Remembering Dolly Parton

About this episode

Upon news of Dolly Parton’s death last week, flags across the country were lowered to half-mast. A petition circulated to rename the Nashville airport in her honor, and social media read like a greatest-hits reel of the charisma and musical acumen that made her universally beloved. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry are joined by three fellow New Yorker writers to celebrate Parton’s life and work, and the legacy she leaves behind. Kathryn Schultz, who penned Parton’s Postscript, discusses her undersung, “Oprah-like” business savvy and deep commitment to philanthropic causes; Amanda Petrusich distills Parton’s vast discography down to three essential tracks; and Lauren Michele Jackson considers how the star’s carefully crafted persona played up aspects of her femininity while transcending divisions of race and class. “The ready word one reaches for is ‘saint,’ right?” Schultz says. “This is someone who came from nothing and might reasonably have felt the instinct to hoard everything she had. And she had the absolute opposite instinct, which was to give as much away as she could.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “9 to 5” (1980) Dolly Pa