I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.

And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles of her out there.

This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially,

and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production

of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Josh Rothman is a man of wide interests.

He's written for The New Yorker about philosophy, about fashion,

about science. But among those many interests, one really stands out. Josh says he's never met

another man who's into romance novels or who will admit reading them. He recently talked with

Curtis Sittenfeld, who has five novels under her belt, books that involve romance, but they're

not exactly romance novels either.

Last year, Sittenfeld published eligible,

a modern retelling of what we might consider the prototype,

the great-grandmother of all novels about romance.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Curtis Sittenfeld asked the first question.

Can I ask you what your definition of

like a romantic novel is? Well, certainly there's lots of classic novels that are essentially

romance based. But I also read like a reasonable quantity of like Nora Roberts.

That's what I was curious.

...