Who gets to be a critic? And why are some so "bad?"

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Andrea Long Chu was once one of Brittany's favorite Sex and the City bloggers, and she's now a Pulitzer-winning critic. Andrea lends her critical eye to everything from the TV show Yellowstone to the work of Sally Rooney to pro-Palestinian protests and free speech. And she does it with wit, style, and fearlessness. Brittany chats with Andrea about her new book, Authority - a collection of some of Andrea's best work, along with two new essays. They discuss why art is a "fossil record" of desire, what kind of authority critics have, and why we might need to rethink what criticism should do for us.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.
0:12.7	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:32.5	Did you wait for a blog that was about watching episodes of Sex and the City?
0:36.2	Oh my God. Yes, I did.
0:38.3	That was a long time ago.
0:39.8	Yeah.
0:40.4	Oh, my God.
0:41.1	I loved it.
0:41.8	I loved it.
0:43.2	That's Andrea Long Chew.
0:45.3	Once, one of my favorite Sex and the City bloggers, now a Pulitzer Prize winning critic.
0:51.3	And you know what?
0:52.6	I wasn't surprised by the news of her win in 2023. She lends her
0:57.0	critical eye to everything from the TV show Yellowstone to the work of Sally Rooney to pro-Palestinian
1:02.5	protests and free speech. And she does it with wit, style, and fearlessness. Like, if you've ever
1:09.6	read Andrea Longchoo, you know she is eviscerating people in some of these pages.
1:14.7	Andrea is here today because some of her best writing
1:17.5	has been collected into a book called Authority.
1:20.4	It's a lot of her published essays and two new ones.
1:24.1	In this book and our conversation,
1:26.3	she has given me so many new ways to look at art,
1:30.2	from high-brow literature to low-brow TV.
	...

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