Help, I Need a Critic!

The art of advice-giving, championed over the years by such figures as Ann Landers and Cheryl Strayed, has lately undergone a transformation. As traditional columns have continued to proliferate, social-media platforms have created new venues for those seeking—and doling out—counsel, from the users of the popular subreddit “Am I the Asshole” to the countless “experts” who peddle their takes on Instagram and TikTok. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz try their hands at the trade, advising listeners on a variety of cultural conundrums. The hosts trace the form from early examples such as Advice for Living, the short-lived column written by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the late nineteen-fifties, through to the Internet age. The genre has long functioned as a forum for parsing the ethics of the era, and its enduring appeal might be explained by our inherent curiosity about the way others live. “There is a sort of plurality of approaches to life itself, which means that we are all passing into and out of other people’s moral universes,” Cunningham says. “I think it causes more trouble—causes more questions.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Witch Elm,” by Tana French

“Crime and Punishment,” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen

“Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney

“The Guest,” by Emma Cline

“I’m a Fan,” by Sheena Patel

“My Husband,” by Maud Ventura

“The Anthropologists,” by Ayşegül Savaş

“Small Rain,” by Garth Greenwell

“Brightness Falls,” by Jay McInerney

Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy

William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

“Ghost World,” by Dan Clowes

The Ethicist (The New York Times)

Dear Sugar (The Rumpus)

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Lisa Frankenstein” (2024)

“The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James

“Carrie,” by Stephen King

“Little Labors,” by Rivka Galchen

“Matrescence,” by Lucy Jones

“The Mother Artist,” by Catherine Ricketts

“Acts of Creation,” by Hettie Judah

r/AmItheAsshole

Advice for Living (Ebony Magazine)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.