Alex: You know, we love to define our terms on this show, so what, for you, is the start of summer? Vinson: For me The start of the summer isn't the first time I go to the beach. Naomi: Oh. Vinson: The first time I go to the beach, then I can say I have started my summer. And Naomi: you know that happened to you, I believe, last week? Vinson: I went to the Jersey Shore, the famed Jersey Shore. Oh, wow. In Long Branch, New Jersey, to be precise. I had the best time. Podcast Naomi: class trip? Vinson: Just thrashing around in the waves. Flopping around like a beached seal. I just threw my body around, um, and then read a book on the beach. Alex: Oh, and I wish I was there. I mean, my problem is for me, summer starts. On June 21st. Okay, so you're a calendar girl. I have a problem. I'm a calendar girl. No, it's very bad. Vinson: I like the calendar too, but for me, it's expansive. I'm trying to get the most summer. So I start Memorial Day. Naomi: Yeah, this is where I'm trying to go. I don't know if it's It's generally the start of summer every year, but for me this summer definitely started with Justin Timberlake getting a DUI in the Hamptons. Alex: And why Naomi: was that the start Alex: of summer for you? Naomi: I mean, you know, it's just, it just signals the, the, the letting go, the, the, the slight falling apart, the loosening of the shackles of, of laws and. Okay, I like it. So it's a time to take some chances. Yeah. Maybe not drunk driving. No, no, we're encouraging No, no. Yeah. Anyway. For the Vinson: spring, there's the groundhog. For the summer, there's celebrity malfeasance. Alex: Yes. The point is that whatever the country is, however you define it, It is summer. It's here. It's here. It's here. So today we have an episode we've been planning for a while now, well before the summer started with your help Vinson: listeners. Today on Critics at Large, we are talking summer obsession. Naomi: Yeah, we've been getting a bunch of voicemails from you guys in the past few weeks. Vinson: Absolutely. We asked you and you delivered, by the way, to talk about the way summer lends itself to a different. More intense level of reading or listening, just a different kind of experience of art, really, that can only happen in these, these fleeting months. That's right. Alex: Yeah. So, just to be clear, we have not been allowed to listen to these voice memos. We have not heard a single one. No, we have no idea. But today's the day. Today's the day, my friends. And we're also going to share our own summer obsessions. Vinson: We haven't heard each other's yet, either. So, lots of suspense. Alex: Are you ready? Should we all hold hands? I'm not sure if I'm ready. I'm always trying to hold hands with my co hosts. We can, we can, we can hold hands. Trying and Naomi: succeeding. Alex: We've happened before. we promise listeners, even though this is perhaps a vulnerable exercise, you will get the truth because this is an exchange, us to you, you to us. Give and take. So, you know, the big question we have today is, what is it about this season? We're getting philosophical here. This the season. What is it about this season that lets us just go deep on our relationship? A work of art, a movie, a book, whatever it might be, that lets us really get into it and get it under our skin. So that's today on Critics At Large. Summer Obsessions. Naomi: Okay! Vincent, who will be our DJ, will be playing us the voicemails. Cue it up, Vincent. Vinson: Here we go. Here is a voicemail from a Critics at Large listener. Listener: So I shouldn't even be doing this while driving. Vinson: Oh Naomi: my god. Justin Timberlake, is that you? Listener: Dangerous. Wait. I'm sorry, we gotta Naomi: back Alex: it up. We gotta Naomi: back it up. Summer of 19. Listener: This Vinson: is gonna ruin the tour. What tour? The world tour! What tour? Alex: Oh my god, the world tour. Yep. Vinson: We're all Alex: in Vinson: shock. Alex: Absolute shock. Vinson: I'm on the controls. Here we go. Listener: My summer obsession was considered dangerous at the time of my obsession. Uh, the summer of 1991, I want to say, um, Christian Slater was like, the thing that He'd been in Heathers in 1989 and Pump Up the Volume in 1990, and by 1991, his movies were on VHS, and I was 13 years old. So he was, like, fully accessible to me as long as I could get my mom to check out the movies at the video store. I remember having a sleepover, like, I was so like, everyone has to know about Christian Slater. Alex: And Spread that gospel. Listener: All of the girls moms were like, you cannot watch, like, Christian Slater movies. He was Forbidden because heathers was such a Kind of controversial like dangerous Alex: forbidden fruit has it. Um, he was a bit of a bad boy Listener: I even remember like taking like an intermission between the movies to go outside and like run through the sprinklers because we were all probably like Absolutely just dying for this ultimate bad boy. Oh my Naomi: god Get it Listener: and it helped probably that I had not been kissed or and boys did not like me so I could put all of my fantasy energy into You My date with Christian Slater. Naomi: I could not identify more. Yeah, Nomi is this listener. She's fully bonded with Alex: this listener. Naomi: What if I, like, actually, I sent in this, this, you know, with my voice disguised by, like, putting a sock on the What if you paid a woman in the street to record your own obsession? No, but, but I mean, I mean, I feel like I'm probably about the same age as this listener. I moved to, uh, America for the year from Israel, and I knew no one. I had no friends. And so I had to go see Pump Up the Volume with my mom. He's got a pirate radio station. Listener: Nobody knows who he is. I could be that anonymous nerd sitting across from you. And when you turn around, And he just looks away. He never looks back at you. Naomi: And it was so embarrassing, because there's nudity in that movie, there's cursing, he was a bit of a bad boy, as the listeners suggested, and, you know, he was just a dream. Yeah. Vinson: I have no real association with Christian Slater, but this species of obsession, this thing of, um, when you're just young enough to imagine that you have a unique connection with a celebrity. Yeah. That pure hearted connection with someone who will never know your name, and, but you feel like almost fated to one day encounter this person. Mm hmm. It's so deep. The unrequited pain of it, the pleasure of that, I mean, there's nothing better. It's exquisite. It's exquisite. It's exquisite. Alex. Yeah. Alex: We have a collective situation here, which I think is also important. That's Naomi: really important, Alex: you're right. That, you know, sometimes an obsession, any kind of obsession, but especially a summer obsession, might be very private and very individual. And sometimes it can be shared. And it is about that kind of group experience of everyone. Becoming enthralled to the same thing. I Naomi: know it was private for me because I had no friends. I know Your mom probably did not share your obsession she did not and I remember being also like a huge bitch doer Huge bitch of like I'm like forced to go Force like my poor mom. Like she didn't want to go see pump up the volume, you know, but she was like, I'll take you. And I felt resentment, but also deep embarrassment, which now, you know, is karmically is revisiting me as I now have a teenager. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. It's a circle of life, my friends. All Vinson: right. Um, I think, I think we're ready to hear another one. Batter up! Um, we're gonna unearth all of our own childhood traumas if we keep on going. Uh, another voicemail from a listener. Listener: I was 14 years old, and as usual, my parents sent me to the summer camp. It was a usual practice in the Soviet Union. All school children of all ages, uh, in summer went to summer camps to breathe some fresh air. So this, when I started, uh, reciting the poems. Okay. Didn't expect this to go to poems. I know. I know. But of Alex: course, we have to remember, we're talking about Russia. That's right. And of course. So obviously, yes, poems. Listener: We were divided in the squads according to our ages. After the night curfew, we were not allowed to do anything. It usually happened at 9 p. m. The lights were off. The squad leaders, they made the last round. I was absolutely obsessed with Pushkin, Lermontov, Yesenin, Maybe you don't know this author this much in the United States. Naomi: The one thing I remember about Yesenin is I believe he committed suicide by slitting his wrists and he wrote his last poem with his own blood. Alex: That's obsession worthy. The Russians. The Russians. I mean, I'm loving this right now because the love that the Russian people have for poetry is legendary. And here we're getting it straight. Yeah. Listener: So I started to recite this to the entire ward, and then, uh, the word of my reciting spread around the camp and some kids from other squads started coming to listen to my readings, and then the squad leaders secretly started coming, and so we all were immersed. Incredible. Alex: Incredible. Listener: Wow. In this Amazing experience. This was my old times summer obsession. Alex: I would like to meet you. I would like to hug you. I would like to have you read to me, even though I would not understand it. I mean, summer camp, classic place for obsessions. Um, this is reminding me, unfortunately, and let's hope to God we cut this from the show that I had a similar experience at summer camp, except it was not around a work of art. It was around an actual cult I started at the age of 10. Wait, what? Certainly centered on myself. What? Yes. And a made up ceremony. This is not the same thing as Pushkin . Vinson: You just what? Yeah, what, how things are being Alex: revealed. Things are coming to, like, I wanted a call and I made one happen. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Yeah. And, and did you have many followers? Oh yeah. Wait, what? Well, it was one night only. Oh, Vinson: did you have to, did you create a whole religion? Like were, yes. Were there tenets to which there weren't Alex: tenets? No. It was more like, you know, rituals and fun stuff. to do in a circle. The counselors were involved. It was all above board. I mean, Naomi: the thing is, you know, one thing about this listeners voicemail. Thank you, dear listener. Uh, by the way, this is lovely is something that I think might tie together. Um, in my mind, at least the youthful summer obsessions, um, have to do with a flouting of rules, right? With with some gesture at least towards rebelliousness, right? Or kind of a breaking away from the norms. And in this case, you know, they had curfew, they had to turn off the lights. And yet the poetry was read and people were coming to listen to it. Precisely. Vinson: Here is another voicemail from a Critics at Large listener. Listener: Here we go. Hi critics. Alex: Hi. Listener: Hey. Um, I love your show. I'm happy to try to contribute. Although my obsession with Was not a film and it wasn't a book and it wasn't a band, so I don't know if it'll qualify, but my obsession was the GoldenEye 007 video game from Nintendo 64 Oh my God. Now it Alex: is now Vincent's turn to deeply play, identify, Listener: and I'm looking it up now on Wikipedia, and it says that it was released in 1997. Goldeneye Load. A Rumble pack. You know how to use one of these and see how it feels when oh oh seven meets N 64. Listener: I have memories of, you know, childhood. There were four of us on the block, and only one of us had a Nintendo 64, so we'd all just gather at my friend Chris's house and shoot each other in pixelated glory. Yes. Yeah. Alex: Well, hand me my gavel, because I'm ready to declare GoldenEye007 Video Game a text. Vinson: It is a text. Of course. Alex: Vincent, tell us about the text. Vinson: I didn't, I was not, as we have established on this very podcast, a big James Bond person at all. At the time that this video game came out, I had not even seen Goldeneye the film with Naomi: Pierce Brosnan. But Vincent, were Vinson: you a gamer? I definitely was such an early adopter of the Nintendo 64 that I ordered it early. And yes, Goldeneye was one of the first great games of that console. I remember, again, a bunch of friends. Seven or eight of us in my friend Tim's attic across the street from school. Mm. Playing golden eye. I would always end up looking at the ceiling 'cause somebody had shot me in the back of the head, . But being good at Golden Eye was a, was a mark. It was almost as important as sports. Alex: The Greco Romans had wrestling. We had golden eye's. Let's hear the next voice. Voicemail. That's it. Vinson: Yeah. . Um, here it is. Listener: Hello critics! I'm a huge fan of the show. My name is Isabel, I'm 22 years old, and I'm currently phoning in from Bogota, Colombia. My last significant summer obsession was in the summer of 2022 when I became obsessed with Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic. It was the summer after my father had passed away earlier that February. I went in with low expectations, but it Lo and behold, the film just washed over me. I'm on before the scene, and nobody's going to remember me. It moved me Listener: so deeply that I cried thrice during my first screening. I subsequently watched it seven more times, and then three more times at home after its release on digital. I became obsessed with everything Elvis. I started listening to his music day and night. I Listener: saw 10 of his films in the span of a month. My favorite is Jailhouse Rock. And yes, I know, the film is not entirely honest about Elvis. It overly sanitizes his life, particularly his relationship towards Priscilla. But. I still very much deeply cherish this film. It made me very happy in a very dark time in my life It was a distraction for grief as well as a way. I learned how to cope with my grief so For that reason i'm very thankful with austin butler with bass lerman and with everybody involved in the film and With elvis for giving us A lot of great music. Goodbye! Isabelle, this is fabulous. Alex: Oh, I love it. This is what it means to become obsessed. It's a very personal thing. We've been talking about group obsessions, but here is a super personal obsession where the cultural item hits you in a particular place. In the summer of 2008, when I was in college. I watched Karen Knightley's Pride and Prejudice probably between 30 and 40 times. It was basically playing on a loop. I have no idea if it's a good movie or not, but I get it. It hits. Naomi: I think, I think also, Alex, what you're saying, um, it makes me think about the kind of connection between like adaptation and original. And Isabelle is telling us about watching Elvis, Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. And then going back to the original, you know, and watching all the actual, actual Elvis movies, also kind of gaining an appreciation and an obsession for the original that begot, you know, this version. Vinson: But it's also just so true that, like, grief can create Obsession. You know, it is like a way of coping. It's a way of like, your brain does not work in the way that it used to work. And therefore, like, feeding it something new, like, the shock of the new, the shock of a new obsession becomes just a new way to start, like, reformulating your mind. So yeah, that's beautiful and so true. So true. Here we are. Critics at Large Radio. Serving you up. Another summer obsession. Listener: Mm. Hi critics. I just wanted to tell you about my summer obsession of sort of the dread summer of 2020. I was spending it, especially in the, that summer, just like driving around in my car on these like sparse. populated freeways, like, desperate to just, like, see something and try and feel connected to the world. I remember feeling so far apart from my friends that the thing I became obsessed over listening to my car was the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. Of course. They decide to, like, get away from Naples and Lenu insists that they go to this island where she knows her crush lives. And sort of everything, spoiler alert, turns against her and her best friend Lila starts having an affair with her crush. And it's just, like, so awful. It turns into, like, the worst beach vacation imaginable. But especially in that, like, horrible time of the pandemic, I remember feeling, like, What I wouldn't give to, like, have my crush be sleeping with my best friend. And, in Listener: a weird way, like, what a gift those novels are that, you know, They feel like a connection to real friendship, the good and the bad. Naomi: Yeah, it's a very kind of like, the yearning as well as kind of the dashing of that desire and yearning. Fucking Nino. Oh my god, don't even say his name in here. Um, and, and yeah, so that, that makes perfect sense to me. Yeah, I love those novels too. Let's get the next voicemail going. Let's get another Vinson: one going. Okay. Naomi: I'm getting obsessed with the obsessions. I know, I love it so much. Vinson: Here we go. Listener: Hi critics at large. I was just wanting to tell you about my summer obsession. The year was 2005. The place was New Orleans. And the song was Ramblin by Led Zeppelin. You know, I had just ended. I was the breaker upper. I had ended a really toxic relationship that, you know, went on far too long. And I found this song and it just infused that entire summer with just like, Electricity, everything was filled with meaning. Such a pleasant, Listener: and then of course, uh, my birthday was in August, that summer and you know, a couple weeks later, hurricane Katrina came in and just kind of. You know, I worked at Charity Hospital, the hospital never reopened. My life completely changed. I literally had to ramble on. It just represents how a song can kind of, you know, Change over time, and it's just such a bittersweet memory of the summer of 2005 in New Orleans. The time has come to become, Alex: in a minute we'll hear more of your summer obsessions and we three will all hold hands and brace ourselves and gather our courage and share ours. Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. Okay, it's our turn. Let's just, let's do it, let's go. I'm gonna just, I'm nominating Vincent. Okay, Vincent. I'm nominating him. Naomi: I feel like Vincent is maybe the least neurotic of all of us. Vinson: Uh, you know, we all have our own neuroses. I'm waving it away. Alex: I want a clean, I want, I want, I want Vincent. Vincent, come and clean. Don't let them assume anything about you. Yeah, no. Don't, don't, don't, let's, let's hear it. Never let them see you sweat. Vinson: I will tell you all about the summer. Summer. Of 1998, during which I went to a camp called Moosilauk. Naomi: Okay. How old were you? Vinson: I was 13 in the summer of, uh, 98 in Orford, New Hampshire, near a lake. And it was my first time, um, often I think these obsessions like coincide with kind of first times in our lives. This is why the memories stick. I had finished my first year at a new school, a sort of fancier, um, wider school than I'd ever gone to. And then the summer camp also had just like, whatever, demographics of people that I had never really spent this much time with. Naomi: You were developing like a new understanding and mapping of the social. Vinson: 100%. Yeah. I had just learned about a new kind of New Yorker, and now I'm learning about a new kind of sort of wider, New England y, We had a very rural camp environment experience. We had dances with the local, with the, with the girls camp across the fence. I Alex: wanted to know if it was a boys camp or girls, okay, got it. Boys Vinson: camp, but we were across, abutting a girls camp. We would have these dances, you know. So provocative to Alex: abut. Vinson: The dances had songs like that don't impress me much. You know, you know what I'm talking about. But before I went to camp, my mother took me like CD shopping. And among the CDs I bought, one was by DMX, one was by, big pun, people that I still love. But the one that stuck with me, the one that mattered the most to me and still matters to me, uh, today, was, uh, the album, Never Say Never. By Brandy. Alex: There it is. Brandy Norwood. Vinson: Brandy is a singer who I love more than any. She has, uh, she has amazing vocal range. She is the best, I think, sort of background singer as lead singer ever. Meaning, you know, she stacks her vocals, doing all the ad libs, creates incredibly intense harmonies. The producer that she worked with, this guy named Rodney Jerkins, who's like, got a background a lot like mine, like grew up in church, his father was a preacher, and you can hear like little gospel rhythms in his, his background. And so, I was learning a lot about music, about um, other people, For the first time ever in my life, I heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers this summer. For the first time, for the first time ever. It was huge. And it was a big deal for me. Yeah. Um, but my way of reconnecting to where I was from, every Vinson: night that I got back to my bunk and sort of like retreated back into myself, the way that I re centered myself every night was listening to the sweet sounds of Brandy Norwood. Alex: It's your Pushkin. Vinson: It's my Pushkin. You might say. Yeah. Except it was all to my, I did not recite. I did not do a rendition. And then of course this album, Never Say Never, is most famous for the great song, the dueling song, The Boy Is Mine. Alex: Featuring Monica. Let's hear it. This song is, this song is inscribed within me. And the video, and the video. I don't know. This Vinson: song is a classic. And this album is a classic to me, um, and it will always bring me back to my first summer of summer camp. Brandy, I love you. Wherever you are, keep shining, keep singing. Naomi: Bravo. Alex: Bravo. Vinson: That's, that's enough of this memory for me. Well, Alex: Vincent, I love that you, um, did not share. That's very good and important that you did not share Brandy with those around you. Vinson: It was all mine. Alex: Yeah. This is what I'm saying. There are summer obsessions that are meant to be shared. There are summer obsessions that are meant to be hoarded. Naomi: Totally. Yeah. I mean, I, my summer obsession. Um, is Mr. Jim Morrison, James Douglas Morrison, an American poet. Vinson: He sounds like an American president. Naomi: Mr. Mojo Rising. Imagine what could have been. This was 1990, the same summer in which I forced my mother. To take me, uh, to watch Pump Up the Volume, and then was a huge bitch tour. Uh, so as I already said, a famous Vinson: summer, Naomi: a famous summer. I was, you know, spirited away by my parents, um, to the state, Seattle, because of my dad's job from Israel. And, uh, on the way, To the States. We stopped in Paris for a week. Now, listeners and critics, I had already become quite into the doors and Jim Morrison in the school year prior and was listening on my little Walkman all the time to some of the greatest hits of our friends from Los Angeles, California. No time to wallow in the mire. I Naomi: was very much into the music itself, which sounded to me mysterious and poetic and dealt with big themes of Death and madness and sex and all of those really, really heavy topics that, you know, are especially attractive when you're a young girl of 14. But more than the band, I was very much enamored with, um, Jim Morrison himself, who was, you know, A magnetic lizard king riding the snake with his top off wearing tight leather pants. And, um, when we were in Paris, I was lonely, I was angry, I was alienated, I was horny, but I didn't really know it. It was, the whole thing was a mess. We were in Paris. We were in Paris. I was skulking around listening to my Walkman along the Seine as my parents were trying to be like, let's go to Louvre, you know, whatever. And then they were like, Oh, do you want to go to Père Lachaise? And I was like, Where Jim Morrison is buried. The famous cemetery. The famous cemetery. So had you Alex: connected it in your head? I had, yes. Somehow Naomi: I knew that, you know, Jim Morrison was buried there. And we did arrive at the site. And I, uh, Vinson: There Naomi: were a bunch of sort of people sort of smoking around, skulking and smoking around the grave. Your people. My people, older than me. I was kind of embarrassed that I was with my parents. You guys, you know, are kind of like recognizing a thread here, perhaps. So I tried to sort of like walk away from them and pretend that I wasn't with them. I was expecting to see Jim Morrison's headstone because, you know, I mean, there was this sort of bust of Jim Morrison classically on the grave. I'd seen pictures. But either someone had stolen it, there was no bus, there was a lot of graffiti. It wasn't as impressive as I had hoped it would be. But I kind of went through the motions and listened to the songs on my Walkman. You know, I might have listened to The End. You know, the classic song, um, and, you know, basically what I want to say about it is that It seems kind of like a joke, and I'm talking about it like a joke, but it was extremely meaningful to me at the time, and in some ways I think remains meaningful to me, even while recognizing the kind of like humorous and comedic elements of both the story and the fact of the doors in Jim Morrison, who's a little bit embarrassing with his kind of like theatrics and poetics. And yet, you know, You know, really captures a mood. Yeah. Nomi. Yes? I love that Alex: you've stayed true to this obsession. I mean. You have. I'll never forget it. No, you have. And, and, even as you may ironize it. In an appropriate and humorous way. Yeah. I think you honor young Nomi. Thank Naomi: you. Thank you. That's really meaningful. Thank you, Alex. I do think so. Vinson: And also, classically, the, the, the, like, the great outpouring of any obsession worth its name is the pilgrimage. Naomi: The pilgrimage. Exactly. That you like, you can't just Vinson: feel. You have to go. It was my Alex: Mecca. It was my Mecca. Alex? Okay, my turn has come. So here's the truth. I have found this assignment really difficult. And. It's because, I think it may be in part because of my somewhat literalist nature. Okay. I've certainly had many obsessions that I'd be delighted to talk about, you know, embarrassing ones, ennobling ones, whatever it might be. But Alex: I was looking for the ones that intersected, as the assignment called for, with the summer. Listener: Yes. Alex: And here's what I've settled on as emblematic of a certain summer of my life. And like you guys, it's music. Mm. You know, I think, I think music, clearly. It's one of the big ones. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Summer of 2005. Alex: I had just graduated from high school. Big transition moment. So, the broader scope of my obsession over this period of time, the spring and the summer of senior year, was like, Crosby, Stills, and Nash adjacent, I want to say. I was listening to a ton of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I went to at least, they had reunited with Young, I think. Pretty sure he was in at least one. I went to like at least two, maybe three concerts. Mm hmm. Alex: But in this case, the specific obsession all coalesced around Martin Scorsese's film, The Last Waltz. Oh god, yeah, I love Listener: that. Alex: The Last Waltz, the documentary movie that Martin Scorsese, one of a pod favorite, made about the last big show that the band put on before they hung it up after ten years of being on the road. Classic Thanksgiving concert in San Francisco. So, the last waltz, I think the reason why it became such a fixation was first of all, it's a smorgasbord. You know, it has the most. It has everybody. Like, you have Joni Mitchell. Neil Young, Alex: of course. Bob Dylan, my number one, comes out at the end. Like, you're not even expecting it and there he is. Van Morrison doing an absolutely amazing job. Mad, coked up, beautiful rendition of Caravan. The thing about this obsession is why, I ask myself, why was I going back in time to my parents era when I was just on the verge of like going forth into my own time? Like, definitely. There was music that I was into for my own time period, you know, I was all about the strokes, okay? I was going to see the White Stripes quite regularly, like, like it was all happening. But those weren't summer obsessions. I think here, there was something about 60s youth culture, and in this case, like 70s leaving youth culture, and maybe, you know, the, the, the last waltz is about saying goodbye to something. It's about ending this period of youth and kind of going off into whatever is next. And something about, Finding your own thing, but also connecting maybe, like, subterraneanly with your parents thing. Before we break, should we hear a few more voicemails? Listener: Yes. Let's do it! Hello, critics at large. Summer 2009 was defined for me by John Updike's novel The Witches of Eastwick. I Listener: was working for a party promoter on Fire Island and would walk around all day listening to Kate Redding's really flawless audiobook recording of the novel while I was tacking flyers to people's doors. The novel is really about a fleeting moment of power and abandon in its character's lives, and that's very much what Summer on Fire Island can feel like. In a sense, Fire Island became Eastwick for me, another cloistered coastal village where sex and gossip and bitchiness were currency, where every margarita became both potion and poison, and Every dance floor and hot tub party came to feel like a witch's sabbath. Alex: I'm getting a little updike in this voice memo. Yeah, you're, Vinson: you're good. Um, first of all, my summer obsession is now what it must be like to be a party promoter on Fire Island. What the fuck did you just say to me? I, that sounds like so, oh man, that sounds like so much fun. Okay, here we go. Listener: As a teenager, I, for some reason, that I'm still trying to figure out, read Atlas Shrugged twice over two different summers. I had not had any, uh, consultation. Nobody had suggested this book to me. I simply found it at the library on one of those spinners. And it was maybe mysterious enough, character driven enough, and just big enough that it was the thing I was doing that I could be seen doing by my family. That meant I didn't have to interact with them. And it wasn't, obviously, until years later that I realized that Ayn Rand and me had different political views. I think often on this experience because I'm sort of intrigued by how I didn't really have reading mentors that The people I looked up to as to what to read were so varied that I ended up charting my own course through books. And I see Atlas Shrugged, despite being an embarrassing choice, now as me really committing to the act of reading itself. Alex: Listener, I'm going to tell you something right now, which is, if you did have the reading mentors that you may wish you had, you would not be The reader you are today. That's like you can't just get the list and go trotting down it. That's right There is no yellow brick road and Ayn Rand can happen to anyone. She's happened to a lot of people yeah, and like and famously has It's very Naomi: teenage too. And I I I sort of love reading mistakes Stakes, you know? Oh, I love them. When you like read something and you don't know you're too young, or maybe you're in a different context or something, so you don't understand like the cultural valence or status of what you're reading, whether good or bad. Right. What you say is so true to me. Reading errors Alex: are crucial. Yeah. In a minute. Where does the cultural meet? The personal critics at large will be right back. Listener: My name is Sasha, and I currently live in Auckland, New Zealand. And my summer obsession, in the summer of 2003, was Pirates of the Caribbean. The first movie. If you spring me from this cell, I shall take you to the black pearl, and your bonnie lass. You're a pirate. And Listener: my best friend and I, at the time, were insanely obsessed. My favorite memory is that was the summer of the big heat wave in New York that knocked out a bunch of power. We were in the cinema when it happened, mid parts of the Caribbean, and We just got up to the front of the movie theater and started to do the rest of the movie ourselves. And there was only one other person in the cinema with us at the time. So until the ushers came to get us out of the building, we just carried on and he just sort of sat and seemed to enjoy two 12 year olds going nuts. Alex: I love that. And one thing I'm getting from listening to the voicemails, from listening to you both, from thinking through my own obsessions, is that What we're really talking about is this important and I would say like sacred place probably where the cultural meets the personal, you know, basically what I want to know is what you guys think about all this like if this seems to you what the obsessions are, are about. Naomi: Yeah, I mean, there's truly nothing more important. Period. I think. I mean, when I think about. Why culture matters. Obviously, culture matters in kind of like enormous collective ways that can move enormous groups of people and make historical changes and so on. But on the personal level, culture can really change a life and can affect a life deeply in ways where you're just not the same after encountering a particular text or group of texts. And, um, It makes its mark on you in a way that's really, uh, significant. And I was just thinking about it last night where I was watching on Criterion right now. They have Postcards from the Edge, the Mike Nichols movie. Oh, I just watched that recently for the first time. Yeah, and I watched it for the first time. I believe it was in 1991. I had started going to movies on my own because I was alone, because I was a bit sophisticated, and I was a bit of a rebel, you know, a little bit alienated. And I went to see that movie, um, which is based on the Carrie Fisher novel of the same name. But specifically the movie. I remember going to see and feeling so strongly about it and thinking it was so amazing and literally the movie ended. And I remember feeling really elated, elated that art is possible. You know, I remember coming out of that movie on high. I was like 15. And I watched it last night and I felt the same way I hadn't seen that movie and at least 20 years and I was like, I'm the same person. I'm the same. I'm exactly the same person. I was and I realized that because of this piece of culture that I remember watching and obsessing over when it came out and rewatching and feeling exactly the same about it. Yeah. And it was a realization that hit me like a bolt of lightning. Alex: Yeah, I think I, I love that and have often had that same experience, but also I do want to just validate to go back to our therapy episode from last week. If you have not listened to that, do so. Um, the idea, like I think both are wonderful. The idea of finding out that you are the same person. Is so, uh, exhilarating and affirming and exciting. And then sometimes finding out that you've moved away. Totally. And that's what I got from the listener voicemails too about these obsessions. Sometimes I look back at a past obsession. I'll just briefly mention it and hopefully we can do maybe five episodes on it in the future. Um, my deep obsession as a late elementary schooler with a musical rent. Oh my god, yeah. Yeah. What happened here? What went wrong? What happened here? And yet I know what happened and I feel a lot of love and affection for the person who, you know, but it's the same thing. It's like you and sometimes I stand by it and sometimes I'm horrified and like you learn in the middle. Naomi: It's like you learned about the AIDS crisis through this. Sure did. Connected to New York, downtown New York at a certain period. I'm proud of it. No, but you know what I mean? It's like, it's like you watch a version of something. Yeah. And you connect and then you, you understand what's interesting to you in life and in art, you know? Alex: So here's another question I have. You know, um, like a lot of these obsessions, but not all of them interestingly, you know? I mean, I, the, the kind of looming force of the intranet is on my mind. Yes. Because, of course, that can direct communities together and sort of, especially, like, you want obsession, like, go to a Reddit board, you know, like, if you're into something that seems obscure or whatever, like, you will find your people and that's really cool. Yeah. Alex: But it also means sometimes that, like, these trends are basically foisted upon us. I mean, they always were. So it's different. That's different than an obsession. But do you think that there's anything about now, writ large, that's That is different, obsession wise, than then. Vinson: I still, you know, I think, I, your point is well taken. I think that it, you have to be a little bit more vigilant, uh, in discovering whether you are truly being self directed or not. Right? Like, there's, more is discoverable than there ever has been, and therefore, um, you know, the classic, like, I found this on my own thing is of course, uh, possible and maybe even more possible, but you just have to kind of look around with a certain level of paranoia to be like, is, am I sure this was me? Um, but I think what I got from what you just said, Nomi, is like, not only are you the same person, but like, crucially, You made yourself that person. Like Vinson: that, that, that, the sort of, like these twin themes of like, education, and the kind of education that like, Um, uh, takes place on no one's watch, but your own and also like self creation and even, and it's the same thing, like whether you're the same or you're not, or you'd like, come back and you're different. It's because it sets you on a trajectory where you could learn something else and change yourself, right? That like, so much of what we do on this show is, oh, this reminds me of this thing. We all have these banks of references that like live inside of us and sort of like are. Like, whatever we quote, whatever we, like, make reference to, like, on so many levels is who we are, and is, like, a result of this self making, that, like, um, it seems to me so precious, and I think people still do that today. Alex: I think so, too. I think, I, I, I absolutely agree, and, you know, uh, maybe it was a bit of a red herring kind of question, like, Vinson: No, I think, I worry about it all the time. It's Naomi: legitimate, the algorithm and so on, you know, the kind of like being led rather than leading oneself. Alex: Sure. I think, I think what maybe I feel is more pertinent in some way is one's own age, because when you are younger, you are more open. Not saying that we're all like set in our ways, but you expect to discover. Yeah. And that's part of what it is to go through the world. You expect to be, you know, Just like swept off your feet by something or to discover something and suddenly it explains everything to you and it is the key to all mythologies and it's so exciting and then by the fall, like, well, you have a new key to all mythologies and yeah, you've moved on and when that happens in adulthood, when that kind of loving attention Mm hmm. Alex: Clicks in and you find something not only worthy of it, but that indeed commands it. Yeah. That is the deepest pleasure. And maybe it's because it goes back to what you were saying, Naomi, that it shows yourself to yourself again. Mm-Hmm. Alex: that you're still there. There you are. This has been critics at large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby, and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is. Condé Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost, with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker. com slash critics. Listeners, thank you so much for answering our call for Summer Obsessions. Even though we couldn't fit all your voicemails into the episode, we did listen to each and every one you sent in and talked about it at great length. Thank you. Um, and we loved hearing from you. Speaking of, if you've got an idea for an episode you'd like to hear, please do email us at themailatnewyorker. com with the subject line, Critics. We always keep an eye on our inbox. See you soon!