tripod, this

25:48

triumvirate that makes up the movie and who

25:50

I think is what sort of makes the movie, places the movie

25:52

in the modern age and keeps it from being just a retread

25:55

of, you know, the paper chase or one of those seventies,

25:58

pedagogical classics that it echoes.

26:00

I mean, her performance is incredible. She plays

26:02

Mary, the school's cook, who

26:04

is also spending Christmas at the school

26:06

because it's her first Christmas since her son

26:09

also a graduate died in Vietnam. And

26:11

she's cooking for them and then eventually

26:14

becomes kind of part of the hang

26:16

squad as the movie unfolds.

26:19

You know, it's interesting that this film

26:21

is so devoted to being made

26:23

exactly as it would have been made in the 70s

26:26

because the version of it that would have been made in the 70s

26:29

might not have made her an equal

26:31

part in quite the same way. Like

26:34

it's a little, you know, somebody is

26:37

conveniently racist

26:39

at the beginning. And one of our first

26:41

glimmers that the Hundham character

26:43

is not entirely worthless is that

26:46

he stands up against the racism. And

26:48

then a lot of the racism just kind of conveniently

26:50

disappears for the rest of the movie, which I don't

26:52

think was probably the experience of being

26:54

in a prep school environment in the 1970s, even

26:57

over the holidays with only two people there. So

27:00

it felt a little bit less

27:02

grounded than some of the other hyper realism

27:05

in a way that I wondered

27:07

if it was a little cheap or convenient.

27:10

Like that was the, that was my reservation about the

27:12

movie. On the other hand, I think

27:15

the performances move you past

27:17

those or moved me past those reservations pretty

27:19

swiftly because they do develop

27:23

these relationships and they do each

27:25

share their own grease

27:28

and kind of move through them. Yes, in a way

27:30

that is tidy and could

27:32

be easily be studied in a screenwriting class, but

27:35

somehow across all of their performances,

27:37

I found really moving.

27:39

Yeah, I hear you Julia. And I say in my review that I

27:41

wish we had a little bit more of her character

27:43

of Mary Devine Joy Randall's character in

27:45

the last act. Although I also appreciated

27:47

as Wesley Morris wrote in his review of the movie that

27:49

she's sort of given her privacy at

27:52

a very painful moment for her in

27:54

the movie. And especially I would say in

27:56

a late scene where Paul Giamatti's

27:58

character in Devine Joy Randall's have this late

28:00

night conversation in the TV room, there's

28:02

a moment that the dynamic between them is flipped in an

28:05

interesting way where sort of hit some of his expectations

28:07

of her are overturned and

28:10

and after that I felt like the movie really won me over

28:12

that she was fully out of the category of the sort

28:14

of sassy black secondary character

28:16

and was although I wish she had more screen time was a

28:18

really fully rounded character. Anyway

28:20

I would say you may have slight niggles

28:23

with this or that about the movie but this is such

28:25

a great choice for family viewing and it happens

28:27

to be open over a holiday weekend. I would totally

28:29

send

28:29

people to the theater to watch this with multiple

28:32

generations of their family.

28:34

Yeah and to be clear so would I. Okay it's The Holdovers,

28:37

stars Paul Giamatti, it's from the director Alexander

28:40

Payne, it's in theaters now go check it out. Alright

28:42

let's move on. Alright now is

28:44

the moment in our podcast where we talk

28:46

about another podcast. Dana what

28:48

do you have?

28:49

Steven Smithsonian magazine covers history

28:51

science and culture in the way only it can

28:54

through a lens that is insightful and grounded in richly

28:56

reported stories. On Smithsonian's

28:58

debut podcast There's More to That host

29:01

Chris Klimak and the magazine's journalists will

29:03

share how they discover the forces behind the biggest

29:05

issues of our time. There's More to That

29:07

gives curious listeners a fresh understanding

29:10

of the big topics of the present. Each

29:12

episode will illuminate a corner of history science

29:14

art and culture with a direct link to a story

29:16

in the news today. Subscribe to There's

29:19

More to That today and find out how much more

29:21

there is to almost everything available

29:23

wherever you get your podcasts.

29:27

Today is the beginning of a new year and a new decade.

29:30

The nation and the world says goodbye to

29:32

the 1980s and looks to the 90s.

29:34

Kowabunga. I'm

29:38

Josh Levine. You can't touch this. And for the next

29:40

season of Slate's podcast one year

29:42

we're flipping on some incredibly

29:44

baggy pants and taking you back

29:47

to 1990. Honey it's the

29:50

90s remember? Microchips,

29:51

microwaves, faxes, air

29:53

phones, It was a year of possibility

29:56

when an eight-year-old could get left home

29:58

alone and send off a a team of burglars

30:01

all by himself. You guys give up? Oh,

30:03

yes, thirsty for more. And

30:06

a teenager born and raised in West

30:08

Philadelphia could become a prince

30:10

of Bel Air. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Uncle

30:13

Phil, can you take a stroll into the 90s, please? In

30:15

this season of one year, we'll bring

30:17

you 1990s weirdest, wildest, and

30:20

most captivating stories, like

30:22

what the downfall of the Soviet Union had

30:25

to do with Pizza Hut. I'm not

30:27

sure that you should be coming over because we got

30:29

tanks parked outside our restaurant. You'll

30:32

hear about the single dad who fought back

30:34

against Big Tobacco, all while hiding

30:36

behind a secret identity.

30:38

I'm looking around like people were at the

30:40

bus stop, looking at us, like,

30:42

oh, my God. And here comes a

30:44

police car.

30:45

In Cincinnati, an

30:47

art exhibit became a battleground over the

30:50

First Amendment. I remember one of my board

30:52

members said, so what's this? And

30:54

I said, well, it's called fisting. And she said,

30:57

oh, fisting? What's that all about? And

31:00

President George H.W. Bush took

31:02

on his greatest adversary. I'm

31:04

President of the United States, and I'm not

31:06

gonna eat any more broccoli. One

31:09

year, 1990, coming November 22nd, wherever

31:13

you get your podcasts.

31:18

All right, well, Dwight Garner is a book critic for

31:20

The New York Times, a job at which he's performed

31:22

a kind of miracle. He's made

31:24

readers want to read his reviews for

31:27

him, but without being a show off. That

31:29

is very hard to do, I'm here to tell

31:31

you. Whether it's a rave, a pain, a

31:33

hatchet job, or anything in between, sentence

31:36

after sentence of his carries so

31:38

much delight. He's proven again and again,

31:40

you can be brief, deep, and

31:43

light. And now he's written a memoir,

31:45

The Upstairs Delicatessen, on eating, reading,

31:48

reading about eating, and eating while

31:50

reading, is Garner at length.

31:53

And Garner at length, I'm here to tell you, is

31:55

equally delightful. It's filled

31:57

with the same sly, sneaky wit

31:59

and. profanity as his daily paper

32:02

criticism. Dwight, welcome to

32:04

the podcast. God, thank you for that,

32:06

Steve, and it's great to be here. It's so heartfelt.

32:09

It's such a fun

32:11

book, and it's fun to talk to you

32:13

always. This is a memoir, and

32:16

eating and reading came about by a process

32:18

of self-discovery. You started

32:21

with Cool Whip and Robert Parker,

32:23

and you evolved into a serious

32:25

reader and eater, but not

32:28

at all self-serious. Dwight, if

32:30

you have a copy of the book handy,

32:33

it's like trying to describe to someone

32:35

who's never had it what a pineapple tastes

32:37

like,

32:37

or a marshmallow, or a

32:40

beef bourguignon, or something. You

32:42

actually just have to put it in your mouth. So

32:44

will you just read the delightful first paragraph

32:47

from your memoir for us? Well, I feel like

32:49

a chef who says, here's one

32:51

I made earlier. Yes, I do have my book here, Steve. Yeah,

32:54

my book starts this way. When I was young,

32:56

growing up in West Virginia, and then in Southwest

32:59

Florida, I was a soft kid, inclined

33:01

toward Ambon-Palm, husky in

33:03

the department store lingo, a brown-eyed

33:05

boy with chafing thighs,

33:07

because I like to eat while I read. And

33:09

reader, I read whatever was handy. George

33:12

Orwell described his childhood self

33:14

as having a, quote, large, rather fat

33:17

face with big jowls, a bit like a

33:19

hamster. This was my look, too,

33:21

so much so that my friends presented me with

33:23

a hamster as a joke gift. I

33:25

regret to inform you that I named it Hold It

33:28

after J.D. Salinger's hero.

33:30

Hold a late lettuce and,

33:32

probably despairing of his diet, staggered

33:34

backwards, theatrically on his hind legs one

33:36

day, and croaked, like Lee Marvin,

33:38

in The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance. I

33:42

mean, it's just so good. How

33:46

could you not read the next paragraph? I know,

33:48

and it's a sustained performance

33:50

of that goodness, but let's

33:52

dig into some specifics. I mean,

33:55

people might ask you or someone

33:57

like you, how did you get there growing

33:59

up? up in a house largely without books

34:02

or serious reading going on. But that's, it

34:04

wasn't in spite of, it was because of. You

34:06

wanted to find out how to be

34:09

in the world because you didn't know upfront.

34:12

So talk about where you're from and

34:15

how you found your way to high literacy. As

34:19

I write the book, I was born in West Virginia. My grandfather

34:21

was a coal miner. My father went

34:23

to law school at West Virginia University. And

34:27

we were a middle class family. I had

34:29

tennis lessons and orthodontia, you know, but

34:32

there weren't a lot of books in the house. There wasn't much culture.

34:34

And I started reading and I

34:37

just kept reading. One of the

34:39

reasons I read is that I just, out of pure

34:41

curiosity, out of observation greed is

34:43

a phrase I use in the book, I wanted to know more about

34:45

what the world was like outside of my little suburb. And a

34:48

lot of it was wanting to know about food.

34:49

Dwight, what you just described about your childhood was

34:52

one of many moments reading your book that I realized

34:54

that maybe part of why I've always vibed

34:56

so hard with your book reviews is that we share

34:59

many elements of our past and also

35:01

of our taste in food. But my

35:03

grandfather was also from West Virginia.

35:05

My father grew up there. And my grandfather

35:07

also worked in a coal mine, not as a miner, but as

35:10

he helped design equipment to get

35:12

the coal out of the mine. He also said, Warsh,

35:15

as you mentioned, your grandfather pronouncing that word.

35:18

And so your description of sort of the food

35:20

culture of sort of working class

35:22

West Virginia was something that I really recognized

35:25

and related to. But then there were

35:27

so many moments that, you know, little food

35:30

journeys that you described also rhymed with

35:32

ones that I had taken. Like I think I've endorsed

35:34

on this show before, Marie Sharpe's Hot Sauce,

35:37

which you mentioned is your favorite hot sauce. I think

35:39

it has actually been an endorsement of this late culture

35:41

gap fest. And Julia knows this very

35:43

well. There's a snack that I picked up from an

35:45

Iris Murdoch book, The Sea, which is a

35:48

book that you talk about as having inspired

35:50

a different snack. You talk about going in search of certain

35:52

oranges that the obsessive

35:54

narrator of that novel mentions in his

35:56

book. And I like to spread toast

35:58

with butter and then press. fresh herbs into

36:01

the butter, which is something that the obsessive narrator

36:03

of that book talks about. So is this

36:05

going to become a question? I guess I was going to ask you

36:07

about snacks inspired by

36:10

books and to what extent that brought

36:12

this book about and maybe just suggest

36:14

a couple on air to our listeners, something that

36:16

you would never have thought of eating if somebody in a book

36:18

hadn't eaten it first. Oh, God, that's such a good question.

36:21

Maybe like you, it sounds like I'm very suggestible.

36:24

If I'm reading a novel and someone has a great snack

36:26

in it or a great meal, I kind of want to go make it

36:28

that night, you know, or if not that night, I'll take

36:30

a picture of it with my phone and going

36:33

back to my phone later, I'll find this thing that I've taken

36:35

a photograph of, this snack or this recipe.

36:37

And so yeah, you know, I love finding food

36:39

in novels and it's well done. And I love

36:41

finding recipe ideas. And, you know, what

36:44

a great thing, what a great pleasure to combine. I'm

36:46

trying to think now of things that I've learned about

36:49

through novels that I do food wise.

36:51

I mean, Iris Murdoch, you're right, is one of the great

36:53

people. Iris Murdoch said one of my favorite

36:55

quotes, actually, the quote that describes this

36:57

book more than anything else is something like

37:00

she writes in the Sea to Sea, the secret

37:02

to a happy life is a series of continuous

37:05

small treats, you know, and one

37:07

of the great things about eating is

37:09

that, you know, this would be fancy food. It's

37:11

just Mary McCarthy in my book describes

37:14

her method of eating peaches her father taught her

37:17

and they would take slice the peach and dip

37:19

every slice into a bit of sugar. And that was

37:21

his method. And she loved it. And she writes, it wasn't

37:24

the method wasn't so important as the way he

37:26

insisted on turning every little moment into

37:28

sort of a nice, a nice treat, a nice moment,

37:31

like he just recognized that it was great at the time.

37:33

Tway, I was struck reading this book, how much it reminded

37:35

me of your last book, Garner's

37:38

quotations, which put on display

37:40

your magpie reading capabilities

37:44

and helped me understand

37:46

why it is that your reviews

37:48

are so fun to read because it helps demonstrate

37:51

the kind of reader you are. And although this

37:53

is a memoir and about

37:55

eating, it is as the subtitle

37:58

says also about reading and I

37:59

was

38:00

curious about how you

38:02

came to that form. Did you know when you set

38:04

out to write this book that it was gonna weave in

38:07

so much of your observation-greed

38:09

reading? Was that the intent from the

38:11

beginning, or did all of those

38:14

deftly plucked

38:16

phrases and memories kind

38:18

of sneak their way in? No,

38:20

that's a good question, because I was really aware

38:23

early on that my life has not been interesting

38:25

enough to, my memoir

38:27

would not be that interesting. Not that much has happened

38:29

to me. I probably can make it interesting

38:31

to a degree, but I realized this was my chance

38:33

to talk about my life a bit and to

38:36

walk through it in terms of food. And

38:38

I'm just one of those people who thinks in quotations.

38:40

I mean, you could name any food out

38:43

there, and I could probably tell you what three or four writers thought

38:45

about it. And I just have a, my mind works

38:47

that way for some weird reason. And I've

38:49

read a lot of books that talk about literature

38:52

and food, and I like them, but I just felt

38:54

there was this wildness untouched. Everyone talks

38:56

about the same few scenes all the time. I

38:59

mean, I'm not a Virginia Woolf or some other novels,

39:02

and I just knew that I had this knowledge from all

39:04

kinds of other writers that was great, and I wanted

39:06

to talk about it, and this was my chance. And

39:08

so I just left at the opportunity to write this book,

39:10

and I'm really happy that I was able to do it.

39:12

Wait, so like all of those thoughts

39:14

and observations

39:15

from writers across history

39:17

about sardines are just floating around in your head.

39:19

You don't have some like secret card

39:21

file full of notebook, like in that

39:24

card. Yeah, I have a two-part

39:26

answer. Yes, they do float around in my head, but

39:29

also I do keep a commonplace book. And as your

39:31

listeners surely know, commonplace book is where writers

39:33

throughout time have written down

39:36

their favorite passages from novels and

39:38

other kinds of books. And I've kept one since I was 14. This

39:41

was, I wrote about this in the introduction to my Quotations

39:43

book, and every time I read a novel, if there's some

39:45

great line in it, I write it down. And I've

39:48

done this since I was really young,

39:50

and my commonplace book is now enormous. And

39:52

so when I went to write this book, I did

39:54

have a large file on my favorite

39:57

food commentary over time, and

39:59

I rated it in a... big way for this book, no doubt.

40:01

Having said that, I do have a lot

40:03

of it on tap. I do have a lot of it available

40:06

to me without looking it up, but I did look it up also.

40:09

Right, there's something just essentially generous about

40:11

the way you write as a critic, which is very hard

40:13

to sustain as a critic, and it

40:15

makes one think abundantly of what

40:18

one loves. It

40:20

doesn't make you relish your distaste

40:22

to read you even when you don't especially

40:24

like something. And I thought of that many

40:27

examples of eating in books that stay

40:29

with you forever. The one off the top of my head was

40:31

an American pastoral where the daughter

40:33

of the Swede is on the run, and she's

40:35

starving, and she bites into it.

40:38

It's a BLT. And the

40:42

phenomenological richness of that

40:44

description just shows you how hungry and

40:46

desperate that character is, and you can taste

40:48

it at that moment. Many

40:50

such examples. Relatedly,

40:52

I'm curious about the

40:55

palate problem, right? The other Robert

40:57

Parker, the wine critic, would often

40:59

talk about kind of blowing out his palate, especially

41:02

on all of these super high alcohol

41:04

wines, and how are you gonna distinguish

41:07

between the 99th wine that you're tasting

41:09

and the 100th? Gluttony leads to

41:11

satiety, leads to a dead palate, and

41:14

as you say, you often find yourself under

41:16

a landslide of books, and similarly,

41:18

you love to eat and do it copiously.

41:21

How do you stay alive to books and food? Oh,

41:24

God, it's such a good question. Well, with

41:26

food, you only have three meals a day, right? And your appetites

41:28

keep coming. And so, you know, I'm hungry, and

41:31

I find that I'm always looking forward to my next meal.

41:34

In terms of books, God, it's so true. And

41:36

with books, if you're a professional critic, you look

41:38

for reasons not to talk about them. I

41:40

sit around all day with a big pile of new books, and

41:43

I look for reasons, because I can only do four

41:45

a month, and I probably get, I don't know, 200 in

41:47

my mailbox a month, or more

41:50

than that. And so you look for reasons to

41:52

put them down. You open it up and I flip around, and

41:54

I look for something to charm me. I look for reasons to review

41:57

it, but I'm also looking like I can skip this

41:59

one. But not becoming dulled,

42:01

I don't know, I just love what I do so much. I

42:03

feel so lucky to have this job. And you guys have

42:06

the same kind of jobs, where every day

42:08

I'm confronting a new topic, a new voice,

42:10

something new to chew on and talk about. And

42:13

those kind of jobs are rare in American

42:16

life. As someone said, if you're in high school

42:18

to go to the job fair, there's no table for

42:20

like literary criticism, like to sign

42:22

up to have this be your profession. And I just

42:25

feel lucky to do it. I love that observation,

42:27

and we'll briefly note

42:30

at risk of stitching in a kid anecdote, that

42:32

my son pointed out that

42:35

I just watch stuff and talk about it and tried

42:37

to use that as an argument that he should be a video

42:39

game critic when he grows up and be allowed to play unlimited

42:41

video games to cultivate

42:44

his critical palette.

42:46

He did not win the argument. Yeah,

42:49

I've heard plenty of child put

42:52

downs along the lines of all you have to do for work

42:54

is watch movies. I

42:56

guess I look pretty good. But I have to say,

42:59

in response, I completely agree with

43:01

Steve that I think joy is one of the critical

43:03

elements of this book and of your writing

43:05

in general, but I'm also so grateful when

43:07

you deliver a deadly pan of a book that

43:09

I don't want to read but desperately want to

43:12

know about. I still think about and laugh

43:14

your review of Jared Kushner's memoir. I

43:16

remember sending

43:16

that link to everyone I knew. It was

43:19

so full of laugh lines.

43:20

Well, you know, I found that readers

43:22

really, especially readers of book reviews,

43:25

love the pan. And the reason is,

43:27

I think, well, A, they're kind of fun, of course, but

43:29

B, book talk in America has become very

43:32

much like happy talk and negative reviews are

43:34

rare now. And there are fewer book reviews. And so I

43:36

think readers are always feel like they're

43:38

being sold a bill of goods. They read this glowing

43:40

review and go buy the book and it's a piece of crap. And

43:42

I think that happens to a lot of people. And so

43:44

when they see a negative review, like, thank God,

43:47

this is not another rave and I can skip this

43:49

book, you know? And I

43:51

think people feel like they're finally getting straight talks sometimes

43:54

if someone pans a book. Okay, Dwight, I

43:56

have to ask just the gooniest

43:59

question.

44:01

One desert island food

44:04

paired with one desert

44:06

island author go. Oh,

44:09

give me a sec, give me a sec, give me a sec, give me a sec, I'll

44:11

figure it out, I'll figure it out, I'll figure

44:13

it out. It's

44:15

those questions that make you dumber the minute they're

44:17

asked. Like, favorite movie, I'm not

44:19

familiar with the concept of movie.

44:20

Thank

44:23

you Dana, let's leave all that in by the way. No,

44:27

it's so true, whatever asked me what to

44:29

read, I never have an answer. I would say

44:31

I want to be in Rome with Ralph Ellison in

44:33

the 1950s. He was there for a year

44:36

or so writing and he

44:38

couldn't find sort of southern food. He couldn't find

44:40

the things he loved and he went out walking

44:43

all over Rome in search of pigs feet and

44:45

he couldn't find them or the right brine

44:48

he did to make them. And I want to be there with

44:50

Ralph on the search for pigs feet in Rome in 1950,

44:52

whatever it was. See,

44:54

this is a lesson Dana

44:56

to all aspiring hosts.

44:59

Sometimes the dumbest questions lead to

45:01

the most intelligent answers. The

45:04

upstairs delicatessen on eating reading,

45:06

reading about eating and eating while reading

45:09

is by Dwight Garner, a very

45:11

esteemed friend of this program

45:14

of VFOP. Dwight, thank you so much for

45:16

coming on the show. It is an absolute

45:19

delight. What

45:20

a pleasure, thank you guys. Hey everybody, it's

45:22

Tim Heidecker. You know me, Tim and Eric, bridesmaids

45:24

and the fantastic four. I'd

45:26

like to personally invite you to listen to Office Hours

45:29

Live with me and my co-hosts DJ

45:31

Doug Pound. Hello. And Vic Berger.

45:33

Howdy. Every week we bring you laughs, fun, games

45:36

and lots of other surprises. It's live. We

45:38

take your Zoom calls. We love having fun.

45:40

Excuse me. Songs. Vic said something. Music.

45:43

I like having fun. I like

45:46

to laugh. People

45:48

who can make me.

45:50

Please subscribe

45:52

now.

45:52

All right, now is the moment in

45:54

our podcast where we endorse

45:57

Dana Stevens. What do you have? All

45:59

right.

45:59

Well, in our segment on the Holdovers, I recommended

46:02

that people over the holiday weekend, if they're looking for

46:04

some family viewing, go watch that movie

46:06

in the theater. I stand behind that. But if you

46:08

want to do some home viewing over the holidays

46:10

as who doesn't, I happen to discover a

46:12

show on Netflix over the weekend that in

46:14

a rare occurrence, all three members of my family

46:17

wanted to watch, not necessarily at the same

46:19

time. So it was sort of constantly flowing

46:21

through my house all weekend. I still haven't

46:23

seen the whole thing, but I've seen bits

46:25

of the whole thing. And I can say that while

46:27

not being perfect, it will make for excellent family

46:30

watching. It's called Life on Our Planet. It's a nature

46:32

show or a sort of paleoanthropology

46:35

show, a history of the planet show

46:38

on Netflix. It's narrated by Morgan Freeman.

46:40

Who better to sonorously

46:42

tell you of your planet's past than Morgan

46:45

Freeman? It's basically a history of Earth

46:47

since intracellular life first began.

46:49

So obviously, each episode is going to be covering

46:52

millions and millions of years of time, if not hundreds

46:54

of millions of years. And so I would not

46:56

say that it is the deepest scientific show.

46:59

I'm pretty sure the science in it is all sound.

47:01

I'm certainly learning a lot as I watch it. An

47:03

interesting element that it has that it takes a while

47:05

to get used to is that it uses a lot of CGI

47:07

recreation of prehistoric times. Right.

47:10

Because how else are you going to see, I don't know,

47:12

two early mammals locking horns in

47:14

the Triassic era unless

47:17

you recreate them digitally. So you

47:19

kind of have to get used to the fact that it goes in between

47:21

present day nature photography that looks so

47:23

incredible. It could be CGI and then,

47:26

you know, fake cinematography of the past

47:28

that actually is CGI. And that toggling

47:30

is sometimes a little weird, but it is more

47:32

than worth it once you get used to it. It's really well scripted.

47:35

And there are so many funny looking creatures

47:37

that you never knew existed that I guarantee

47:40

members of your family will be deciding who

47:42

is most like which prehistoric

47:45

weird bird with giant feet flying

47:47

through canyons. It's just visually fun

47:50

to watch. Julia, I think your boys would really dig

47:52

it if they have had, you know, dinosaur love in their

47:54

past. And you learn a ton about

47:56

early mammals and early plants and non-dinosaur

47:58

creatures, too.

48:00

Oh, that's great. Julia, what do you have? Well,

48:02

since we've all agreed we can't get enough Nathan Fielder,

48:05

I do want to endorse this hilarious

48:08

bit that he and Emma Stone did promoting

48:10

The Curse on Jimmy Kimmel. Did

48:12

either of you guys see this? No. It

48:15

merits watching. But the whole bit is

48:17

essentially a Nathan Fielder sketch in

48:19

which I guess the New York Times critic reviewing

48:22

the show praised Emma Stone's performance

48:24

but critiqued Nathan Fielder's

48:27

and said he was very stiff. And so he shows

48:29

up pretending to be like an incredibly

48:31

loose, cool actor to prove

48:35

that

48:35

the review is wrong and

48:37

just won't let the bit drop. And

48:40

the whole thing is just good. It's

48:42

just funny. And I mean, probably

48:44

you would hate it, Steve.

48:45

But that sounds like the perfect

48:48

acting challenge for Nathan Fielder, right? I mean,

48:50

since I was praising his performance, but his performance

48:52

is essentially to be his stiff self, I

48:55

want to see him acting like a cool actor guy.

48:58

So he comes out in

48:59

this ludicrous outfit and huge

49:01

pants and these teeny tiny mirrored glasses

49:04

and is sitting

49:07

in a chair in this hipster

49:09

relaxed way. But then under it, you

49:11

can feel the coiled nerdery radiating

49:15

through. But then even that is the performance

49:17

of the nerd pretending to be like

49:19

just the layers. It's extremely Nathan

49:22

Fielderian. And then it's funny

49:24

to see Emma Stone's non-acted

49:27

self are kind of like game

49:29

expressive, promoting my

49:31

project self kind of going along

49:34

for the ride and playing a quite

49:36

game second fiddle to this absurd

49:38

bit. Anyway, so often

49:40

late night performance is totally

49:43

forgettable and this one is essentially

49:45

its own little show.

49:47

You're right, Julia. I hate it already. So

49:49

I'm endorsing this week an essay by the extraordinary

49:52

Vivian Gornick in the New York Review of Books.

49:55

It's called Camus on Tour and it's about

49:57

Camus. Some publishing houses just published

50:01

his Reflections on America when he came here

50:03

on essentially book tour. Essay

50:06

just begins with this kind of, Dana

50:08

you have to read this essay if you haven't already,

50:11

with a tour de force that begins

50:13

with nothing in a professional writer's life more

50:15

resembles the life of a traveling salesman

50:17

than the literary book tour. The superficial

50:20

difference between writers on tour and salesmen

50:22

on the road is that writers are encouraged to imagine themselves

50:25

prized personae whose pitch is

50:27

eagerly awaited by the anonymous crowd whereas

50:30

salesmen know themselves to be an intrusion

50:32

albeit one with an edge while both

50:35

are beggars at the gate. I love it and it goes

50:37

on from there and it's just, it's just, if

50:40

any Gornick is 88 and at the absolute

50:42

top of her game it's such a wonderfully

50:45

deft and funny recounting

50:47

of the incongruity of Camus in America

50:50

and let me just briefly read another

50:52

very funny part. Most of his evaluations on his

50:54

trip are superficial or banal or laughably

50:57

snotty. Here's Camus still

50:59

in the boat, his ship just coming into New York.

51:02

A tremendous sight despite, or this is Camus

51:04

now, a tremendous sight despite or because of the fog,

51:06

order, power, economic strength,

51:09

they're all here. The heart trembles

51:11

before so much remarkable inhumanity.

51:14

Then Gornick comes in and says grudgingly

51:17

he adds, but I know people can change

51:19

their mind. He, however,

51:21

will not. So anyway it's

51:23

just deft and

51:26

an encouragement to those of

51:28

us laboring in the vineyards of criticism

51:30

that we might get it right even

51:32

if it happens finally in our 70s or 80s. It's Vivian

51:36

Gornick, it's in the New York Review

51:38

of Books and the essay is called Camus

51:41

on tour. Julia, thank you so much.

51:43

Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Dana. Thanks, Steve.

51:48

You will find links

51:51

to some of the things we talked about today on our show page at

51:53

slate.com slash culture fest and

51:55

you can email us at culture fest at

51:57

slate.com our introductory music

51:59

by the composer Nicholas Patel. Our

52:02

production assistant is Kat Hong. Our producer

52:04

is Jessamyn Molly. For Julia Turner

52:07

and Dana Stevens, I'm Stephen McCapp. Thank you

52:09

so much for joining us.

52:10

We'll see you soon.