Latest mix, v2: tnycriticsatlarge_042326_earnestness_v2.mp3 Alex Schwartz: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Nomi Fry. Vinson Cunningham: I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. How you doing? Alex Schwartz: Doing good. Doing well. Hey, doing well. Vinson Cunningham: You know who else is doing well? Our listeners who are always, whenever we get an email, it's like they're just throwing a hundred mile an hour fastballs. That's a, that's a baseball reference. It's spring everybody. But, uh, today's episode, play ball. There you go. Today's episode idea came to us from a listener, um, Lewis. Thank you Lewis. Rodin suggesting that we do an episode about the return of earnestness. And I mean, it just rang a bell with all of us. He was basically making the case that earnestness, sincerity, a lack of irony, whatever you wanna call it, is what's resonating in our culture right now. And once we started thinking about this idea, we started noticing it everywhere. I mean, what were we there was, what are some examples of this? Alex Schwartz: Well, I have been. riveted by the Artemis two mission. CLIP: Artemis II (via NASA) The mission itself, but also the astronauts and their feedback about what they saw and felt in deep outer space. CLIP: Artemis II (via NASA) Mm-hmm. I believe that's the technical term for where they were. Mm-hmm. And that is rife with earnestness. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: They have reflections about the state of humanity. Earth our interconnectedness. That would be my, my, the first place my mind went. Naomi Fry: I mean, talking about space, uh, project Hail Mary, the, the recent movie Starring Grind Gosling, that has been shattering box office records, CLIP: Project Hail Mary The great success of this movie suggests to me that there is a hunger for a sincere story about connection and hope. Vinson Cunningham: Also, like I should say, we've spoken about this show on this, uh, on this show before, but the pit, CLIP: The Pitt which is just like Naomi Fry: absolutely the pit, the Vinson Cunningham: pit so earnest about the necessity for saving lives, saving lives, doctors' jobs, how hard they are, and how hard they work at them. Alex Schwartz: There's love on the Spectrum, which just came out with its fourth season, earlier this month. Hugely popular dating show CLIP: Love on the Spectrum rife with earnestness. Yes. Unlike so many dating shows where there are obstacles and there are jealousy, and the whole hope is to inflame competition. And here it's just about trying to find a connection and expressing yourself as you are. Mm-hmm. And audiences love this. Yeah. And really have been embracing it. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Yes. The ice skater, Alyssa Lu just brought home the gold and the Olympics. CLIP: Alysa Liu You know, the effervescence, the, the belief in oneself, the wanting to show up and do your best. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: You know, people really responding to that. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. It's all there. And so today we're delving into this new wave of. Earnestness, we're gonna sketch out where and how it's showing up in our world right now. Um, in part by looking at two new books that. For us at least, fit into this theme. Lena Dunham's, new memoir, fame Sick, and a novel by the writer Ben Lerner that came out earlier this month. It's called Transcription. And maybe the big obvious question for us is what was maybe the era of cynicism that we're coming out of and why now are we so. To wear our hearts on our sleeves. So that's today on Critics of Large, why Earnestness is everywhere. ________________ Okay, so we got this case going. Earnestness has become a dominant attitude in art right now and maybe also in our daily lives. I don't know, let's figure it out. Uh, what's one recent example that solidified this idea for you? Alex Schwartz: Well, I mentioned the Artemis two mission before, and I wanna just put it up top because first of all, remarkable, extraordinary, four human beings traveled around the moon, returned back, saw things that have never been seen before. Went farther than any human beings have ever been before. Mm-hmm. And I, I was following the mission. My three-year-old son is very interested in space, so therefore I'm also interested in space. No one will be surprised that I am not, you know, all for let's colonize Mars. All of that lunacy nonsense, you know, in our, in our clients Vinson Cunningham: multi-planetary existence. Alex Schwartz: Exactly. Mm-hmm. Just the, for me, it's all about earth. And so what this mission brought back is how precious. It is to live on Earth. I'm always saying to my son, you know, we are so lucky to be part of life on Earth. Yeah. And these four astronauts come back and they say the same thing. Naomi Fry: Right. Alex Schwartz: they were recordings that were made while they were still on Artemis two. But I'm thinking in particular of a press conference that the four of them gave when they came back at, at, um, the Ellington Field Joint Reserve base in Houston. And first of all, they're also visibly moved. Mm-hmm. By what they've been through. Mm-hmm. They're so visibly moved by their connection to one another. It's just, it's very earnest, it's very sincere. But particularly Christina Cook's part of the press conference where she talks about what it means to be a crew. CLIP: Artemis II presser Nothing could be more earnest than this speech. The kind of thing you might hear before an eighth grade basketball game at which your team is about to be brutally beaten, but which you need to go into with the, with the force of the, the Spartan Army. But she's saying this about their mission, and then she applies it out to being about life on earth. CLIP: Artemis II presser There's nothing out there that these guys saw. And if there is, it's very far away. It's all about this spinning ball that all of us share. It's true. Naomi Fry: Yeah. No, it's true. Alex Schwartz: It's moving. Naomi Fry: Yeah, that's true. It's true. Alex Schwartz: Earnest. Naomi Fry: Yeah, and I, I was, you know, as I was watching this press conference, Alex, that you're referring to, I was thinking a couple things. First of all, I was thinking how hopeful I felt. This was not to be jingoistic, but this was a NASA mission. It was about the government advancing science and research. But it, it made me think about exactly a year ago. Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: Was the Blue Origin Mission. Jeff Bezos's Rocket that sent up his fiance now wife, Lauren Sanchez. Bezos. Mm-hmm. And Katie Perry, Gail King, a number of other women. Yes. And just Alex Schwartz: to think about it brings shame. Naomi Fry: Yeah. And that was, they went up for 11 minutes. Um. Of course at great, you know, private cost. Yeah. You know, the impetus was supposedly like, we're gonna bake. I remember Katie Perry saying, we're gonna put the ass back in astronaut, because they're like, hot ladies, Vinson Cunningham: very Naomi Fry: nice going up. We're gonna glam up for this mission, et cetera. And it was kind of fashioned as a kind of like woman empowerment thing, but it was roundly mocked because it was for Naugh. Like it was for, you know, like this, you know, multi-billionaire. Sending up his, his wife and some of her rich friends to sort of like get a little taste of space tourism and like, what, what are we learning? What are we saying? Even, right. It's like, oh, if you're a billionaire, you will be able to go to space for like a, a pleasure cruise. I guess that's, that's pretty much it, I think. And so. Put in conversation with that. I was, I was like, wow, this is old school. Like I'm feeling refreshed, I'm feeling reinvigorated. Like we're not all dead yet. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: You know? And you mentioned. You know, they're like, it's like an eighth grade team. This brings me to Project Hail Mary, which mentioned a couple minutes ago, which I have to admit I did not see, but I watched some clips and I read several reviews. It's curious to me that in the movie, I believe Ryan Gosling, who goes out to space to save Earth and with the help of kind of like an inner species buddy comedy, it's been called with this like friendly alien, um, is a middle school science teacher. And this idea of like service, right? Mm-hmm. This idea of kind of like teaching the children there is hope for the next generation. Um, and. That made me think, sorry, I'm going on about a movie that came out exactly 20 years ago with Ryan Gosling, in which he plays a middle school teacher, half Nelson. Do you remember that movie? Oh yeah. Where? He's a crack smoking, yeah. Public, middle school teacher. It's Alex Schwartz: not a pretty picture. Naomi Fry: It is not a pretty picture. I've not seen this. It's a good, it's a great movie, Uhhuh. It's a great movie and he's great in it. But this is not, that was not, you know, deep in the bush years, W Bush, um, not a pretty picture. Mm-hmm. Collapsing public schools, you know, he has this like relationship, this friendship with one of his middle school students, a girl who ends up dealing drugs and dealing him drugs. You know, it's, it's kind of a very dark picture. And so thinking about him as this, like. Teacher come astronaut who is setting out to save the world really, for me was like, we're trying to say something different here. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: I think space travel is specifically, uh, interesting in this regard because Okay. If we were to start to name some characteristics of the mm-hmm. Bad mood that. The culture has been in, and I don't think we're saying that that's all the way over, but No. If we were, Naomi Fry: unfortunately, Vinson Cunningham: yeah, if, if we were gonna name some of the characteristics, one would be conspiracists, um, sort of grand theories of, uh, malarkey and subterfuge by the government and space travel specifically has always been. A great theater of conspiracy thinking. We never been to the moon. You know, this kind of, these kinds of things are resurgent and I think Naomi Fry: the earth is flat. Vinson Cunningham: The earth is flat. The, I think these things have been kind of on the upswing, um, recently. And so to see it happen again, to see the sort of undeniable imagery of actual space travel, some of the photographs of Earth from the backside of the moon are just so beautiful and so majestic that I think that there's a, there's also a kind of. Bursting of mythologies that may real earnestness, real seriousness of purpose can, can kind of illuminate, it can kind of change our minds about things that we are being artfully or fancily back and forth or ironic about. But, um, to your point, Naomi, are there other things beyond Artemis that have been really tickling your, your earnestness bone? Alex Schwartz: Um, I am really interested in the success of a show like Love on the Spectrum. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. CLIP: Love on the Spectrum - trailer Alex Schwartz: My go-to is not dating shows. This is not an area that I'm particularly into. I'm not a bachelor bachelorette person at all. And I think my antipathy towards it has to do with sense of how awful it is to put this particular experience under a microscope for the entertainment of millions. And then, here enters a show like Love on the Spectrum, which by all accounts, this show is a total. Delight and people love it. And I think the reason people love it is the earnestness of the subjects who are not in there to play a game or to launch a TV empire for themselves or to become a household personality that they can then further try to benefit from or profit off of in some way. Mm-hmm. But who are there to do the thing. Yeah. And the reaction this has gotten from. Audiences I find very moving. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: It's almost too moving for me. And I, I really liked it. You know, when you think about dating shows, right? There is a boatload of cynicism and a lot of like, are you here for the right reasons or for the wrong reasons? And often it's for the wrong reasons. It's for fame, it's for money, it's to become an influencer, you know? And so there's a lot of cynicism specifically around that place of romance and love. And so something like Love on the spectrum is. Is is quite different. Quite refreshing. But it's just, you know, watching people being vulnerable, truly vulnerable, where I'm, I'm looking at these people who are open in a way that's inspiring in certain senses, but is also Yeah. Very. Uh, very vulnerable. You know, I was like, I'm gonna cry every second. You know what I mean? Like, it was Alex Schwartz: too raw. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Speaking of love and its portrayals on television, we, we've already talked about this show, but we, you can't really pass over heated rivalry as a sort of Yes. Sight of a, a font mm-hmm. Of sort of earnest reaction among TV fans of over the past couple of months. Just the, Naomi Fry: the yearning, Vinson Cunningham: the, the, the straightforward. Yearning that that occurs in the show and sort of that it displaces onto its audience, toward its characters, I think Alex Schwartz: is, yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, Alex Schwartz: yeah. We've talked about it. We could talk about it endlessly. I could. Everyone else would leave the room. Heated rivalry was, Naomi Fry: well leave you alone. Alex Schwartz: Leave. Thank you. Leave me thoughts Your thought. Yes. Leave me alone with the listeners. My thoughts. Heated rivalry was a mass catharsis event. I think we can see that clearly now in the, in the, in the blooming light of April Uhhuh, that in the depths of January, everybody needed to have this enormous catharsis. And yes, we've all talked about the yearning, but it was more than the yearning. It was about connection, and it was about a sense of connection being possible. And everyone's losing their minds, and everyone's crying and everyone's filming each other, crying to post it on Instagram Mask catharsis event Earnestness. There it is. Vinson Cunningham: When we're back, two new books that are examples of this trend in action. We're discussing Ben Lerner's novel transcription and fame Sick, the new memoir by Lena Dunham. Don't go away. :: MIDROLL :: Vinson Cunningham: Before we move on, I think it might be salutary to stop and maybe make some definitions. Alex Schwartz: Oh, I love that. Vinson Cunningham: But what's earnestness? What are we, what are we talking about? Alex Schwartz: Uh, what a good question. Yes, we're talking about earnestness being back, but I just wanna acknowledge as we do that, that I, I do think it's a small. Reaction to the overwhelming sense that the people running things are cynics, liars and shit, posters, both literal and figurative. And that everything is being done for profit ironized to the point where there is no actual, uh, baseline of truth. And this earnestness is in a response to that, to the dominant culture. So I think what we're seeing in this earnestness. Mode, some of these things we've talked about and more that we'll keep talking about is an attempt to not succumb, I think, to some of, to some of that and to try to get at the truth and not to just coat over it or co or go along with it or concede to it. Mm-hmm. With cynicism. Saccharin is something else. Saccharin is, everything is great. Never fully dressed without a smile. Here we go. Saccharin is lies. Telling lies, and so it actually is kind of the opposite of mm-hmm. There may, they might be Vinson Cunningham: opposites. Alex Schwartz: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I think it, I think it kind of is. I think it's about relentless positivity and I don't think earnestness needs to be about relentless positivity, but I think it is about trying to be clear about priorities for what matters. Naomi Fry: I think there's a lot of, when you were just talking, Alex, and you were talking about like, everything is great. It made me think about kind of the hijacking. hijacking of sincerity by the corporation. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: The idea that. Everything, you know, let, let's all s smile and, and be together. The kind of disnification, Vinson Cunningham: have a Coca-Cola Naomi Fry: and have a Coke. Just think about kind of, um, the relentless kind of techno positivism of like. We're all gonna be connected. Twitter will, it's like you can, you can have a free exchange of ideas. Facebook, right? Facebook. We're gonna connect the whole world. Yes. We're gonna connect the whole world. Mm-hmm. What could be more earnest than the professed goals of all of these hugely influential. Companies that have cropped up in, in the two thousands, reconnecting now with the idea of earnestness is different than, say a moment like the Obama era or something. We already know where some of these things have gone before, like the, the evil places, if not evil, then certainly self-interested places that these promises have have taken us before. Alex Schwartz: Well, I have a question, Vincent. I have a question for you because. I do think when we think about earnestness, these things probably operate in cycles. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Where for us, in this room, because of our ages, and I think for a lot of people, the last real moment of this was the early Obama years. Yes. And you as someone who both. Worked in the Obama milieu and also have famously written a novel. Mm-hmm. Dealing with the kind of called great expectations, just in case anyone doesn't know that. Thank you. Um, dealing with some of the cynical underbelly of that time. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: How do you think about those years now and how do you see them in comparison to what we're going through? Was that a spot of earnestness or was that something different? Vinson Cunningham: I think it was, and I think earnestness can take many different shapes. Because it seems to me that earnestness is always a response, and this is, I guess this is part of the technical nature of it. It seems to me that in the Obama era, There had been a really tough time in American public life before that, and here we are a, a, a symptom of perhaps a better time, a phenomenon that was. Thereto for unprecedented in American history, the spectacle of a black president. Um, so this might lead to many other great things. And we saw a lot of cultural items all the way to the end of that, that cycle. You had these great expressions of, you know, really ardent. Emotion even in 2016, at the end of that era, you see like Beyonce's lemonade, like just things that are, you know, Naomi Fry: God, I was just thinking about Vinson Cunningham: that. Tough and strong, but really just forthright. Um, that seems to be speaking to a, a culture in the balance and trying to push toward the light. I would say the last, the moment of earnestness before that was early, early Bush era, weirdly, Iraq war era. When, like you think about like twe. Um, Naomi Fry: early W Bush, Vinson Cunningham: w Bush, you think about like oh oh 3, 0 4, 0 5, when you have bands like Death Cab for Cutie and like the postal service, all these, my sort of college age twee for me, Alex Schwartz: like the Garden State Vinson Cunningham: soundtrack, the garden, you know, this moment that was like, you know, very Naomi Fry: no slang. Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: And that was, that to me seemed, seemed to me almost like a. Dissociating response. Like, the world is so bad and strange. Naomi Fry: Strange. When I hear the shins, I start sobbing now. Like you put on the shins. Yeah. And like, were we ever so fucking young? Like, Vinson Cunningham: that's it. Yeah. Alex Schwartz: But I love that idea that it's, yeah, it's Vinson Cunningham: totally, it was dis, it was dissociation. It was like mm-hmm. Post nine 11, no one really knows what to do with the political picture. And so it's like, um, we're gonna. Retreat to Urban Enclaves as a milieu and make e either like uplifting or kind of sweetly sad songs and films, right? Um, I, I think, you know, when you look at that as art, as a response to especially political conditions, um, there's a lot to start to think about, about, about now. So let's turn to two new releases in the literary world. Uh, we could start with Fame Sick, the new memoir by Lena Dunham. Know me. Naomi Fry: Sure. Vinson Cunningham: Would you like to do a synopsis of that text? Naomi Fry: Yes. So this is a memoir and it traces her life from when she started working as a filmmaker, made tiny furniture, and then was almost immediately picked up by HBO to create the series girls that then ran for six seasons. She was 25, I believe, when uh, the first season of girls came out. So extremely young and. Immediately became kind of a media sensation. And, uh, the book kind of traces her arc as she becomes very famous, very fast, very rich, and then as kind of her life basically collapses because of this like. Hyperfocus on her as this figure that's supposed to represent the millennial woman. She also, uh, develops a lot of illnesses. Mm-hmm. Uh, she has endometriosis, she has ER's, Danlos syndrome, a lot of comorbidities. She is, as she becomes kind of like the busier, the more famous, the more influential she becomes, she becomes sicker. And the book basically talks about. This period in, in, um, quite, you know, candid detail, I would say. Mm-hmm. It's a total page turner for me. I was very interested reading it. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: You know, one of the interesting things about it is that I think. Girls was in a lot of ways a comedy. It was very comedic and it treated its protagonists. Sometimes it's kind of like the butt of jokes, and there is something about the tone in which this book is written, which I would say is quite earnest and maybe different than what we have come to. Expect from Lena Dunham in the earlier part of her career, at least the kind of the, the part of her career that made her name initially? Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. To the point where I kind of start, I found myself taking notes when she made jokes, because usually even in her prose writing Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: It is very kind of joke heavy. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: And it's very, it, it, it really isn't happening here. That thing. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Um, there are parts that are funny and are kind of. Maybe heartwarming or a contextual way, but no straight up jokes. Here's, here's something that really caught my eye. Mm-hmm. She's talking about getting the first big check for writing the pilot of girls. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Um, and she says, uh, it wasn't just the money, which was life changing and would allow me not only to start a life outside the family home, but buy some incredibly horror separates. Mm-hmm. And I, I laughed at that. Yeah. Um, because it's a kind of like exercise and misdirection that kind of characterizes her. Mm-hmm. Her, her best jokes. Mm-hmm. But also. I went paging back to be like, oh wow, this is the first joke and I don't know how long. Yeah. And that, that difference in texture really struck me. Alex Schwartz: Do you guys think that earnestness is at odds with humor? We've been circling this question a bit. Like, Vincent, you were underlining the jokes because they seemed out of sorts. My instinct is to say, no, it's not. But also maybe it's at odds with the kind of humor that's trying to, uh, indicate that something isn't as serious as it is. Vinson Cunningham: Yes, it, it, it's at odds with a certain kind of humor. And I think that Dunham Wall always, you could always see that there was a truth between be beneath her comedy, that there was a kind of relationship to reality and actually that it was trying to figure something out, especially in that first season of girls, which I think is, um, really brilliant. But at the same time, I think the structure of her joking has always been a kind of like. Um, three card Monte where like it hides the pain and the joke is the picking up of the cup and there's no pain under it, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, you know, it's in there somewhere, but every time you say No, it's, it's right there that there's the cup. And all of a sudden, nope, sorry, Alex Schwartz: it's a deflection. Vinson Cunningham: The, this kind of really intricately woven act of deflection and displacement, et cetera. And so it's interesting, I think earnestness can coexist with comedy, but precisely the kind of comedy that she. Brought to the fore, I think is incompatible with the kind of earnestness that we're talking about. And so it's like she has to, she has to learn how to make a new kind of joke, which I do think happens in this text sometimes. Mm-hmm. Um, and it's, it's really interesting and this is a concept that connects fame sick with the next thing that we'll talk about, which is the book is precisely this flitting between, here's how I became famous and here's how I became sick. And in that, in that way it is a kind of diagnostic text is the way. Mm-hmm. It's like looking at looking at things and, and, and showing maybe where symptoms began. Uh, and that to me seems to be hovering over and kind of simmering beneath. Also, the next thing I wanna talk about Mm. Which is transcription, the new novel. The new kind of short, but to me, quite potent novel transcription by, uh, Ben Lerner. Could could you offer a synopsis of transcription, Alex? Alex Schwartz: Yeah. So transcription is Ben Lerner's fourth novel, and in each of his novels, he's had a protagonist who's sometimes is named Adam, who is basically a hymn like figure. Mm-hmm. Uh. That person started out in his first novel leaving the Atcha station as a young aspiring poet who was in Madrid and an arts fellowship and had. A very callow way of operating in the world transcription may not literally be about the same character though. Basically it is. That protagonist is now in his mid forties, and at the start of the book is going to record an interview with a mentor, a big important mentor figure for him in what is understood to be probably the last interview this person is going to give. He's doing it for literary magazine. He's nervous about it. And right before the interview he drops his phone, which is also his recording device in water that's accumulated in his hotel sink and breaks his phone. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: And rather than come clean about this. For some reason when he goes to the house of Thomas, his mentor, he goes along with the charade that he is recording and everything's fine. After some attempts at deflecting and saying, let's really start this tomorrow, and this is just a pre-interview, the conversation begins and we get that conversation, which of course is the reader knows, cannot be literally transcribed from what happened. Um, it's a fiction on a fiction. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Then in the middle of the book, there is an interlude that takes place in Spain with people who knew Thomas. And the final section of the book is a long conversation that he has with Thomas's son who describes huge difficulties that he's having with his daughter, who's about eight or nine and has stopped eating. So that's what transcription is. Um, to me, what's so distinctive about it is this narrator figure who's appeared in the Ben Lerner novels. Goes through, we see him go through this trajectory of growing up in all the books. That person has kind of gone through the Callow stage of young adulthood and the shooting for sincerity stage. Mm-hmm. Of early, mid adulthood, and has shown us this glibness of being a teenage boy, trying to impress everybody and lying to everybody essentially at the same time in his third book. Mm-hmm. And so here we get that person who's a dad. Like this character has his own child. Yes. Who's going through issues and he has to be the stable figure who provides some kind of, you know, baseline for this child in distress. And he's also trying to engage in these relationships with his wife, with his self as an idea of his past. 'cause he's going back to the site of his past in college. All of these things. This guy is very sincere. Mm-hmm. In a way that the earlier characters were not. Yeah. And the writing is much simpler, I think, especially than the last couple of books that Ben Lerner has written. So I'd love to know what you guys thought about the book. Did you read it? Did you enjoy it? Did you sense these themes as well? Naomi Fry: To me, the way I felt, I mean, I really liked it. I think. The the first part, which has the con, this conversation, untaped conversation with the older mentor. It could be read as if there was a little bit of fun had with this kind of like type of person, right? Oh, oh, for sure. Type of like, it's like, okay, here you go. On another kind of like. Anecdote about Vinson Cunningham: Brilliant rant or Naomi Fry: a brilliant rant that has, you know, that even though is obviously much respect is paid to this figure. He's not a charlatan and yet there is, he's a figure who is distant in a lot of ways from life. And I think as the book goes along and you know, passes. Through the kind of middle section of, of Spain that you described, Alex, and then ends up with the, the great man's son, it gets much closer to the bone and, you know, the, the problems this son had with his father and his detachment and the death of his mother, that was never really discussed and mm-hmm. The kind of solitariness that he ended up growing up in. And by the end of it I was like. I was like crying, you know what I mean? Like by the end of it I was like, okay, this is really kind of like meaningful on the levels of like life and death, you know? Yeah, yeah. But just if, if we're talking about like, when I worked as a, as a. Fact checker and the aughts at US weekly. There was something called the Barometer that we had to check, which was like, how many bees? It's like, how buzzy is this thing? You know? And so the er, Ernesto meter. Vinson Cunningham: Yes. Alex Schwartz: Es Vinson Cunningham: yeah. That's so true. And I think, you know, what you said at the end there was so lovely and so true, is that the closer you get to issues of life and death Naomi Fry: mm-hmm. Because it ends with COVID, right. And Vinson Cunningham: yeah. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: And the, and the impending death of the, the father. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Crises with children. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Thomas, the mentor's son who in this text is plays as a kind of double of the narrator. Mm-hmm. In certain ways. The narrator's daughter is refusing to go to school. Max's daughter is refusing to eat. She's diagnosed with, um, ARFID it's called. It's, which is avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. Um. All of a sudden this family that can afford, as Max says, you know, grass fed beef, all these other things, don't eat this, don't eat that. Suddenly at the, at a doctor's urging, they just stock their home with candy. They, um, they resort to letting the, the little girl use her tablet because it turns out that helps her eat Naomi Fry: to watch unboxing videos, Vinson Cunningham: right. Yeah. On Naomi Fry: YouTube it's, Vinson Cunningham: that's right. It's like, um, coming down to a kind of mean. Or, or a sort of median human experience, uh, that sort of de classes the family in a certain way. One way to define earnestness might be, you know, it's the quality that, uh, reinforces our sameness with other people. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: You know, irony, cynicism. These are ways of saying No, I'm different than that. Nope, I'm not like that. No, thank you. Uh, that's cool, but it's actually not for me. Um, ways of kind of izing ourself into a corner and all of a sudden things like death, illness. Children of certainly it, it these are topics about which it's hard to be, um, as ironic as we might otherwise be. It breaks that down Alex Schwartz: It's a big, old, big hearted book, and that may be a reason that people are responding to it. Vinson Cunningham: Why is this earnestness coming through so strongly right now? Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. :: MIDROLL :: So we've been talking about. A new earnestness. And really for me, the big question here is why is this earnestness coming through so strongly right now? Uh, one aspect of this is maybe a sort of generational thing. You see a lot of think pieces about quote unquote millennial cringe. This idea that old ways of earnestness are coming back around. Uh, does this strike you? Earnestness versus cynicism, earnestness versus whatever its opposites might be. Does that strike you as a generational thing? Alex Schwartz: Okay. Can I just be millennial cringe and ask what the hell it is? Millennial cringe. What is that? Does it mean that we are so lame running around being our lame selves and no one can take it anymore? Vinson Cunningham: Millennial cringe means your parents were boomers and they led you to believe that there was a real future for yourself. You were super ambitious in the workplace. You got married in a. In a barn and there were mason jars present and very fuzzy lighting, and you were into avocado toast and went to brunch and thought that the world was gonna be just like it was for your parents. That's millennial cringe. Naomi Fry: Can I, can I say something from a Gen X perspective as the Gen Xer in the room, young Gen Xer in the room. Vinson Cunningham: It's not just young people, older Gen X thinks of this Naomi Fry: about us too. Yes, I remember. Okay. Okay. Take us back. Remember? I recall, what Alex Schwartz: do you remember, grandmother? Naomi Fry: I recall like, I don't know, early 2010s. Right. Being a young Gen Xer and thinking, wow, millennials really, I'm not talking about you specifically, but just as a culture believe in the system. Alex Schwartz: Oh, Naomi Fry: okay. Okay. They think they're like, you know, the, the whole concept of selling out. For instance, which for me was like, oh my God. Like these people. And they're, they're gonna, you know, they, they, they're gonna give away their, you know, indie credit to the system. I, I was like, oh, millennials, see no problem with that. Because they think the system is gonna reward them. That if they do the right thing, make the right moves, things will be okay. And they can, they can have avocado toast forever. Okay. And like cash out. And there was an earnestness, I think, to saying like. I'm gonna work at Facebook and they're gonna take care of me until I die. Alex Schwartz: Maybe my problem in understanding this is because I never worked at Facebook. Right. And all of that seemed like utter bullshit to me. Well, Naomi Fry: of course, from Alex Schwartz: the start, Naomi Fry: right? Well, of course you are spiritually perhaps a Gen X, Alex Schwartz: right? Perhaps that's it. Perhaps That's it. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Alright. Okay. I'm getting it. So the broad strokes narrative is off. You march to Facebook, to Google, to wherever, to McKinsey. That was a huge thing also. Yes. To McKinsey. Naomi Fry: Yes. Alex Schwartz: To. Naomi Fry: I'll be a consultant, remember? Alex Schwartz: And what could be more earnest than that? Yeah, I'll fix systems and I'll connect the universe. Is that the portrait I'm getting? Vinson Cunningham: Yes. Alex Schwartz: Okay. [a] Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. And, and so it, it's interesting like, uh, that all sounds in a certain way, like a bad thing, but. Gen Z. We were talking about an article that recently appeared in the New York Times. Naomi Fry: Yes. Vinson Cunningham: They're coming around Naomi Fry: Yes. Vinson Cunningham: To millennial cringe and therefore reengaging, perhaps with earnestness. Naomi Fry: Yes. So I think there is a sense, gen Z is like my, my daughter who is Gen Z, gen alpha Cusp is always like millennials. It's like the most embarrassing thing, but. Now that the world has turned out to be bad in a variety of ways that weren't predicted by the millennial generation, gen Z is trying to be like, okay, so what's left? How can we. Like live beyond this apocalypse or kind of like approach the current conditions on the ground while retaining our humanity perhaps. Mm-hmm. So I think one thing, you were referring to this article in the Times from, from late 2025, Vincent, that was about this term to climb Cringe Mountain. Okay. Which is basically because. This younger generation has grown up in public. Basically like everything is retained forever. There has been a kind of confusion about how can I be myself? You know what, if I'm, anything I'm doing is cringe because everybody's gonna see it, And from what I understand, grandma, again, there is a kind of like reversal of that. Like I think like bow and yang from like you used to be on SNL was talking about how like being on SNL is like climbing cringe mountain every week. It's like everybody sees your like most. Embarrassing missteps in public, and this is the way people are living now, and so they might as well embrace it. Like I, there's another phrase that people always say, I'm cringe, but I am free. Like, embrace it. You're a person. Everybody makes mistakes. Vinson Cunningham: What you said is so true, NAMI and, and it highlights. Maybe an aspect of this current wave that might be, I don't know, might be true, which to me it seems like, yeah, you could have earnestness as we talked about, as like, you know, a response to hints of green shoots of hope. It could be a kind of avoidance, but it can also be a direct response to illness, like both of the texts that we talked about. Mm-hmm. But. Fame sick. It's right there in the title and it's about her bodily sickness, transcription. There's all kinds of illness happening here. It's almost like everybody in our culture, we've just seen too much awful stuff and it's it, it's impossible to ize. And I think there is a widespread sort of diagnostic glance at the culture and seeing something truly ill in it and. The only sane response to that is to, to kind of sober up and say, alright, what resources do humans still have? You know, this thing about not being cringe, showing oneself. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Be risking earnestness is all about, uh, I have to reach into the bag of sort of human resourcefulness and see what's there and what responses we, we have, what antibodies I guess there are to this illness that everybody can see. Alex Schwartz: You know, it's, it's interesting to think about this as like a generational divide issue because a lot of what I hear talking about how. The Gen Z is responding to millennials, et cetera. I just feel like everyone goes through that in their own way. You go through being a young person who, um, rages at the people above you and you feel pure of heart and angry of purpose, and then you go on and become enmeshed in the same system for better or for worse, and look around you like, what is the world? What have we done as the people below you were like raising their pitchforks at you. Yeah. Being like, Naomi Fry: you did this. How dare you? Alex Schwartz: So. That is part of just the cycle of, of living and of living with the consequences of the world that we're in. Um, can I just share Yeah. A moment. Can I share a braided moment? You know, when you find yourself reading a children's book and just crying as you're reading it Naomi Fry: Yes. Alex Schwartz: And you're like, why is this happening all Vinson Cunningham: the time Alex Schwartz: happening today? Know, I know Naomi Fry: why it's happening. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. We know why it's happening. So I was reading Amos and Boris, Naomi Fry: oh my god, Alex Schwartz: the other day. Naomi Fry: William Stagg? Uh, I don't think I know Alex Schwartz: William Stagg. I'm gonna send it to you. Naomi Fry: So there is a, there is a mouse. Mm-hmm. And there is a whale. Alex Schwartz: The mouse is Amos, the whale is Boris. Vinson Cunningham: Wow. Alex Schwartz: And the mouse goes on a little voyage on the rodent. Mm-hmm. His ship that he builds himself only to fall off the side of the rodent, off goes to rodent. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: And along comes Boris, a whale who saves the mouse. And years later, the mouse is able to do a good service for Boris in return. I'm bringing this up. This William Steig book is not a new phenomenon, but I think it just has to do with, we're talking about the generations and how the youth see older people and older people see youth, and it has to do with reading this book about the fragility and interdependence of life, which I guess is the theme I keep coming back to in this episode to your three-year-old child who's. Eating French toast and is about to ask for something ridiculous and has like no sense of the enormity of what Boris and Amos have just been through. Yeah. Like, cannot access it, should not be able to access it. Mm-hmm. But, and I'm like choking up as, you know, my kid's like, gimme on tv. Like it's, it's Vinson Cunningham: like you don't understand. Alex Schwartz: Oh, Vinson Cunningham: I totally know exactly what you mean. And I think, you know. I take what you, I, I take what you say about, you know, the cyclical nature of the relationship between children and adults, but I do think that certain moods set in as responses to, you know, all kinds of stimuli that make this, this eternal fact, the fragile nature of our existence here, more or less, sort of in stark relief. I was thinking, um. On this was about the education of Henry Adams, um, Henry Adams being the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great grandson of the Second American president, John Adams. And he's, it, it's about him and his generations struggle to reckon with the 20th century, the, the, uh. The onset of industrial power. All these things that his, that their education, they're, they're sort of colonial and provincial kind of Brahman education did not prepare them for, they're these total fussy athletes who all of a sudden nothing in the, in the culture corresponds to how they were raised to be. They're just people without a home, you know? Um, and I do think there are these special moments where. Uh, hey, civilization is not a guarantee. The bonds that we build with other people are, yes, part of our nature, whatever you call our nature, but also are conditioned by politics and the social life and all these other things. Um, and you know, sometimes I cry at a children's book and it is precisely because, oh man, these things that I took as just bedrock when I was a child. Suddenly seem to be totally in question. And I do think there's something special about the nature of our lives today that brings all these things into question. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: And I think it's, it's something about handing something over to our children, which again, every generation must do. But at a moment when there's all these tectonics beneath us that we don't understand at these moments of radical uncertainty where it just, it seems harder and therefore more scary to pass the baton. Which is why, you know, middle age is a part of what we're talking about. Yeah. It's like, okay, Alex Schwartz: yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Something is, there's a turning of the of the dial, which there always must be, but I'm doing it under circumstances that are unfathomable to me, and I'm so scared for you. Alex Schwartz: So I think one thing I'm hearing you say that I think is really important is that. Earnestness in this way is not an offshoot of complacency. It's kind of the opposite of complacency. Naomi Fry: Yes. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Like I think what's repulsive about um, a certain kind of earnestness is when it's in bed with complacency. Mm-hmm. That's disgusting. Like nothing is worse than that. And I think that's what we were trying to get at before. The sense of everything is great, everything will be fine. I'm gonna wear my corporate fleece to Facebook headquarters and go ahead connecting the world like no revolting, whereas. Earnestness about dealing with the challenges, but also the merits of existence in the face of threats to that existence is a worthwhile project. What you're saying reminds me of something that I wanna enter into the art little like treasure trunk of earnest texts that we have. Mm-hmm. Ones that are worthwhile and enjoyable, which was. The recent speech by the Nobel Prize Laure in literature, Laszlo Kraka. And for anyone listening, I really recommend taking six minutes, going to YouTube and just watching the speech, which is in English. CLIP: speech It's really funny speech. It's hilarious. It's a very Naomi Fry: cute, yeah, Alex Schwartz: and it's sincere because of this expression of thanks. This way of just embracing the world by at a very heightened moment in life. Offering thanks to things that have contributed. And I reposted it on my Instagram and said something about we must embrace the world. And I thought to myself, what an earnest fuck I am. You know, this is, this is disgusting and I should be ashamed of myself, but I did it. Naomi Fry: No, Alex Schwartz: but I did it. No, don't Naomi Fry: be a ashamed. You're right to do it. Alex Schwartz: Don't do it every day. You're right Vinson Cunningham: to Naomi Fry: do it. You are cringe and you are free. Alex Schwartz: I'm Naomi Fry: cringe. And Alex Schwartz: I am Naomi Fry: free. We are cringe and we are free. Vinson Cunningham: This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kushman, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with Music by Alexis Rado. Also, shout out to another one of our engineers, PR Bandy, who just got married. Congratulations PR Mazeltov. You can listen to all of our episodes anytime@newyorker.com.