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5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 27 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jeffrey Toobin on the G.O.P.’s silence; the psychiatry of Trump; advice from a boxer; being yoga; dial-a-feminist playwriting. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Fred Kaplan 34 Kind of New Cécile McLorin Salvant rethinks jazz. SHOUTS & MURMURS Susanna Fogel 39 Your Frozen Egg Has a Question ANNALS OF EDUCATION Jonathan Blitzer 40 American Studies Undocumented students’ efforts to get into college. A REPORTER AT LARGE Ian Parker 46 Are You My Mother? A custody case and the definition of parenthood. PROFILES Rebecca Mead 60 The Book Monk A master printer’s lifework. COMIC STRIP Edward Steed 65 “Mets Injury Schedule 2017” FICTION Samantha Hunt 70 “A Love Story” THE CRITICS ON TELEVISION Emily Nussbaum 78 “The Handmaid’s Tale.” LIFE AND LETTERS Thomas Mallon 81 J.F.K. at one hundred. BOOKS 84 Briefly Noted Laura Miller 88 Kei Miller’s “Augustown.” MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 90 Two new concert halls in Germany. POP MUSIC Hua Hsu 92 Jlin’s “Black Origami.” POEMS Carrie Fountain 54 “Poem Without an Image” Stephen Burt 72 “Lamb’s Ear” COVER Barry Blitt “Ejected”

DRAWINGS Jason Adam Katzenstein, Jason Patterson, Will McPhail, J. C. Duffy, Emily Flake, P. S. Mueller, Amy Hwang, Drew Dernavich, Bruce Eric Kaplan, David Sipress, Roz Chast, Alice Cheng, John O’Brien, Charlie Hankin, Amy Kurzweil SPOTS Hanna Barczyk CONTRIBUTORS

Ian Parker (“Are You My Mother?,” p. 46) Rebecca Mead (“The Book Monk,” p. 60) has contributed to the magazine since has been a staff writer since 1997. “My 1994, and became a staff writer in 2000. Life in Middlemarch” is her latest book.

Fred Kaplan (“Kind of New,” p. 34), a Jonathan Blitzer (“American Studies,” columnist for Slate, is the author of p. 40) writes for newyorker.com. “Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.” His last piece for the mag- Susanna Fogel (Shouts & Murmurs, azine was about John Zorn. p. 39), the director and co-writer of the film “Life Partners,” is the author of Samantha Hunt (Fiction, p. 70) is the au- “Nuclear Family,” which comes out in thor of “The Seas,” “The Invention of July. Everything Else,” and, most recently, “Mr. Splitfoot.” Laura Miller (Books, p. 88), the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Thomas Mallon (Life and Letters, p. 81) Adventures in Narnia,” writes about is a novelist, an essayist, and a critic. “Fi- books and culture for Slate. nale: A Novel of the Reagan Years” came out in paperback in August. Jeffrey Toobin (Comment, p. 27) has writ- ten two books about the Supreme Court, Emily Nussbaum (On Television, p. 78), “The Nine” and “The Oath.” He is also The New Yorker’s television critic, won the author of “American Heiress: The the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2016. Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst,” which came Carrie Fountain (Poem, p. 54) has pub- out last August. lished two poetry collections, including, most recently, “Instant Winner.” Her Edward Steed (Comic Strip, p. 65) has first novel, “I’m Not Missing,” comes contributed cartoons to the magazine out next year. since 2013.

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

PODCAST VIDEO Evan Osnos analyzes how Trump’s A profile of a student who firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. attends an underground university director, will damage his Presidency. for undocumented immigrants.

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2 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 THE MAIL

YOU’RE FIRED! Michael Flynn. Pence is presenting himself as a moderate, thoughtful Evan Osnos, in his article on the ways figure, at home in the halls of Con- that Donald Trump could be removed gress and on the international stage. from office, focusses on options out- He already looks and acts “Presiden- lined in the Constitution (“Endgames,” tial,” and there is a very real possibil- May 8th). But the example of Spiro ity that he could win in 2020. The Agnew, the Vice-President under only way to block Trump’s destruc- Nixon, who was removed from office tive juggernaut is for Democrats to in 1973, suggests another possible win control of either or both houses approach. Agnew’s fall was not di- of Congress. rectly connected with the Watergate Paul Scoles scandal but, rather, was connected 1New York City with allegations of corruption during his term as governor of Maryland. CHEAP EATS Charged with that crime, he resigned the Vice-Presidency as part of a plea I was glad to see Michael Grabell’s deal. If Trump turns out to have article on Case Farms and its exploita- gained the Presidency, in part, by tion of undocumented immigrants coöperating with Russian efforts to in slaughterhouses, but it’s not news smear Hillary Clinton, that not only that slaughterhouses and construc- might open him up to further inves- tion companies mistreat their workers tigation in Congress, as Osnos sug- (“Cut to the Bone,” May 8th). In the gests, but could also end in plea deals mid-seventies, I was a migrant worker that take Trump, and perhaps even in the Pacific Northwest and in Cali- Mike Pence, off the stage without ac- fornia, and we knew that the real prob- tual impeachment or invocations of lem was greedy farmers. We also knew the Twenty-fifth Amendment. that the laws meant to restrict those Michael H. Goldhaber farmers’ malfeasance had many loop- Berkeley, Calif. holes. Grabell should place greater em- phasis on the responsibility that the The possibility that Trump could be modern American consumer bears for forced out of office isn’t titillating— keeping hellholes like Case Farms in it’s terrifying. The Presidency is not operation. Right now, the average a beauty pageant, where the vacated American spends about five per cent position goes to the first runner-up, of her or his wages at the supermar- nor is it a congressional seat subject ket. In 1950, when I was born, it was to a special election. The Presidential seventeen per cent. The corporate con- line of succession is prescribed by the trol of agriculture depresses the price Constitution, and, if you think saying of food and the wages that farmers “President Trump” is scary, try saying and farmworkers receive. If the mid- “President Pence.” The Vice- President dle-class consumer were willing to pay is a deeply religious, far-right ultra- more for quality, those of us who are conservative, whose presence on the sustainable farmers would be able to national stage owes primarily to his make a living. anti-L.G.B.T. and anti-choice legis- Walter Haugen lation in Indiana. And there is no rea- Ferndale, Wash. son to think that he will be any less fanatical if he assumes the Presidency. • It looks to me as though the efforts Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, to position Pence as a replacement for address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited Trump began early on, by insulating for length and clarity, and may be published in him from the events surrounding the any medium. We regret that owing to the volume firing of the national-security adviser of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 3

MAY 17 Ð 23, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet for American Ballet Theatre, “Whipped Cream” (premièring on May 22, at the Met- ropolitan Opera House), is an extravaganza for the eyes and ears. Dancers dressed as candies, pralines, and liqueur bottles move to Richard Strauss’s decadent, swooping melodies from 1924. Their surreal world, conjured by the artist Mark Ryden, is a blend of kitsch and Old Masterly detail. The story is slight, but, then, isn’t that true of many of the old ballets? Most of it occurs in a dream. “It’s a ballet féerie,” Ratmansky says. “Ballet in its purest form.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARCELO GOMES American Ballet Theatre The season opens with a bit of skirt-swishing fun: the Spanish-themed “Don Quixote.” The DANCE production, full of colorful crowd scenes, offers ample opportunities for showing off with fans, capes, guitars, and whatever else falls to hand. If it’s fireworks you’re after, see Isabella Boylston and Daniil Simkin (May 17 evening, May 20 mat- inée), but this is also a good opportunity to catch débuts, including Misty Copeland in the role of the passionate Kitri, on May 16 and the eve- ning of May 20. Christine Shevchenko, an excit- ing soloist, gets her first stab at a leading role in the May 17 matinée. The New York première of Alexei Ratmansky’s new fantasy ballet, “Whipped Cream,” takes place on the following Monday. • May 17 at 2 and 7:30, May 18-19 at 7:30, and May 20 at 2 and 8: “Don Quixote.” • May 22 at 6:30 and May 23 at 7:30: “Whipped Cream.” (Metro- politan Opera House, Lincoln Center. 212-477-3030. Through July 8.)

New York City Ballet There are three programs to choose from in the final week of the “Here/Now” festival. On Pro- The Trisha Brown Dance Company performs the late choreographer’s iconic “Opal Loop,” at Jacob’s Pillow. gram 8, the highlight is Justin Peck’s new ballet, “The Decalogue,” set to a piano score by Sufjan Stevens (their third collaboration). However, Summer Preview ances feel increasingly essential. Who that mixed bill requires sitting through Jorma knows how long it will be possible to ex- Elo’s hard-driving, twitchy “Slice to Sharp,” a throwback to a time, not so long ago, when the What can explain the enduring fasci- perience the laid-back elegance of works Finnish choreographer’s ballets were ubiqui- nation of George Balanchine’s “Jewels”? like “Opal Loop,” in which dancers follow tous. Program 9 offers a chance to revisit Alexei The ballet, which turns fifty this year, enigmatic pathways like loose-limbed Ratmansky’s “Concerto DSCH,” from 2008, a sporty romp set to Shostakovich, one of the doesn’t have a plot; some would argue visitors from another world, or “Groove most popular works of the past decade. (That that it’s not even top-shelf Balanchine. and Countermove,” a more explosive program also includes Christopher Wheel- Yet it has undeniable glamour. And per- work, last seen a decade ago? On Aug. 13, don’s “After the Rain Pas de Deux.”) • May 17 at 7:30 and May 19 at 8: “Jeux,” “The Shim- haps no other ballet so fully encapsulates the company will appear on the grounds mering Asphalt,” “Unframed,” and “Fearful three such distinct worlds: the aqueous of the Clark Art Institute, in Williams- Symmetries.” • May 18 at 7:30 and May 20 mystery of Gabriel Fauré’s music, in town, Mass., with a compendium of at 8: “Chiaroscuro,” “Slice to Sharp,” “Stabat Mater,” and “The Decalogue.” • May 20 at 2 “Emeralds”; the glinting, and very shorter Trisha Brown works, called “In and May 21 at 3: “Red Angels,” “Varied Trio American, jazziness of Stravinsky, in Plain Site.” It will be performed outdoors, (in four),” “Barber Violin Concerto,” “Polaris,” “Rubies”; and the grandeur and melan- Brown’s natural element. “After the Rain Pas de Deux,” and “Concerto DSCH.” • May 23: “A Midsummer Night’s choly of Tchai kovsky, in “Diamonds.” In 2007, the photographer David Mi- Dream.” (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212- This summer, at the Lincoln Center chalek had a curious idea: What would 496-0600. Through May 28.) Festival, three equally distinctive com- dancing look like if it were slowed down Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana panies—New York City Ballet, the Paris to less than a hundredth of its normal The company, a solid presence on the American Opera Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet— speed? For the film “Slow Dancing,” using flamenco scene for more than thirty years, will will perform it at the David H. Koch specialized cameras designed for analyz- offer three new ensemble works by contempo- rary flamenco choreographers, plus various solos, Theatre ( July 20-23). The French danc- ing car crashes, he captured forty- three at BAM’s intimate Fisher theatre. Keep an eye ers will take on “Emeralds”—always the dancers in styles ranging from butoh to out for Ángel Muñoz, a performer of enormous most elusive of the three—and the ballet, to mesmerizing effect. Now he is spontaneity and verve, who will be dancing a solo and also presenting a new work, “Caminos,” for Americans and Russians will take turns focussing on Yvonne Rainer’s 1966 work three men. (321 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 718-636- in the other two. “Trio A.” The original five-minute piece 4100. May 16-21.) The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, in consists of everyday movements like tilt- Parsons Dance the Berkshires, turns eighty-five this year. ing, bending, and sitting. In collaboration David Parsons is best known for an effective One event worth the trip is “Tireless: A with Rainer, Michalek filmed several gimmick: the strobe-lighted, gravity-flouting Tap Dance Experience,” a show put to- dozen dancers—including his wife, the illusions of his 1982 solo “Caught.” That signa- ture piece is on both programs again this season, gether by Michelle Dorrance, whose tap ex-ballerina Wendy Whelan, and Rainer, joined by a more up-to-date device: small drones chops are matched by her enthusiasm for now eighty-two—each executing a seven- that buzz around the dancers in “Hello World,” a the form. She invites soloists and ensem- second segment of the work. At Danspace première that grapples with human and techno- logical evolution. There’s also “UpEnd,” a fresh bles from across the country—and one (June 23-July 1), the results, entitled “Slow collaboration between Parsons and Ephrat Ash- duo from Tokyo—to show their stuff, June Dancing/Trio A,” will be projected at a erie, a skilled and imaginative b-girl whose open 28-July 2. On Aug. 16-19, the Trisha Brown speed so reduced that movement is barely spirit should fit well with the company’s enthusi- astic, athletic style. (Joyce Theatre, 175 Eighth Ave., Dance Company pays a visit; since perceptible. at 19th St. 212-242-0800. May 16-21 and May 23. —Marina Harss Brown’s death, in March, such appear- Through May 28.) GRITTI LORENZO BY ILLUSTRATION

6 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

DANCE

Michelle Boulé Long a cherished performer, at once down-to-earth and enigmatic, Boulé has been choreographing her own work for the past few years, pieces that strug- THE THEATRE gle to vivify esoteric ideas, sometimes graced by low-key humor. Her new solo, “The Monomyth,” borrows from Joseph Campbell’s notion of the ar- chetypal hero’s journey. The hero is Boulé, alone, with disco fading in and out. (The Chocolate Fac- tory, 5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City. 866-811-4111. May 17-20. Through May 27.)

Stacy Matthew Spence Spence, like other alums of Trisha Brown’s com- pany, is a delicate dancer who fashions delicate dances. “This Home Is Us,” choreographed and performed with the similarly spindly but more in- tense Joanna Kotze, continues Spence’s investiga- tion into heightening awareness of place through movement and sound. The score mixes noises re- corded in the homes of both performers into the vi- brations of St. Mark’s Church, the home for dance where the work is performed. (Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Second Ave. at 10th St. 866-811-4111. May 18-20.) Oscar Isaac plays the title role in Sam Gold’s production of “Hamlet,” at the Public, starting June 20. “FLEXN Evolution” Two years ago, “FLEXN” took fiercely talented practitioners of the broken-bodied street form abeth Marvel (Antony), Corey Stoll called flex and let them flounder in the vastness Summer Preview (Brutus), and John Douglas Thompson of the Park Avenue Armory. The direction (by Peter Sellars) encouraged them to address topical Among the signifiers of a New York (Cassius). The second Delacorte offer- issues but gave insufficient guidance in the peril- summer—the Mister Softee jingle, ing, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” ous transfer from street to stage. Now the produc- air-conditioner droplets messing up starting previews July 11, will showcase tion returns in revised form. As before, each per- formance is prefaced by frank panel discussions your hair—is the sound of blank verse. the comedic gifts of Annaleigh Ashford about racial equity and criminal justice, but the Shakespeare has become a mostly (Helena), Danny Burstein (Bottom), coda that follows the final show might be most il- May-to-August affair, despite the and Kristine Nielsen (Puck), under the luminating: a multigenerational demonstration of flex’s evolution. (Park Avenue Armory, Park Ave. at Bard’s penchant for discontented win- direction of Lear deBessonet. The Drill- 66th St. 212-933-5812. May 18-21.) ters and warring winds. Oscar Isaac, ing Company, the scrappy troupe be- who played Romeo in Central Park hind Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, “La Mama Moves!” The opening week of this year’s festival culminates years before “Inside Llewyn Davis” and also specializes in verse al fresco, minus in a daytime block party on May 20. In addition “Star Wars” made him a heartthrob, the line; the group returns to Bryant to a d.j., a marching band, and free food, there will take on “Hamlet,” at the Public, Park’s Upper Terrace with “The Merry will be a showing of “#Here to Dance,” a compila- tion of minute-long dance videos, submitted over beginning previews on June 20. Sam Wives of Windsor” (May 19-June 3), the Internet, on the subject of human rights. Be- Gold’s production, also starring Keegan- “Twelfth Night” (July 28-30), and “The fore that come the premières of Young Soon Kim’s Michael Key (“Key & Peele”), as Hora- Tempest” (Aug. 25-Sept. 9). “iyouuswe” and Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Mal- vacías’s “A” and “D.” A globally varied miscellany tio, has already caused its share of The composer Michael Friedman of premières follows. (Ellen Stewart, 66 E. 4th St. drama. Last year, Gold pulled the pro- (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) 646-430-5374. May 18-21. Through June 4.) duction from Theatre for a New Au- programs City Center’s flavorful En- François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea dience’s upcoming schedule, citing cores! Off-Center series, which revives In recent years, Dia:Beacon has presented the work artistic differences—apparently his Off Broadway musicals for short runs. of such dance eminences as Merce Cunningham, revision of the text was too out-there. This summer’s slate includes “Assassins” Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, and Steve Paxton. Now this less established and less exalted Paris- (Broadway audiences got to know ( July 12-15), Stephen Sondheim and based duo gets the museum’s imprimatur. Their Gold’s experimental streak with this John Weidman’s 1990 revue of Presi- 2004 piece “Sylphides” is an intriguing art proj- season’s polarizing revival of “The dential predators, a politically fraught ect that involves vacuum-sealing dancers in body bags. “Dub Love,” from 2014, shallowly mixes bal- Glass Menagerie.”) The Brooklyn piece no matter who’s in the White let pointe work with moves from club and street company swapped in “Measure for House; “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds dance. The accompanying reggae-and-dub d.j. set Measure,” Shakespeare’s acid tale of Her Chameleon Skin” (July 26-27), should get the former factory thumping. (3 Beek- man St., Beacon, N.Y. 845-440-0100. May 19-21.) hypocrisy, which plays at the Polonsky Kirsten Childs’s 2000 portrait of a Shakespeare Center starting June 17, young dancer trying to make it on “Tap Attack” directed by Simon Godwin. Broadway; and “Really Rosie” (Aug. 2-5), The American Tap Dance Foundation celebrates National Tap Dance Day with a free outdoor event. Meanwhile, the Public’s free Shake- Maurice Sendak and Carole King’s be- Honoring the inclusive spirit of the tap tradition, speare in the Park season kicks off at loved children’s musical, serving up the program combines students and professionals, the Delacorte on May 23, with “Julius songs of chicken soup with rice and children and elders, set pieces and improvised jam sessions. (Hudson River Park, Christopher St. at the Caesar,” directed by Oskar Eustis and alligators all around. —Michael Schulman Hudson River. 646-230-9564. May 21.) featuring Gregg Henry (Caesar), Eliz- GRITTI LORENZO BY ILLUSTRATION

8 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

1 1THE THEATRE OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS NOW PLAYING ter, because he loves himself more. As his handy assistant, Monica Reed, Nielsen does what no Bella: An American Tale Arlington one else does better: tries to make sense of an- Robert O’Hara directs a new pioneer-era mu- After a recent performance of Enda Walsh’s lat- other character’s madness. And as Garry’s wife, sical by Kirsten Childs, about a wanted woman est Irish import, a woman in line for the ladies’ Liz, Burton is a model of good sense and strong (Ashley D. Kelley) who flees out West, where her room loudly polled her fellow audience members: character, poised and maternal. Each of these ac- Buffalo Soldier awaits. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 “Did you get it? Anyone?” No one said yes. The tors makes Coward’s language sound fresh and W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin May 19.) show is certainly elusive, but the woman prob- contemporary while understanding that the play ably wouldn’t have asked the question if it had has nothing to do with naturalism. (St. James, 246 Building the Wall been billed as a dance piece, which is perhaps how W. 44th St. 212-239-6200.) Robert Schenkkan’s political thriller, written in it’s best thought of—although just as central are rapid response to the 2016 election, is set in the Walsh’s urgent, enigmatic monologues and an un- Seven Spots in the Sun near future, as President Trump’s campaign prom- usually haunting use of video projections. Char- Martín Zimmerman’s fablelike play, directed ises unfold. (New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St. 212- lie Murphy (and, for one magnificent extended by Weyni Mengesha, crashes together a practi- 239-6200. In previews. Opens May 21.) dance passage, Oona Doherty) plays an engross- cal doctor, a passionate nurse, a drunken priest, ingly self-possessed young woman trapped for a vicious soldier, and an anxious wife. Set in an Can You Forgive Her? decades in a waiting room in a dystopian city, unnamed Latin-American country, it explores In Gina Gionfriddo’s play, directed by Peter Du- her every move surveilled by an affably skittish the brutalities of war and the confusions of re- Bois, Amber Tamblyn plays a woman afflicted Hugh O’Conor. The tone tilts between slapstick covery. The style is magical realism, which may with financial and romantic problems who finds and nightmare; the message seems to be about put one in mind of a more starkly politicized refuge with an engaged couple on Halloween. solitary confinement in all its forms. (St. Ann’s José Rivera, and the script shifts between dia- (Vineyard, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. In pre- Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779.) logue and direct address, spoken by a trio of ac- views. Opens May 23.) tors playing townspeople. It takes an unusually Ernest Shackleton Loves Me confident writer to sketch a junta and its after- The Cost of Living There’s a lot to explain at the outset of this math in just eighty minutes, and Zimmerman has Martyna Majok’s play, directed by Jo Bonney for ultra-high-concept musical comedy. Kat (the that confidence. But while the play asks big ques- Manhattan Theatre Club, tells the parallel sto- violinist Val Vigoda) is a severely sleep-deprived tions, its working out of the answers feels both ries of an unemployed truck driver who reunites forty-five-year-old single mother and struggling wispy and overwrought. Still, there are some with his ex-wife and a doctoral student who hires composer who joins a dating site while her ba- startling and visceral images, as when the doc- a caregiver. (City Center Stage I, 131 W. 55th St. 212- by’s father is on tour with a Journey cover band, tor, Moisés (Rey Lucas), savages a pile of pine- 581-1212. In previews.) and promptly receives a highly interested reply apples with a claw hammer. (Rattlestick, 224 Wa- from the long-dead polar explorer (Wade Mc- verly Pl. 212-627-2556.) The Government Inspector Collum, who also plays banjo). And that’s just Red Bull Theatre stages the Gogol satire, directed the premise: the show’s various technologies also 3/Fifths by Jesse Berger and featuring Michael Urie, in need to be demonstrated, including green-screen James Scruggs’s piece turns the entire venue which the corrupt officials of a provincial town projections and music assembled via live loops. into a bizarro theme park called Supremacy- assume a new arrival to be an undercover inspec- Weighed down with so much apparatus, it seems Land—imagine an old-fashioned state fair in a tor. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St. 646- the ship may never set sail, but then you find world where the South won the Civil War. For 223-3010. In previews.) yourself immersed in Shackleton’s crazy odyssey the first half of the evening, audience members as filtered through Kat’s smart-aleck sensibility. are free to roam this “atrocity carnival,” visiting The Lucky One Not everything is equally enchanting; the songs, booths where they can ask a black man questions The Mint revives A. A. Milne’s 1922 play, di- by Vigoda and Brendan Milburn, have a same- pulled from a list (“Can I touch your hair?”), rected by Jesse Marchese, about two brothers ness to them, and the jokes are more cute than watch “coon dances,” or learn how to tie a noose. whose enmity erupts when one of them lands in funny. (Tony Kiser, 305 W. 43rd St. 866-811-4111.) The attendants are unfailingly chirpy, which, of legal trouble. (Beckett, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239- course, heightens the general discomfort. The 6200. In previews. Opens May 18.) The Play That Goes Wrong show’s second half, set in a subterranean caba- Mischief Theatre’s combustible farce, originally ret space, is a backstage play involving Suprem- 1984 staged above a pub in North London, invites acyLand’s staff. Scruggs’s look at the way sub- Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s adapta- us to the opening night of “Murder at Haver- servience is enforced—partly by the oppressed tion of George Orwell’s dystopian novel trans- sham Manor,” a hoary nineteen-twenties who- themselves, brainwashed into acceptance—is fers from the West End, featuring Tom Sturridge, dunnit put on by the ostentatiously inept Corn- disquieting, to say the least. The ultimate hor- Olivia Wilde, and Reed Birney. (Hudson, 139-141 ley University Drama Society. “The Play That ror: the shock wears off by the end of the three- W. 44th St. 855-801-5876. Previews begin May 18.) Goes Wrong” is a bit hoary, too—an intricately hour production. (3LD Art & Technology Center, planned fiasco in which doors slam, cues go hay- 80 Greenwich St. 800-838-3006.) Seeing You wire, the leading lady gets knocked unconscious, 1 The immersive-theatre producer Randy Weiner and every inch of the musty drawing-room set and the choreographer Ryan Heffington (known (by Nigel Hook) is destined to come crashing ALSO NOTABLE for Sia’s “Chandelier” video) created this site-spe- down. Of course, it takes incredible skill to pull cific piece, which transforms a former meat mar- off such bungling, and Mark Bell’s production Amélie Walter Kerr. Through May 21. • The Antip- ket into nineteen-forties Hoboken. (450 W. 14th nails every spit take and sight gag. (This is one of odes Pershing Square Signature Center. • Band- St. 866-811-4111. In previews.) those genres that Brits just do better—you need stand Jacobs. • Come from Away Schoenfeld. • A those plummy accents to paper over the may- Doll’s House, Part 2 Golden. • The Emperor Jones Somebody’s Daughter hem.) The show never tells us anything about its Irish Repertory. Through May 21. • Gently Down Chisa Hutchinson’s play, from Second Stage characters, but it succeeds as pure comedic eye the Stream Public. Through May 21. • The Glass Theatre Uptown, is about an Asian-American candy. (Lyceum, 149 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.) Menagerie Belasco. Through May 21. • Ground- teen-ager desperate for her parents’ attention. hog Day August Wilson. • Happy Days Polonsky (McGinn/Cazale, 2162 Broadway, at 76th St. 212- Present Laughter Shakespeare Center. • Hello, Dolly! Shubert. • In 246-4422. Previews begin May 23.) This harmless production of Noël Coward’s 1939 & of Itself Daryl Roth. • Indecent Cort. • The comedy about theatre, pretense, and lies should Little Foxes Samuel J. Friedman. • Miss Saigon The Whirligig verge on farce—and does, at times—but the di- Broadway Theatre. • Mourning Becomes Electra The New Group presents Hamish Linklater’s rector, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, plays it safe when Abrons Arts Center. Through May 20. • Oslo Viv- play, directed by Scott Elliott and featuring Zosia he shouldn’t. Still, there are bright spots amid ian Beaumont. • Pacific Overtures Classic Stage Mamet, Dolly Wells, and Norbert Leo Butz, the dullness, and Kevin Kline, Kristine Nielsen, Company. • Six Degrees of Separation Ethel Bar- in which divorced parents care for their ailing and Kate Burton are performers you look for- rymore. • Sunset Boulevard Palace. • Sweat Stu- adult daughter as figures from her past reëmerge. ward to seeing again and again. Kline plays the dio 54. • Vanity Fair Pearl. • The View UpStairs (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. actor and rogue Garry Essendine; he can’t re- Lynn Redgrave. Through May 21. • War Paint 212-279-4200. In previews. Opens May 21.) member who’s loved him, but that doesn’t mat- Nederlander.

10 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

1 OPERA

New Opera NYC: “The Golden Cockerel” CLASSICAL MUSIC The five-year-old company presents Rimsky-Kor- sakov’s final opera, a lively musical fable that deliv- ers a lavishly orchestrated parody of an incompe- tent autocratic ruler. This is the opera’s first New York performance in the original Russian, and its first local outing since 1971; Igor Konyukhov di- rects, and J. David Jackson conducts. May 18-19 at 7:30, May 20 at 2 and 7:30, and May 21 at 2. (Lo- reto Theater, Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, 18 Bleecker1 St. nonyc.org.) ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES

New York Philharmonic Alan Gilbert’s final weeks as the Philharmonic’s music director continue as he indulges one of his favorite passions: new Scandinavian music. After beginning with Brahms’s Violin Concerto (with Leonidas Kavakos), the program takes a north- ward turn with the New York premières of two works: “Aeriality,” by the exciting young composer Morton Subotnick, a living legend of electronic music, is featured at the Lincoln Center Festival. Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and “Wing on Wing,” an extravagant piece for two sopranos and orches- tra by a known quantity, Esa-Pekka Salonen. May Dvořák’s potent work, which plunges 19-20 at 8 and May 23 at 7:30. • The traditional Sat- Summer Preview gamely into the ancient intra-Slavic urday matinée features the program’s major work (the Brahms concerto), preceded by lighter cham- Operatic productions, given their am- conflict between Catholic Poland and ber fare, Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, played by bitions and expense, are always planned Orthodox Russia which flared up after the fine pianist Shai Wosner and several of the at least a year in advance. But, in mak- the death of the tsar Boris Godunov, orchestra’s principal strings. May 20 at 2. (David Geffen Hall. 212-875-5656.) ing their selections for this summer, makes a fine substitute. the region’s major players uncannily Back in New York, Mostly Mozart NOVUS NY: Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 5 reflected our moment of deep political has shown wisdom in bringing back An ambitious run of spring programming at Trin- ity Church wraps up with a performance of one of unease. One of the two productions the thrillingly radical production of Glass’s grandest works, a hopeful, evening-length that Francesca Zambello, who runs “Don Giovanni” (Aug. 17 and Aug. 19) piece for voices and orchestra (subtitled “Re- Glimmerglass Opera, in Cooperstown, by the conductor Iván Fischer, one of quiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya”) that draws on re- ligious texts from several world traditions. In is directing herself is the Donizetti several prominent Hungarian artists a smaller-scale midday event on Thursday, at rarity “The Siege of Calais” (July 16- who have spoken out against that coun- St. Paul’s Chapel, Julian Wachner and his out- Aug. 19), which takes place during the try’s increasing tolerance of anti-Sem- standing players offer a welcome performance of John Luther Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Hundred Years’ War. Zambello has itism and homophobia. The festival’s piece, “Become Ocean,” in addition to works by moved the setting to the present day, other theatrical presentation is “The Jessica Meyer (a world première) and Luna Pearl the better to reflect on the refugee cri- Dark Mirror,” a staging of Schubert’s Woolf. May 18 at 1; May 19-20 at 8. (Broadway at Wall St. No tickets required.) sis in which all of Europe is currently “Winterreise,” featuring the captivating embroiled. (Zambello will also direct tenor Ian Bostridge (Aug. 12-13), which The Orchestra Now: “Ives & Hartley” “Porgy and Bess,” an opera whose po- continues New York’s near-obsession Leon Botstein and his graduate training orches- tra from Bard College have spent the season pair- litical dimensions are a permanent part with this most personal of composers. ing music by great composers with artists whose of the American experience.) Those (Tanglewood also presents a series of works are currently on view at the Metropolitan who prefer their bel canto straight up Schubert concerts this summer.) Seem- Museum. The last concert brings together two hardy New Englanders, the composer Charles can always head to Caramoor, where ing to float above it all is Morton Ives (“Three Places in New England”) and the Angela Meade, one of the Westchester Su botnick, the electronic-music pio- artist Marsden Hartley, each of whom made art festival’s artists-in-residence, will be neer whom the Lincoln Center Festival that combines rugged masculinity with unex- pected tenderness. May 21 at 2. (Fifth Ave. at 82nd featured in a semi-staged presentation is hosting at the Kaplan Penthouse St. 212-570-3949.) of Bellini’s “Il Pirata” (July 8). ( July 20-22). “Silver Apples of the Dvořák’s “Dimitrij,” which will be Moon,” created, in 1967, specifically for American Composers Orchestra: “Parables” Rossen Milanov, the music director of the Prince- mounted at Bard Summerscape ( July a recording on Nonesuch Records, will ton and Columbus Symphony Orchestras, leads an 28-Aug. 6), also has a political thrust. provide a fix of analog-era high-tech evening of new and recent works, each reflecting The Bard Music Festival’s focus this bliss. But its new companion work, some striking facet of history. Along with John Corigliano’s guitar concerto “Troubadours” (fea- year will be on Chopin (Aug. 11-20), a “Crowds and Power,” is based on Elias turing Sharon Isbin) and Bright Sheng’s “Post- composer whose fierce love of his native Canetti’s disturbing book from 1960, a cards,” the program includes world premières by Poland was wrapped in layers of per- volume that, sadly, remains just as rel- the emerging composers Carlos Simon (“Por- trait of a Queen”) and Nina C. Young (“Out of sonal and aesthetic contradiction. But evant as ever. Whose Womb Came the Ice”). May 23 at 8. (Sym- —Russell Platt without a Chopin opera to stage, phony Space, Broadway at 95th St. 212-864-5400.) GRITTI LORENZO BY ILLUSTRATION

12 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

1CLASSICAL MUSIC RECITALS

Kyung Wha Chung The veteran Korean violinist, an artist of poise and A RT power, gives her first New York performance in twenty years: an evening (with two intermissions) devoted to Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. May 18 at 7:30. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.)

Daniel Gortler A week bursting with keyboard talent also includes this fine Israeli pianist, who presents a program, at the Jewish Museum, that surrounds a work of Brahms (the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor) with a piece that influenced the composer (Bach’s Par­ tita No. 6 in E Minor) and a work that he would influence in turn (Berg’s exquisite Sonata, Op. 1). May 18 at 7:30. (Fifth Ave. at 92nd St. 212-423-3337.)

Murray Perahia This refined pianist turned seventy in April, but he refuses to rest on his considerable laurels. Pera­ hia will open with Bach’s French Suite No. 6 in E Major—which he played buoyantly on his recent Deutsche Grammophon début—and close with Bee­ thoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, part of a new “Calder: Hypermobility” opens at the Whitney Museum on June 9. urtext edition that he is editing. Also included are works by Schubert (Four Impromptus, D. 935) and Mozart. May 19 at 8. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) visitors to see the works as Calder Summer Preview intended—in motion. The exhibition, Maurizio Pollini This Italian master pianist’s technique may not be as MOMA kicks off the season with the on the eighth floor, includes an exten- effortlessly pellucid as it was in his lengthy prime, highly anticipated “Robert Rauschen- sive series of related performances and yet he remains a formidable artist—and a polarizing berg: Among Friends,” a retrospective demonstrations of rarely seen works. one, too—for his keen intellect and his penetrating in­ sights. Chopin’s music has been in his repertoire since that shines a light on the American It’s also the swan song of Jay Sanders, childhood; here, he devotes an entire program to that artist’s radical gift for transforming the museum’s first-ever curator of composer—a mix of nocturnes, ballades, and other the process of making art from a sol- performance, who is leaving to helm works, culminating in the dramatic Sonata No. 3 in B Minor. May 21 at 3. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) itary act into a collective adventure. the vanguard nonprofit Artists Space. The show, which spans six decades, Opens June 9. Brooklyn Art Song Society: “New Voices” includes more than two hundred and In the twilight years of nineteenth- Michael Brofman’s adventurous organization is often at its best when advocating for new work. Its next fifty works, among them such classics century Paris, the Rosicrucian critic concert is a case in point, bringing together the sing­ as “Monogram” (1955-59), a paint- Joséphin Péladan organized a series of ers Laura Strickling, Steven Eddy, and Elisabeth splattered stuffed goat with a tire exhibitions, extending invitations to Marshall to present fresh songs by the composers Tom Cipullo, Michael Djupstrom, James Kallem­ around its middle, which collapsed artists of a symbolist bent across Eu- bach, Glen Roven, and Scott Wheeler (“Ben Gunn,” painting and sculpture into a third rope. The Guggenheim revisits the with words by Paul Muldoon). May 21 at 4. (Old Stone form that Rauschenberg called a scene in “Mystical Symbolism: The Salon House, 336 3rd St., Brooklyn. brooklynartsongsociety.org.) “combine”—the name alone expresses de la Rose+Croix in Paris, 1892–1897,” Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: a desire to bring forces together. The which includes works by such artists as “America” exhibition, which was organized with Ferdinand Hodler, Georges Rouault, This season­ending program is meant to convey a spirit of openness and optimism characteristic of the United the Tate Modern, in London, where and Félix Vallotton, and also has a States: a notion ideally addressed by the final work, it earned rave reviews, represents the musical element, which emphasizes Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” Suite. A grand muster artist’s collaborations with John Cage, the influence of Erik Satie, Richard of Society stalwarts also offers aptly congenial works by Barber (“Souvenirs”), John Corigliano (“Red Violin Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Wagner, and other composers. Opens Caprices”), John Harbison (“Songs America Loves to Yvonne Rainer, Paul Taylor, and June 30. Sing”), and William Bolcom (Three Rags for String Cy Twombly, among others. Opens John Giorno is a poet, an activist, Quartet). May 21 at 5. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-875-5788.) May 21. and a legendary downtowner—it was New York Philharmonic: “Contact!” If not for Marcel Duchamp, who he who slept for five hours and twenty Thanks to the personal generosity of Alan Gil­ knows what Alexander Calder might minutes so Andy Warhol could make bert, Esa­Pekka Salonen, and others, the orches­ tra’s new­music series has lived to see another year, have called the painted metal-and- his 1963 movie “Sleep.” The New York with Salonen serving as adviser. The last concert of wire pieces he began making in Paris, native turns eighty on June 21, and, to the season, at National Sawdust, uses the late Jacob in the early nineteen-thirties, which mark the occasion, his partner, the Druckman’s chamber masterwork “Come Round” as an anchor for a program highlighting new and recent he thought of as performing sculp- artist Ugo Rondinone, celebrates with works by three gifted young modernists, Sam Pluta, tures? On a visit to Calder’s studio, “I ♥ John Giorno,” an exhibition in Eric Wubbels, and David Fulmer (“Sky’s Acetylene”). Duchamp coined the noun “mobile,” thirteen spaces around the city, from Jeffrey Milarsky conducts the Philharmonic musicians in the Wubbels piece, with Pluta sitting in on electron­ and the rest is art history. In “Calder: Hunter College to the High Line. —Andrea K. Scott ics. May 22 at 7:30. (80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. nyphil.org.) Hypermobility,” the Whitney allows GRITTI LORENZO BY ILLUSTRATION

14 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

1 A RT MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES vated my hysteria with terror and delight.” ham—but their kind of success eluded her. The Lawler does that, too, with disciplined wit and artist spent her adulthood in and out of men- Metropolitan Museum hopeless integrity. Through July 30. tal hospitals, eventually taking her own life, at “Irving Penn: Centennial” the age of forty-five. This fascinating, welcome The American photographer, whose twin tal- Jewish Museum survey aims to rescue her from the footnotes ents for dynamic portraiture and spartan still- “Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry” of the avant-garde. Through June 24. (Blum, 20 lifes dovetail beautifully in his fashion work, is It’s a good time to take Stettheimer seriously. W. 57th St. 212-244-6055.) perhaps best known for his six decades of con- The occasion is a retrospective of the New 1 tributions to Vogue. Penn, who died in 2009, York artist, poet, designer, and Jazz Age sa- shot a hundred and sixty-five covers for the loniste. The impetus is an itch to rethink old GALLERIES—CHELSEA magazine, including the very famous image, orders of merit in art history. It’s not that from 1950, of Jean Patchett in a wide-brimmed Stettheimer, who died in 1944, at the age of Alex Katz hat with a net veil. In the high-contrast, boldly seventy-three, needs rediscovering. She is se- As a student at Cooper Union, in 1946, Katz geometric shot, the model’s hands-on-hips curely esteemed—or adored, more like it—for was struggling in drawing class, so he started stance and sidelong glance lend her a mischie- her ebulliently faux-naïve paintings of party sketching people wherever he went. The pocket- vous and distinctly modern character. This scenes and of her famous friends, and for her size results, exhibited here together for the first extensive retrospective shows all aspects of four satirical allegories of Manhattan, which time, are an illuminating example of the contest Penn’s keen approach to his medium. A suite she called “Cathedrals”: symbol-packed phan- between an aspiring artist’s attempt to capture of portraits, from 1947-48, demonstrates his tasmagorias of Fifth Avenue, Broadway, Wall every detail of what he’s seeing and the confi- reputation-establishing trick of cornering his Street, and Art, in the collection of the Met- dent ease with which, as a mature painter, Katz subjects—a brooding Capote, a commanding ropolitan Museum. She painted in blazing pri- came to encapsulate faces and gestures. In one Schiaparelli, an impassive Joe Louis—with the mary colors, plus white and some accenting drawing, a pair of women and a pair of men sit use of angled stage flats. While the photogra- black, with the odd insinuating purple. Even kibbitzing on benches in Union Square; Katz pher was, without fail, technically virtuosic, her blues smolder. Greens are less frequent; captures all four physiognomies and expres- he was not conceptually impeccable. The ha- zealously urbane, Stettheimer wasn’t much sions—from a querulous, sharp-nosed woman to giographic wall text touts his series of female for nature, except, surreally, for the glories a sympathetic, shovel-chinned man—with vig- nudes, from 1949-50, as images shot “without of the outsized cut flowers that barge in on ilant specificity. Through June 30. (Taylor 16×34, a lens of fashion or prudery,” but the cropped her indoor scenes. She painted grass yellow. 515 W. 19th St. 212-256-1669.) compositions of white torsos are, in fact, par- She seemed an eccentric outlier to American 1 agons of sanitized formalism. And even the modernism, and appreciations of her often run wall text finds it necessary to note, regarding to the camp—it was likely in that spirit that GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN Penn’s studio portraits of Africans and Pacific Andy Warhol called her his favorite artist. But Islanders, from 1967-71, that their setup “recalls what happens if, clearing our minds and look- Iván Argote colonialist traditions.” Penn was at his best ing afresh, we recast the leading men she pic- The Parisian gallery stages a soft opening of with fashion’s striking sculptural volumes—a tured, notably Marcel Duchamp, in support- its lavish new building on Orchard Street— Balenciaga sleeve or Issey Miyake staircase ing roles? What’s the drama when Stettheimer the full renovation, which will include multi- pleats—and the personalities of the people who stars? Though Sept. 24. ple exhibition spaces and a bookstore, should brought them to life. Through July 30. 1 be complete by November—with a commen- surately ambitious solo show by the young Museum of Modern Art GALLERIES—UPTOWN Bogotá-born, Paris-based artist, who invokes “Louise Lawler: Receptions” themes of history, memory, and dislocation. In her best-known photographs, Lawler has Wilhelm Sasnal Works on view include intricately mounted, pictured works of art as they appear in muse- The gallery inaugurates its new headquarters multilayered text pieces made from cut paper, ums, galleries, auction houses, storage spaces, with a show that includes politically pointed cashmere, and ephemera; cast-concrete forms and collectors’ homes. A Miró co-stars with its paintings by the Polish artist—a canny choice, that suggest fragments of hole-punched paper; own reflection in the glossy surface of a mu- given that the five-story town house is just a and a series of short videos about young peo- seum bench. The floral pattern on a Limoges stone’s throw from Trump Tower. But the al- ple born the same day that the Berlin Wall fell. soup tureen vies with a Pollock drip painting ways pensive Sasnal complicates simplistic But the most striking piece here is the simplest, on a wall above it. Johns’s “White Flag” har- readings. Paintings of Angela Merkel, Hil- so ridiculous it’s impossible to resist: an eight- monizes with a monogrammed bedspread. lary Clinton, and Marine Le Pen are offset by and-a-half-foot-long aluminum sweet potato, An auction label next to a round gold War- scenes both bucolic (birds silhouetted against clad in gold leaf. Through June 11. (Galerie Per- hol “Marilyn” estimates the work’s value, in a cloudy sky) and sinister (protesters holding rotin, 130 Orchard St. 212-812-2902.) 1988, at between three hundred thousand and a sign that reads “Choke on Your Silver Spoon four hundred thousand dollars. Lovers of art You Fucking Nazi”). Particularly striking is Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia don’t often reflect on the interests of wealth a stark black-and-white trio of former U.N. After National Guardsmen shot and killed four and power that enable our adventures. But if Secretaries-General seen in extreme closeup: Kent State students protesting the Vietnam War, that consciousness is forced on us we may be Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, and Kurt Wald- in 1970, a few of their despairing classmates formed frozen mid-toggle between looking and see- heim. Through May 20. (Kern, 16 E. 55th St. the conceptual art-punk band Devo, as a vehicle ing. The effect is rather sadistic, but also per- 212-367-9663.) for their dystopian theory of “de-volution.” The haps masochistic. Lawler couldn’t mock aes- group, for which Mothersbaugh sings and plays thetic sensitivity if she didn’t share it. Having Sonja Sekula keyboards, is his most famous project, and its landed herself in a war zone between creating This career-spanning show of small works by singular aesthetic—a combination of sci-fi kitsch art and objectifying it, and between belonging the little-known Swiss-born modernist con- humor and biting social satire—characterizes his to the art world and resenting it, Lawler capers tains nothing so dull as a series. Each bright art works as well. In this dense retrospective, some in the crossfire. Her retrospective comes at a drawing or painting is a world of its own, in- thirty thousand postcard-size drawings, ranging moment when an onslaught of illiberal forces vented from scratch. In the nineteen-forties, from the cartoonish to the splatter-painted, are in the big world dwarfs intellectual wrangles Sekula experimented, in her meticulous fash- presented in plastic sleeves as a browsable, de- in the little one of art. Who, these days, can ion, with biomorphic and Cubist abstraction; cades-spanning visual diary. Some of the images— afford the patience for mixed feelings about later, her unfettered compositions included including one in which a chair seems caught in the the protocols of cultural institutions? Artists vibrant, washy areas and idiosyncratic glyphs. act of devouring a person—appear elsewhere as can. Some artists must. Art often serves us “7-Levels,” from 1958, features a sunburst at bright, fabricated rugs. From exhilarating pho- by exposing conflicts among our values, not its center and a doodle-like density of ink, tographs of the members of Devo performing in to propose solutions but to tap energies of overlaid with horizontal bands of pastel color. garbage bags to colorful animated videos and mu- truth, however partial, and beauty, however Photographs of Sekula portray her looking ra- tant “My Little Pony” sculptures, Mothersbaugh’s fugitive; and the service is greatest when our diant in André Breton’s New York apartment, resolute absurdism, and prolific experimentation, worlds feel most in crisis. Charles Baudelaire, posing with a bedridden Frida Kahlo, and sit- is uplifting. Through July 15. (Grey Art Gallery, 100 the Moses of modernity, wrote, “I have culti- ting between John Cage and Merce Cunning- Washington Sq. E. 212-998-6780.)

16 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

1 ROCK AND POP

Musicians and night-club proprietors lead NIGHT LIFE complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements.

(Sandy) Alex G Since 2010, the Philadelphia-based songwriter Alex Giannascoli, now known as (Sandy) Alex G, has recorded and released nearly a record a year of vibrant, whirring guitar pop. In August, the art- ist, primarily a solo act, surprised fans by playing on several cuts for Frank Ocean’s acclaimed re- lease “Blonde,” and on the accompanying visual album, “Endless.” On his latest record (his eighth), “Rocket,” Giannascoli pivots yet again, combining Americana flourishes, noise collages, and breath- less hardcore stylings. (Park Church Co-op, 129 Rus- sell St., Brooklyn. 718-389-0854. May 18.)

Sacred Bones Ten-Year Anniversary This modish label curates inspired, authentic music on the gloomier end of the spectrum, from para- noid synth-punk and noise to visionary experi- mental. Its roster of progressive artists will be on Lee Tesche, Franklin James Fischer, and Ryan Mahan shout out hymnal-punk screeds as Algiers. hand to celebrate this milestone birthday, as part of this summer’s Red Bull Music Academy festi- val. Guests include the Norwegian vocalist Jenny singer is an unlikely hero in his home Hval, the snarling duo Uniform, and two fascinat- Summer Preview town for reviving a roots-reggae sound ing collaborations: one between the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and the drone rockers Moon Duo, The city’s concert hounds are enjoying that originated, in the nineteen- the other between the acclaimed cult figure Gene- the opening weeks of Brooklyn Steel, seventies, with Peter Tosh, Horace sis Breyer P-Orridge and the electronic act Blanck the newest venue with the word Andy, and several legendary dub pro- Mass. (Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, 73 West St., Brooklyn. 718-310-3040. May 20.) “Brooklyn” in its name. The converted ducers. Whitney, Weyes Blood, and metalworking shop—now the bor- Moses Sumney (Aug. 11) take the Elza Soares ough’s biggest general-admission hall, Bandshell stage with sets that wouldn’t In 1959, the Brazilian singer Soares recorded “Se Acaso Você Chegasse” (“If by Chance You Ar- with a capacity of eighteen hundred— be out of place on your favorite college rived”), a swinging samba hit that lifted her out of retains its industrial look, complete radio station. Across the river, Gover- the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. At twenty-two, she was with exhaust fans, gantry cranes, and nors Ball ( June 2-4) will feature already a widow who had lost one of her three chil- dren to malnutrition. Since then, Soares’s voice—a bolt-coated sheet metal; a lone disco Chance the Rapper, Lorde, Phoenix, growl that has echoes of jazzy scat—has changed her ball hangs over the bar. Bookers have Tool, and Childish Gambino, and the fortunes, if not her luck. (She later lost another hus- programmed the space well this sum- nascent Panorama Festival ( June 28- band, this one an abusive soccer star, and another 30), now in its second year, plants its child.) The title of her most recent album, “A Mul- mer, inviting buzzy new bands and her do Fim do Mundo” (“The Woman at the End discerning legacy acts out to East Wil- flag on Randall’s Island, with perfor- of the World”), suggests that she has little to lose liamsburg. Highlights include the re- mances from Frank Ocean, Solange, as she nears eighty, and the music is rife with am- bitious guitar distortion, a poetically raucous trib- united alt-rockers Ween ( June 6-7), Nine Inch Nails, and A Tribe Called ute to São Paulo’s rock avant-garde. (Town Hall, 123 who were genre-blending and offend- Quest. Pro tip: walk there across the W. 43rd St. 212-840-2824. May 19.) ing when most of today’s ravers were R.F.K. Bridge, at 125th Street, and take 1 the shuttle bus back to the mainland. tots, and the Venezuelan dance alchemist JAZZ AND STANDARDS Arca (July 6), whose electronic sludge The biggest ticket of the summer will bounce well off the venue’s black may be for Kendrick Lamar ( July 20 and Jane Ira Bloom Trio July 23), who follows up a charged Bloom has concentrated on the soprano saxophone for walls. There are still jams to catch at decades, judiciously using its high-pitched sonority in long-standing haunts: Baby’s All Right Coachella set with two nights at Bar- the service of her own well-crafted modernist compo- hosts Algiers ( July 22), from the far-off clays Center. He tours in support of sitions. Her gifted trio mates—the drummer Bobby “DAMN.,” released in April, which Previte and the bassist Mark Helias—offer both jos- tropic of Atlanta. The band has been tling interaction and shrewd use of space. (Corne- honing a gripping sound that gathers earned the year’s best first-week album lia Street Café, 29 Cornelia St. 212-989-9319. May 21.) disparate Southern modes—Americana sales and has fans still picking it apart. Lamar brings Travis Scott along for the Lea Salonga harmonies, gospel choirs, chain-gang The first Broadway revival of the 1989 musical chants—into rousing protest punk. run; the pair’s recent collaboration, “Miss Saigon” is playing just a few blocks away If you prefer a patch of grass to the “Goosebumps,” is a sleeper hit as tender from this newish bastion of cabaret. Although Sa- as it is raging—it strikes the most per- longa is indelibly associated with the role of the pit, festival season is in full bloom. Cel- doomed Kim, which she introduced in the orig- ebrate Brooklyn!, the free annual series, fect balance of pop precision and mind- inal London and New York productions, she has brings Chronixx ( July 8), from Spanish less fun on the airwaves right now, and also scored points with a new generation of Dis- ney fanatics, having provided the vocals for Jas- Town, Jamaica, to the Prospect Park in arenas this season. —Matthew Trammell mine, in “Aladdin,” and for Fa Mulan, in “Mulan.”

Bandshell; at just twenty-four, the (54 Below, 254 W. 54th St. 646-476-3551. May 15-22.) GRITTI LORENZO BY ILLUSTRATION

18 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

MOVIES

David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” fuses a low-budget Halloween trope with Texas history and folklore.

(Aug. 11), by Sabaah Folayan and Summer Preview Damon Davis, tells the story of the Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play protests that followed the killing of a couple separated by a tragic accident Michael Brown by a police officer, in in David Lowery’s romantic fantasy “A Ferguson, Missouri, from the perspec- Ghost Story” (opening July 7). It blends tive of the town’s residents. the moody Western melodrama of Gal Gadot stars in “Wonder Lowery’s 2013 film, “Ain’t Them Bodies Woman” ( June 2), as the superheroine Saints” (also starring Mara and Affleck) who leaves a remote island to attempt and the sensuous fantasy of his 2016 to put an end to the First World War. remake of “Pete’s Dragon.” The new Patty Jenkins directed; Chris Pine and movie is a boldly imaginative tale set in Connie Nielsen co-star. In Trey Edward a rustic Texas town where ghosts come Shults’s postapocalyptic horror thriller, to life in a traditional form: as gliding “It Comes at Night” ( June 9), a family white sheets with eyeholes. The comedy hides in a remote cabin to avoid a highly inherent in the setup is balanced by the contagious disease. Joel Edgerton, Car- bereaved couple’s anguish and longing; men Ejogo, Christopher Abbott, and Lowery’s spare, ardent images take a Riley Keough star. The dystopian drama practical look at both sides of the “The Bad Batch” ( June 23), directed by boundary between life and death, be- Ana Lily Amirpour, stars Suki Water- tween the present day and the eternal. house as a woman who is forced to live Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” in a compound of outcasts that’s threat- ( June 23) is a remake of Don Siegel’s ened by cannibals; Jason Momoa, 1971 Civil War drama, about a wounded Giovanni Ribisi, and Keanu Reeves Union soldier who is given shelter in a co-star. In “Lemon” (Aug. 18), Janicza Confederate girls’ school and arouses Bravo tells the story of a forty-year-old the repressed sexual energy of students director who’s at a crossroads in love and teachers alike. Kirsten Dunst, Ni- and in art. Brett Gelman, Bravo’s hus- cole Kidman, and Elle Fanning play band, co-wrote the script with her and residents of the school; Colin Farrell also stars; Judy Greer and Michael Cera plays the soldier. “Detroit” (Aug. 4), co-star. Steven Soderbergh’s “Logan directed by Kathryn Bigelow, is a his- Lucky” (Aug. 18) is a comedic caper torical drama about a police raid, during about three siblings (Channing Tatum, that city’s 1967 riots, in which three Adam Driver, and Riley Keough) who black men were killed. John Boyega, plan a robbery that will take place Anthony Mackie, and Samira Wiley during a Nascar race.

star. The documentary “Whose Streets?” —Richard Brody GRITTI LORENZO BY ILLUSTRATION

20 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 1 MOVIES NOW PLAYING ton (John Wayne) with his rifle held erect—the di- fore, is James Gunn, but, as the plot grinds onward, rector Howard Hawks makes a familiar plot resound with its compound of the flimsy and the over-spec- Bless Their Little Hearts strangely with new sexual overtones. Reworking his tacular, and as the finale grinds on forever, you sense Billy Woodberry’s only dramatic feature to date, from own 1959 classic, “Rio Bravo,” in which a motley crew that the genial balance of the first film has been mis- 1983, looks deeply into the life of one family in Watts of lawmen holds a prisoner in the face of an outlaw laid. When the biggest laughs arise from a small piece and plots its crisis in three dimensions: race, money, siege, Hawks starts the story on a tragic footing. of computer-generated wood, where does a franchise and gender. Charlie Banks (Nate Hardman), first seen Cole unintentionally kills a boy, whose sister (Mi- go next?—A.L. (5/15/17) (In wide release.) in an employment office, has been jobless for a de- chele Carey) then takes bloody revenge, shunting the cade and does day labor when he can get it. His wife, action toward medical melodrama. As Hawks’s he- Icaros: A Vision Andais (Kaycee Moore), is the family’s main support, roes endure debilitating physical and moral wounds The hallucinatory power of ayahuasca and the in- but when it’s time to give their three lively and help- and display their neuroses along with their firearms, cantatory lure of rituals fuse with existential dread ful young children their allowance, she slips the coins the jovial grandeur of the original gives way to antic in this darkly hypnotic drama. Angelina (Ana Ce- to Charlie, for him to dole out as the nominal head of irony. The aging characters start tall and proud but cilia Stieglitz), a young American woman, travels the household. Working with a script and cinematog- end up battered wrecks—Hawks shows how to be as to a rustic compound in the Peruvian Amazon to raphy by Charles Burnett, Woodberry crafts a passion- funny as a crutch—and the romantic hero turns out to take the drug under the care of shamans. She’s af- ately pensive realism—nearly every scene of action is be a poetry-spouting young dandy (James Caan) on flicted with cancer, and her hope for a cure seems matched by a long one in which one character or an- his own vengeful mission, who scatters his buckshot secondary to her effort to face the end. Meanwhile, other, in observant repose, looks back and sees their widely.—R.B. (Museum of the Moving Image; May 20.) she befriends a young shaman (Arturo Izquierdo), self reflected in society’s mirror. Bruised by strug- whose vision is failing as his spiritual practice in- gle, Charlie seeks comfort with a former girlfriend; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 trudes on his private life. Arturo’s mother (Lurdes Andais has it out with him in a terrifying scene of The return of the ragtag outfit that made such an Valles), an expert in plants and potions, muses that, domestic apocalypse, a single claustrophobic ten- unexpected impression in 2014—here was a Marvel with the drug, “you can pass from dreams to real- minute take in which a lifetime of frustration bursts movie that presumed, if only in fits and starts, to spear ity without leaving the dream”—which holds true forth.—Richard Brody (IFC Center.) its own pretensions. The crew in the sequel is pretty for the movie itself. The directors, Leonor Cara- much unchanged: Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who is ballo and Matteo Norzi, film the outpost and its Chuck way too goofy to deserve his title of Star-Lord; the wild surroundings with an ecstatic stillness. They Philippe Falardeau’s new film is centered on the mint-green Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and her semi-ro- capture the induced hallucinations with a visual boxing ring, although only a fraction of it is spent botic sister (Karen Gillan); the enormous Drax (Dave imagination of rare specificity and fury, in which in combat. The hero is Chuck Wepner (Liev Schrei- Bautista), a stranger to the social graces; a thieving pop-culture memories and exotic natural splendors ber), who almost went the distance with Muham- and sadistic critter named Rocket (voiced by Bradley converge with personal troubles and metaphysical mad Ali, in 1975, and never allowed anyone to for- Cooper), and Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), for- transformations.—R.B. (In limited release.) get it. We join him first in the buildup to the fight, merly a tree. New to the scene is Ego (Kurt Russell), as he delivers liquor around Bayonne, New Jersey, whose name, it must be said, is a ready-made spoiler; La Notte and makes life tough for his wife, Phyliss (Elisabeth he likes to flaunt his own planet in the way that other In Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 drama, the Moss), and then in the long and painful aftermath, guys show off their sports cars. The director, as be- romantic conflicts of an intellectual couple when he trades on his spasm of fame, gets floored by drugs, and winds up sparring with a bear. The more intimate the movie grows, the more awkward it can be to watch—just look at Phyliss, joining her stray- ing husband in a diner, where he’s making nice to his latest pickup, or at Sylvester Stallone (Morgan Spector), offering Chuck a chance to be in “Rocky 2” and seeing him screw up. The script leans too heavily on voice-over, but there’s no faulting the period texture and the rough-edged commitment of the performers; Schreiber nails both the bluster and the pathos of the hapless hulk.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 5/15/17.) (In limited release.)

The Dinner The first—though not the most unlikely—thing that Oren Moverman’s new film asks us to believe is that Richard Gere, age sixty-seven, and Steve Coogan, age fifty-one, could be brothers. Coogan plays Paul Lohman, a foul-tempered history teacher, and Gere plays Stan, a smooth-tongued congressman on the brink of a crucial vote. Paul and his wife, Katelyn (Rebecca Hall), on whom the smoothness clearly grates, meet Stan and his wife, Claire (Laura Lin- ney), for supper in the kind of upmarket restaurant where an array of waiters processes to the table with each course. The meal is interrupted by calls on the politician’s time, angry walkouts, memories of an earlier trip to Gettysburg, resurgent tensions be- tween the two couples, and flashbacks to an outrage that involved their sons—the nominal (if implau- sible) reason for this pleasant occasion. The ran- cor is relentless, and the movie’s moralizing, unlike the desserts, feels doughy and overcooked; despite the skill of the cast, you spend much of the film try- ing to decide which of its characters most deserves to choke on an appetizer.—A.L. (In limited release.)

El Dorado From the first scene of this 1967 Western—in which Sheriff J. P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum) silently pen- etrates the hotel room of the hired gun Cole Thorn-

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 21 MOVIES

in bourgeois Milan come to life in a visually Snatched dazzling yet psychologically dislocating pag- In this leaden comedy, Emily (Amy Schumer), eant of clashing architectural styles. The Pon- a retail clerk with delusions of glamour, plans tanos—Giovanni (Marcello Matroianni) and an exotic vacation in Ecuador with her rocker Lidia (Jeanne Moreau)—are in trouble from boyfriend. When he dumps her, she coaxes the start. He’s an esteemed writer, she’s an ed- her mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn), who’s di- ucated and frustrated housewife, and a hospi- vorced and solitary, to join her on the trip. Hap- tal visit to their terminally ill friend Tommaso pily enticed by a romance-novel-type hunk at (Bernhard Wicki) lays bare the couple’s fault the hotel bar, Emily persuades Linda to join lines. When Lidia, fleeing Giovanni, wanders them on a back-road adventure that results in through various neighborhoods, Antonioni sub- a kidnapping by local bandits. Spirited away to merges her in exotically inventive angles that Colombia and left to their own devices, the transform the city into impenetrably alluring women try to escape, leading to a series of trib- abstractions. The erotic roundelay that fol- ulations that are meant to spark situation humor. lows, at a wild party thrown by a philosoph- But the director, Jonathan Levine, has no feel for ically inclined industrialist (Vincenzo Cor- comedy. Schumer fires off some asides of sharp bella), plays out as if following the blueprints obliviousness, but the humor, which may have of his villa’s layout and the scheme of its décor. seemed to fly in a script conference, sinks with- Antonioni captures vast currents of shifting out a trace. Only one mercurial stunt, involving power—whether sexual or cultural—in chilling two retired American operatives (Wanda Sykes and resonant details. The Pontanos’ climactic and Joan Cusack), has any glint of wit. With confrontation on a golf course turns that wry Ike Barinholtz, as Emily’s agoraphobic brother, setting into a primeval forest of their conflict- Jeffrey, and Bashir Salahuddin, as the State ing desires. In Italian.—R.B. (Film Society of Department officer whom he badgers into ac- Lincoln Center; May 20.) tion.—R.B. (In wide release.)

ABOVE & BEYOND

Dance Parade and Festival it was bought by the current owner for a pit- If you find yourself swarmed by undulating tance; the house is hoping it will attain a rec- bodies on a downtown stroll this Saturday, ord price for the artist. An additional contem- know that they are moving with purpose. This porary-art sale follows on May 19; sessions on annual street festival, now in its eleventh year, May 23-24 are devoted to academic European includes more than eighty forms of dance, art and American art. (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212- from Armenian folk to Brazilian zouk, creat- 606-7000.) • Christie’s showcase of postwar ing a spectacle of sheer variety that is rooted, and contemporary trophies (May 17) is espe- the organizers suggest, in equality, emotional cially notable for a triptych by Francis Bacon, and physical health, and empowerment. Since “Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer,” 2007, in a cheeky sendup of New York’s anti- once owned by the writer Roald Dahl. The tri- quated cabaret laws, the organizers have en- partite portrait was made not long after the listed their own New York Dance Police, who two men met at a Soho pub—Bacon would go issue tickets—in the form of summonses to free on to render Dyer’s image countless times— and discounted dance classes—to people along and has never before gone to auction. Then, the route whom they deem too stiff. (Parade after a second day of contemporary-art sales begins at Broadway and 21st St. and continues to (May 18), the house moves on to sales of Af- Tompkins Square Park at St. Marks and Ave. A. rican and Oceanic art (May 19) and of Amer- May 20 at 1 P.M.) ican and nineteenth-century academic Euro- 1 pean art (May 23). (20 Rockefeller Plaza, at 49th St. 212-636-2000.) • Peter Doig’s “Rosedale,” a AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES haunting landscape reminiscent of early Klimt, leads the pack at Phillips’s contemporary-art The showdown of big-ticket art auctions con- evening auction on May 18, part of a sale that tinues for a second week. Sotheby’s presents also includes one of Damien Hirst’s compo- contemporary art on the evening of May 18, sitions with pills, “The Void.” (450 Park Ave. preceded by a sale of Picasso ceramics and 212-940-1200.) • Bonhams, too, has scored a drawings from the collection of his grand- high-value consignment for its May 17 auction daughter Marina, the daughter of Paulo, Pi- of Impressionist and modern art: one of Ma- casso’s son by the dancer Olga Khokhlova. The tisse’s much loved cutouts, bearing the whim- evening sale is led by a large Basquiat can- sical title “Arbre de Neige.” (580 Madison Ave.

vas (“Untitled, 1982”) last seen in 1984, when 212-644-9001.) AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

22 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 F§D & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO grad-ese—“dope,” “dank,” “sick,” and, BA R TA B Pith inscrutably, “bread,” are favored adjectives. In a back garden, where Reider grows Location will be provided upon purchase herbs, ten diners snacked on fiddlehead of tickets, at www.pith.space. ferns (“mad popular for some reason”) There are plenty of weird ways to get fa- grilled with white miso, and a tasty mous these days, and seemingly countless unripe- strawberry-and-porcini-spiked methods for capitalizing on that fame— beef tartare. “This is the perfect setup for consider Jiff the Pomeranian, who, one a murder- mystery-dinner-type thing,” Bar Moga assumes, never dreamed as a puppy in one patron whispered. There was some- 128 W. Houston St. (929-399-5853) Illinois that his cuteness would eventually thing potentially terrifying about forced This new cocktail bar has made it a priority to earn him tens of thousands of dollars per small talk with strangers and a lack of celebrate women. The menu features female-pro- sponsored Instagram post. Jonah Reider health-department oversight. But wines duced wines from around the world and cocktails devised by Becky McFalls-Schwartz and Natasha was a senior at Columbia University, host- selected by a precocious sommelier at Blue Torres, veterans of the New York mixology scene, ing dorm-cooked dinners for friends, Hill at Stone Barns helped things along. who were trained by the late Sasha Petraske, at when celebrity came knocking, in 2015. “I don’t know shit about wine,” Reider Milk & Honey. On a recent Sunday afternoon, cool breezes and early-spring light poured in through The school newspaper ran a review of the said, as he poured a delicious natural or- Moga’s large casement windows, which are left “restaurant,” called Pith, in Hogan Hall, ange one from the Czech Republic. open, weather permitting. (Wild nights find pa- suite 4-B, where Reider made creative use With each dish of the eight-course trons crawling in and out of them.) Japanese surf guitar filtered through the moody space, which is of a toaster oven and offered fare that procession, it became clearer that every- dim in the back, even during the day. On the walls included lamb chops and mole popcorn. thing would be “all Gucci,” as he’d put it. are prints of revelling Japanese women from the Overnight, Pith became one of the “hot- Particularly Gucci: a pillowy yet rich nineteen-twenties, who were called “moga” (short for “modern girls”), marked by their independent, test” reservations in town, according to spring-onion soubise with caviar; bruléed Western style. Today, they serve as the bar’s spirit the New York Post and the Washington squash with lemon balm (Reider: “Tastes guides. No doubt one would have gladly cozied up Post. Luckily Reider, like Team Jiffpom just like Froot Loops!”); buttery home- to a refreshing, tropical Sleepwalk (lemongrass shochu, yuzu, sake, coconut, ginger, lime) or an before him, knew how to spin a story, and, made pasta with morels and pea shoots; and ethereally smooth Devil’s Pocket Watch (Scotch, what’s more, he knew how to cook. a flawlessly seared Seattle wagyu sirloin. sweet-potato shochu, apricot liqueur, pista- In April, Pith was reincarnated as a After some huckleberry sorbet dusted chio-cranberry maple syrup). Hospitality precedes politics—“We’re mixing drinks, not saving lives,” supper series, three nights a week, in a ritzy with fennel pollen, most of the guests Torres said—but a portion of sales from the bar’s town house near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. departed, and Reider and the return cus- signature cocktail, the Moga, is donated to the The other evening, a patron who’d dined tomer contemplated all that had changed. Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the A.C.L.U. The drink is very spirituous, comprising in the dorm remarked on the aesthetic No more exams; far more trips to Aus- Japanese whiskey, rum, and aged plum liquor—a step up, from grubby linoleum and napkins tralia bankrolled by KitchenAid. One subtle jab at the cliché of the “weaker sex.” “We by Bounty to Hans Wegner chairs and a thing remained the same: Reider still had wanted the Moga to be a strong cocktail, a serious drink,” Torres said. “We were also playing with the wood-burning pizza oven. “Yeah, I’m chill- to do all the dishes. (Tasting menu, $95.) idea of creating a pink strawberry drink and calling

PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM MEBANE FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR WILLIAM MEBANE BY PHOTOGRAPH ing,” Reider said. He still speaks under- —Emma Allen it the Moba—for ‘modern boy.’ ”—Wei Tchou

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 23

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT director, on the other hand, represents about her. This was patently absurd; THE SILENT MAJORITY not only an abuse of language but an Trump had spent the fall quoting and abuse of power. In 1976, Congress, rec- embracing Comey’s criticisms. Later in n August 7, 1974, a trio of Repub- ognizing the political sensitivity of the the week, Trump contradicted his sub- Olican politicians made a sombre F.B.I. post, set the director’s term at ten ordinates’ explanation, telling Lester journey from Capitol Hill to the White years. This act was partly intended to Holt, of NBC, that he had fired Comey House. Senators Barry Goldwater and preclude lengthy tenures like J. Edgar because he was “a showboat” and “a Hugh Scott and Representative John Hoover’s forty-seven-year reign, but also grandstander” (coming from Trump, Rhodes had dedicated their profes- to provide the director with a measure that sounded more like a projection than sional lives to the conservative move- of independence from the incumbent like a slight) and because Comey’s lead- ment and to the electoral fortunes of Administration. The law did allow the ership had left the F.B.I. “in turmoil,” the Republican Party. But, on this oc- President to remove the director, but the which it is not. casion, they chose to put the interests prevailing norm called for this power to In fact, during the interview with Holt, of their country ahead of the partisan be used sparingly. Before Comey, only Trump all but acknowledged that he had concerns of the G.O.P. They had come one director had been fired, in 1993, when fired Comey because the director had to level with Richard Nixon, their President Clinton dismissed William made sure that the Bureau continued fellow-Republican and the President Sessions for ethical lapses—a decision to investigate the ties between Trump’s of the United States. The three men that generated little dissent. campaign and the efforts by the Russian told Nixon that the wounds of Wa- On Tuesday night, when the news government and its allies to hand tergate had finally cut too deep. His of the firing broke, Administration offi- the election to him. This is exactly the party was abandoning him. It was time cials announced that the President had kind of investigation that requires the for the President to go. He announced acted, at least in part, because Comey, F.B.I. director to have independence; his resignation the next day. in the course of clearing Hillary Clin- Trump’s short-circuiting of the probe, The great question in politics today ton in last year’s e-mail controversy, had with Comey’s dismissal, is a grave abuse is when, or whether, any Republican will made excessively harsh public comments of Presidential power. The interference undertake a similar trip to the White in an F.B.I. investigation replicates, with House of Donald Trump. Throughout chilling precision, another part of the a hundred-plus days, Trump has proved Watergate story. On June 23, 1972, six himself temperamentally and intellec- days after individuals associated with tually unfit for the Presidency. Follow- Nixon’s campaign broke into the Dem- ing the lamentable campaign of 2016, ocratic National Committee headquar- people surely had modest expectations ters, the President and his aide H. R. for the manner in which Trump would Haldeman discussed a plan to stop an conduct himself in office, but his bel- F.B.I. investigation into the matter. As ligerence and his mendacity have been captured on a White House tape, Nixon astonishing even by his standards. Still, told Haldeman that C.I.A. officials an undignified Twitter feed, albeit one “should call the F.B.I. in and say that that originates in the Oval Office, is we wish for the country, don’t go any just a national embarrassment, not a further into this case—period!” Yet constitutional crisis. there is one important difference be-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS The firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. tween Nixon’s and Trump’s obstruction

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 27 of the F.B.I. Nixon had the decency, or Lowell Weicker have passed from the gency. His default response to conflict has at least the deviousness, to do it in se- Washington scene; it’s that the obses- always been to lash out, which can be en- cret. Trump, with characteristic brazen- sive partisanship of current leaders like tertaining on a reality-television show and ness, is conducting his coverup in full Senator Mitch McConnell and Repre- effective in a political debate. But, as the view of the public. sentative Paul Ryan has stunted the con- President of the United States, who com- In 1974, the release of the June 23rd science of their entire party. It’s a cer- mands a nuclear-armed military, Trump tape, which became known as the smok- tainty that history will look unkindly is playing for incalculably higher stakes. ing gun, was the final goad to Goldwa- upon the moral blindness of contem- Democrats, despite their characteristic ter and the other Republicans to cease porary Republicans. caution and fecklessness, have begun to their defense of Nixon and to join calls Only the voters, in 2018 and beyond, speak candidly about Trump, but their for his ouster. Trump seems almost to be will have a chance to send the kind of status as the minority party renders them courting comparisons with Watergate, message that today’s cynical G.O.P. will nearly irrelevant to Trump’s fate. The as when, last Friday, he tweeted the Nix- understand. In the meantime, the Trump Republicans alone have the power to onian threat that Comey “better hope Presidency will stagger from one crisis to impose limits on this Presidency or to that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversa- the next. So far, to the good fortune of end it altogether. To date, however, no tions.” Trump is not offering explana- the nation—and, even, the world—the one in the leadership, or even in the tions; he’s making confessions. The com- President has had to confront disasters rank and file, has displayed the courage parison breaks down, however, in that only of his own making, like firing Comey to live up to the example set by the hon- the Republican response to Trump’s law- and promulgating executive orders that orable Republicans of the past. Daily, lessness has ranged from full-throated discriminate against religious and ethnic and conspicuously, Trump proves the support to muted statements of concern minorities. But, in these perilous and un- danger of his continued service. His par- to, mostly, silence. It is not just that mod- predictable times, it’s worth pausing to ty’s stalwarts won’t be able to say that erate Republicans (and Watergate he- consider how Trump’s recklessness might they weren’t warned. roes) like Senators Howard Baker and manifest itself in a national-security emer- —Jeffrey Toobin

ON THE COUCH sional code of conduct forbids mem- to not contribute at this perilous time.” THE GOLDWATER RULE bers to publicly comment on the psyches The psychiatrist John Zinner took of living public figures whom they have the argument further, suggesting that, not personally examined. as doctors, who swear an oath to pro- The ban, known as “the Goldwater tect their patients, psychiatrists have an rule,” is the legacy of an embarrassing obligation to speak out about the men- episode from 1964. That year, Fact mag- ace posed by Trump’s mental health. azine published a petition signed by “It’s my view that Trump has a narcis- hen Donald Trump accused his more than a thousand psychiatrists, sistic personality disorder,” Zinner said Wpredecessor Barack Obama of which declared that Barry Goldwater, later. “Trump is deluded and compul- wiretapping him, James Comey, then who was then the Republican Presi- sive. He has no conscience.” He said the F.B.I. director, told colleagues that dential nominee, was “psychologically that psychiatrists have a constructive he considered Trump to be “outside unfit to be President.” Goldwater lost role to play in advising policymakers to the realm of normal,” and even “crazy.” the election, but he won a libel suit add checks on the President’s control Many Americans share this view, but against the magazine. The bad public- over nuclear weapons. “That supersedes the professionals who are best qual- ity seriously tarnished the reputation the Goldwater rule,” he said. “It’s an ex- ified to make such an assessment have of the profession. istential survival issue.” (There were been forced to remain mum. More than fifty years later, Trump some dissenters at the meeting. Dr. Mark “I’m struggling not to discuss He- appears to be testing the limits of the Komrad, who is on the staff at Johns Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” a psy- Goldwater rule. In March, the Wash- Hopkins Hospital and Sheppard Pratt chiatrist named Jerrold Post said last ington, D.C., branch of the A.P.A. con- Health System, worried that overturn- week, speaking on the phone from his vened a meeting of its members to de- ing the rule could be bad for the pro- office, in Bethesda, Maryland. Post, bate the rule. Post and several others fession. “We’re already seen as peddlers who is the director of the political-psy- argued that, given the President’s er- of a liberal world view,” he said. “If we chology program at George Washing- ratic behavior, the organization was make pronouncements about Donald ton University’s Elliott School of In- infringing on its members’ freedom of Trump, nothing is gained. You don’t ternational Affairs, and the founder of expression. Psychiatrists, they insisted, need a doctor to tell you that the guy the C.I.A.’s Center for the Analysis of have a responsibility to serve society at on the plane with a hacking cough Personality and Political Behavior, has large. “I think there’s a duty to warn,” is sick.”) made a career of political-personality Post said. “Serious questions have been Post is part of a push to have the profiling. However, he is also a distin- raised about the temperament and suit- A.P.A. form a commission to revisit guished life fellow of the American ability of He-Who-Must-Not-Be- the Goldwater rule. He’ll make the Psychiatric Association, whose profes- Named.” He added, “It seems unethical argument to a larger audience later

28 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 this month, at the association’s annual turned on, Post, who had been discuss- “I almost retired after that, but I had the meeting, in San Diego. Meanwhile, ing Saddam’s “malignant narcissism,” doggedness.” Working variously as a the President’s sudden firing of Comey gave a less than scholarly answer: “I bouncer, an enforcer, and a liquor sales- presented an almost irresistible case would run right out of the office!” man, Wepner trained part time till he study. 1—Jane Mayer got his shot against Muhammad Ali, in Post, when asked about the firing, 1975. “I was in such good shape for the chose his words carefully. He said he DEPT. OF ROLE MODELS Ali fight that I didn’t know whether I agreed with lay commentators that OUT-GUTTING wanted to fight him or fuck him. I hope I Trump appeared to be trying to sup- don’t embarrass you,” he said to Schrei- press the F.B.I.’s investigation into his ber, who gave a cosmopolitan shrug. campaign’s ties to Russia, revealing a “The way I fought—let’s face it, it pattern—a quickness to get rid of those wasn’t the best,” Wepner went on. “When who disagreed with or threatened him. I got drinking, I’d pound the bar and say, The result, Post said, would be “a sy- ‘I can lick any man in the world!’ But I cophantic leadership circle afraid to huck Wepner placed his giant hand won by out-gutting guys, out-hearting question him.” He added that the man- Con Liev Schreiber’s spine and felt a them. Also, I fought dirty. I’d throw kid- ner of the firing, which Comey learned tender spot. “You gotta be careful lifting ney shots, stick a thumb in the guy’s eye, about from TV reports, displayed “a weights,” he said. Wincing, the actor said, head-butt him, spin him sideways, and failure of judgment in crisis”; it was “I thought I had to get big to play you!” hit him under the cup”—he mimed a likely to turn Comey into “a danger- “Nah,” Wepner said, “you’re plenty big.” wicked uppercut, and Schreiber instinc- ous and resentful witness.” Post said It was a few hours before the film tively covered his groin. “I’m a lucky guy,” that it reminded him of other leaders “Chuck” was to première at the Tribeca Wepner added, “because I never got he had studied, including Vladimir Film Festival, and the men were having knocked out and I still got a little left Putin, “a quintessential narcissist,” lunch nearby, at Little Park. Schreiber, upstairs. And you conveyed all that. Right whose “way of handling criticism is to who co-wrote the film, plays Wepner, now, you’re one of the top three or four eliminate—literally—the critics.” After the brawny, easily bloodied boxer from actors in the world!” the Comey episode, Post said, he wor- Bayonne, New Jersey, who inspired Syl- Schreiber laughed. “With the fighters, ried that “He-Who-Must-Not-Be- vester Stallone to write “Rocky.” The there’s always a ranking.” Named’s leadership is imploding.” actor, forty-nine, wore dungarees and a “But,” Wepner said, “I did want a movie What would Post ask Trump, if he work shirt; the fighter, seventy-eight, that would be children-friendly.” Schrei- had the opportunity to get the Presi- wore a blazer with a jaunty pocket square. ber looked startled. The film focusses on dent on his couch? Post cleared his Wepner earned his nickname, the Wepner’s womanizing and drug use, which throat and said, “I’m sorry, but I think Bayonne Bleeder, in 1969, when his fight led to his serving twenty-two months in I’d better not answer that.” against Sonny Liston rained blood on prison for dealing cocaine. And Wepner The question reminded him of the the spectators. Between bites of herbed seemed delighted by the scene where time, during a television interview, that scallops, the fighter said, “I could feel my his character jumps, “bare-assed, off a div- Dan Rather asked him what he would nose breaking, hear my cheekbone crack- ing board, holding a bottle of vodka, into do if he encountered Saddam Hussein. ing. The doctor looked at me and he a pool with three girls. How many girls Not realizing that the microphone was went”—Wepner made a retching sound. will come to the movie just to see Liev Schreiber’s naked ass? Liev Schreiber is a sexual beast!” “Oh, boy,” Schreiber said, pushing his Brussels sprouts aside. “Here we go! Sometimes I apologize to Chuck, be- cause I used his life to tell a cautionary tale of celebrity and narcissism: ‘Be care- ful of telling your story too much! Of getting lost in who people think you are!’ A prizefighter’s journey is an existential- ist ideogram for life, and the real fight, the real fifteen rounds, occurs in the heart, at home.” Wepner looked doubtful. He likes to hand out a business card that com- bines a portrait of him in his heyday— posing, fists up, wearing a Fu Man- chu mustache—with the words “Inspi- ration for Rocky Movies” and “Went 15 “Before this goes any further, I should let you know that I have parents.” Rounds with Muhammad Ali for World 1 Championship”; a photo of Ali on the O PIONEERS DEPT. pact” in one circle, “purposeful life” canvas after Wepner knocked him down; OFF THE MAT in the other, and, at their intersection, assorted boxing accomplishments with “generation Lululemon.” Stump folded their insignia; and, finally, the name of his hands under his chin and cocked his current employer, Allied Beverage his head. L.L.C. All the card lacks is Wepner’s “O.K., so, the bigger reveal,” Baim phone number or e­mail address. said. The next slide displayed the Lulu­ During pre­production, Schreiber lemon logo, which resembles Mary Tyler said, “it was a real angle into the char­ hat can a brand stand for these Moore’s flip hairdo, along with the words acter when I noticed that Chuck, who’s Wdays? Social justice is problem­ “personal impact, purposeful life,” and a dominant in so many ways, was al­ atic (see Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner ad), and slogan, “This is yoga.” ways deferring to Linda”—the fighter’s sex doesn’t sell the way it used to (for “It’s the idea of taking yoga off the third wife. the 2017 Pirelli calendar, the formerly mat,” Baim said, banging his hand on “I love her,” Wepner said simply. oiled­up models went makeup­free). the table, “and extending its definition.” “I wanted to get away from ‘Rocky,’ ” So last year, when Lululemon, the ath­ This, he added, “would obviously extend Schreiber said, “but there was this thing leisure pioneer, decided that it wanted your customer base, and tap into this we couldn’t get away from, and that to be known for something bigger than overarching, massive trend that the world was about love. Chuck does all these sumptuous yoga pants, Duke Stump, is seeing right now.” terrible things, but there’s something an executive vice­president at the com­ The screen showed a man diving, head pany, interviewed dozens of advertis­ first, from a tree swing into a lake. It ing and marketing agencies. He ended looked bad for the spine. up hiring Virtue, the in­house creative Stump smiled.“We need to be inclu­ agency of Vice Media. Vice, he said the sive,” he said. “This needs to be aspira­ other day, at the company’s offices in tional in a way that invites people on Venice, California, “made us feel un­ their own journey to consider what it comfortable in a really good way, and means to ‘be yoga.’ ” they do ‘real’ better than anybody.” The ad campaign that Virtue dreamed Stump, who has a headful of wavy up stars real people, young creative types hair and was wearing a breezy blue shirt and athletes who embody “principles of and a chunky turquoise ring, sat down yoga,” but who are not yogis. One is Paris with Spencer Baim, Virtue’s founder, in Moore­Williams, a British grime rapper a conference room named Tahrir. Baim, who goes by the name P Money. (Re­ who is British, and his Brooklyn­based cent hit: “Gunfingers.” Principle embod­ team had recently spent four days at ied: practice of breath.) Lululemon’s headquarters, in Vancou­ Stump said, “He’s also a vegan.” ver, for an “immersion” that included Baim clicked to the next slide: a photo Liev Schreiber and Chuck Wepner hours of yoga and meditation. “You of Shi (Atom) Lu, a punk drummer in should know that I only learned how China, wagging her head and scream­ about him that’s boyish, that’s lovable, to say ‘Namaste’ in the last few months, ing into a microphone. (Principle em­ that’s . . . innocent.” thanks to you,” Baim said. “And then bodied: practice of self­discovery.) Near the end, Wepner recalled, he lost you guys came to our office and we got “I wish I was going to this shoot,” two fights to Victor the Wrestling Bear. you fairly drunk.” Baim said. Fresh in his memory was the Brillo­like He cued up a slide show that he’d de­ “You and I both,” Stump said. fur, the beady eyes, the immense strength. signed for Stump to explain the new Lu­ Baim noted how many companies are Schreiber said, “Chuck and Linda come lulemon campaign to store employees. jumping on the “be the best version of to the set the day I’m fighting the bear, The logos of Coca­Cola, Nike, and Apple yourself ” bandwagon, “whether they have and Chuck tells me, ‘Liev, try and spin appeared on a screen, paired with de­ a right to say it or not.” He added, “Very the bear so you get clear of his paws. Oh, scriptions of what each stood for and few brands can say, ‘This is yoga.’ ” and don’t hit him in the nose—that’s a their respective slogans (Apple: “self­ex­ “The answer always lies within,” very sensitive spot.’ Finally, I say, ‘You pression, individuality, ‘Think different’ ”). Stump said, his voice grave. “We’re ac­ know I’m not really fighting the bear, “We’re not saying those brands aren’t tually giving yoga the biggest hug of its Chuck, right? You understand the insur­ great—obviously, they are,” Baim said. life.” He spread his arms wide. ance company would never let me in the (Stump used to be a vice­president at Baim: “You’re taking the word back.” ring with an actual bear?’ Chuck had the Nike.) “But they all represented a mo­ Stump: “Yeah!” most disappointed look I’ve ever seen. ment in time. Now you’ve got this de­ Baim: “You’re regaining control of He would have fought the bear that day.” sire for a personal journey—‘I want to that conversation, and you’re defining it “Nah,” Wepner said. “You can’t beat find myself, I want to be someone spe­ the way it should be defined.” the bear.” cial.’ That is really fucking hard.” After the meeting, Baim was plan­ —Tad Friend Next, a Venn diagram: “personal im­ ning to drop by a photo shoot that was

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 31 in progress on a nearby beach. “You’re But he needed help. In workshops, “Carol, we’re in the program!” Showal- perfectly dressed, man,” Stump said, he polled the actors about how they ter said, as they took their seats in Row E. smirking. Baim was wearing black jeans imagined Nora’s single life. Everyone After the show, they got dinner at and a white button-down shirt. assumed the worst: prostitution, debt- Joe Allen and discussed. “Tremendous!” “I went for a run this morning after ors’ prison. So Hnath went in the op- Showalter said. “I thought it was going drinking, like, five glasses of wine on posite direction, making her a success- to be ‘Helmer vs. Helmer.’ ” Among the the plane,” Baim said, defensive. “And ful author. He researched nineteenth- questions they had received from Hnath: I meditated!” century Norwegian divorce law and read Could Nora be sympathetic if she had 1—Sheila Marikar books such as “Ibsen: The Dramaturgy left her children? “I thought that the of Fear” and “Marriage, a History.” Still, audience reaction tonight said ‘No,’ ” HE SAID, SHE SAID he said, as a man, he worried. “I won- Gilligan said—the crowd had cheered DIAL-A-FEMINIST dered, Am I missing something?” for Nora’s daughter during a heated That’s when his producer, Scott exchange. In her research following Rudin, proposed a playwriting method Roe v. Wade, Gilligan had interviewed you might call dial-a-feminist. Hnath pregnant women who were consider- reached out to several academics, in- ing abortion. “The word ‘selfish’ kept cluding Susan Brantly, who teaches coming up,” she said. “There was this Scandinavian literature at the Univer- notion that the ‘good woman’ is selfless. “ woman cannot be herself in the sity of Wisconsin-Madison, and Toril So, according to that, Nora’s a bad A society of the present day, which is Moi, an Ibsen scholar at Duke and woman.” an exclusively masculine society,” Hen- the author of “Sexual / Textual Poli- Showalter had advised Hnath to read rik Ibsen wrote in 1878, proving himself, tics: Feminist Literary Theory.” In one up on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who, in 2017 parlance, to be a woke bae. He draft, Nora argued that she left be- in the late nineteenth century, left her was writing about “A Doll’s House,” his cause it was better for the children; husband and child. “Her daughter lived proto-feminist masterwork, which con- Moi wrote to Hnath, “You could get to be ninety-three years old and was still cludes with Nora Helmer, a restive Nor- some traction here by enforcing the bitter,” she said. Ibsen didn’t consider wegian housewife, walking out on her idea that not all women are made to “A Doll’s House” a feminist play, but its husband, Torvald. The play ends with a impact was seismic. “In England, women slamming door, one of dramatic litera- said their lives were changed forever,” ture’s greatest cliffhangers. Showalter said. “Eleanor Marx—Marx’s Enter the playwright Lucas Hnath, daughter—learned Norwegian to trans- who has, fourteen decades later, written late the play.” a sequel. In “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” Gilligan had helped Hnath fine-tune which has been nominated for eight Nora’s relationship with her children’s Tony Awards, Nora (played by Laurie nanny, Anne Marie. “It’s a very intense Metcalf ) returns fifteen years later, hav- issue within feminism today, where a ing written a popular anti-marriage novel lot of women are able to pursue the life under a nom de plume. “It’s something they want because they hire nannies,” I’d been threatening to do for a while, she said. (Ivanka Trump is Exhibit A.) to write a sequel to ‘A Doll’s House,’ ” She began making a point about Na- Hnath, a thirty-seven-year-old with Jim thaniel Hawthorne, and became so ex- Morrison hair, said recently. “There’s cited that she knocked her Pinot Noir something about just saying that that into her meat loaf. The new play, she sounded so audacious.” continued, “came very close at the end Hnath grew up near Orlando and to the transformative feminist vision, read the play in high school. His mother which, interestingly enough, is part of bore some resemblance to Nora: she was Laurie Metcalf as Nora Helmer nineteenth-century utopian thinking.” divorced and, as an ordained minister, “I am very much a nineteenth-cen- was a woman in a man’s world. After be mothers.…This point of view is still tury utopian feminist!” Showalter said. moving to New York, Hnath saw an shocking to some feminists.” How did they feel about a man writ- avant-garde production in which Nora The other night, two of Hnath’s con- ing “A Doll’s House, Part 2”? “The irony had a lizard tail. “I came out of that think- sultants caught the show, at the Golden is that the most famous feminist heroine ing, That was a terrible production, but Theatre. They were the New York Uni- in the theatre, arguably, was written by a that play’s kind of good,” he recalled. In versity psychologist Carol Gilligan, best man,” Showalter said. “There are aspects 2014, while travelling through Croatia known for her research on female moral of the Nora that we’ve inherited that by bus, he copied a bad translation onto development (“In a Different Voice”), are filtered through a male consciousness. his laptop and began writing his own and the Princeton literary theorist Elaine There just are. But women get a crack at adaptation. “By the time I got to the end Showalter, who coined the term “gyn- it because they get to perform it.” of it, I felt the need to keep going.” ocritics” (“Toward a Feminist Poetics”). —Michael Schulman

32 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017

tenor saxophone, Dexter Gordon gaz- ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS ing through a cloud of cigarette smoke, Charlie Haden plucking a bass with back-bent intensity. This was the first KIND OF NEW time Salvant had been booked at the club—for jazz musicians, a sign that Cécile McLorin Salvant gives old songs a fresh voice. they’d made it and a test of whether they’d go much farther. She seemed BY FRED KAPLAN very happy to be there. The set opened with Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” and it was clear right away that the hype was justified. She sang with perfect intonation, elastic rhythm, an operatic range from thick lows to silky highs. She had emotional range, too, inhab- iting different personas in the course of a song, sometimes even a phrase— delivering the lyrics in a faithful spirit while also commenting on them, min- ing them for unexpected drama and wit. Throughout the set, she ventured from the standard repertoire into off- the-beaten-path stuff like Bessie Smith’s “Sam Jones Blues,” a funny, rowdy re- buke to a misbehaving husband, and “Somehow I Never Could Believe,” a song from “Street Scene,” an obscure opera by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. She unfolded Weill’s tune, over ten minutes, as the saga of an entire life: a child’s promise of bright days ahead, a love that blossoms and fades, babies who wrap “a ring around a rosy” and then move away. When she sang, “It looks like something awful hap- pens / in the kitchens / where women wash their dishes,” her plaintive phras- ing transformed a description of do- mestic obligation into genuine tragedy. A hush washed over the room. n a Thursday evening a few months lowing, winning a Grammy and sev- Wynton Marsalis, who has twice Oago, a long line snaked along Sev- eral awards from critics, who praised hired Salvant to tour with his Jazz at enth Avenue, outside the Village Van- her singing as “singularly arresting” and Lincoln Center Orchestra, told me, guard, a cramped basement night club “artistry of the highest class.” “You get a singer like this once in a in Greenwich Village that jazz fans re- She and her trio—a pianist, a bass- generation or two.” Salvant might not gard as a temple. The eight-thirty set ist, and a drummer, all men in their have reached this peak just yet, he said. was sold out, as were the ten-thirty set early thirties—emerged from the dress- But, he added, “could Michael Jordan and nearly all the other shows that ing lounge and took their places on a do all he would do in his third year? week. The people descending the club’s lit-up stage: the men in sharp suits, No, but you could tell what he was narrow steps had come to hear a twenty- Salvant wearing a gold-colored Issey going to do. Cécile’s the same way.” seven-year-old singer named Cécile Miyake dress, enormous pink-framed McLorin Salvant. In its sixty years as glasses, and a wide, easy smile. She nod- t was only because of a series of a jazz club, the Vanguard has headlined ded to the crowd and took a few glances Iflukes that she became a jazz singer few women and fewer singers of either at the walls, which were crammed with at all. Cécile Sophie McLorin Salvant gender. But Salvant, virtually unknown photographs of jazz icons who had was born in Miami on August 28, 1989. two years earlier, had built an avid fol- played there: Sonny Rollins cradling a She began piano lessons at four and joined a local choir at eight, all the Wynton Marsalis said, “You get a singer like this once in a generation or two.” while taking in the music that her

34 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD BURBRIDGE mother played on the stereo—classi- Saint-Tropez, very arrogant, politically cal, jazz, pop, folk, Latin, Senegalese. on the right. I had nothing to say to At ten, she saw Charlotte Church, a those people. So I figured the jazz de- pop-culture phenomenon just a few partment would be like a good hobby —a years older, singing opera on a TV place to make friends, like going to a show. “This girl was making people community-theatre class.” cry with her singing,” Salvant recalled, Soon, Bonnel formed a band for Sal- sitting in her apartment, a walkup on vant—he played piano, other students a block of brownstones in Harlem. “I played bass and guitar—and, within three was attracted by how she could tap months, booked their first gig, at a local into emotions like that. I said, ‘I want music hall. He also began putting Sal- to do that, too.’ ” vant through a crash course in jazz his- She grew up in a French-speaking tory. “He gave me recordings, twenty household: her father, a doctor, is Hai- CDs at a time, which I played again and tian, and her mother, who heads an el- again,” she said. He started her with Ella ementary school, is French. At eigh- Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie teen, Cécile decided that she wanted Holiday—all of their albums, not just to live in France, so she enrolled at the the ones her mother had played. Then Darius Milhaud Conservatory, in Aix- came the early blues singers. “I listened en-Provence, and at a nearby prep to Bessie Smith’s complete recordings school that offered courses in political non-stop, all day,” she said. “I hated them science and law. Her mother, who came at first, but eventually fell in love with along to help her get settled, saw a list- her world. These songs were amazing. ing for a class in jazz singing and sug- She sang about sex and food and sav- gested that Cécile sign up. ages and the Devil and Hell and really “I said, ‘O.K., whatever,’ ” Cécile exciting things you don’t hear on ‘Ella told me. “I was passive—super pas- Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song- sive.” At an audition for the class, she book.’ I thought, This is great! All these sang “Misty,” which she knew from a great stories! I’d heard torch songs by Sarah Vaughan album that her mother Dinah Washington about ‘I’ll wait for often played. After she finished, the you forever.’ But here’s Bessie Smith sing- teacher, who’d been accompanying ing, ‘You come around after you been on piano, asked her to improvise. gone a year? Goodbye! ’ It was empow- She didn’t know what that meant, nor ering.” She went on to albums by later did she care. “I didn’t want to get into singers who fused jazz standards with his class anyway,” she recalled. “I had earthy blues, especially Abbey Lincoln, poli-sci, law, classical voice—I didn’t who brought political consciousness and have time.” dissonant note-bending to the saloon- But the teacher, a jazz musician song tradition. “After coming from Sarah named Jean-François Bonnel, was as- Vaughan, Abbey Lincoln felt harsh and tonished by her singing. “Cécile was a little depressing, too edgy and cold,” something else,” he wrote to me in an Salvant said. “I slowly began to love that e-mail. “She already had everything— edge, and went through a period when the right time, the sense of rhythm, the I didn’t like Sarah Vaughan because she right intonation, an incredible Sarah didn’t have that edge.” Vaughan type of voice”—a pure bel Toward the end of that year, Bonnel canto, with exceptional range and pre- and Salvant were driving back from a cision. Two days later, Bonnel ran into jazz festival in Ascona, Switzerland. On her on the street and told her that he’d the road, “just for fun,” he remembers, come ring her doorbell until she signed she did impressions of the great jazz up for his class. “I always obeyed my singers—Vaughan, Fitzgerald, Holiday, parents and my teachers,” Salvant re- Carmen McRae. “It was incredible,” he called, with a laugh. She enrolled, and told me. She mimicked not only the found that she liked it. “There were all sound of their voices but also their phras- these cool people with dreads and cig- ings, rhythms, breaths. Bonnel’s next arettes,” she said. “It was very different task was to prod her into finding her from the classical-music program, with own way with this material. In class, he these precious girls, or the poli-sci told her to focus on the piano, molding school, which was full of rich kids from the songs’ harmonies into her fingers

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 35 and improvising new melodies on top warm, smart, and funny, but also re- was twenty-one and completely un- of them. served and nervous, her voice more known in her own country. At this point, she wasn’t intent on nasal than smoky. As she tells it, she is As she faced the crowd, she seemed becoming a jazz singer. She had kept not a natural performer. “The first year tentative. Ben Ratliff wrote in the Times studying classical voice, and performed I sang before audiences, I closed my that she “looked like an English teacher a few Baroque recitals in small churches. eyes the whole time,” she said. “After a wearing a sensible black dress with ma- “The reason I turned to jazz was the while, I gave myself a challenge: try to genta ballet flats” and “stared inquisi- gigs were coming in,” she said matter- look at people for a nanosecond, catch tively at the house: really stared, as in of-factly. “If more gigs had come in their eyes—see if I melt.” As Salvant’s ‘it’s not polite to stare.’ ” Her mother, with Baroque, I’d have tried to do both.” mother watched her career develop, she who was in the audience, heard people She recorded an album, called “Cécile,” was eager to see her succeed but didn’t laughing. “They were saying, ‘Who’s with Bonnel’s band, and by 2010 she want to push her toward a life as a pro- she?’ and ‘She’s not glamorous,’ ” she re- was singing throughout Europe. She fessional musician. “I never thought she called. “I thought, Oh, no, why did I figured that she’d give her jazz career would go where she is now,” Léna Mc- put her through this?” three years to take off. She was twenty, Lorin Salvant, a tall, assertive woman Salvant launched into “Bernie’s young enough that, if things didn’t work who speaks with a pronounced French Tune,” a cool-bop anthem by Gerry out, she could go back to school and accent, says. “She’s an intellectual. I Mulligan, followed by “Monk’s Mood,” try something else—maybe history or thought she would go into academics.” a knotty melody by Thelonious Monk, literature or law. Still, while Salvant was in school, her and “Take It Right Back,” a raucous mother became interested in the Thelo- Bessie Smith blues. “She had people ne afternoon, Salvant and I went nious Monk competition, which is held eating out of her hand—it was ridic- Oout for lunch around the corner annually—the closest thing that the com- ulous,” Al Pryor, the A. & R. chief at from her apartment, at a small, brick- mercially modest jazz industry has to Mack Avenue Records, who was also walled place called Il Caffe Latte, on “American Idol.” Each year highlights a in the house, recalled. “I knew that I Malcolm X Boulevard. Salvant, stir- different instrument, and in 2010 it would had to sign her up.” Rodney Whitaker, ring an iced coffee, seemed unaccus- be a singing competition. Léna insisted the bassist hired for the rhythm sec- tomed to being out in the middle of that Cécile record an audition disk. tion that accompanied the contestants, the day. When she’s not on the road, “Cécile is very malleable, she’s very open, knew she was going to win even during she maintains a scholarly routine. “I’ll and I take advantage of that,” Léna told the pre-show rehearsal. “I’d never met listen for an hour to a record of some- me. “I told her the contest would be a anyone that young who’d figured out one soloing, and I’ll sing along, impro- good experience.” how to channel the whole history of vising,” she said. “I’ve been listening to Cécile sent in a disk just before the jazz singing and who had her own thing, Benny Golson, Coleman Hawkins, deadline, and she was chosen as one of too,” he later told me. She and two Oscar Peterson, Sonny Rollins. When twelve semifinalists, out of two hun- other women made it into the finals. you listen to a solo a lot, it’s like you’re dred and thirty-seven applicants. In The next day, after a second round of trying to get in a person’s brain. ‘Why October, she was flown to Washington, competition, at the Kennedy Center, did Coltrane do this instead of that?’ ” D.C., for the first phase of the contest, Salvant was declared the winner. Onstage, Salvant projects confidence before a live audience, at the National Afterward, she flew back to France and subtle theatricality; offstage, she’s Museum of the American Indian. She to finish her law courses, but she quickly realized that New York was where a jazz singer needed to be. Pryor offered her a contract. So did Ed Arrendell, a prom- inent talent manager. In early 2012, she moved to Manhattan, on her own for the first time. “My concern was: How can I deal with the solitude of a creative life style?” she told me. “I’d been used to being a good student—get good grades, follow whatever structure I’m in. Now it was the idea of letting all that go, work- ing from home—what a nightmare!” Unnerved, she did what she was ac- customed to doing: she enrolled in classes on composition and music the- ory at the New School, in Greenwich Vil- lage. But Arrendell was eager to jump- start her career. He sent her some names of pianists she might enjoy singing “O.K., everyone, a few important safety announcements.” with. She particularly liked a YouTube video of a pianist named Aaron Diehl playing Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag”— precise, soulful, and joyous all at once. “It was exciting to see somebody play Fats Waller with a fresh take yet very much in the spirit of the music,” she said. “I’d been trying to do this for years—take something old and make it yours but still authentic—and here was someone who’d figured it out.” She called him, and they met. “He was very versatile, very serious, and didn’t seem to be an asshole,” she recalled. “Those were the boxes I checked off.” Their first gig was at the Kennedy Center. More gigs followed, with Sal- vant fronting Diehl’s trio (including Paul Sikivie on bass and Lawrence Leathers on drums), and the musicians coalesced into a working band, on the road three weeks out of every month. She also recorded an album, called “WomanChild,” for Mack Avenue, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. (Her next album, “For One to Love,” won the award.) Meanwhile, she flunked her composition course at the New School because she had an out-of-town gig on exam day. She dropped out, no longer needing the academic structure.

efore a recent tour in France, Sal- Bvant stopped by Aaron Diehl’s apartment one afternoon to rehearse some songs. The two live in the same building, Salvant on the top floor and Diehl on the parlor and ground floors. “It’s like the pros of having a room- mate without the cons,” she said. Salvant wanted to try out a new discovery, a song from the nineteen- twenties called “Dites-Moi Que Je Suis Belle” (“Tell Me I’m Pretty”), by a cab- aret singer named Yvette Guilbert. She played a YouTube clip of it on her phone, and sang along in a quiet, crys- talline voice. They spent half an hour exploring ways to make it sound like jazz. Diehl picked out the chords, then tinkered with them, thickening the har- mony; he added a pop-tune bass line, then discarded it in favor of a vamp that opened some space between cho- ruses. Diehl is Juilliard-trained, aca- demic in demeanor, attuned to the log- ical structure of a song. But he deferred to Salvant, partly because she’s the band’s leader and partly because, he

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 37 told me, “she has much better ears than Al Pryor, of Mack Avenue, told me about parallels to songs of the nineteen- I do.” that when he heard Salvant at the Monk thirties, like Josephine Baker’s “Si J’Étais Once they’d worked out a plausible competition he wondered how she had Blanche” (“If I Were White”), and arrangement, he asked her, “Will you be acquired such broad knowledge of the songs from the sixties, like Burt Bacha- changing the phrasing of the melody?” music. He said, “She seemed to be an rach’s “Wives and Lovers,” which warns “I’ll do that however this ends up,” old soul in a young woman.” Pryor was women to be sexy for their men so that she replied. “But I want this to prog- onto something. Salvant told me that, they don’t run off with someone else. ress from shy and coy to desperate and when she was a kid in Miami, her friends “A friend once asked me why I didn’t a little intense and angry.” She’d read nicknamed her Grandma. “I walked slow,” sing more feminist songs,” Salvant re- that the song was one of Sigmund she said. “I was interested in old things— called. “I said it’s hard to find feminist Freud’s favorites, and her idea was to old books, old music.” When she went jazz songs. But I thought about it, and reclaim a frothy ditty as an enraged through a death-obsessed phase, as many I wondered if there were sexist songs critique. They agreed to work on it teen-agers do, she consoled herself by that I could make fun of. I went online, more at their next rehearsal. reading Guy de Maupassant. Aaron looked up the ten most sexist songs in The singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, Diehl, who is four years Salvant’s senior, American pop history. ‘Wives and Lov- who was a judge at the 2010 Monk com- told me, “I look at her as an older sister.” ers’ was the best. And Aaron happened petition, told me, “I had never seen I asked Salvant if, like many musi- to love that song. Rhythmically it’s great, someone as young as Cécile invest in a cians, she’d thought of covering con- and the words sound wonderful.” lyric and tell a story in the manner that temporary pop songs. She winced. “It’s She sang both songs at the Vanguard she did.” This impulse to dramatize a fine,” she allowed. “There are some the night I saw her. She treated the song, treating it less as a monologue new songs that I really like, but I never Baker as a haunting dirge, lingering on than as a play, sets Salvant apart from think, Maybe I’ll sing this song. I don’t the words “I’d like to be white / How other jazz singers, even from many of care whether what I do is modern or happy I would be.” She turned the the great ones. “To me, performance is of our time. I want to sing songs that Bacharach into a subversive anthem of acting as a character on the stage,” Sal- have this timeless quality. I’m inter- assertiveness, purring its opening lines vant said. “Trying to get inside a world ested in history—how things differ, with a mix of come-hither bounce and for other people and getting them to how they’re still the same. I love it menace: “Hey, little girl / comb your join in—that’s thrilling.” As her early when a song is a hundred years old hair / fix your makeup / Soon he will stagefright waned, she began to con- but still connects.” open the door.” In the silence after the ceive of a song as a conversation be- But, she said, “I’m finding it hard to song ended, I could hear sighs all around tween her and the audience. “I’m not find these songs. Maybe I need to figure me, the collective release of an uncom- just singing words that are strung to- out something new. Sometimes I’d like fortable tension. gether,” she said. “They’re a story. So to be more outrageous—like write a The lyrics of “Wives and Lovers” who am I telling the story to? Not to musical play, or do a one-woman show, are “ridiculous,” Salvant told me later. the band. They’re into making it sound or design outlandish costumes and wear “But they’re also things I really do. good. I needed to acknowledge there them, or somehow combine my visual I’m not completely over the idea of are people in front of me. They’re not art with my music.” (She sketches and needing to be presentable and look- my enemy. I’m sharing something with paints on the road, and illustrated the ing my best. It’s advice that I’ll almost them.” cover of “For One to Love.”) “I have a take, then say no. The songs that I Salvant looks back on the week at notebook full of drawings and ideas. I sing and kind of make fun of—they the Village Vanguard—some of which call it ‘My Book of Imaginary Proj- have some kind of power over me. By was recorded for an album that will be ects.’ If I tried them, I feel they’d be making fun of them, I weaken that released later this year—as a break- a catastrophe. But maybe I should power.” through. She dislikes listening to her- try one.” Later, while Salvant and Diehl were self, and cringes at excess acrobatics: In a phone conversation after the on tour in France, she wrote to me in “It’s like I’m saying, ‘Listen! Please! Presidential election, Salvant said, “The an e-mail that they had been perform- Like this! I really worked hard on this!’ current political landscape is making me ing “Dites-Moi Que Je Suis Belle,” the I don’t want that desperation in my feel I want to be messier, sing more po- Freud favorite turned feminist howl. voice. I want to be natural and free and litical songs, write more political songs.” The audiences seemed to get the irony, adventurous.” In the weeks leading up She’d recently given a lecture at the reacting with a “curious, nervous mood,” to the Vanguard dates, she talked with Chautauqua Institute, in upstate New like the one that “Wives and Lovers” the band about this habit and came up York, on the history of race and women inspires in American audiences. But with a way to break it. “I said we should in popular culture. In it, she dwelled on Salvant and Diehl wanted to work on play like we’re old—people who have the nineteenth-century phenomenon it more. “I just want it to be leaner and lived and now we’re natural,” she re- of black entertainers performing in more incisive,” she wrote. “Not sure if called. “I want to act sixty years old. blackface, which many have found de- it has to even be funny. Also, wanting Desperation is a young person’s thing. meaning but which she sees as a form to do some digging for other songs like If I’m old, I’m not thinking, What can of rebellion—African-Americans re- that, asking, ‘Am I pretty?’ I wonder if I be? I’m getting too old for that shit.” claiming their own stories. She talked they are as rare as I think.” 

38 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 ised one another that if you got to SHOUTS & MURMURS thirty-eight and were still single you’d all move to Portland and live in a big Craftsman like hippies and bring up sperm-donor babies together and find random lovers to fulfill your sexual needs. Are we still on schedule for that? So T minus three years, you think? Or are you rethinking that whole plan, now that Becca got mar- ried (I think she settled, by the way) and Meredith’s bathroom is always disgusting? And I know there have been some recent conversations with your thera- pist in which you’ve admitted that you’re not sure parenthood is right for you at all, and that you’re worried you’re just freezing your eggs because of so- cietal expectations and your parents’ hints about grandchildren. Dr. Flem- ing told you that you have to live your truth. I don’t know what that means to you, but I’m guessing it means I may never get out of here—or, at least, that that’s a possibility. Again, no judg- ment if that’s what you choose. I to- tally get it, totally support it. I’d just personally love to know what to ex- pect. I’m not a fan of surprises in gen- eral. They make me very nervous. I have a lot of nervous energy to begin with, and then you add a surprise to the mix? No bueno. Not that it’s terrible in here or any- YOUR FROZEN EGG thing! It’s more of a personal prefer- ence. I’ve never been great with small HAS A QUESTION spaces, and the climate is far from ideal. As you know, I’m used to more of a BY SUSANNA FOGEL tropical environment: warm and wet. God, that sounded disgusting. I’m not Dear— that mean I have temporarily ceased trying to be disgusting. I’m just stat- Wait, O.K., how do I address this to exist? ing the facts about your ovaries, not letter? Who are you now, exactly, in re- As you can tell, I’m freaking the fuck body-shaming you. I would never do lation to me? Because I was part of you out in here. that—I have so much respect for for thirty-five years, right? We were Not that that’s your problem! Do women. Obviously. I was inside one one. So does that mean I’m addressing your thing. I just figured I’d touch base for thirty-five years. Not like that! Well, this letter to myself? No, because I live to see whether you had a sense of a actually, sort of. God, everything I say in a freezer now, with a dozen of your time frame for all this. Like, if you sounds disgusting. And confusing. I’ll other eggs, and you don’t. So I guess had to predict how long you’ll be keep- wrap this up. you are a “you” now, and I am a “me.” ing me on ice, what would you say? So, yeah, just respond at your lei- But am I still thirty-five, like you? Will Just a guesstimate is fine. Because I sure. I hope it won’t be too long, but, I continue to be thirty-five until you remember that time when you and again—it’s not about me. You go, girl! defrost me? And if we’re going with your two best friends went up to that I’ll be fine in here. that theory for a second—and I have cabin for Becca’s thirtieth birthday, Just circle back to me sooner rather temporarily stopped aging for the du- and, after rewatching all five seasons than later, if you can. And happy Val- ration of the time that I am in this of “Friday Night Lights” and lament- entine’s Day. freezer, and am therefore currently in ing the fact that you’d never have hus- Sincerely,

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI a state of suspended animation—does bands like Coach Taylor, you prom- ????? 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 39 struction boom of the mid-nineties. In ANNALS OF EDUCATION 2010, they applied for permanent resi- dency, but a year later they still hadn’t received a response. AMERICAN STUDIES “I don’t know what to tell you, sweetie,” the receptionist said. “It probably has to How undocumented immigrant students pursue a college education. do with that.” Ashley and Melissa didn’t know it, but BY JONATHAN BLITZER the year before, the Georgia Board of Re- gents, which oversees the university sys- tem, had instituted a policy barring un- documented students from the state’s top five public schools. Georgia had thirty-five public colleges, serving about three hun- dred and ten thousand students, of whom some five hundred were undocumented; only twenty-nine undocumented students were enrolled at the top five schools. Nev- ertheless, the state legislature wanted the Board of Regents to send a message. As a state senator’s spokesman said, “We can’t afford to have illegal immigrants taking a taxpayer-subsidized spot in our col- leges.” Two other states—South Carolina and Alabama—ban undocumented stu- dents from public universities. Each year, about three thousand un- documented students graduate from high school in Georgia, but their opportuni- ties for college are severely limited. At the public universities they’re still allowed to attend, they must pay out-of-state tu- ition, more than double what state resi- dents pay. To matriculate at private col- leges, they have to apply as international students, and often that doesn’t allow them to qualify for the financial aid they may need. Many of them have given up In Georgia, undocumented students are barred from the state’s top public schools. on applying altogether. “I always just lived my life normally, elissa and Ashley, identical twins As soon as they started filling out the until I tried to do stuff and couldn’t,” Mfrom Georgia, shared a bedroom application online, however, they encoun- Melissa told me. She and Ashley are while growing up. They had the same tered a problem. The second page of the short, with round faces and dark eyes, best friend, took classes together in high Web site wouldn’t load. and have a laid-back manner that often school, and dreamed of becoming art- Ashley called the university’s admis- tips into reserve, except when they talk ists in their own collective. “We’re like sions office to see if the site had crashed. about their situation, which they do in two different people with one brain,” The receptionist, who spoke in a treacly chatty, almost lighthearted tones. The Melissa liked to say. drawl, directed her to a question on the college application was like the driver’s In the spring of 2011, during their ju- first page, which asked if the applicant license they couldn’t get, or the work per- nior year, they decided to apply to col- was a United States citizen. mit for which they didn’t qualify. The lege in their usual way—in tandem. The “It should say ‘yes’—is that what you twins were used to improvising, and they University of Georgia, in Athens, the put?” she asked. decided to delay applying until their legal state’s flagship university, was their first “We’re sort of in limbo at the mo- status was clarified. choice. “All my life, I knew I wanted to ment,” Ashley replied. When the twins On a winter day midway through the go to college, even before I understood were six years old, they moved from girls’ senior year, their parents received a what that would entail,” Ashley said. “My Mexico with their parents and older sis- letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Im- parents didn’t go to college, so they didn’t ter to the suburbs of Atlanta. Victor and migration Services, telling them, with- know how to navigate all this. We had Verónica, their father and mother, came out explanation, that their residency ap- to figure out the process for ourselves.” to Georgia legally to work in the con- plication had been denied. In the next

40 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVER MUNDAY several hours, huddled in the living room, students from Georgia to institutions in “We had to internalize that as teachers.” the family made a plan. Melissa and Ash- other states. Among the last schools to Their authority assumed a different cast. ley would graduate from high school; desegregate were the five universities that As Jon Hale, a historian at the College of then the family would decide whether now barred undocumented students. “I Charleston and a scholar of the freedom- to stay in the country illegally or leave see history repeating itself here,” Erroll school movement, said, “There’s always for Mexico. Davis, a former chancellor of the state this question of who has more knowl- An order of deportation came in the university system and superintendent of edge. The teachers may know more about mail a few weeks later. In an apparent error, Atlanta’s public schools, told the local a particular subject, but they don’t nec- it was addressed only to their older sister, press. Davis had implemented the 2010 essarily have the relevant life experience.” Melanie. The letter told her to leave the ban, but he said that he had little choice Levy saw his role as encouraging stu- U.S. by June 15, 2012. Unsure what to do, in the matter. Republican state legislators dents to become leaders, rather than as the family waited, hoping that Melanie had threatened to pass an even harsher imposing a set curriculum. “We’d ask, ‘If had been singled out by mistake. Then, on measure if the board failed to act. Refer- your goal is to fight segregation, what the day she was supposed to leave, Presi- ring to his former students in the public do you want that white society has—and dent Obama announced that he was issu- schools, Davis said to me, “All told, you what don’t you want?’ ” Students requested ing an executive order called Deferred Ac- spend over a hundred thousand dollars specific courses of study, performed plays, tion for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which on them, and then you tell them they and published their own newspapers; suspended the deportations of young peo- can’t go to college in Georgia?” after classes, they organized sit-ins. “They ple who had come to the U.S. as children. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, de- were all told at school in Meridian that Melissa, Ashley, and Melanie would be al- spite the Supreme Court’s decision in they would be suspended if they were lowed to stay, for the time being, but their Brown v. Board of Education, school sys- caught at a freedom school, but they parents’ position had not changed. tems remained segregated, and black in- came anyway,” Levy said. Around that time, Verónica saw a stitutions were drastically underfunded. post on a friend’s Facebook page that Between 1954 and 1965, black children n April, 2011, seven undocumented mentioned Freedom University, in Ath- in Mississippi made up fifty-seven per Istudent activists were arrested for block- ens, minutes away from the University cent of school-aged students, but received ing traffic on Martin Luther King, Jr., of Georgia. It was a school for undoc- only thirteen per cent of the state’s spend- Boulevard in Atlanta while protesting umented students who had been shut ing on education. Throughout the South, the Board of Regents’ policy. John Lewis, out of the public universities, offering civil-rights activists created informal in- the local United States representative free college-level instruction once a week. stitutions, called freedom schools, to ed- and a veteran of the civil-rights move- The school’s exact location was secret, ucate and organize students in desper- ment, encouraged the protesters. “I was because Ku Klux Klansmen had threat- ate need of academic support. beaten, left bloody, but I didn’t give up,” ened to break up classes and alert im- In Prince Edward County, Virginia, he told them. “And you must not give up.” migration authorities. The school’s in 1959, the local government shut down Four humanities professors at the scrappy unconventionality attracted Ash- the public-school system in order to re- University of Georgia—Lorgia García- ley and Melissa; their friends were pre- sist integration. Freedom schools, also Peña, Pamela Voekel, Betina Kaplan, paring for college, and the twins were called training centers, sprang up in store- and Bethany Moreton—wanted to help restless to get on with their own educa- fronts, back yards, and church basements. fight the ban. They contacted the lead- tions. They filled out applications on the They educated roughly six hundred and ers of a group in Atlanta called the Geor- school’s Web site and submitted short fifty black students, providing them with gia Undocumented Youth Alliance. At personal statements about why they courses in black history, the arts, and the time, GUYA was focussed on the ar- wanted to attend. Soon afterward, they current events. In 1961, activists in Mc- duous work of fighting individual de- were accepted, and received e-mails Comb, Mississippi, founded Nonviolent portation orders. One member told me, with the address and their class sched- High—which held classes at an office “Out of eleven hundred deportations a ules. One Sunday morning in August, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinat- day, we could stop maybe one or two a Verónica drove Melissa and Ashley an ing Committee—so that a hundred stu- month.” Having the support of profes- hour east for their first day at Freedom dents who had been expelled from pub- sors from the state’s most prestigious University. In the car, they chatted ner- lic school for protesting segregation could public university was both a validation vously about what awaited them. “Who study algebra, English, physics, geome- and an opportunity. gets undocumented students all to- try, and French. That summer, the professors met with gether?” Melissa remembered thinking. Many of the teachers at freedom some guya representatives in a seminar “This almost sounds like a setup.” schools were white college students from room at the university’s Spanish depart- the Northeast. In 1964, during the Free- ment. Keish Kim, a bespectacled nine- he University of Georgia, in Ath- dom Summer voter-registration drive, teen-year-old from Korea, told the group, Tens, did not accept black students Mark Levy came from Queens College, “What we really want is to be able to be until 1961. The following year, in an effort in New York, to work at a school in Me- students. The state has stripped that iden- to maintain segregation, the state spent ridian, Mississippi. “Many of us wouldn’t tity from us.” Another activist, a nine- four hundred and fifty thousand dollars know how to survive down there, but teen-year-old named Gustavo Madrigal, on grants and scholarships to send black these kids were survivors,” he told me. had graduated from high school two

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 41 years earlier and begun working four we started keying in on immigrants’ the pre-colonial Americas. “There was jobs, each paying less than minimum rights,” she told me. The stories of de- such excitement that students were prac- wage, to save up for out-of-state tuition portations that broke up immigrant fam- tically talking over each other,” she told at the University of Georgia. The ban ilies reminded her of how families had me. “You’d ask a question and it was like blindsided him. “The premise of the been split during slavery. When she heard getting hit by a wall.” There were classes Board of Regents’ policy was that we about Freedom University, she offered on racial identity in America and on se- were taking someone else’s place and the Economic Justice Coalition as a clear- miotics and literature, and eventually doing nothing with it,” he said. That ing house for donations, since it was al- there was a debate team. struck him as ironic: because of the out- ready established as a nonprofit. She also As the lecture went on, the twins ex- of-state-tuition law, he was actually sub- helped raise money for gas cards and en- changed furtive glances. “In high school, sidizing the cost of college listed volunteer drivers. Pa- there’d be a slide show, and you’d take for state residents. He also mela Voekel told me that practice tests,” Melissa said. “Then you’d resented the insinuation they needed a network of have the real test and see how well you about his scholastic ambi- people who could arrange knew the material the teacher had just tion. “We needed the rigor door-to-door pickup. They given you.” Her A.P. American-history of a college class, because modelled their system on class had been a rote recapitulation of that’s where we wanted to one developed during the American achievements, whereas Voekel be.” The group agreed that Montgomery bus boycott, encouraged the students to question ev- the professors had a role to in 1955 and 1956. erything they’d heard in school. “It wasn’t play as educators, and to- In August, the found- her saying, ‘Hernán Cortés discovered gether they decided to start ers held a rally at the Uni- the savages,’ ” Melissa said. “These ex- a freedom school to help fill the aca- versity of Georgia, under an arch at the plorers weren’t saviors. They came and demic void. By consensus, the group chose center of campus, to launch Freedom destroyed communities. I thought, Is she the name Freedom University. It recalled University. Three hundred people turned allowed to say this? Are we breaking the activism of the past, and, on T-shirts, up, and the new students wore caps and some rules here?” it also made for a gratifying taunt: “F.U. gowns to simulate a graduation. Mad- When they weren’t in class, the stu- Georgia.” rigal, dressed in a green satin robe, gave dents at Freedom University worked at A few weeks later, the organizers a speech in which he described his trip fast-food restaurants, supermarkets, and began recruiting students, posting no- from Mexico to the United States, when construction sites. “Under the circum- tices on Facebook and in Spanish and he was nine years old. He and his fam- stances, there was this understanding English newspapers. An activist named ily had been kidnapped and robbed by that attending Freedom U. and being Beto Mendoza knocked on doors in the marauding gangs, and his mother had in the classroom was a revolutionary ac- trailer parks on the outskirts of Athens, nearly died from dehydration. “Why am tion,” Melissa said. In a small room next where many undocumented families lived, I sharing this with you?” he asked. “It’s to the kitchen was a makeshift nursery, to speak to parents of prospective stu- not to gain your sympathy but to obtain where some of the students brought dents. Almost a hundred students ap- your support.” The inauguration of Free- their children or younger siblings to play plied for some thirty places. dom University coincided with an an- while their partners or parents were The viability of Freedom University niversary: the University of Georgia’s working. During a break, Ashley and would depend on two factors: money for fiftieth year with an integrated student Melissa milled around, eating pizza off school supplies and drivers to take stu- body, which was being marked on cam- paper plates, too timid at first to ap- dents to school from across the state. pus by a series of events called Celebrat- proach the other students. But the DACA Under a national immigration policy ing Courage. policy, which had just been introduced, called Secure Communities, authorities gave the newcomers something to talk could deport undocumented people who hen Melissa and Ashley arrived about. “You’d say, ‘Hi, I’m So-and-So. were arrested for petty crimes. Since the Wat Freedom University, the school’s Have you submitted your DACA appli- students weren’t eligible for driver’s li- organizers were still receiving menacing cation yet?’ ” Ashley told me. “It was the censes, they ran the risk of deportation phone calls from anonymous vigilantes, icebreaker.” anytime they got behind the wheel. An so there were no signs posted outside. “You learn about your status as an un- Athens-based organizer named Linda All the twins saw was a squat red brick documented person, and it’s no longer, Lloyd, who led a group of predominantly building with green shutters, the home like, Oh, I deserve this, because my fam- black labor activists called the Economic of a Latino community center that was ily came here illegally,” Melissa said. She Justice Coalition, offered to help. Lloyd’s lending its space. hadn’t realized how controversial the work centered on registering voters and Inside, next to a small kitchen, was a term “illegal immigrant” was until some- pushing for wage increases, and she was classroom, where twenty students were one admonished her for using it in class. convinced that the fates of black and gathered around a table. About fifteen She was floored by the idea that such la- Latino workers were intertwined. “While others sat on chairs behind them, with bels had turbulent histories. In one book we were advocating for a living wage, we notebooks on their laps. The air was hot she was assigned, “Undocumented: How found that Hispanic laborers were work- and stale, and a small fan rattled in the Immigration Became Illegal,” by Aviva ing for less than the minimum wage. So corner. Voekel was giving a lecture about Chomsky, she came across the following

42 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 sentence: “Illegality as we know it today I should have the chance to apply to the Freedom Summer. Rita Bender, who came into existence after 1965,” when school.” She told me later, “It was had started a community center in Mis- Congress overhauled the national im- the first time I ever spoke passionately sissippi in 1964 and whose husband, migration laws. to someone who had more authority Michael Schwerner, was murdered by than I did.” the Ku Klux Klan that year, congratu- rom the earliest days of Freedom lated the girls on their work. “I’m one FUniversity, a group of students held n the fall of 2014, Freedom University of your biggest groupies,” she said. Me- protests, called “actions,” at public uni- Imoved to the Martin Luther King, lissa, who’d read about Bender in class, versities and at the offices of the Board Jr., Center, in downtown Atlanta. Three was speechless. of Regents. At first, Melissa and Ash- of the four founding professors had left The main target of the increased ley declined to participate. The demon- the University of Georgia to teach out activism at Freedom University was strations sometimes resulted in arrests, of state, and they named as their suc- the state policy. “We didn’t think the and, during their first year, they didn’t cessor a recent Ph.D. from Emory Uni- ban would last,” Lorgia García-Peña yet have DACA protection. Verónica versity, Laura Emiko Soltis, who had told me. “We thought we could em- made them promise not to get in trou- done fieldwork with the Coalition of barrass the university presidents and ble. They tended to keep their heads Immokalee Workers, in Florida. Soltis, regents, but they were scared of the down, a habit they had learned from a voluble thirty-three-year-old from legislature.” Melissa and Ashley grap- their parents. “They are definitely the Minnesota, saw herself more as an ac- pled with feeling like two people at type of people who had it ingrained in tivist than as an academic, and her lead- once: during the week, they worked them that immigrants are here to work ership marked a shift in the school’s minimum-wage jobs; on the weekend, and that anything they get, even jobs, mission. Student activism had always they were activists spouting social the- is a kind of favor to them,” Melissa said. been a mainstay at Freedom University, ory. Their co-workers often recognized When I met Verónica—a warm, exu- but, within two years, it became the them from the local television news. berant woman in her mid-forties—she school’s trademark. One of Soltis’s first “Once you have a greater knowledge regaled me with stories of immigrant moves was to take Melissa, Ashley, and of injustices happening in the world, life in Georgia as though she were tell- eight other students to Jackson, Mis- it feels neglectful not to do anything ing jokes. The punch lines were barbed sissippi, for the fiftieth anniversary of about it,” Melissa said. “At the same and frequently unsavory, but she laughed anyway, darkly amused by the daily slights she suffered. She told me that she rarely faced outright hostility while at work, however, even though her job, as a land surveyor, frequently took her to the state’s rural areas. The sight of a Mexican woman in a pickup truck was less jarring to people than seeing her at a P.T.A. meeting. She used to show up at her daughters’ school to volunteer, only to be told politely that her help wasn’t needed. Once the twins received DACA sta- tus, in 2013, they got driver’s licenses and began working legally. Melissa took a job at a McDonald’s, where one of her aunts was employed, and Ashley became a waitress at a Mexican restau- rant. Verónica worried about them less, and their relationship took on a more typically American aspect: the girls be- came more independent and defiant. Before long, they started participating in actions, where they quickly devel- oped a reputation for fierceness. At one event, in which students disrupted a meeting of the Board of Regents in Atlanta, Melissa accosted one gray- haired member, who was stunned to be confronted. “I’ve been here all my life,” Melissa said. “I’m a good student.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 43 colleagues and admissions offices, even showing up in person. The strategy was imperfect and laborious, but last year six of the school’s twenty-six students re- ceived full scholarships—to Dartmouth, Eastern Connecticut State University, Hampshire, Berea, and Tougaloo. Those who didn’t get in continued their course- work at Freedom University. A few times a year, the students went on college tours up and down the East Coast, where they were hosted by Free- dom University alumni and led panels about the school. Among the students, an accidental hierarchy emerged. Those with DACA identification documents could fly; the others had to stay home. Some of the unlucky ones came to re- sent DACA for the disparity, and Me- lissa and Ashley always specified that they counted themselves among the “privileged.” In Georgia, the girls gave talks at local universities, targeting campuses “Quit hogging the sheets, loveless void!” that were directly affected by the ban. “We don’t have actual leverage over •• school resources,” Melissa told me. “But students at these schools do.” Chapters of student activists cropped up at the time, you also have to keep living life.” officers led her down a back stairwell University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, One winter afternoon, the two drove and handcuffed her wrists behind her and Emory, the most distinguished pri- to the University of Georgia to “inte- back, while Ashley watched from out- vate university in the state. In 2014, grate” a classroom. Seventy professors, side, through a small window on the John Lewis delivered the commence- college students, and undocumented ac- first floor. She took out her phone to ment address at Emory. “It doesn’t make tivists gathered as organizers delivered film, and began chanting, “Education, sense that we live in a country, in a so- speeches until the building closed for not segregation!” ciety, where more than twelve million the night. One of them was Lonnie people are living in the shadows,” he King, who had led the Atlanta Stu- very year, Melissa and Ashley would said. He urged students to “get in the dent Movement, in March, 1960. As Eapply to college. In 2013, they got way and find a way; make a way out of college students, he and Julian Bond, into Syracuse University, but, as un- no way.” It was what he called “getting who went on to lead the N.A.A.C.P., documented applicants, they did not in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Even had published a letter titled “An Ap- qualify for full financial aid, and they before Lewis’s address, Emory students, peal for Human Rights,” in which they couldn’t afford the tuition. The follow- working with their counterparts at Free- announced their plan “to use every legal ing year, they applied to twenty-two dom University, had been meeting with and non-violent means at our disposal schools between the two of them; the the college president to press him to to secure full citizenship.” Less than a year after that, ten. They were wait- reconsider the admissions status of un- week later, they launched sit-ins at seg- listed at Smith, Trinity, Dartmouth, documented students. In 2015, the uni- regated businesses throughout Atlanta. and Mount Holyoke. The schools with versity made students with DACA sta- “Latinos are treated as badly as blacks,” better aid packages were also the most tus eligible for full financial aid. “If it King told the group at the university. selective. The odds of getting in, with weren’t for Freedom University, that “Oppressed communities need to come funding, were “like the chances of get- never would have happened so quickly,” together!” ting a hole in one in golf,” Voekel told John Latting, the dean of admissions, Melissa and Ashley had decided on me. Melissa said, “As each year passes, told me. a sisterly division of labor: if Melissa was you feel less qualified. I’m still present- Even so, the twins’ own determina- arrested, Ashley would break the news ing this profile of me as a high-school tion to get into college, after three years to Verónica. When the police arrived, student.” of applying, was beginning to flag. Each and ordered everyone to leave, Melissa Professors at Freedom University applied to only one school for the 2016 gave her keys and backpack to Ashley wrote students recommendations and academic year: Melissa to Dartmouth, and remained in the classroom. The gave them application advice. They called where Voekel taught, and Ashley to

44 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 Emory, where Freedom University’s de- place for me. I can’t have the conversa- When we arrived, a young black pro- bate coach was on the faculty. Both were tions I want to have in my home town.” fessor named Ryan Maltese was teach- initially rejected. Then, one Saturday last The twins still saw each other fre- ing an introductory course on Ameri- spring, the twins were at home playing quently, but their lives were diverging for can politics. Maltese, who is broad- cards with Verónica when Ashley no- the first time. I met Ashley for dinner shouldered and gregarious, had dia- ticed a voice mail from a member of the one night, at an Italian bistro near cam- grammed some of the essential facts of admissions office at Emory, telling her pus. She wore a U.C.L.A. sweatshirt and DACA on the board. A couple of stu- that, after further consideration, she’d a white headband, and had a nose ring. dents had asked what would happen if been accepted. Ashley put the phone on Over pasta, as jazz played in the back- the President-elect eliminated the pro- speaker, and the three of them danced ground, we talked about the courses she gram, and Maltese stressed all the logis- around it together. Then Verónica asked, was taking. The Presidential campaign tical complications involved in undoing “Did the admissions officer say anything had soured her on classes that dealt di- it. The real concern, he said, was that about Melissa?” rectly with current events. “No courses the Georgia policy may already have “I always pictured it very abstractly,” about race and politics right now—it’ll prevented young immigrants from qual- Ashley said. “If we ever got into college, get too personal,” she said. Instead, she ifying for DACA, which required that ap- it would be the both of us. I never pro- enrolled in a film survey, a sociology lec- plicants be enrolled in, or have gradu- cessed that it might not be.” ture, Portuguese, and a seminar called ated from, an American high school. “If Cities of the Lusophone World. The the state basically says to you that col- n the night of the Presidential elec- classes were rigorous, but not overwhelm- lege isn’t ever going to be an option, you O tion, the twins stayed up late watch- ing, and she vowed not to let her fluc- don’t stay in high school,” he said. “You ing the returns, alternating between de- tuating grades be a source of stress. She drop out and find work.” spondency and anger. Donald Trump was four years older than her roommate, That weekend, the Board of Regents had promised mass deportations, and but she had quickly fallen in with a group announced that it was taking two schools he’d threatened to cancel all of Obama’s of friends her age, mostly upperclassmen off the list of banned universities: the executive orders, which included DACA. who were activists. schools had accepted a hundred per cent At 5 A.M., Ashley wrote on Facebook, Last fall, Freedom University began of the academically qualified citizen ap- “I so desperately want to hold my par- renting space at an Atlanta-area college plicants, and so could now open their ents close and tell them that I love them from a sympathetic Latino student or- doors to the undocumented. The logic and that I’m sorry and that it’ll be okay, ganization. College was now literally in underlying the original policy remained even though I am in no position to make sight for the undocumented students, unchanged, as did the law precluding that promise.” In the morning, the fam- and enrollment had reached about forty. in-state tuition. A Democrat on the ily held a meeting, just as they had when The Sunday following my dinner with Georgia State Senate subcommittee on their residency application was rejected. Ashley, the twins and I went to class at higher education told me that, in the The question of whether to leave the Freedom University, which occupies a months before the Presidential elec- country arose yet again; only now Ash- glassed-in lounge in the middle of cam- tion, some Republicans were reconsid- ley was nearing the end of her first pus. The current students reverentially ering the tuition law. When Trump won, semester at Emory. Once more, they referred to them as “the el- they changed their minds. decided to wait. ders.” The twins were slightly Ashley, Melissa, and I left Melissa was working as an usher at a wary: Freedom University was Freedom University together theme park at Stone Mountain, a mas- changing in subtle ways. The around six o’clock, and went sive quartz dome with a carving of three classes were more structured to Emory for coffee at the stu- Confederate generals which had once than before—Soltis had ex- dent center. After class, Me- served as a meeting place for the Klan. panded the curriculum to in- lissa had lingered to talk to a She was repelled by the symbolism, but clude college prep along with boy she hadn’t seen in a while, she had friends at the park, and the hours meditation and yoga. But, as and Ashley gently ribbed her. were flexible; plus, she got to work with the activism increased, the “It feels good being back,” actors. “It’s the entertainment business,” classroom discussions occa- Melissa said. “There was a she said. sionally seemed enervated, the partici- time when Freedom University was tak- One morning in November, Me- pants vaguely distracted. Because Soltis ing over my life, so I had to pull back a lissa took me to the Old Fourth Ward led the actions, the lines of authority had little.” After all the actions she’d orga- of Atlanta, a maze of streets and back blurred. Her involvement was not just nized and the talks she’d given, she still alleys where she likes to wander among academic but personal, and that made wasn’t a freshman in college. the sprawling murals and graffiti. As some of the students resentful at times. We wandered out to the quad. Ash- we made our way down Edgewood Av- Their leader, who was quick to applaud ley had midterms to study for, and Me- enue, she admitted that she was think- them for the risks they took as activists, lissa needed to get home. The car keys ing about abandoning the idea of col- wasn’t undocumented herself. Soltis had were in Ashley’s dorm room, so the lege and becoming an artist. Still, she trained students to challenge authority, twins crossed campus to fetch them. said, “I talk to all my friends who are and at Freedom University, she repre- They walked side by side before head- currently in college, and I know it’s the sented the school administration. ing separate ways. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 45 A REPORTER AT LARGE ARE YOU MY MOTHER?

A gay couple, an adoption plan, and a brutal custody battle.

BY IAN PARKER

Circe Hamilton (left) adopted her son a year and a half after she broke up with Kelly Gunn (right), but the women remained close, a

46 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 mained close, and Gunn became the boy’s godmother. That relationship formed part of the debate about what constitutes parenthood.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RYAN PFLUGER THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 47 he week before Labor Day, 2016, to New York before flying with him to a matrimonial judge on Centre Street. Circe Hamilton, a freelance pho- London, on Saturday night. She should bring Abush’s American and T tographer in her mid-forties, was Hamilton is tall, with long hair and a British passports. preparing to move back to the U.K., after long, pale face. Gunn, who is fifty-three, Hamilton began to shake. “I fell apart,” twenty years in New York. She had begun has cropped graying hair and wears round she said recently. (Chemtob, recalling to think of the city as an obstruction; she white-rimmed glasses on a round face; Hamilton’s shock, said, “She had no clue.”) had recently struggled to make a living, she prefers adventurously billowing Hamilton changed, got in a taxi, and and felt that she was depriving her young clothes made of dark fabrics. Compared called Valentina Rice. Rice began asking son of a gentler, slower childhood in west with Hamilton, who is unimpressed by friends to recommend lawyers, and one London, with access to English relatives, displays of emotion, Gunn is happier to of them spoke to a family-law specialist, the National Health Service, and muddy use the language of therapy, and is readier who said that Hamilton should “get the playgrounds under gray skies. Hamilton to share her feelings. Disorder can agi- hell out of there.” Without legal repre- is an American citizen—and, she recently tate her—she once sent an employee to sentation, she was “walking into an am- learned, a descendant of Alexander Ham- her home to deal with an insect—and bush.” Rice relayed this advice, but Ham- ilton—but she grew up in England, on the day of Hamilton’s farewell party ilton, she told me, “felt she had to go, and sounds English, and has a British pass- Gunn was upset about a blocked toilet. she didn’t have her son.” port. When her friend Valentina Rice She had mentioned it in a text message, In the courtroom, Gunn and Hamil- hosted a farewell dinner for her, on Au- but was repelled when Hamilton carried ton didn’t speak to each other. “It was an gust 30th, Hamilton was surrounded by her own plunger across town and into out-of-body experience,” Hamilton re- expatriate British women with careers Gunn’s apartment. Hamilton later re- called. “I thought I was in a really weird in the media and in fashion. The guests called that, after she dropped off Abush play: ‘Where am I, and how did I end ate blueberry polenta cake and said with Gunn, she thought that her ex up here?’ ” goodbye to someone they understood seemed “more panicked than usual.” Chemtob told the judge that Gunn to be a single mother. The next day, Wednesday, a shipping was in a “co-parenting relationship Hamilton’s son, Abush, was born in company collected Hamilton’s belong- where the child one hundred per cent Ethiopia, and was adopted by Circe in ings. She had what she thought would believes, and knows, that he has two August, 2011, when he was a toddler. A be her final photo shoot in New York: a mothers.” Gunn and Hamilton had raised year and a half earlier, Hamilton had bro- portrait of Emma Forbes, a British TV Abush “as both parents equally.” She ken up with Kelly Gunn, the woman presenter, for Hello! Gunn later sent her acknowledged that Abush usually called who had been her romantic partner for pictures of Abush having fun at the beach. Kelly Gunn by her first name—truncated several years. In their final year together, At one o’clock on Thursday, Hamil- to “Kee”—but only because Gunn and Hamilton and Gunn had begun the pro- ton was at home cleaning, expecting to Hamilton had agreed that “ ‘Ma’ and cess of an overseas adoption. After the leave for Fire Island in the evening, when ‘Mommy’ would be confusing.” Hamil- separation, Hamilton continued to pur- she got a call from a woman who intro- ton was a “flight risk,” Chemtob said, and sue the process. The two women re- duced herself as Nancy Chemtob. A New Gunn had become “very concerned about mained in close contact, and a year after York family and matrimonial lawyer, the welfare of the child.” Abush arrived Gunn became his god- Chemtob founded her own firm in her The judge invited Hamilton to speak. mother. Despite some friction between twenties; in the two and a half decades “I have no idea why I was brought into the women about the meaning of that since, she has represented such clients the courtroom,” she said. “I am the sole role, Gunn and Abush developed a strong as Bobby Flay, Star Jones, and Diandra parent.” bond. He often stayed with her over- Douglas, the ex-wife of Michael Doug- night; he loved her dogs. las, in divorce proceedings. Her style is he judge allowed Gunn’s petition to On the morning of the farewell din- amused and unsentimental, and she has T progress, and Hamilton relinquished ner, Hamilton had walked with Abush a strong Long Island accent. (Today, when Abush’s passports. Leaving the court- from her home, in the West Village, to Hamilton and Chemtob refer to each room, she briefly embraced Gunn, who Gunn’s apartment, on Sullivan Street, a other, they use inexpert, mocking approx- was weeping, and whispered, “I’m so block south of Washington Square Park. imations of the other’s accent.) sorry.” Hamilton later told me, “I did feel The apartment is modern, with glossy Chemtob told Hamilton that she rep- sorry for her. It was ‘Why do you have dark floors and a wall of windows. Gunn resented Kelly Gunn. Hamilton only to do this?’ ” Hamilton then cancelled her had become wealthy by supplying Apple half-registered what came next. Chem- flight, reënrolled Abush in school, and with display fixtures for its stores; she tob recalls telling Hamilton that Gunn hired a lawyer. had run her own design company, and had just asked a New York court to rec- Gunn v. Hamilton—an inquiry into had been a partner in another. She owned ognize her as one of Abush’s parents and whether Abush had two parents or one— property in Los Angeles, and a summer award her joint legal and physical cus- began the following week, and was still house on Fire Island. She had offered to tody. As an interim measure, Gunn was running in the new year. The proceedings, take Abush to the beach for a few nights seeking a restraining order that would which exhumed hundreds of e-mails of while Hamilton finished packing. Ham- stop Hamilton from taking him out of love and regret, became an intimate his- ilton would join them on Thursday, Sep- the country. Chemtob told Hamilton tory of a New York romance and its after- tember 1st, and then bring Abush back that, at 2:30 p.m., she must appear before math: a study of what counts as splitting

48 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 up, what counts as a family, and, in a quiet but stubborn subtext, whether the abil- ity to pay for good dentistry enhances a legal claim to be something more than a godmother. The case was the first of its kind in the city. “It’s as if you gave me the keys to your apartment and, suddenly, I’m say- ing, ‘The apartment is mine,’ ” Hamilton told me, bleakly, last fall. “What the fuck? Where does it end?” Her life had been put on hold, and her possessions were stuck in a shipping warehouse in New Jersey. Abush had returned to school; Hamilton couldn’t take him out of state without permission. The court had allot- ted Gunn time with Abush on Sundays and on Thursday afternoons. Several times a week for months, Hamilton and Gunn sat a few feet from each other in a bright, shabby courtroom, at 80 Centre Street. A sign on the wall noted that “loud and angry words gen- erally indicate a weak argument,” but the white noise of the city, through open win- ¥¥ dows, risked drowning out any form of speech gentler than a reprimand. Abush was not in the courtroom, but visitors in where improvised extended families are By the time Chemtob met with me, the public seats sometimes glimpsed his commonplace, such a ruling would risk Gunn had spent eleven days on the wit- image when attorneys looked at e-mail emboldening people who, having been ness stand. Chemtob recalled a recent printouts with photo attachments: a smil- invited into the lives of single par- conference in Judge Nervo’s chambers, ing boy with big eyes and a high fore- ents, then object to being asked to leave: in which he addressed both sets of law- head, playing with a dog or being held neighbors, babysitters, childless friends, yers and protested that the slow-mov- in the air. siblings, flings. ing case was creating a backlog. “He was If Gunn had filed her petition even a really sweet,” she said. “He was ‘Look, few days earlier, it might well have been “ t’s ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ 2016,” Nancy I’d love to be on the front page of the quickly dismissed, and Abush would have IChemtob told me, over a drink, Law Journal, but I’d also love this case spent Christmas in Oxfordshire. But in October. “It’s wild.” She had the to be over. Why don’t we, instead of mak- Gunn came to court just after New York air of a morning-news anchor after a ing law, just see how we can get both to had expanded the definition of who few cups of coffee. The litigation was settle?’ ” But under New York law there’s counts as a parent. On September 8th, in its second month. Chemtob hadn’t no legal middle ground between being when Judge Frank Nervo began hearing taken a day off since the summer. In a parent and not being one. Neither party the case, he understood—as did the half- court, she could be oddly playful. Sev- was likely to settle, and, whatever the dozen attorneys in front of him, and the eral times, after fractious exchanges be- Judge’s ruling, an appeal was inevita- wider community of family lawyers— tween her and Hamilton’s lead attor- ble. Chemtob, confident in her case and that Gunn’s petition would help set the ney, Bonnie Rabin, of Cohen Rabin aware of Gunn’s financial advantage, had limits of that expansion. Stine Schumann, she asked me, in repeatedly urged Rabin to “throw in If Gunn won the case, this would cre- mock-exhaustion, “Do you want to take the towel.” ate a striking precedent. Her supporters over?” Chemtob’s informal style some- Chemtob mentioned a recent client, would laud the court for having restrained times surprised Hamilton’s lawyers, a financier who had impregnated a a woman who, with blithe unilateralism, who maintained a more scholarly air. woman he met on Ashley Madison, a had attempted to put an ocean between One of Rabin’s colleagues told me that Web site for people seeking extramari- a small boy and one of his mothers. Sup- she’d never before seen the phrase “the tal affairs; he did not want to support porters of Hamilton would see presump- bun was in the oven” in a legal memo. their child. Boys in fourth grade, Chem- tion rewarded; to them, a Gunn victory During the proceedings, Rabin, whose tob said, should be taught that “if you would suggest that legal chutzpah, and firm frequently handles L.G.B.T. cases, ever have sex you need to flush the con- the funds to pay for it, could convert the often struck a pose of speechless as- dom down the toilet.” She also recalled desire to be a parent into the fact of being tonishment at what she was obliged to how she took Gunn’s case. An acquain- one. In New York City, in particular, hear from the other side. tance, Jane Aronson—a pediatrician who

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 49 calls herself the Orphan Doctor—had When Gunn came to Chemtob’s office, (Chemtob said to me, “I always tell moms contacted her. Aronson’s expertise, which weeping, on August 24th, accompanied to dress like moms, dads to dress like has drawn her into friendships with An- by her sister, Jennifer, Chemtob was able dads.”) An hour after the meeting, Gunn gelina Jolie and Hugh Jackman, includes to share some remarkably encouraging went to a West Village playground, where the medical evaluation, from afar, of over- news. She had just read up on an ongo- she hosted a farewell pizza party for seas children who are being considered ing case, Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A. C.C., Abush and some of his friends. for adoption in America. A few years which was being closely watched by ago, Aronson sought advice from Chem- L.G.B.T. legal activists, but which had mericans are in unusual agreement tob when she separated from her civil barely registered in Chemtob’s midtown A about a parent’s right to parent. Ac- partner, a woman with whom she had firm. (Describing her daily routine, cording to Chris Gottlieb, a law profes- adopted two sons; Aronson secured joint Chemtob said, “I confess that I have to sor at N.Y.U., who co-directs a family- custody. read the Post first.”) The litigation, in- law clinic there, this view “has stood the In late August, Aronson was sitting volving two women from western New test of time, and couldn’t be more essen- with Gunn in Christopher Park, outside York who were formerly in a relation- tial to our democratic way of thinking.” the Stonewall Inn. She called Chemtob ship, and a boy who turned seven last Gottlieb worked on an amicus brief in and handed Gunn the phone. “She year, was about to be decided by the the Brooke S.B. case. On the issue of pa- sounded like a nut job,” Chemtob re- Court of Appeals in Albany. Oral argu- rental rights, she said, “I, as a progres- called. To the extent that she could fol- ments had been heard in June. Chem- sive, agree with people whom I wouldn’t low Gunn’s scattered account—years of tob explained that, if the petitioner in agree with on almost anything.” She ex- co-parenting; a looming flight to Lon- Brooke S.B. won, the precedent might plained, “We agree on this—you have don—it seemed clear that she was le- make Gunn something more than a the right to raise your kid in ways that gally unprotected. “The law’s one hun- legal stranger. If the case went the other I fundamentally disagree with. This right dred per cent against you,” Chemtob way, Gunn’s litigation could take Brooke really has been understood as an on-off told her. “You have absolutely no rights.” S.B.’s place as a trailblazer. “Nancy made switch. If you’re a parent, you get to make (Gunn recalls that Chemtob used a dis- me feel confident,” Gunn told me. She all the critical decisions: what religion quieting phrase: “legal stranger.”) Nev- recalled asking Jennifer, “Am I doing your child is raised in, where they live, ertheless, she suggested that Gunn make this?” Jennifer replied, “You’re doing this.” whether they can stay out until eleven an appointment: “Let’s see what we can Chemtob recommended filing a pe- and smoke marijuana.” do.” Gunn told me that she had ap- tition before Hamilton flew to London. So when the definition of “parent” proached Chemtob, at Aronson’s urging, She also suggested that Gunn wear con- becomes uncertain, it creates turmoil in hoping merely that “a strong letter” might tact lenses in place of her severe white the law. “The thing about parental rights compel Hamilton to “talk about this.” glasses—advice that Gunn ignored. is that you cannot give them to one per- son without taking them away from somebody else, unless it’s with that per- son’s consent,” Gottlieb said. “That’s un- like other rights. Most progressives would agree with me that you can give L.G.B.T. people the right to marry without tak- ing anything away from a straight per- son. That’s not true with this. When you give rights to Brooke B., it’s at the ex- pense of Elizabeth C.” New York’s statutes describe the ob- ligations and entitlements of a parent, but they don’t define what a parent is. That definition derives from case law. In 1991, in a ruling in Alison D. v. Virginia M., a case involving an estranged lesbian cou- ple and a child, the Court of Appeals opted for a definition with “bright line” clarity. A parent was either a biological parent or an adoptive parent; there were no other kinds. Lawyers in this field warn of “opening the floodgates”—an uncon- trolled flow of dubious, would-be par- ents. Alison D. kept the gates shut, so that a biological mother wouldn’t find, say, that she had accidentally given “With the knees , fellas, lift with the knees!” away partial custody of her child to a worthless ex-boyfriend. But many saw ing” for a case that looked something turned, the promise of Brooke S.B. de- the decision as discriminatory against like Brooke S.B. rived in part from the fact that it in- same-sex couples, who can choose to raise In 2015, Canby spoke on a panel volved, as Canby put it, “unsophisticated a child together but can’t share the act of about family-law issues affecting gay people from a rural small community.” producing one. Judge Judith Kaye, in a clients. She recalled that, afterward, Brett A more typical litigant would live in dissent that has since been celebrated, Figlewski,of LeGal, the L.G.B.T. bar the city, be “very connected to the noted that millions of American children association of Greater New York, “chased L.G.B.T.-rights community,” and be had been born into families with a gay me down the street and got me into a aware that adoption was the only way or lesbian parent; the court’s decision Starbucks, and said, ‘Meg, I for an unmarried same-sex would restrict the ability of these chil- think we’ve got the case.’ ” partner in New York to have dren to “maintain bonds that may be cru- Canby went on, “I sat with unquestioned parental rights. cial to their development.” him, reading the trial, turn- Barone’s misconceived cer- Starting in the mid-nineties, some ing over the pages, looking at tainty about being a mother U.S. states began recognizing a new legal the facts, and just saying, ‘This was a legal asset. Blank Rome category: the de-facto parent. This usu- could be the one.’ ” joined with Susan Sommer, ally defined someone who had been given The women at the center from Lambda Legal, a civil- permission, by a legal parent, to share of the case, Brooke Barone rights nonprofit. By last June, parental duties; who had lived with, and and Elizabeth Chapman, when Sommer delivered oral bonded with, a child; and who had as- grew up near Jamestown, arguments, Barone hadn’t sumed some of the financial burdens of southwest of Buffalo, and seen the boy she considered parenthood. This person would not nec- began a relationship in 2006. After her son for three years—except by ac- essarily be granted full parental rights Chapman became pregnant, through cident, in the supermarket. but would at least have standing to argue, a donor, she and Barone had a baby On August 30th, the day that Ham- in the face of a legal parent’s objection, show er. Barone cut the infant’s umbili- ilton dropped Abush off at Sullivan that a child’s best interests would be cal cord. The child took Barone’s last Street, the Court of Appeals published served by a continued relationship. name. An announcement in the James- its decision; Barone did have stand- New York couldn’t easily follow suit. town Post-Journal named two mothers ing as a parent. Judge Sheila Abdus- Meg Canby, a matrimonial attorney at and four grandparents. The couple Salaam wrote that the Alison D. stan- Blank Rome, a large law firm, told me broke up in 2010. Barone, now living a dard was “unworkable when applied to that Alison D. was a “terrible ruling that few miles away, continued to provide increasingly varied familial relation- had the imprimatur of precedent, leav- financial support and to spend regular ships.” In circumstances like Barone’s, ing the state with a higher bar.” In 1995, time with the child, who knew her as Abdus-Salaam wrote, what should mat- the state started allowing unmarried “Mama B.” When Chapman married ter is a plan to parent—so that “where people—including same-sex partners— another woman, Barone attended the a petitioner proves by clear and convinc- to become second parents through adop- wedding. But, in 2013, Chapman denied ing evidence that he or she has agreed tion. In Canby’s view, this was “a salve Barone further access to the child. with the biological parent of the child on the wounds of Alison D.,” but it Barone, then aged thirty-one, went to conceive and raise the child as co-par- wasn’t equality: most heterosexual par- to family court in Chautauqua County. ents, the petitioner has presented suffici- ents didn’t have to get around this bu- A judge was sympathetic, calling the ent evidence to achieve standing to seek reaucratic obstacle. circumstances “very disturbing,” but custody and visitation of the child.” (In Over the years, the Alison D. rule was said that the law gave her no oppor- April, Abdus-Salaam was found dead in often challenged, and was sometimes tunity to intervene. (The decision, the Hudson River, an apparent suicide.) bent a little. In 2006, the Court of Ap- Barone told me in a phone interview, The Court of Appeals stopped short peals decided that a man who had be- caused her attorney to cry.) In an un- of establishing a de-facto rule for New haved as a child’s father and was thought successful appeal, Barone drew a con- York. The new rule would apply quite by the child to be a father—what an- trast between her legal effort and more narrowly, in cases in which the evidence other jurisdiction would call a de-facto usual family-court cases—the kind allowed a judge to feel confident about parent—couldn’t evade paying child sup- that, as Meg Canby put it, involve “the what a couple had been thinking before port by proving that he wasn’t in fact the mothers of children trying to drag fa- a child arrived. The rule would not apply biological father. In 2010, Bonnie Rabin thers, kicking and screaming, to take when a child (or a pregnancy) predated represented a lesbian client who secured responsibility for their kids, to see them, a relationship. A case like that, the court standing as a non-biological, non-adop- participate in their lives, to pay for wrote, was “a matter left for another tive parent, although on the narrow them.” Canby went on, “Brooke is beg- day.” The TimesÕ editorial board de- ground that she and her ex had entered ging to come in and do that—and she’s scribed the decision, in a headline, as a civil partnership in Vermont. Yet to the shown the door. There’s just a funda- “an overdue victory for gay par- consternation of many Alison D. stuck, mental unfairness.” ents and their children.” In Oc- even after New York enacted same-sex In September, 2015, the Court of Ap- tober, Barone began seeing her son again. marriage, in 2011. Meg Canby said that peals agreed to review the case. For Alison D. was gone. The floodgates lawyers like her were “waiting and pray- those who hoped to see Alison D. over- had not been opened, but they were less

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 51 guarded. Soon after the Brooke ruling, a mother, Rabin said. “But Ms. Gunn wanted Gunn told me that, in the winter of Long Island courtroom began to con- more. Ms. Gunn doesn’t get to have more. 2007, “I asked Circe to marry me.” This sider whether a ten-year-old boy, born That’s not the way the world works.” was before same-sex marriage was legal into a Bay Shore ménage involving two On September 12th, Gunn took the in New York. She bought two diamond women and a man, might be the state’s witness stand and declared that Abush rings, and gave one to Hamilton. Gunn first child to have three legal parents. was her son. recalled the moment as awkward. “Her Chemtob called Gunn, who was on her “Objection,” Rabin said. own parents got divorced—she’s afraid way to Fire Island with Abush. “It’s the of it,” Gunn said. “She laughed and got craziest thing,” she recalls saying. “Brooke n a morning last December when really nervous and uncomfortable. Like, was just decided in your favor!” (Chemtob Othe case had paused, Gunn and her ‘Oh, gosh.’ ” (Hamilton recalls the ring, told me that the courts “would have thrown attorney were drinking coffee in Soho and other gifts of jewelry, but told me me out” if she’d filed two days earlier.) House, a members’ club in the meat- that she didn’t recognize the moment The next day, Gunn left Abush in Cherry packing district. Gunn was wearing a as a proposal, and never thought of Grove with friends he knew well, and long-sleeved shirt that hid a line of tat- herself as being engaged.) Gunn said she caught a ferry. In the rain, feeling sick tooed paw prints near her left elbow. The that the episode illustrated Hamilton’s with anxiety, she made her way to Cen- tattoos, sometimes visible in court, com- emotional evasiveness: “She would tre Street. memorated the death of a pet Chihua- say, ‘I know I don’t say “I love you” hua. I asked Gunn about another design, that often.’ Something happens to her uring the trial, Hamilton and Gunn half-visible under the watch on her right mouth, she can’t get the words out. So Dsat behind their lawyers. Hamilton wrist, where, in 2012, she had tattooed I take her actions as an implication of usually held in her lap a black cardboard Abush’s name, in the Ethiopian script. her feelings.” box containing photographs of Abush. “Whenever we take photos with my arm They had started talking about adop- Gunn began each morning by turning around him, it’s there,” Gunn told me. tion. Hamilton took the lead in that con- her chair slightly, making it easier to keep She had a smiling, earnest manner. “I say, versation, and in the process that fol- her back to Hamilton. ‘Even when we’re not together, I look at lowed. “Circe needed this so badly,” Gunn On September 8th, the first day that this and you’re with me.’ ” told me. “I had a big identity, a big job. Gunn and Hamilton met in front of The daughter of a firefighter, Gunn And, without getting too binary, I wanted Judge Nervo, Rabin argued that the pe- grew up in Queens and left home at sev- this for my partner, you know.” In the tition should be dismissed, in part be- enteen. She said that she got “a little lost fall of 2007, they attended an event for cause Chemtob had supported it with in the cracks for a few years” before going would-be adoptive parents at Rutgers, untruths, including the idea that Gunn to college, in the Midwest. She returned and Jane Aronson was one of the speak- referred to Abush as her son. (Rabin later to New York permanently in her thirties, ers; shortly afterward, they had a consul- answered a question of mine about and only fully reconnected with her par- tation with her. Chemtob’s strategy by saying that some ents and her sister a decade ago. She has Hamilton looked into applying for lawyers “throw everything against the a brother, who has children, but who is an overseas adoption, feeling that the wall and hope that it sticks.”) Nervo de- not on good terms with the family. process would be more predictable, and murred; the case began. Gunn and Hamilton’s relationship less fraught, than a domestic one. She “ ‘Parent’ is a word no different—and began in 2004, after they met at a Val- was drawn to an agency that encouraged I hate to say it, Your Honor—than a entine’s Day party. Gunn was thirty-nine, ongoing contact between adopted chil- word like ‘God,’ or a word like ‘love,’” Hamilton thirty-one. They moved in to- dren and their birth families. In 2009, Chemtob said. “It’s a word that you gether in 2007, and bought the Sullivan the couple applied for an adoption from can’t really define. But when you talk Street apartment. By then, Gunn had either Ethiopia or Nepal. This required about God, love, or parent, it elicits emo- discovered her commercial skills. She subterfuge. No country, in the shrinking tion. It’s a feeling that you can’t explain. worked for a firm that supplied Apple category of countries allowing foreign You could be in a church or a synagogue Stores with large printed graphics; she adoptions, welcomed applications from and everybody believes in God. But also founded her own company, Shasty, same-sex couples. Hamilton presented what’s God? What’s love? You know it to make acrylic signs. She was often away herself as straight and unmarried; she when it’s there. That’s what a parent is.” from New York. In 2012, Gunn earned even invented a boyfriend. The two Rabin acknowledged that, while Ham- three million dollars. women discussed initiating a second- ilton and Gunn were a couple, they had Hamilton became a part-time office parent adoption once a child was living made “a joint plan” to adopt. But that plan manager at Shasty. She still had a career with them. Gunn was included in “was terminated, aborted, extinguished— as a photographer: in addition to maga- the paperwork that began to amass— clearly—when the parties separated.” She zine and corporate work, she had a side- criminal- background checks, financial went on, “You can encourage a loving re- line, which had grown out of a personal and medical reports, an apartment in- lationship. You can encourage time to- art project; she made commissioned por- spection—but only as a roommate. gether. You can encourage someone to traits of women who, often for therapeu- Gunn told me that, over time, Ham- support you, and I mean emotionally. That tic, confidence-building reasons, wished ilton forgot that she was enacting a fic- doesn’t encourage them to be a parent.” to be photographed unclothed for the tion. She added, “I think she got too Hamilton had valued Gunn—as a god- first time. comfortable with it.” Gunn went on to

52 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 describe Hamilton as homophobic: “She doesn’t have a lot of gay friends.” The romantic relationship did not survive the year. Gunn voiced concern about the responsibilities of motherhood, and about the potential psychological difficulties that an adopted child might have. She was also attached to the life of comfort that she’d managed to build. (By now, this included the summer house on Fire Island. Hamilton recalled Gunn saying, “I just want to be drinking cock- tails by the pool.”) She rekindled a rela- tionship with a former girlfriend, Maria Piñeres, an artist who lived in Los An- geles. As Gunn told the court, “This opened up a can of worms.” Judge Nervo interjected, “Who would have thought?” According to Hamilton and her friends, the couple broke up in December, 2009. Gunn rejected that description. She said that they had experienced a moment of crisis—“a big excavation of important •• things that we needed to work through before the baby comes.” She added, “I am paid Hamilton three hundred and fifty plication stopped referring to the Sulli- entitled to go through a crisis. I’m enti- thousand dollars to remove her from the van Street apartment, or to a roommate. tled to take time and navigate that with deeds of the New York apartment and Gunn insists now that she was no less a partner.” Although she and Hamilton the Fire Island house. These properties a co-applicant than before. “We were stopped sleeping together, their sense of were co-owned, although over the years pregnant, basically,” she told the court. family survived, she said. She claims that Hamilton had made a far smaller finan- She has also described herself as part Hamilton didn’t truly move away from cial contribution to their partnership than owner of the adoption application, Sullivan Street until 2011. “She came every Gunn had. Gunn now describes this cash which she called an “asset.” (Gretchen day!” Gunn told me. “Her computer was as a gift—disguised, for tax reasons— Beall Schumann, a colleague of Rabin’s, still in my apartment.” Hamilton sublet that would allow Hamilton to set up one suggested to me that this was like claim- a series of apartments, but, in Gunn’s of the homes of their future child. ing ownership of “the intellectual prop- opinion, these were merely for “lovers.” As the separation agreement was being erty of a conversation about I.V.F.,” after As Gunn put it, “The only thing she discussed, Hamilton e-mailed the attor- breaking up with a partner who subse- couldn’t do at my apartment was bring ney who was helping them, and included quently began fertility treatments.) home a girlfriend.” Hamilton disputes a query about child support: might she In March, 2011, nearly a year after the this—she certainly moved out—while ask Kelly for this one day? She added, “If separation agreement, the adoption acknowledging that she was often at the I can manage on my own, I won’t ask.” agency sent Hamilton a photograph of Sullivan Street home, as a friend and as The final agreement didn’t refer to child Abush, who was fifteen months old. His an employee; she remained the office support. But, in court, Chemtob brought mother had left his father, who had then manager at Shasty. up the e-mail dozens of times. When I brought him to an orphanage. In the pho- Jane Aronson noted that many mod- talked to Hamilton about it, the subject tograph, Abush was wearing a white ern relationships take unconventional flustered her. At one point, she claimed T-shirt with cartoon dinosaurs on it, and forms, and may not be best understood to be unfamiliar with “child support” as he was holding car keys in one hand and as being either on or off. “Who’s to judge a phrase. a bracelet in the other. He had perhaps if they were broken up or not?” she asked, The adoption application—in Ham- been handed these to soothe him; he adding, “This is just a divorce with two ilton’s name—was not withdrawn after looked as if he had been crying. people who can’t work their shit out, and the breakup. Hamilton kept the paper- The day she received the photograph, the kid’s stuck in the middle. And we’re work updated, and attended seminars Hamilton forwarded it to Gunn, who trying to determine whether one’s a par- about adoptive parenting. But Gunn con- was in Las Vegas on business. Gunn later ent or not? You would never do that if tends that Hamilton never explicitly told told the court, “We both cried and felt, people were straight.” her that she was now adopting as a sin- like, finally.” Neither side disputes that, in May, gle mother. In December, 2010, Hamil- That summer, Hamilton made two 2010, Gunn and Hamilton signed a sep- ton bought a one-bedroom apartment in trips to Ethiopia. On the first, she spent aration agreement. Under its terms, Gunn the West Village, and her adoption ap- ten days with Abush. On the second, she

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 53 formally adopted him in Addis Ababa, and then flew back with him, through London. Gunn, who had been working in POEM WITHOUT AN IMAGE Hamburg, met them at Heathrow Airport. “I can’t describe the feeling,” Gunn Just now it has come told me. “I just fell in love with him. He to me again: the sudden comes waddling through with Circe, knowledge of everything holding an orange that he carried all the that remains to be done way from Ethiopia.” She said that, at though I worked my ass off Heathrow, when Circe left her alone with this week, doing things, doing Abush for a few minutes, she felt an “in- things. What is my style? stant connection” with him. is a question I have never He slept on her lap during the flight asked until now, in the waiting to Newark. “It just felt amazing,” she said. room at my dentist’s, “I have pictures. When I reclined my chair, when this article in O Magazine he laid his little chubby hand on my arm. encouraged me so cunningly I didn’t want to move, ever. It felt like, in to do so. Maybe it is not that moment, all the shit that we’d gone my job to surprise you, not through, and all the work—here’s this anymore, says the spirit. person. It’s such a long process, for gay O.K., I say. O.K. But still, people. The planning to have a child is I want one more crisp so extraordinary. It’s interesting—how image, just one, though I know much we have to plan, and how much I don’t deserve it, I want it stress that can put on your relationship.” to appear the way money once I asked Gunn if she had thought of or twice in my life has appeared herself as a full partner in the adoption in my line of vision on during the eighteen months before Abush the street: some bill, nearly flew to New York. “I did pursue it—full alive, green god, its skin throttle,” she said. “Had I not, I wouldn’t giving off evergreen light, have given Circe three hundred and fifty unaccounted for and then thousand dollars.” She went on, “I did immediately mine, no what I was always supposed to be doing. questions asked. I’m the provider.” —Carrie Fountain he day before the 2016 Presidential Telection, Circe Hamilton took Abush—now six—to a swimming class of Alexander Hamilton. Pierpont ad- tographs that she brought to court each in Battery Park City. On the way, they opted Harold. During Circe’s childhood, day. Many of the images had been taken stopped in the graveyard of Trinity the Hamilton ancestry was not a part of on a return trip to Ethiopia, in 2015, when Church, on Broadway, where Alexander family conversations; she learned of it Abush reunited with his birth relatives. Hamilton is buried. Circe’s mother, only last fall. “I called my grandmother’s Hamilton expressed worry that these Louanne Richards, was with them. Rich- fourth husband,” she told me. “I asked family members might learn of the legal ards lives in Oxfordshire, but she spent him, ‘Is there a bloodline to Alexander case—and so register her lack of candor much of last fall in New York. A former Hamilton?’ He said, ‘Oh, yes.’ ” about her sexuality. She became tearful. Royal Ballet dancer, she now works as an In the churchyard, in front of Hamil- This was unusual: in our conversations, acupuncturist and a tai-chi teacher; she ton’s tomb, Circe told Abush, “That’s your she tended to be evidence-oriented and has an optimistic, utopian bent. When distant relative.” As Hamilton later re- almost brusque; her hands busily sketched she first met Gunn, she scolded her for called, he replied, “No way!” out arguments in the air, and her laments being a capitalist. The next week, I sat with Hamilton were accompanied by dry laughter. Hamilton’s parents divorced when at the desk that she was using at the offices Chemtob’s witnesses testified for she was twelve. Harold Hamilton, her of her attorneys, in a tower by the Port nearly two months. (Meg Canby called American- born father, lives in Rhode Is- Authority Bus Terminal. During the trial, the trial “a proceeding run amok.” Forty- land, and teaches film. Gunn said that she often went back to the office, after day trials privilege the rich.) According he has the air of “someone waiting for court, with Rabin and her colleagues; to the case that Chemtob was making, a the trust fund that’s never going to come.” later, she’d go home to put Abush to bed, plan to adopt was an agreement made in When Harold was young, his parents di- then return to midtown. She had her own perpetuity, unless it was explicitly can- vorced, and his mother married Pierpont supply of English tea bags in the firm’s celled. “It’s good forever?” Nervo asked, at Morgan Hamilton—the grandson of J. P. kitchen. one point. “Yes,” Chemtob replied. To but- Morgan, and the great-great-grandson Hamilton showed me the box of pho- tress her claim that the plan had survived,

54 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 Gunn, along with friends and relatives, ton had used when telling people about gestion that they should all meet at had testified to her parent-like behavior their breakup. Potter testified that she had Heathrow, Hamilton wrote to a friend: toward Abush. detected no sarcasm. “Kelly (the ex) weirdly is in Hamburg on Hamilton’s lawyers had collected let- If Hamilton never announced, in a job and will help me.” Gunn used ters from a hundred people who chal- writing, that she was now adopting alone, frequent- flier miles to upgrade Circe and lenged Gunn’s story, but these witnesses Gunn appeared to have registered this Abush on the flight to Newark. Chem- had still not been heard. The protracted change. At the start of 2011, a year after tob later described this as a financial con- trial was testing Hamilton’s outlook on the end of her romantic relationship tribution to the adoption. “Miles are life, which Valentina Rice had summa- with Gunn, Hamilton was renovating money!” she said. rized as “It’s all meant to be.” Hamilton her new West Village apartment, and When Abush first arrived in New described a recent attempt by lawyers on had a new girlfriend. Gunn e-mailed York, he was not entirely healthy, and he both sides to agree on a calendar of the her: “You said I would wake up and re- didn’t understand English. Hamilton had time that Gunn had ever spent with alize I’ve lost everything. And that’s a wide network of friends—her group Abush; this required a meeting that where I am these days.” A few minutes e-mails about the adoption went to eighty stretched over three days, and involved a later, she added, “I am just going through people—and she was happy to let Gunn dozen people—their shoes off, ordering a lot of emotions around the loss, of the be one of those involved in Abush’s life, sushi—arguing about whether an over- baby that will never be, the life that will and to accept help. In the first months night stay counted as two days or one. never be. I realize I’m a year too late, after Abush arrived, Gunn came to sev- Earlier, Hamilton had heard Chemtob and this is your new year. New home, eral of his medical visits. She also took say to Rabin, “Just make her a parent, new partner, new life coming.” In a Feb- him to Tumbling Tots classes at Chelsea and it’ll all be done.” ruary, 2011, e-mail to Aronson, Hamil- Piers, and for walks in the park. Gunn In my conversations with Chemtob, ton said that Gunn had experienced “a describes this as a sustained pattern of she had been puzzled that Hamilton was bit of a midlife crisis,” adding, “We are parenting. If her role in Abush’s adop- able to afford her representation. Ham- friends, but I am pursuing this adop- tion had at times been more auxiliary ilton told me that she had borrowed tion solo.” than collaborative, this could describe any money from family and friends, but it When Gunn first saw a photograph number of people approaching parent- seemed unlikely that this was covering of Abush, on the work trip to Las Vegas, hood; Gunn presents herself as a boun- all the costs. (Chemtob had mentioned she wrote to Hamilton, “He’s adorable. tiful ex-partner who strayed, but who one small part of the expense: “rush” trial I am so emotional from the news. I’m never renounced family commitments. transcripts cost each side more than a sure this is a big day for you.” She went This reading seems to be challenged thousand dollars a day.) Hamilton de- on, “I am doing my best to temper my by the regret, the baby shower, the lack cided to sell her apartment; last week, own emotional reaction to this, and I of evidence showing Gunn assuming the she was in contract with a buyer. want you to know I am so proud of you identity—joyful or not—of a parent- Hamilton told me that Gunn lost in- for following your dream. You made this to-be. (In June, 2011, when Hamilton terest in the adoption in 2009. “She was happen!” Gunn added, “I saw his face, first visited Ethiopia, Gunn sent a jokey amassing her fortune—she just didn’t and a wave of grief rolled over me. He e-mail from a retreat in Italy: “Can you have time,” she said. “She was racing was supposed to be our son. take more than one kid? around the world for Apple.” After the I’m not sure I will ever get Guess it doesn’t work that breakup, Gunn felt “sad and guilty,” Ham- over my regret and sorrow way exactly.”) In Gunn’s at- ilton said. The financial settlement was over that. But I will be very tempt to align her narrative the act of “a concerned friend, saying, very happy for you and for with Barone’s, her money— ‘Yes, I know I jumped ship, but I want him, and hope to find a way her availability as a pro- to take care of you.’ ” Hamilton noted an to be in your lives.” It was a vider—must stand in for e-mail that Gunn had sent in January, striking aspect of the litiga- other, missing facts. 2010, from L.A., while watching reports tion that, for both parties in And, if it’s true that Gunn of the Haitian earthquake on CNN. “You the dispute, affectionate and never retreated from the adop- could get yourself a Haitian orphan,” she encouraging messages had tion—and that “the only one wrote. Later, Gunn wrote from Colom- become weapons for the op- who broke any sort of plan bia, on a visit with Piñeres: “Maria said posing side. The case was a war fought was Circe,” as Chemtob put it to me— you could get a kid here.” In an instant- with kind words. it’s confusing that Gunn approved an message conversation with Terri Potter, That summer, Gunn hosted what was, e-mail, sent to her company’s staff and an old friend and a sometime Shasty em- at the time, referred to as a baby shower. clients in September, 2011, that wel- ployee, Gunn explained that she didn’t (“It wasn’t a shower,” Gunn told me. “My comed Hamilton’s baby to their com- expect to get back together with Ham- staff and I went out and got stuff for her munity but did not mention Gunn. And ilton: “We don’t have a sexual connection and went over for dinner.”) Shortly be- it’s odd that there is no evidence of Gunn / and I don’t want to be a mother / two fore Hamilton brought Abush to the pushing, at the time of Abush’s arrival, very big issues.” Asked about the exchange United States, Gunn wrote, “We’re all for a second-parent adoption. Instead, in court, Gunn said that she was sarcas- ready for him in NY. It takes a village.” in an e-mail to Hamilton in Novem- tically parroting language that Hamil- After Hamilton agreed to Gunn’s sug- ber, 2011, she wrote, “You’re doing a killer

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 55 job raising a vibrant kid. I admire you ticle, in the London Times, about Ham- him.” Gunn and Chemtob now describe for all you’ve done, and are doing. How ilton’s adoption of Abush. Gunn told me the godmother title as a restraining order. amazing you found each other.” that one night in May, 2012, when Abush After attending three or four of Abush’s It may be that, after Abush appeared— was at Sullivan Street, “he had some emo- medical visits, Gunn never went to an- after he’d fallen asleep on Gunn’s lap—she tional freak-out in the middle of the other. She didn’t take him on vacation changed her mind. As Hamilton put it night.” She went on, “He starts crying— without Hamilton, or go to parent-teacher to me, “I think that she meets this lit- wailing. And I knew enough from the conferences. Gunn did often pick Abush tle boy, and this wasn’t what she expected, training, from books we read, from Jane, up from school and take him to extracur- and she falls in love with him and wants that these kids have problems, and you ricular activities, and there were frequent ownership.” If this is correct, then in don’t know what’s going on. And he sleepovers at Sullivan Street—usually on those first months Gunn may have al- couldn’t even talk. So I held him, and I Thursdays, when Hamilton liked to go lowed herself to infer, from Hamilton’s said, ‘It’s O.K., I love you.’ It was really— to movie screenings hosted by a friend in willingness to let her be involved in as a parent—one of those magical mo- the East Village. Hamilton recalled that Abush’s life, that if she played the part ments, where you comfort your kid. It Gunn was often in Los Angeles, where of a decent, divorced parent then Ham- was profound and beautiful.” she later bought an apartment; Gunn and ilton would treat her as one. But this The next day, she described this to Piñeres were briefly engaged. (“We weren’t proposal was unspoken. Regret, followed Hamilton. “I’m thinking, She’s going to the focus of her world,” Hamilton told by stealthy solicitousness, would be un- react, like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s so sweet.’” me. “She led a bicoastal life.”) Gunn’s ar- derstandable and not ignoble, but this Instead, Hamilton cried. Gunn saw this gument is that, wherever one can see her would hardly be Brooke S.B. reaction as “cold.” Her response to Ham- involvement, this indicates co-parenting; Hamilton recognized that Gunn was ilton’s distress, and to Abush’s, seems to where one cannot, Hamilton has side- keen to have time with Abush, but she have been narrowly focussed on her own lined her. (Or, as Aronson put it to me, didn’t treat this as a risk—she remained emotional needs. “She was jealous that I “terrorized” her.) “I knew I had no actual fond of her, and maintained a casual confi- had this bond with him,” Gunn said. “She rights,” Gunn told me. “I didn’t want to dence that things would work out, and wanted to be the only one. She wasn’t stir the pot. I was scared. But I had faith perhaps valued Gunn as insurance against happy for me, or for him, that this mo- in Circe. I really thought she’d come financial disaster. (Hamilton also wasn’t ment happened. I can’t imagine what else around.” In court, Chemtob referred to opposed to the day-to-day advantages of it could be.” (Hamilton’s memory is that Gunn as “almost like an abused child.” having a friend with money: she drove she was pained to think that she hadn’t Aronson told me, “Kelly second-citizened Gunn’s BMW more than Gunn did.) been there to comfort Abush.) herself in this relationship, because of Just after Abush’s arrival, Hamilton told Gunn called Aronson, who, she said, guilt, the nature of who she is culturally— Jane Aronson, in an e-mail, that Gunn “validated my feelings that this was ac- Irish-Catholic girl, gay. You’re always going now wanted to be involved with him. “I tually a very beautiful and poignant mo- to have a mind-set that you’re worthless.” don’t want to get back together with her ment for Abush.” Aronson gave her Hamilton seems to have treated Gunn and don’t want her help financially but Chemtob’s number. It was four years be- as one might treat a difficult sibling. She do love and respect her as a friend,” she fore Gunn used it. “I told Kelly from the valued Gunn’s attachment to Abush, even wrote. “So if there is another person in very beginning, ‘Keep a schedule of every if she connected it, in part, to turmoil in his life that wants to help babysit and visit,’ ” Aronson told me. “And ‘Make sure Gunn’s life. In 2012, Gunn retired from look after Abu, I’m not saying you have all the receipts.’ ” the graphics firm and began to close down no! We shall see how this pans Hamilton recalled a series Shasty. A beloved dog died. During the out.” Hamilton recently told of conversations with Gunn next few years, Hamilton said, Gunn me, “That’s the big argument. that began in the spring of 2012. seemed to become unmoored and needy: Was my non-directness at fault “She wants a title, she wants “She became more obsessive—wanting for how I arrived at today? My to be honored,” she said. “We more time, wanting to know who was in kindness, my naïveté? My fam- talk about it a lot. ‘Aunt’? ‘God- my world.” Hamilton added, “It was ‘What ily has a lot to say about that.” mother’?” According to Ham- are we doing on the weekend? Who are Early in 2012, after six ilton, there was no discussion you dating?’ ” According to Valentina Rice, months in New York, Abush then about a second-parent Gunn clearly wanted to re-start a rela- stayed overnight with Gunn adoption. (Gunn disputes this.) tionship with Hamilton. (Gunn denies for the first time. Not long That summer, they agreed on this, saying to me that her interest in Ham- afterward, Gunn thanked Hamilton “godmother.” Gunn defined her role in a ilton’s romantic life was related only to for trusting her with the boy, and for long memo, in which she noted, “My in- Abush: “I could give a shit who she’s dat- “allowing me to love him and be loved volvement in gymnastics, swimming, and ing, but I really want to know if that per- back by him.” Hamilton told Gunn, “I other sports in my youth is something son is sleeping in the same room as him.”) encourage him with his friendship and I’m excited to share with him as he grows.” Rice recalled that Hamilton also worried love for you.” A later e-mail seemed to extract as much about Gunn spoiling Abush: “There were But Gunn was beginning to chafe familial meaning out of the title as pos- so many gifts and clothes and toys—and against limits to her access, or status. She sible: “I am his godmother, that is fam- she didn’t want to bring him up that way.” was upset not to be mentioned in an ar- ily—I (god)parent him, nurture and love Hamilton, whose distrust of materialism

56 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 has British upper-middle-class roots— describing Gunn’s apartment, she re- marked that it contained no hand-me- down furniture—said that Gunn had told Abush, “You know that the beach house is yours, the dog is yours.” When Rabin, Hamilton’s lawyer, later came to survey this history, she concluded that Gunn had become used to “a lot of control over her world—her employees, her friendships.” Time with Abush, she said, “gave her a sense of family, and she didn’t have to do any of the work—it was all play and fun.” Rabin detected in Gunn “a huge sense of entitlement”; her frustra- tion with limits on her role was “about her ego,” Rabin said. “It’s a narcissistic injury.” By 2015, nearly four years after Abush’s arrival, the relationship between Gunn and Hamilton had become strained. Gunn was pressing for weekend time, and pro- testing about not being included on the planned reunion trip to Ethiopia. Ham- ilton agreed to some shared sessions of ¥¥ therapy. “Why do I do these things?” Hamilton asked me. “I’m now trying to Chemtob said of Hamilton, “I don’t think still showed “Lives in London.” ) Gunn establish boundaries.” she does everything she can for the child. told me, “I think it makes Circe crazy that In an e-mail sent in May, 2015, Gunn I’m not saying he needs a driver, but he she has to consider somebody else—and asked Hamilton for assurances of con- definitely needs braces.” Hamilton some- I’m pretty pliable. I allow her a lot of au- tinuing “access, primacy, etc.” in her re- times seemed to be on trial for insult- tonomy with Abush.” lationship with Abush, even if a steppar- ing two contrasting sets of assumptions On August 15th, Hamilton wrote to ent came into his life, or if he moved to about how a modern Manhattan fam- her, “I’ve decided I’m going to give En- the U.K. “I long ago made peace with my ily should look: she’d failed to gain full gland a try and I really need you to not role as godmother,” Gunn added, noting access to high-bourgeois comforts; and, come.” She said that they’d visit Gunn that she had “never inferred or articu- by resisting Gunn, she was showing bias in October and the following April. When lated” to Abush, or to anyone else, that against new family configurations, and Gunn opened this e-mail, she recalled, she was his mother. (Contradicting this, the gay culture that had helped to cre- “I just started wailing.” A few days later, Gunn told me that she had always re- ate them. Gunn described her to me as she spoke to Chemtob. plied “yes” when asked if Abush was her “heteronormative.” By then, Hamilton had returned to son. She also said that he did, in fact, call Hamilton often told people that she New York. She went camping with friends, her “Mommy,” although none of her wit- might move back to the U.K. She saw took Abush to Rhode Island to see his nesses recalled hearing this.) Hamilton work opportunities there, and Abush had grandfather, and started to say goodbye. withheld the assurances Gunn sought. “I fallen a little behind at school. She was don’t know when or how ‘god mum’ meant also worn out by the negotiations with n November, 2016, Chemtob rested ‘second mum,’ ’’ she wrote. “I am sorry Gunn. Last summer, she and Abush took Iher case. Rabin submitted a motion to that I haven’t been clearer on defining a six-week trip to England. They looked dismiss, arguing that the evidence pre- your role with Abush.” at schools. Midway through, Gunn came sented was so weak that the court should In March, 2016, Hamilton sublet her for a week. As Hamilton recalled it, Gunn reject Gunn’s petition without requiring apartment, to save money. After one declared, “I’m here to buy property in En- a response. The Judge invited oral argu- apartment fell through, she and Abush gland. If you move back, I will come, too.” ments from both sides. Chemtob read ended up, rent free, in a sunny, open-plan There were several long discussions. Gunn from a dozen e-mails in which, over the carriage house at the back of a friend’s pressed for time with Abush on a sched- years, Hamilton had told Gunn how much West Village brownstone; she is still liv- ule similar to their New York routine; she meant to Abush: “Marvelous time”; ing there. In court, Chemtob character- Hamilton resisted. Gunn flew home, but “We would be lost without you.” Rabin, ized these arrangements as being close changed her Facebook setting to show in turn, described Gunn’s petition as a to vagrancy, and noted, to me, that Ham- that she now lived in London. (Gunn re- form of assault on Hamilton. “Love doesn’t ilton had rejected Gunn’s offer to give cently claimed that she always changed make a parent,” she said. her half of a Brooklyn town house, and this setting when travelling. But long after “It just might,” Judge Nervo replied. another offer to straighten Abush’s teeth. she returned to New York her profile page The attorneys were not expecting

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 57 Nervo to respond to Rabin’s motion be- And sometimes they sit there and think, de-facto standards. Describing her con- fore the end of the year. “The waiting is Wow, if this person could pay for a pri- cerns to me, Gottlieb imagined a working- very scary,” Hamilton told me in Decem- vate school and a good college . . .”) class single mother who found that a fairly ber. “I have to keep it together.” She had “Best interests” lies at the heart of fam- typical modern romantic life—a series of just done her first work in months; this ily law. It guides a judge who’s hearing a monogamous relationships—held alarm- included a portrait of Clea Newman, one child-welfare case, or a dispute, between ing new uncertainties. “Is it the two-hun- of Paul Newman’s daughters. She had parents, about custody and visitation. And dredth dinner that they cook for my kid been denied permission to take Abush it sounds like a natural, virtuous idea to before they get rights?” she asked. A de- to England for Christmas. Gunn held a bring to a conversation about who is and facto rule could also give an abusive lover seventh-birthday party for him, at Sul- is not a parent. It helped establish the con- a new weapon, in the form of a threat- livan Street, and posted photographs on cept of de-facto parenthood. At a panel ened lawsuit. “I worry that, further down Instagram. Hamilton said that Gunn now discussion held in December, Meg Canby the line, you could even think about a had “more access than she has ever had argued for “a more child-centered juris- nanny seeking rights,” Gottlieb said. Such before,” adding, “She has amped up the prudence” than the Brooke decision had cases have not yet proliferated in the one- present-giving. And she’s pushing her provided for—something closer to a de- third of U.S. states that recognize some relationship with him to new bounds.” facto rule. The panel discussed a touch- form of de-facto parenthood. But it takes Hamilton and Gunn both worried ing video of her son that Barone had shot, time for such cases to appear, and New about how the dispute was affecting and a remark he’d made that was later York is especially litigious. (In 2015, New Abush. Gunn told me, “He knows some- quoted in Barone’s appeal. He asked Bar- York had a domestic- relations caseload thing’s really weird, but nobody’s saying one, “You won’t forget me, will you?” of five hundred and ninety thousand; the what.” She said that when she had re- Chris Gottlieb, the N.Y.U. professor, caseload in California, which has twice ferred to herself, in passing, as a part of made a counterargument. “Courts are the population, was three hundred and his family he’d paused for a moment, then terrible at figuring out what is in the best eighty-seven thousand.) “If it’s really the said, “But Mommy said you’re just a interests of a child,” she said. Judges “aren’t basis of your rule that a separation would friend.” She had replied, “I think you free of biases,” and so “a best-interests be hard emotionally for a child, that ap- know that’s not true.” rule is likely to hurt a disadvantaged plies just as much to a nanny,” Gottlieb “The real law is what’s in the best in- group”—hippies, at one time, and gays, said. “Because the truth is kids are emo- terests of the child,” Chemtob told me. until recently. Writing in 1973, Hillary tionally damaged all the time, and we can’t That phrase had hung over the proceed- Rodham described the rule as “a ratio- protect them from that. Somebody has ings. It had inspired unsuccessful at- nalization by decision-makers justifying to make the choices for them.” tempts by Chemtob to bring Abush’s their judgments about a child’s future, In December, Rabin was in the au- opinions into the courtroom, by means like an empty vessel into which adult per- dience for the Brooke S.B. panel at of a forensic psychiatrist or a law guard- ceptions and prejudices are poured.” which Canby spoke, and at the end she ian. And it provided some cover for The amicus brief that Gottlieb and a stood to make a skeptical point or two. Chemtob’s courtroom remarks about number of nonprofit groups submitted In her view, the speakers had underes- Gunn’s financial advantage over Ham- in the Brooke S.B. case argued that Ba- timated the legal consequences of mak- ilton. (Rabin, reacting to this line of ar- rone should be recognized as a mother, ing a person a parent. The panel’s chair, gument, told me, “Judges are people, too. but it sought to steer the court away from a judge, asked Rabin to stop lecturing the room. It was a peculiar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a parent, and who has no argument with Barone’s victory, and who is admired for her own challenge to Alison D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reactionary, in- truding on a celebration. I saw her in her office the next morn- ing. “That’s the focus right now—‘What does the child think?’ ” Rabin said. “I re- ally think that has to be the wrong ques- tion, unless you’re talking about a ten- year-old who has only known this other person as a pure parental figure, not just somebody who spent a lot of time with them, paid for certain things, was loving to them.” Barone was a parent, unques- tionably, but if courts start “to mush it up, then the standards become lower and “I know nobody here works with each other, lower and that’s when the confusing flood- but it seems like morale is down.” gate cases happen.” She added, “What I’m concerned about is that judges will me, was that Gunn needed “sole deci- Chemtob sounded affronted. Nervo’s get persuaded by a picture that shows sion-making on medical.” stress on “unabated” was an attempt to somebody with their arm around a child.” So the proceedings resumed, and for amend Brooke S.B., she said, and this eight days Hamilton’s witnesses came to risked reviving Alison D. She said, “Kelly n January 5th, Judge Nervo rejected court. They reported that nobody had used to say to us, ‘This is about being O Rabin’s motion to dismiss. Gunn toasted Gunn at the baby shower; that gay, about discrimination.’ And we would and Hamilton had agreed to a plan to before the breakup Gunn had declared just try to get her away from that”—to adopt, he wrote, and the plan existed “even her dogs to be “enough responsibility”; keep the court’s focus on her and Abush. after the parties executed a separation that she had not referred to Chemtob was now persuaded agreement.” He observed that “at no time Abush as her son. Terri Potter, that Gunn was right. did respondent advise petitioner that she Gunn’s old friend, contradicted A few days later, Hamilton would be proceeding with this adoption Jennifer Gunn, Kelly’s sister, was walking near Bryant Park, on her own.” Gunn’s role in Abush’s life who had testified that before to get lunch after a morning wasn’t godmotherly; rather, it resembled Abush’s arrival a room was spent with her attorneys. She that of an “ordinary parent with a child being set up for him on Sulli- and Abush had just been away conceived or adopted with a now-estranged van Street. (Potter knew the for spring break—first to see partner.” He quoted from an e-mail in room, because she’d slept in it friends in New Jersey, then to a which Hamilton told Gunn that Abush often.) A teacher from Abush’s cabin in upstate New York. The “loves you so very much and very much preschool said that she didn’t news of the decision had come considers you part of his family.” know Gunn as a parent. Another teacher as they approached the cabin. “I could finally This wasn’t a final ruling in the case, said that she had never heard Abush say exhale,” she said. “I’d been holding it to- but Chemtob was giddy. She told me Gunn’s name. Michael Gray, a neighbor gether for seven and a half months.” She that this was her career’s highest point. in Hamilton’s building, whose children said nothing to Abush about the ruling. She had again encouraged Rabin to became close to Abush, described having They went looking for deer in the woods. throw in the towel. “I don’t have a towel,” almost daily contact with him, and weekly Hamilton and I went to the offices of Rabin replied. sleepovers; he said that Abush called him her lawyers and continued to talk. Rabin Hamilton sounded distraught. After “Daddy Michael.” (Chemtob, in scornful appeared in the doorway. “I just got no- Gunn gave up on the adoption, she said, reference to the idea that Gunn was just tice,” she said. “They want to go to the she did not: “And I’m so glad, and it’s one member of a network supporting a appellate division tomorrow.” magical—but for her to crush it now. . . . single mother—in the spirit of “It takes The next day, Chemtob secured an It makes everything seem dirty, convo- a village”—referred to witnesses like Gray interim stay on Nervo’s decision. (“Yea!” luted, a lie. It’s so sad. Just dark, dark.” as “the village people.”) she e-mailed to me.) The appeal would Rabin told me that she was baffled by Gunn rotated her seat further, so that take months, and would be preceded by Nervo’s idea that Gunn resembled a di- her back was more turned to Hamilton. a decision about whether Abush would vorced parent. “She is told she’s not a par- During Potter’s testimony, she wrote, be expected to remain in New York during ent, admits she’s not a parent, says, ‘I’ve “Ungrateful slag,” on a Post-it note. that time. Meanwhile, the court still held never told the child that I’m the parent,’” In mid-February, the court met for Abush’s passports, and Gunn was still Rabin said. “All there is, in the most ob- the last time. Chemtob and Rabin each entitled to visits. When I spoke to Gunn, jective way, is a relationship. And some spoke for forty-five minutes. The Judge she was certain of the justness of her continuity of contact.” I asked Rabin if said that he’d been given “a little too cause, and dismissive of Hamilton, her Hamilton had allowed ambiguity to enter much to think about.” lawyers, and Judge Nervo: “This guy the relationships among Gunn, Abush, The court rose. It was a Thursday af- doesn’t get to tell me I’m not Abush’s and herself. “I think that’s why the court ternoon—time for one of Gunn’s visits parent.” But she recognized the possibil- said, ‘We want clear and convincing evi- with Abush. She looked directly at Ham- ity of eventual defeat. “Every minute, I dence of consent,’ ” Rabin said. “Relation- ilton and said, “Where is he?” have to consider that I could never see ships are about ambiguity. Especially for him again,” she said. She was in regular single parents who rely on other people.” n April 14th, Nancy Chemtob called contact with Barone. “She was heartbro- Rabin knew that a judge has an obli- Ome. “We lost,” she said. Gunn’s pe- ken for me and for Abush,” Gunn said. gation, when weighing one side’s motion tition had been denied. Judge Nervo had Hamilton’s upstate trip had begun to dismiss, to regard the other side’s evi- written that, under Brooke S.B., a pre- with a stop at Newark Airport, where dence as impeccable—to assume that every conception plan could create a path to she picked up a rental car. She recalled, witness has spoken the truth. But she nev- parenthood. In a case like Gunn’s, he “My son was ‘Airplanes! England! Let’s ertheless seemed taken aback. Nervo was wrote, this had to mean a plan that had go!’ And I was ‘No, we can’t yet.’ He perhaps again trying to force a settlement. “continued unabated”; the words and ac- doesn’t know why. And every time he On January 18th, the lawyers all met in tions of Gunn and Hamilton showed that asks—‘Why didn’t we move? Why didn’t his office. Neither side would budge on their plan had been terminated. Nervo we go at Christmas?’—I say, ‘It’s up to parenthood. In a case that had begun with ruled that, on May 1st, Abush would get the universe.’ ” Hamilton laughed. “What Gunn hoping to send Hamilton a stern back his passports, and his court-ordered can I say? He’s, ‘Mommy, I’m cross! The letter, Chemtob’s current position, she told visits with Gunn would end. universe can’t talk. Just hurry up.’ ” 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 59 Gerhard Steidl is known for fanatical attention to detail and for embracing the best that technology offers. “He is so much better than anyone,”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PECKMEZIAN PROFILES THE BOOK MONK

The printer the world’s best photographers trust most.

BY REBECCA MEAD

he University of Göttingen, which he established in Göttingen in in Germany, owns one of the the late nineteen-sixties. He has been T world’s rarest books: an intact pursuing his craft there ever since. “I Gutenberg Bible. When Gerhard always say that the good spirit of the Steidl, a printer and publisher of pho- Bible, which is so nearby, brings a tography books, was growing up in warm, creative wind here in my fac- Göttingen, in the nineteen-fifties and tory,” he said. Among photographers sixties, the book—one of only twenty and photography aficionados, Steidl’s surviving complete copies, and one of name recognition equals that of Jo- only four printed on vellum, rather hannes Gutenberg: he is widely re- than on paper—was sometimes on garded as the best printer in the world. display at the university’s library. Steidl, His name appears on the spine of more whose father worked as a cleaner in than two hundred photography books the presses of the local newspaper, had a year, and he oversees the production developed a precocious interest in the of all of them personally. He also pub- technical aspects of printing, and one lishes literary books, among them the day he asked the librarians if he might works of Günter Grass. examine the book. “I wanted to learn Steidl, who is sixty-six, is known as much as possible about Gutenberg, for fanatical attention to detail, for su- who invented the movable letters for perlative craftsmanship, and for em- printing, and I wanted to see the first bracing the best that technology has result,” he said recently. The librari- to offer. Edward Burtynsky, the Ca- ans placed the Bible on a desk and nadian photographer, who specializes walked away. “It was not even secured!” in large-scale, painterly aerial images he recalled. that show the impact of humans on Steidl was struck by the book’s du- the environment, said of Steidl’s op- rability: despite having been made in eration, “It is like the haute couture the fourteen-fifties, it looked almost of printing. He takes it to the nth de- new. Otherwise, he was disappointed. gree.” Steidl seeks out the best inks, “I was really expecting that it was more and pioneers new techniques for industrially produced,” he said. “But it achieving exquisite reproductions. “He was all more or less handmade—the is so much better than anyone,” Wil- color was by hand, the drawing was liam Eggleston, the American color by hand. The letters were used to print photographer, told me, when I met the text, but there were many varia- him recently in New York. Steidl has tions. Let’s say it was interesting. But published Eggleston for a decade; two I was not impressed.” As much as Steidl years ago, he produced an expanded, admired Gutenberg’s revolutionary ten-volume, boxed edition of “The contribution to the dissemination of Democratic Forest,” the artist’s mon- knowledge, the Bible itself was “a ba- umental 1989 work. Eggleston passed roque illustrated object that was ab- his hand through the air, in a strok- solutely not to my taste.” ing gesture. “Feel the pages of the Despite his dissatisfaction with the books,” he said. “The ink is in relief. handiwork of the father of printing, It is that thick.” Steidl considers himself to be in the Artists who work with Steidl typ- tradition of Gutenberg, and he appre- ically travel to Göttingen, which is ciates the proximity of the relic to his about four miles west of the old bor- the photographer William Eggleston said. own printing and publishing business, der with East Germany. They wait,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 61 sometimes for years, to be summoned, in the morning and you could be stark in-house chef, Rüdiger Schellong, in and are expected to drop everything naked, and he wouldn’t notice.” a dining room where a long table is when he calls. “It is like going to kiss Göttingen, which was barely touched set with flowers arranged in a vase of the Pope’s ring,” Mary Ellen Carroll, by Allied bombs during the war, re- Lagerfeld’s design. Steidl’s place at the the conceptual artist, said. (In 2010, tains a Teutonic quaintness, with its head of the table is indicated by a stack she published “MEC,”—a book of her many half-timbered buildings. Steidl’s of cream-colored notecards, made to work, divided into categories includ- factory is on a street in the center of his specifications at a nineteenth-cen- ing Mistakes, Boredom, and Lies— town; next door, he owns a private tury paper mill on the west coast of with Steidl.) When artists arrive in guesthouse known as the Halftone Sweden. He uses notecards to anno- Göttingen, Steidl is often not quite Hotel, where his photographers stay tate his conversations, and writes on ready to give them his attention, and while visiting. The compound is known them with Staedtler pens, which he so they must while away entire days familiarly as Steidlville, and his em- keeps, lined up, in the breast pocket in a library four floors above the com- ployees liken a stay there to entering of the white lab coat he wears while pany printing press, which runs non- a submarine: the door closes irrevoca- working. All of Steidl’s choices are stop, seven days a week. Steidl does bly behind you, and there is nothing refined. “He has the best paper scis- not want artists straying into town, or to do but descend. The guesthouse is sors on earth,” Singh told me. Steidl dawdling at a restaurant or a bar where decorated with spartan luxury: there likes his clients to prepare for consul- he cannot find them. “He is like a are narrow metal-frame beds, as in a tations by cutting up their own pho- monk,” Robert Polidori, whose work dormitory, but the mattresses are ex- tographic proofs and gluing them into Steidl has published since 2001, says. cellent. Each room is named for an mockup layouts. It is not unusual to “He is not a priest—he is there to work, artist with whom Steidl has worked: see world-renowned artists bent over but he doesn’t perform miracles, or one features Edward Ruscha prints; the dining table, cutting and pasting sacraments. He delivers.” another has a plaque on the wall, a like kindergartners. Steidl can be brusque. “I have seen readymade that reads “Prof. Joseph Steidl lives around the corner from situations where grown men and women Beuys Institut for Cosmetic Surgery / his factory. He prefers to sleep in his have cried,” Polidori says. A certain Specialty: Buttocklifting.” A third own bed, and he often arrives in New submission is required. Dayanita Singh, room has photographs by Karl Lager- York City on the first flight in the an artist who lives in New Delhi, has feld, the designer of Chanel. Steidl ex- morning, and leaves on the last flight been publishing with Steidl since 2000. ecutes much of the fashion house’s the same day. To prepare for the open- She told me, “Everything is done to printing and stages all of Lagerfeld’s ing of Chanel’s cruise collection last keep you focussed on whatever you are exhibitions. spring, which took place in Havana, doing. There is this utter concentra- Three-course, spa-like lunches— Steidl flew from Germany to Cuba tion—nothing else that is going on in lentil salad, vegetable soup, dates with for the day, four Fridays in a row. On your life is relevant. It’s like if you went yogurt, juice extracted from the ap- another occasion, after being honored to a Vipassana retreat for ten days.” She ples that grow in the back yard of at an early-evening award ceremony added, “He might call you down at five Steidl’s factory—are provided by an in London, he got on a plane to New York, arriving in time for another early- evening engagement—a screening of a documentary, “How to Make a Book with Steidl,” at the Museum of Mod- ern Art. His artists like to say that he moves faster than jet lag. The proximity of his workplace and his home is convenient, but there is a serious political motivation un- derlying it, too. When Steidl was a teen-ager, he spent several weeks vol- unteering at Auschwitz, clearing paths for visitors and sleeping in a former barracks. His father had served in the German Army, and Steidl partici- pated in a program that had been es- tablished, he said, to show young Ger- mans “what the parents had done.” The experience helped him confront “the dark side of Germany.” One thing that he contemplated was the ethics of separating one’s work from one’s “Sundays we like to walk around being insufferable about our routine.” domestic life. “I read about how the homes of the officers were outside the race with him—to get as much done lished in 1985, is a series informed by concentration camp, where they had while the money lasts, and while his Thoreau; it includes black-and-white a wife and children, and a little dog, life lasts.” images of a scrubby body of water near and they were the nicest people you Gossage’s home, in Washington, D.C. can expect,” he told me. “And then hotography arrived late in the de- The work at hand had been among they were going to work—they were Pvelopment of the visual arts, and, Steidl’s projects in progress for more shooting and murdering and sending because of technical advances, its meth- than five years, and Gossage’s notes people to death. So I also thought ods have been more quickly rendered and technical specifications had lan- that it makes a huge difference when obsolete. The last facility that pro- guished in Steidl’s analog filing sys- you are not isolated from your work, cessed Kodachrome film, which many tem—dozens of trays lining a wall when working and living is a symbi- mid-century photogra- in his office—while more osis. Normally, when you have a busi- phers used, ceased to do so press ing assignments jump- ness and you produce something in- in 2010. An undeveloped ed to the head of the line. dustrial, you have the plant somewhere roll of Kodachrome found A photographer typically and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, in a late photographer’s ar- makes three visits to Göt- and noise, and destroys the environ- chive today could contain tingen: the first to concep- ment. You are working there all day, an unlocked masterpiece tualize the work, the sec- and then in the evening you drive that may never be seen. As ond to print pages and test home and you have your pleasant place the photographers who materials, and the third to to stay, with clean air, while poor peo- worked in the second half print the book. Gossage ple have to live with the dirt you are of the twentieth century was at the final stage. “I producing. I control my noise, because reach the end of their lives, Steidl is don’t care if it’s late, so long as it’s per- I am sleeping there, with an open win- engaged in an effort to print and cat- fect,” he said. dow, every night.” alogue work that might otherwise not The book, to be called “Looking Largely because of his profitable be available, and to use advanced in- Up Ben James,” was a record of a trip relationship with Chanel and other dustrial means to distribute it widely: through Britain that Gossage had corporate clients, Steidl is free to dis- it is a Gutenberg-like goal, with the made with Martin Parr, the English regard commercial viability when history of photography substituting photographer, who is best known for choosing the photographers he wishes for the word of God. somewhat grotesque representations to publish. He tends to print editions “Gerhard grasped that there was a of working-class communities in Brit- of three or five thousand, which, for historical moment—almost an imper- ain. Gossage’s images were more ab- art books, is the equivalent of mass ative—to get this work, publish it, and stract and allusive: a curving road production. Steidl’s books are expen- put it in the historical record before it through overgrown hedgerows; a view sive, but not prohibitively so. Polidori’s is too late,” Sharon Gallagher, the pres- over Welsh hills. Steidl told me, “I most recent book, “Hotel Petra,” sells ident of Distributed Art Publishers, like his work because it is a kind of for fifty-five dollars; the list price of which distributes Steidl’s books in the literature and photography. Many pho- Edward Burtynsky’s “Salt Pans” is sev- U.S., told me. “I think he sees what he tographers say that they are telling a enty-five dollars. Steidl typically pays is doing as a praxis—a social action story, but it’s not really a story—it’s a his artists a modest royalty up front. toward political ends.” Steidl told me, set of images lined up. But John is Copies on the secondary market can “If you read a book, or a visual book— telling a story.” go for considerably more than the list for me, it is all reading—or if you are The book presented a technical price. The American fine-art photog- in a gallery or a museum, and the cu- challenge: though many of the images rapher Joel Sternfeld, who has pub- rated show was done by an educated were black-and-white, some of them lished with Steidl for years, told me, person, that educates you visually. That were to be printed amid a field of “He is creating, almost by himself, this all adds up. I will not say it brings you color—red, blue, yellow—making the new category, which is the semi-mass- to a higher level, but it makes life more image look as if it had been printed produced book as a work of art. He valuable, than to be stupid.” Steidl is on tinted paper. Steidl’s press can print has an unswerving commitment to the not sentimental about print qua print; six colors—or five colors and a lac- artist.” he reads the newspaper on an iPad quer—at once. For Gossage’s book, ten Steidl prides himself on being a when he is travelling. But there is none- colors were required, which meant that canny businessman: he has always theless a moral dimension to his book- each sheet had to go through the wanted to make money, and funnels making, a conviction that the book printer at least twice. “There’s no other it back into the business when he does. remains an ideal vehicle for culture’s printer in the world that could make But his admirers say that he is en- reme diating powers. this book,” Gossage told me. “But, if gaged in a loftier project than merely One Monday morning in October, Leonardo comes to your house, do you selling books. “Gerhard has an intense Steidl was at work in his long, narrow have him touch up the kitchen, or paint quest for making an encyclopedic, press room with the American pho- the ceiling? I’m having Gerhard paint wide survey of the world of photog- tographer John Gossage. Gossage’s the ceiling.” Steidl makes for a slightly raphy,” Polidori says. “It is almost a best-known work, “The Pond,” pub- unprepossessing Leonardo: he is a slight,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 63 tidy man, precise and contained, with “The three blacks, with this new ink,” self, and printing them with paper and cropped dark hair and glasses worn he said. “It looks more photographic to ink that, with his father’s help, he pur- over owlish eyes. He was dressed that me. It looks more delicate.” Steidl, who loined from the newspaper. At sixteen, day, as he often is, in a dark plaid shirt, referred to the book as “the art work,” he bought his first printing equipment jeans, and sneakers under his lab coat, was now ready to print. While the pro- with money that he had raised by sell- a uniform that gives him the aspect of cess took place, in the course of the ing diet pills—speed, essentially. A a nerdy twelve-year-old. next three days, Gossage moved be- chubby child, he had been prescribed Gossage’s book was to be printed tween the library and the press, spend- the medication to lose weight. “The on matte, uncoated paper, which is typ- ing abbreviated intervals in his bed empire was built on family crime,” he ically used for literary books, not for at the Halftone Hotel—the kind of told me, with satisfaction. photography; to achieve the desired half-active, half-inactive twilight fa- His earliest contact with the art pictorial density, Steidl would be using miliar to the parents of a newborn. world came in the late sixties, when he multiple blacks and grays. Standard tri- began hanging out at Kenter, a local tone printing uses black and two shades teidl has never lived anywhere but club and performance space. “We played of gray; a preferred Steidl technique is SGöttingen, unless you count the the Velvet Underground, and a lot of to print with three different blacks and many hours he has spent in the first- free jazz, and of course there was a lot two shades of gray, with results that class cabins of Lufthansa. (Joel Stern- of marijuana involved, which I never closely mimic the appearance of pho- feld tells a story of being on a plane to did,” he said. “And a friend of mine had togravure. The inspiration for the Frankfurt and getting up to use the the idea to make exhibitions in this choices of paper and ink was Henri bathroom; when he returned to his seat space—not prints on the wall, more Cartier-Bresson’s canonical book “The in coach, he found an impish Steidl concept art with readings.” Steidl Decisive Moment.” First published in sitting in it.) His parents were refugees printed posters for the club, and also 1952, Steidl reprinted it two years ago. from the East. In 1945, they spent a produced political posters; at Kenter, He showed Gossage a copy of the 1952 year in a British-run transit camp, with he formed connections with members edition—which he had bought second- Steidl’s older sister, then a toddler. Then of the Social Democratic Party, includ- hand a few years ago—as well as his a Catholic charity organization settled ing Gerhard Schröder, the future Chan- reproduction, running his fingers over them in a modest apartment on the cellor, who was attending the universi- the surface of the page like a skater top floor of a building just outside the ty’s law school. Steidl remains active in doing turns on ice. city walls. The camp, Friedland, now politics, and for some years he was a In the press room, large sheets of houses Syrian refugees. member of Göttingen’s city parliament. blank paper were piled on wooden pal- Steidl’s family was poor, and his Steidl curated shows at Kenter, and lets in stacks, which looked like blocky parents had received no formal edu- began following the international art pieces of contemporary furniture. Steidl cation. There were few books at home, scene. “I was reading in the local news- gets his paper from factories around and it was momentous for Steidl when paper that there is a new style of art the world. When it arrives in Göttin- he received one—Hans Christian An- coming from the U.S.A. called Pop art, gen, it sits in the warehouse for about dersen’s “Thumbelina”—as a Christ- and that in Cologne there is an exhi- two weeks, in order to reach the opti- mas gift. Steidl begged his sister to bition of one person who is a master mal temperature and humidity for ab- read it aloud to him immediately, of this Pop art, Andy Warhol,” he re- sorbing ink. Shelves were lined with and afterward he told his father how called. “I went to Cologne and met inks made by a company near Han- much he had loved it. Steidl’s father, Andy, and I was asking him, ‘What is nover: warm gray, cool gray, something angered that the children had finished the technique you are providing here, called “skeleton gray,” and high-body the book so quickly, struck the sister. and are you doing it by yourself?’ I liked intensive black. “Cheaper inks cost five Years later, Steidl’s father explained it a lot because the inks were so strong, dollars for one kilogram—this ink costs that he had believed the book, having and it looked totally different than etch- thirty dollars,” Steidl said. “It’s like good been read through, was now useless; ing or stone lithographs.” cuisine. If you use better product, the before buying the gift, he’d never been Warhol explained that the tech- results are better.” in a bookstore. nique was screen printing, and invited Steidl had printed three versions of Steidl received a scholarship to at- Steidl to visit the Factory, in New York, a single image: empty milk bottles ar- tend a Catholic school. (He is not re- to learn more. “Of course, I had no rayed on the doorstep of a Georgian ligious, but, in gratitude for the early money to fly to the United States, but town house. To the casual eye, they support, he helps fund a local soup I wrote a letter to Gerard Malanga, looked identical, with the glass show- kitchen run by the Church.) He ended his studio manager, and he gave me all ing a delicate luminosity against the his studies at the age of fifteen. By then, the instructions.” In the late seventies, stone. Closer examination revealed mi- he had developed an interest in pho- a gallerist gave Steidl, in lieu of pay- nutely differing degrees of density in tography—he built a darkroom in the ment for a printing job, a portfolio of the black of the shadows. basement of the family apartment Warhol’s “Marilyn” prints. They hang “What do you think?” Steidl asked. building—and in printing. He began on the walls of a library he recently Gossage examined the pages; he designing posters for local student the- built next to his home—a repository preferred the look of the middle image. atre, using photographs he shot him- for all company publications and for

64 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 COMIC STRIP BY EDWARD STEED

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 65 printing books for Walter Keller, a pub- lisher whose company, Scalo, was in the vanguard of photography. When Scalo eventually went bankrupt, Steidl became the publisher for many of Keller’s artists. The other central figure for Steidl was the novelist Günter Grass, who was also a visual artist, though this work was less well known. Steidl came across an exhibition of Grass’s etchings and lithographs at a gallery in the south of Germany. He recalls, “I tried to find a book, but there was nothing existing, so I was writing him a letter, saying, ‘Can you give me some advice, is there a publication in Germany or another country?’ ” Grass wrote back, saying that there was no such book, because his publisher fo- cussed exclusively on literature. “There was a footnote to his letter, saying, ‘I see from your stationery that you are “On the other hand, he’s really good on infrastructure and tax reform.” a printer and publisher. Maybe this is something for you.’ ” Steidl went to Berlin to meet Grass, •• and they prepared a catalogue raisonné of his art work. “His publisher was writ- Steidl’s private collection of several not an artist. He abandoned his own ing to me a very furious and angry let- thousand art books. aspiration to become a photographer ter, saying, ‘If you touch again my By the early seventies, Steidl’s print- as a young man, after realizing that he Günter Grass, I will really put you out ing business had grown sufficiently that would never be as good as the artists of business, and I have the power to he had several employees. Through he admired. “But it helps me a lot that do it.’ I was writing back to him, say- Klaus Staeck, a publisher of political I have all this knowledge about pho- ing, ‘O.K., make the art book with poster art, Steidl began to work with tography processes—what kind of lens, Grass, if you have the know-how—he Joseph Beuys, first as his printer and what is the perspective, contrast, the will be very pleased.’ But they didn’t then as a kind of factotum. “He was my darkroom work,” he said. “I meet the have the know-how.” Eventually, Grass private professor,” Steidl says. “I saw artist on the same level—not intellec- entrusted all his books, including fic- him every day, or week. He was giving tual, but on the same level of realiza- tion, to Steidl. In 1999, Grass won the serious answers to all my stupid ques- tion of the art piece.” Nobel Prize in Literature, and Steidl tions. I would ask him something in Steidl collaborated with Beuys until subsequently sold hundreds of thou- the world of art, or art theory. He the artist’s death, in 1986. On the wall sands of his books. Several years ago, wanted me to do a good job for him of the library in his factory, behind Steidl bought the building next door and, therefore, he was explaining with- glass, hangs a chalkboard with a hand- to the Halftone Hotel, thinking that out getting tired.” In 1974, Beuys made written manifesto by Beuys: “The mis- he would tear it down and build an ar- his first visit to the U.S., and Steidl ac- take has already begun when someone chive for Grass’s publications and edi- companied him, as his personal docu- seeks to buy a stretcher and canvas.” tions. Analysis of timbers revealed that mentarian. One of the few Steidl pub- Steidl says, “I learned from him to use the building dated to 1307. Steidl ren- lications of which Steidl is a de-facto very basic materials. And I got a sense ovated the building instead, restoring co-author is “Beuys in America,” a col- of a book not as an industrially pro- the exterior while transforming the in- lection of photographs of the tour. Four duced product but more as a hand- terior into a showcase of medieval and images chronicle a visit with a feminist crafted object, made in a manufacture modern-day technology. Iron girders group in New York—in one of them, as a work of art—but always serial. I support wattle-and-daub walls, and Yoko Ono is present, in the background, never wanted to be selling unique pieces, there is an enormous illuminated glass holding a cigarette. And Steidl was the or originals. I was always interested in cabinet for Grass’s books—a time cap- cameraman on a short video that Beuys serialization. I was interested in find- sule preserved for a future civilization. made at the Biograph Theatre, in Chi- ing out how can you make a semi- Steidl said of the building, “We de- cago, where John Dillinger was shot. industrial production highly individual.” cided to open it up, like a book.” Steidl is aggressively modest, insist- In the early eighties, Steidl forged Next door to the Grass archive is an ing that as a printer he is a technician, two important relationships. He began empty lot; Steidl plans to build an art

66 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 gallery there. Nearly the entire block is his assistant, Rodolphe Bricard. Both page, or be framed by white space. A now part of Steidl’s domain, and in- men had just arrived in Göttingen. lot of white, Peverelli said, would “give cludes his own home, which is on a Peverelli had already printed a book it some class.” pleasant square facing a church. He with Steidl, in 2014: a collection of Peverelli seemed slightly abashed at lives there with his girlfriend of thirty- photographic studies for paintings that the images’ potential elevation from six years, Gundula Kronewicz, a school- Balthus made late in his life. (Harumi commerce to art. There was a discus- teacher. Although they have no chil- Klossowska de Rola, Balthus’s daugh- sion of size: Should the book have a dren, Steidl paid for the installation of ter, is Peverelli’s longtime part ner.) This coffee-table format? “I find a coffee- a public playground in the space be- visit was to set in motion a new proj- table book pretentious, but I don’t know hind his house. Kronewicz tends not ect: a book of backstage photographs if people are going to look at these to have much to do with Steidl’s work, taken by Peverelli at Chanel fashion photos if they are not big,” Peverelli and many of his artists have never met shows. Peverelli had several thousand said. Steidl favored something smaller— her. (When Steidl was showing me images from which to choose. “I need he dislikes oversized fashion books. around his house one afternoon, we a strong concept, so I am counting on “After a few years, it is like a graveyard came across her in the kitchen, read- this guy,” he said. “I’m a very bad edi- for photos,” he remarked. ing a book and sipping a glass of wine.) tor, and it’s all about editing.” Being published by Steidl provides From his living-room window, Steidl Late in the afternoon, Steidl called a commercial photographer with an can see the Halftone Hotel and his fac- Peverelli and Bricard in from the li- imprimatur of seriousness, and can tory, which has a garden growing atop brary, and sat down with them at the have substantial consequences on a an extension that contains the printing long dining table, in order to begin career. Henry Leutwyler, a Swiss pho- press. Though he can walk from the sorting through images of models in tographer based in New York, had se- back door of his home to the back door their finery. The photographs were cured prominent assignments from of his factory without venturing into front-lit, with flares of light in the magazines, but had never published a the street, he told me that he goes to frame. To achieve the effect, Bricard book until Polidori connected him work “around the block, to see some- had stood in front of the camera, hold- with Steidl. “Gerhard called on my thing from the real life.” ing a light, and was then Photoshopped mobile, and I almost dropped it,” Leut- out. “I don’t want to show the cables wyler told me. “In our world, we play teidl is often overextended, and on the floor, the dressers, the guy who these jokes on each other—‘Hello, this Stherefore late in delivering the books goes and cleans up the can of Coke on is Anna Wintour calling.’ ” Steidl vis- he has promised, to the frustration of the floor,” Peverelli said. “Everyone does ited Leutwyler in his apartment, and his distributors. “He sees he has a role that.” They discussed whether the im- looked over a box of prints connected to do,” Sharon Gallagher, of D.A.P., ages should bleed to the edge of the to a magazine assignment in 2009: shots told me. “The irony is that he can’t keep to a schedule while he does it. He’s oriented in history, but not in time, perhaps.” Steidl has only one working press—he has another in stor- age, for spare parts—and never allows his staff count to rise above fifty, to avoid the need for an extra layer of management. He knows how to run the machines with the same skill and delicacy as his employees, many of whom have been working with him for decades. Steidl also serves as his own janitor: typically the last to leave the office, he empties the trash cans every night. He finds it calming. He prints only one book at a time. “When you’re on press, it’s like you’re a couple,” Steidl told me. “If there is another lover, it does not work at all.” During this period, however, he is typ- ically also working with other photog- raphers whose projects are at earlier stages of development. While Gos- sage’s book was being printed, Steidl turned his attention to a Swiss pho- tographer named Benoît Peverelli and of personal items belonging to Mi- Steidl’s biggest client, by far, is Lagerfeld’s photographs of models as chael Jackson, which had been crated Chanel. He suggested to me that he he does on the photographs of art- up when the singer, in dire financial could still function without it, but ists like Gossage, whose book took straits, planned to auction off his mem- added, “Let’s say that what I earn from four days to print. Binding is the only orabilia. In 2010, the year after Jack- the fashion business makes life more part of the process that Steidl out- son’s death, Steidl published “Never- comfortable.” His relationship with the sources—sometimes to a fifth-gen- land Lost,” a poignant portrait told company began in 1993, after Lager- eration bookbinder across the street through the star’s possessions: a dime- feld won a prize in Germany that in- from his factory, sometimes farther store tube sock stitched all over with cluded the making of a monograph afield. sequins; a white dress shirt with what printed by Steidl. “Karl said, ‘The last One evening, I joined Steidl and looks like a pair of sturdy panties at- thing I want to have in my life is a Gossage as they made the final deci- tached, to prevent shirttails going astray monograph about my work, so go to sions about the book’s packaging. We during strenuous dancing. “Gerhard hell—I don’t want it,’ ” Steidl recalls. “I sat at Steidl’s cluttered desk—a counter, opened that door I didn’t know ex- was pissed, because I needed the money. really, stacked with boxes and papers. isted, which is the art world,” Leut wyler So I was writing him a letter, saying, Steidl uses a special stool that allows said. “Until 2009, I gave away my prints ‘If you don’t want a monograph, in what the sitter to incline forward, like a as gifts. In 2010, we started selling are you interested?’ He said he had just drunk at a bar. On a nearby shelf was them.” Since then, Leutwyler has done had a photo book with another pub- a gold-colored insulated teapot filled ten solo shows; a print of Michael lisher that was really badly printed, and with peppermint tea, which Steidl Jackson’s sequinned glove can sell for he was disappointed. I said, ‘O.K., I am drinks in the afternoon. (In the morn- fifteen thousand dollars. a printer, and we can make a test. Send ing, a silver-colored teapot is filled with Each Steidl title is unique, printed me some photos, and I will print them black tea.) with a bespoke combination of inks and for you, and you can decide whether it Designing a book’s packaging is a papers. But to the informed eye, and is worth it.’ ” process Steidl particularly relishes. the informed hand, a Steidl book is as Lagerfeld evidently decided that it “He wants to pick the cover, he wants distinctive as an Eggleston photograph. was worth it; eventually, he proposed to pick the endpapers,” Polidori told Unlike another German art publisher, that Steidl take over much of the print- me. “He treasures this limited one- Taschen—which is known for repro- ing for Chanel. Steidl went to Paris to on-one time with the artist. It’s al- ducing risqué images by the likes of meet with Lagerfeld, taking with him most a love act.” Sometimes Steidl Helmut Newton in enormous formats several test prints. Presenting one image, indulges in a brightly colored ribbon that would crush most coffee tables to Steidl cautioned, “This is beautiful for a bookmark, like statement socks splinters—Steidl produces books that paper, but it is very expensive.” Lager- worn with a formal suit. He pays at- invite holding and reading. Steidl dis- feld responded with four words: “Ger- tention to elements that barely regis- likes the shiny paper that is often found hard, are we poor?” ter with most readers, such as the head in photography books, and prefers On behalf of Chanel, Steidl is driven and tail bands—colored silk placed to use uncoated paper, even though it to Paris dozens of times a year. He where the pages attach to the spine. takes longer to dry and thus makes a makes the trip in a Volkswagen Pha- “It’s a tiny bit of fashion,” Steidl said. printing cycle more expensive. He opts eton in which the passenger-side seats “With Karl, it is the buttons. With for understatement even have been replaced by a me, it is the head and tail bands.” For with projects that would bed, as in the first-class Gossage, he chose black bands and tempt other publishers to cabin of an aircraft. He black endpaper, to contrast with the be ostentatious. “Exposed,” drinks a glass of good red colored ink on the pages. The endpa- a collection of portraits of wine before leaving Paris, per was made from cotton, and would famous people by Bryan and is asleep, sandwiched cost thirty cents per book, as opposed Adams, the rock star between two pillows, by to the seven cents it would cost if he turned photographer, has the time the driver has used offset paper. “Using the cheaper no image on its cover. reached the periphérique. one saves significant money for the Bound in blue cloth, the “I wake up when the car shareholders,” he said. “But I am the book looks as if it might gets off the highway—I only shareholder.” be found on a shelf in an academic li- see the Burger King sign, and I know Earlier that day, I was in the library brary. Steidl wants his creations to sat- I have arrived in Göttingen,” he told when Steidl brought the finished pages isfy all the senses. When he first opens me. “Not one minute earlier.” upstairs. Gossage held them up to the a book, he holds it up close to his nose Steidl was just back from Paris window, to see them in daylight, and and smells it, like a sommelier assess- when I was in Göttingen, and I watched then let out a laugh. “This is such good ing a glass of wine. High-quality pa- him one afternoon scanning the pages printing—you have no idea how happy pers and inks smell organic, he says, not of the latest Chanel catalogue, look- I am,” he said. “I could conceive that chemical. To the uninitiated, a Steidl ing for rogue pixelations as expertly it was possible to do it, but I had no book smells rather like a just-opened as a dermatologist checking for moles. idea how to get there.” box of children’s crayons. He lavishes as much attention on Gossage turned to Steidl. “The only

68 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 question, Gerhard, is do I kiss you now, or later?” he asked. “Later,” Steidl said.

wo days before Christmas, Steidl Tflew to New York. Given the tim- ing of his appointments, he could not avoid spending a night in the city. He took the last flight from Frankfurt and arrived at J.F.K. on Thursday night, then checked into the Mercer Hotel, in SoHo. On Friday morning, he stopped off at the East Village apartment where Saul Leiter, a pioneer of street photography, lived from 1952 until his death, four years ago. Steidl has been working with the director of the Saul Leiter Foundation, Margit Erb, to publish “In My Room,” a collection of intimate photographs of Leiter’s wife and other women, selected from three thousand prints that Leiter made but never published. Steidl’s first book with Leiter, in 2006, helped to re- store the artist’s reputation. Erb explained, “Saul had no money—he was in debt, he had a reverse mortgage, he would sell four or five prints a year. After the book came out, within one month he had paid back all his debts.” Leiter went on to be- ¥¥ come a top seller at the Howard Green- berg gallery. “He died a wealthy man, “The Americans,” which Steidl reprinted “First of all, I think it is too big,” because of this book,” Erb said. a decade ago. Frank said. “It made sense then. It Steidl returned to a waiting car, Steidl climbed a rickety staircase to doesn’t make sense now.” driven by Lagerfeld’s chauffeur, hold- the unrenovated downtown loft where Steidl agreed that the reprint could ing a box of Leiter’s prints—ninety Frank and his wife, June Leaf, have be smaller. “The contents are very good,” thousand dollars’ worth of art work. lived since 1971. “I brought cookies,” he said. Steidl tucked the images in his shoul- Steidl announced, holding forth a small Frank turned the pages. “It is well der bag, by the front seat. “I have only brown parcel. “I would have brought printed,” he allowed. “Did you print it?” lost one print in my life—an Eggleston more, but I did not have the capacity.” “Yes,” Steidl said, gently. “When I chrome,” he said. “It is somewhere, (Steidl travels with nothing but two was a baby.” slided, in my files, but I cannot find it. Marimekko shoulder bags—one blue, Frank then turned his attention to a It happens when I am not concentrat- one black.) Frank sat at a small table dummy of a catalogue he intended to ing. One second you are not concen- by the window, wearing a robe. Seat- publish, featuring all of his collaborations trating, and after a day you don’t re- ing himself opposite, Steidl brought with the publisher. Steidl held the book member, and things are put on top.” out a small pile of books that had been in front of him, like a teacher with a child, Steidl’s respect for the elders of the individually wrapped in glassine paper, as the artist turned the pages with inter- field is immense, but his approach is like birthday packages. est. One page showed family snapshots practical rather than reverential: he is “I like this moment,” Frank said, made by Frank’s father. Frank smiled. seeking their authorization while they slowly. “Is that your mother?” Steidl asked. still can give it. “I feel myself in a po- One package contained a past Frank Frank nodded. He appeared to be sition like a doctor,” he said. “A doctor publication, “The Lines of My Hand,” pleased with Steidl’s efforts. “It’s a long cannot be sentimental.” which Steidl had printed in 1989. “In catalogue,” he said. Later in the day, Steidl met with 2004 and 2005, we made a list of all the “We did a lot of things, Robert,” Steidl Robert Frank, who, at ninety-two, no books that should be reprinted,” Steidl said. The catalogue listed Frank’s books, longer makes the trip to Göttingen. said. “We said this one should not be but, as Steidl explained, the list did not One of Steidl’s paramount projects has reprinted. I looked again, and I think it place them in the order in which Frank been to reprint the works of Frank, in- is really a good book. I cannot think of had made them. “It’s in chronological cluding his landmark work from 1958, a reason why it should not be reprinted.” order,” he said. “As published by Steidl.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 69 FICTION

70 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK LEGER coyote ate a three-year-old not bought these clothes and wore them I one wants. There are days I ache so “ far from here.” would prevent some beautiful young badly, the only remedy beyond a proper A “Yeah?” man from being killed in the garments. plowing would be a curved and rusty “My uncle told me.” I’m romantic like that. piece of metal or broken glass to gouge “Huh.” I’m telling you about the coyotes, the out my hot center from mid-inner thigh “He said, ‘Don’t leave those babies kids, the taxi-drivers, the drugs, the writ- all the way up to my larynx. I’d spare my outside again,’ as if I already had.” ing, and the romance because I want to spine, brain, hands, and feet. I’m not “Had you?” be as honest as I can here. As I said, irrational. “Come on.” An answer less precise thoughts become material. I’m not hys- than no. terical or crazy. I’m laying the ground- he list of potential reasons that my “Why’s he monitoring coyote activ- work for real honesty. Thusband and I no longer have sex ity up here?” • wakes me up at night. If I’m not already “Because.” I had great hopes that the threat of awake thinking about the coyotes. The “Because?” Lyme disease would revitalize our sex first reason, and the wildest, craziest rea- “It’s irresistible.” life. “Will you check me for ticks?” You son, is that maybe my husband is gone. “Really?” know, and things would go from there. Maybe one night a while back I kicked A wild dog with a tender baby in its Grooming each other as monkeys do. In him out after a fight and maybe, even jaws disappearing into the redwoods that way, at least for a while, I got him if I didn’t mean everything I said, he forever. My uncle’s so good at imagin- to touch me again and it felt good, but went away and didn’t come back. That ing things, he makes them real. “Yeah. then Lyme disease never really took off would certainly explain why we don’t It’s just what he does, a habit.” Or a in California like it did on the East Coast. have sex. Maybe I’m just imagining him compulsion. • here still. It can be hard to tell with men, “I don’t get it.” The men I know speak about sex as whether they are really here or not. Es- But I do. Every real thing started life if their needs are more intense or deeper pecially a man with a smartphone. as an idea. I’ve imagined objects and mo- than women’s needs. Like their penises The second reason I develop to ex- ments into existence. I’ve made humans. are on fire and they will die if they can’t plain why my husband and I no longer I tip taxi-drivers ten, twenty dollars every extinguish the flames in some damp, have sex is that my husband is, no doubt, time they don’t rape me. tight hole. Through high school and gay. A faultless crime, though not with- • college, I believed men when they said out its heartache and deceit. The last time my husband and I had their desires were more intense than The third reason I concoct to explain sex was eight months ago, and it doesn’t mine because they talked about sex so why my husband and I no longer have count because at the time my boobs were much. They developed entire industries sex is that he must be molesting our so huge from nursing that their power over devoted to their desire. The aches! The children when he puts them to bed each him, over all men, really, was supreme. suffering of the boys! The shame and night. This reason does double duty for Now, instead of sex with my husband, I mutual responsibility for blue balls. The me, cultivating worry about both my spend my nights imagining dangerous sce- suffering of the boys. Poor boys, I thought. marriage and my kids at the same time. narios involving our children. It’s less fun. Poor boys, as if I were being called upon Such efficiency. • to serve in a war effort, the war against The fourth reason is that I must look “Watch out,” my uncle says. “Watch boys not getting any. like a chubby English maid: bad teeth, out,” taking refuge in right-wing notions, • mouth agape, drooling ignorance and living his life terrified of differences. The only desire I have that compares breast milk. This reason sends me onto • to the way men talk about sex is my fer- the Internet for hours, researching var- Once, I was a drug dealer, back when vor for rehashing the past. I relive the ious exercise regimens and diets hawked pot was still illegal here. I’m a writer now. exquisite pain of things that no longer by self-tanned women with chemically I haven’t made any money writing yet; exist: my father’s jean jacket, my father, bruised hair. In the middle of the night, still, that’s how I spend my days, putting Travolta’s 1977 dark beauty, how it felt it’s easy to hate myself as much as the things down on paper. People continue to be alone in the house with my mom world hates me. A few years ago, my to come to my house to buy pot and I after my siblings left for school, the husband bought me a short black wig sell it to them even though I’m no lon- hypnotic rotations of my record-player as part of a sex-toy package. His ex- ger a drug dealer and they could get this spinning the Osmonds and Paper Lace, girlfriend has short black hair. I know shit legally, even though I’m sick of the the particular odors of a mildewed tent the chemistry of other people’s desire is people who pop their heads in my door, in summertime. Memory as erogenous not my fault, but the wig, so fucking all friendly-like: “Hi. How you doing?” zone. blatant, really hurt. “Fine,” I say, but I mean, Shut up and Then I realized that men think they Finally, the last reason I imagine buy your drugs and stop thinking you’re are special because someone told them so. for why my husband and I no longer better than me. Then I realized that I, too, have begun have sex comes almost as a relief, be- • to burn lately, and, while no one wants cause it requires very little imagina- When I was young, I shopped at the to hear about middle-aged female sex- tion or elaboration and after I think Army-Navy with the thought that if I ual desire, I don’t care anymore what no it I can usually go back to sleep. My

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 71 husband must be having an affair. I have a friend from college. She’s a real New England Wasp, with a fantas- LAMB’S EAR tic secret. Her family pays for all those Lilly Pulitzers, summers on Nantucket, No more at home here and boarding schools from a fortune than the lambs, though no made manufacturing dildos and vibra- less so tors. I love that secret. One of the big- among the Banks Peninsula’s steep, gest sellers is a set of plastic prosthetic grassy, and almost pathless monster tongues, some forked, some declivities, the paired-off stalks can grow spiky, most of them green or blue, all of to the height of a house cat; they slouch, them scaled for the lady’s pleasure, es- almost as much at ease pecially a lady with a lizard fetish. as a cat would be, amid the taller foxglove blooms, whose This friend once asked me a greasy buttered-popcorn and flame- question that returns on nights like this orange bells emerge one: “Are you the kind of woman who so early in the Southern summer’s game, would want to know if her husband’s as if to ring in the new year. cheating on her?” And she left the ques- tion dangling. Her mouth may have even Too soft to be called teeth, been slightly open. People cheat because too thick, except they are no longer running away from in direct sunlight, to see through, sabre-toothed tigers. I get that. Adren- the diminutive lobes on their immature aline insists on being taken out for a spin. aluminum-gray or Statue-of-Liberty-green But there was an indictment inherent in leaves’ edge look faded even when brand-new. either answer I could give my friend, so I stayed silent and wondered, Was she Their paler fur will catch asking because she knew something? a drop from a hiker’s water bottle if it spatters, if that hiker happens to slide e moved out of the city because down the unexpectedly parabolic Wthere’s no room for non-million- curve of a given hillside. aires there anymore. In the country, life is Though dwarfed by nearby sheaves more spacious. We bought a king-size of bladed flax, or harakeke, the woolly stems bed. Some nights we snuggle like baby snakes, all five of us. Those nights, our giant bed is the center of the universe, the portant, how do these blogs not consti- leaking poison, or fear. Something we mother ship of bacterial culture, popu- tute acts of violence against women? can’t yet see. lated with blood, breast milk, baby urine. I glimpsed a huge beyond when I be- I’d like to post some shots from my A petri dish of life-forms. Like some hogan came a mother, the immensity of an abyss, own childhood, a version of my parents’ of old. Those nights I know we are safe. or the opposite of an abyss, the idea of parenting blog, if such an abomination But when our children sleep in their own complete fullness, small gods everywhere. had existed back then. In these photos, room my husband and I are left alone on But now all that the world wants to hear through the fog of cigarette smoke filling the vast plain of this oversized bed feel- from me is how I juggle children and the living room, across the roar of Georges ing separate, feeling like ugly Americans career, how I manage to get the kids to Moustaki blasting his sorrow from the who have eaten too much, again. eat their veggies, how I lost the weight. record-player at midnight, it would be • I will never lose this weight. difficult for a viewer to even locate the The plague of perfectionism on par- When we encounter a mother doing children in rooms so thick with adults enting blogs is rancid. Alice in Wonder- too many things perfectly, smiling as if it acting like adults. land birthday parties; Spanish-speaking were all so easy, so natural, we should feel • nannies; healthy children harvesting per- a civic responsibility to slap her hard across I’ve been thinking about drafting a fect blue chicken eggs from the back- the face and scream the word “Stop!” so manual for expecting mothers. An hon- yard coop; homeschooled wonders who many times that the woman begins to est guide to a complex time of life for read by age three; flat, tight bellies; happy chant or whimper the word along with us. which no one’s ever properly prepared. husbands; cake pops; craft time; quilt- Once she has been broken, we may take After I became a mom, I asked an older ing projects; breast pumps in the board- her in our arms until the trembling and friend, “How come you never told me room; tenure; ballet tights; cloth diapers; self-hatred leave her body. It is our duty. I’d lose my identity when I had a kid?” French braids; homemade lip balm; tre- I once thought motherhood loosened “ ’Cause it’s temporary. They give you mendous flat pans of paella prepared over a woman’s grasp on sanity. Now I see it a new one. And I kind of forgot.” a beach campfire. What sort of sadist is is the surplus and affluence of America. “Really?” running these Internets? And, more im- Plus something else, something toxic, “No.”

72 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 mother, strong as stinky cheese, with a ripe, moldy, melted rotten center of such intense complexity and flavor it would can hold their ground like hooves; kill a boy of his tender age. the individual petioles try • to overtake one another, competing Once, I woke Sam in the night. That’s harmlessly, like teams my husband’s name, Sam. “Honey,” I in the fairest of sports. said. “Honey, are you awake?” “Uhh?” Each puffed leaf-ridge seems to invite “I think I’m dying.” a child’s finger and thumb. “Yeah,” he said. “Uh-huh.” And then No thicker than the skin he went back to sleep. of a tuned kettledrum, Presumably my husband likes stinky they might have come cheese and the challenge of living near my here in search of a world without force, hormones. Presumably that’s what love is. or at least without force of arms. • Another night, also in bed, I woke If they could speak Sam. I do that a lot. “I want you to agree they would not; they would wait that there is more than one reality.” for a durable peace, “Huh?” for people taking one another on faith “I want you to agree that if I feel it, across the continents, if I think it, it is real.” as well as in this not-quite-wilderness “But what if you think I’m an ass- with its traced-in, bush-sheltered not-quite-farms, hole?” he asked. where no human being or sheep “Well. Then that’s real.” is likely to get entirely lost, “Really?” given the tree-bark hash marks, dry plank “What does that word even mean, shelters, twine-bordered streambeds, and occasional hand-carved ‘really’?” I started to scream a little. fenceposts with their hand-mounted “What?” scarlet or cherry-red fire alarms. “The word ‘really’ suggests that we all see things the same way. It suggests —Stephen Burt one reality. Right?” “Sure. Right. Really,” he said. Really.

When I sit down to begin my man- bing the toilet with bare hands. I was ne huge drawback to my job as a ual, I realize how specific my guide is to probably even using the same sponge I Odrug dealer is that, while I grow one demographic. So then, O.K., a moth- use on the sink, that area right near the older, passing through my thirties and ering guide for middle-class, heterosex- toothbrushes. The e-mail was from my into my forties, the other drug dealers ual women who went to college and are husband. “Thought you might like this,” stay young. They are almost all in their gainfully employed. But once I’ve arrived he said. It was a link to a list of life hacks, twenties. Normally, I don’t socialize with there, my pen raised and at the ready, I simple tricks designed to make one’s life the other drug dealers, but one night a realize I actually have very little wisdom. easier: use duct tape to open stuck lids, group of the twenty-year-olds asked if I So: a brochure. Pen in hand. Until I re- keep floppy boots upright with pool noo- wanted to join them for a drink. I almost alize that what I’ve learned about being dles, paper-clip the end of a tape roll so said no, but then decided, why not. a middle-class, hetero mother who went you can find it easily. All the motions at the bar were famil- to college could actually be boiled down I wrote him back. “Or you could marry iar. It’s not as if I forgot how to go out for to one or two fortune cookies. I write, a woman and make her your slave.” a drink. I know what kind of wine I like. I “HORMONES ARE LIFE. HORMONES ARE He never did respond. had no trouble finding a seat. After our first MENTAL ILLNESS.” I write, “EQUALITY • drink, some of the young drug dealers dis- BETWEEN THE SEXES DOES NOT EXIST.” I’m not saying that men have it bet- appeared to play pool, some wandered off And then my job is done. ter or women have it better. I don’t ever to greet other friends. Halfway through my want to be a man. I’m just saying there’s second drink, I was holding down the fort few days ago, I was scrubbing the a big difference between the two. alone, a couple of purses, packs of smokes, A rim of the upstairs toilet because it • and cocktails left in my charge. No prob- smelled like a city alley in August. My When I swim at the public pool, I lem. I didn’t mind a moment of silence. phone dinged. I’d received an e-mail. I wear sunglasses so I can admire the hair- But then a young man—handsome, pulled off my latex gloves to read the less chest of the nineteen-year-old life- long hair, strong hands—joined me at message. Who am I kidding? I wasn’t guard. I love it that he, a child, really, is the table. I started to panic. wearing gloves. Real honesty. I was scrub- guarding me, fiercest of warriors, a This, I suddenly thought, is what it

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 73 means to go out for a drink. This is the “Thanks,” he said, disappearing with the mailman and the UPS man, the gar- entire purpose. Have a drink, meet a the food. “Thanks.” Some mother’s child, bage truck, the school bus, the washer- stranger, have fantastic sex all night long. some mother who had at least taught dryer in the basement. I know each door. But I didn’t want to blow up my life. I her son to say thank you. I know the sound of a man outside love Sam. I love our life. Still, there was coughing. this young man beside me, interested in “ an you check me for ticks?” “What was that?” But Sam is already me, nervous even. C Sam switches on a light, picks asleep. “Wake up.” I whisper so that the “Hi,” he said. “I’m a friend of Alli’s.” me over, stopping at each freckle. How coughing man won’t know we’re onto One of the twenty-year-old drug dealers. lucky I am to know such love, to momen- him. “Wake up, hon. Someone’s outside.” “Hi.” I tried not to, but I imagined tarily remember what it means to have “What?” him naked, me naked. I imagined him the body of a child, ignorant of age’s hu- “Sh-h-h. I heard something.” accepting the way my body has aged miliation. “O.K.,” he says. “You’re all clear.” “What?” naturally, despite the near-certainty that “Thanks. Should I check you?” “There’s someone downstairs. Some- that would never happen. Very few bod- “Nah. I’m good. There’s no Lyme one’s outside.” ies this close to San Francisco are al- disease in California. Not really.” He “Who?” lowed to age naturally. switches off the light and now it’s night. “A guy. Please.” “Alli told me you’re a mom.” • “Please?” “That’s right.” It wasn’t the sexiest What’s the scariest sound a person “Go see.” thing he could say, but maybe, I thought, can hear? “See?” this is how it will work, how he’ll appre- In a quiet country house where the “Yeah.” ciate the lines and rolls of my abdomen. closest neighbors are pretty far away, the In the dead and dark of night, I send “I was thinking, since you’re a mom, scariest possible sound is a man cough- away the only man who has sworn an you might have some snacks? I’m really ing outside at night. Because why is there oath to protect me. I must be an idiot. hungry. Like, is there anything in your a man standing in the dark, studying the I must be really scared. purse?” sleeping house, licking his lips, cough- Sam disappears in his underwear and After a short excavation, the high- ing? Why would someone be so near to bare feet, leaving behind the retired base- est humiliation. He was right. I found my home, to my children, in this place ball bat he once thought to stow under a bag of baby carrots and a granola that is not the city? the bed for just this sort of occasion. The bar in my purse. I passed my offerings I know the sounds of this house in- soft pads of his feet go down the top across the table to the young man. timately. I know the difference between few steps and then there’s no more sound. He’s so gone I have a sense our entire downstairs is filled with stagnant black pond water through which he’s now wading, swimming, drowning, trying to stay quiet so the bad guy, whoever he is, doesn’t hear him, find the staircase, and tear our tiny world apart. • The uncertain position we all main- tain in life asking when will violence strike, when will devastation occur, leaves us looking like the hapless swimmers at the beginning of the “Jaws” movies. In- nocent, tender, and delicious. “Sam?” I call softly, so the bad guy won’t know we’re separated. There’s no answer from downstairs. Why is it taking him so long to come back? • I hold the night the way I would a child who has finally fallen asleep. As if I were frightened it will move. I am fright- ened it will move. I am scared my life will suffer some dramatic, sudden change. I try to hear deeper. I try not to shift at all, not to breathe, but no matter how still I stay there’s no report from downstairs. What if Sam is already dead, killed by the intruder? What if the bad guy, in ing, and when they are done I’ll have to binoculars could not see those thoughts. stocking feet, is creeping upstairs right become a human again instead of a The town we live near is so small, it now, getting closer to my babies, to me? mother, like spirit becoming stone, like was inevitable that we would meet. We Part of me knows that he is. Part of a butterfly turning back into a caterpil- did, many times. We once even shared me knows that he always is and always lar. I’m not looking forward to that. the dance floor at the local bar, a Mex- will be. Who are you? ican restaurant, really. We momentarily • The answer is easy in daylight. But danced together like robots from outer Where we live there are squirrels, rab- the night’s untethering almost always space. But then each time we met again bits, all manner of wild birds, foxes, turns me into someone I’m not. I spend it was, to her, as fresh as the first time. mountain lions. There are rednecks get- nights thinking about the different “Nice to meet you,” she’d say. Once, I ting drunk at the sports bar three miles women I become in the dark. had to deliver a piece of mis- away. There are outlaw motorcycle clubs Where am I keeping these directed mail and she invited convening. There are children dreaming. women when the sun is up? me in for a glass of wine. In Other living things still exist in the night. Where do they hide, these an instant, I developed a fan- Sometimes it’s hard to remember that. women who have breached tasy of the famous writer and Sam is probably fine. He’s probably the sanctity of my home, who me as best friends. I dropped downstairs on his computer. Barely Legal, know things about me so se- that fantasy quickly, because Backstreet Blow Jobs. cret even I don’t know these it was clear that her alien- Night ticks by. things? Maybe they are in the robot routine back in the bar “Sam?” There’s no answer and the closet. Maybe they are hiding had not been an act. quiet becomes a dark cape, so heavy I inside me. Maybe they are me When I mentioned that can’t move my legs. I can’t move my trapped somewhere I can’t get I had three children, her jaw body. I am only eyes, only ears. The night to, like in the DNA markers of my hor- came unhinged. “Oh, my God.” Her asks, Who are you? Who will you become mones, those proteins that make me a hand rose to her face as if I’d said I had if Sam has been chopped to bits by the guy woman instead of something else. three months to live. Maybe that was downstairs? You may ask, Are these women who what children meant to her. This is a good question. Who am I? bombard me at night real, or do I imag- I went to hear her read at the local Who will I be without Sam? Without ine them? You may eventually realize library once when I was very pregnant. kids? I can hear how well-intentioned that is a stupid question. During the Q. & A., she spoke of child people at Sam’s funeral will say, “Just be I think about fidelity. To Sam, to my- rearing with great disgust. Likening yourself.” But there is no self left. Why self. The light is still gray. The night is motherhood to a dairy operation. She would there be? From one small body I still so quiet. I let the women in, an en- said that children murder art, and though made three new humans. I grew these tire parade of them, the whole catalogue, it was easy for me to dismiss her com- complex beauties. I made their lungs and spread out on the bed before me. Sam ments as ignorance—she’d never had a noses. It took everything I had to make is gone and these women keep me com- child, she’d never made a life or a death—I them. Liver? Take it. Self-worth? It’s all pany. Even if they terrify me. I let the could not prevent the other people in yours. New people require natural re- other women in. the audience from looking at me with sources and everyone knows you don’t pity. “How did you like that?” a number get something for nothing. Why wouldn’t n author lived for a time in a mod- of my neighbors asked me afterward. I be hollowed out? Who can’t under- Aern house behind mine, on the other “I enjoyed it very much, thanks.” stand this math? side of a eucalyptus grove. She had re- When I was at her house she dis- The strangest part of these calcula- cently divorced. She is a great writer, missed me after one glass of wine. “I tions is that I don’t even mind. Being though she has written only one book. have to eat my sandwich,” she said, as if hollow is the best way to be. Being hol- The book takes a frank approach to sex that sandwich were something so sol- low means I can fill myself with stars or and bodies. I try to copy her writing. idly constructed it would be impossible light or rose petals if I want. I’m glad ev- Her book is about prostitutes, so I as- to divide, impossible to share. I left. erything I once was is gone and my chil- sume she was once a sex worker. Or The next time I saw the famous writer, dren are here instead. They’ve erased the maybe she just wants her readers to be- she was in the grocery store. Once again, individual and I am grateful. The indi- lieve that, for street cred at book parties, she didn’t recognize me or acknowledge vidual was not special in the first place. in university settings. the four or five times we’d already met, And, really, these new humans I made I could kind of see into the rear win- the wine we had drunk together, so I are a million times better than I ever was. dows of her house at night with a pair was able to freely stalk her through the • of binoculars. These voyeur sessions never aisles of the store, to spy the items of The bedcovers look gray in the dim lasted long, because all she ever did was nourishment a famous writer feeds her- light of chargers, laptops, and phones sit there. Maybe once or twice I caught self: butterfly dust, caviar, evening dew. scattered around our bedroom. In this her walking to her kitchen. It was bor- I stood behind her in line at the fish- ghost light I am alone. The night asks ing. She was alone all the time, and while monger’s counter, my own cart bulging again, Who are you? Who will you be when she was no doubt thinking amazing, fan- with Cheerios, two gallons of milk, laun- everyone is gone? My children are grow- tastic thoughts about the nature of art, my dry soap, instant mac and cheese, chicken

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 75 breasts, cold cuts, bread, mayonnaise, ap- concert at the conservatory. I hadn’t been back She and the academic attended a ples, bananas, green beans, all the flabby in years. It was great to see him. His wife is lecture together one night. After the embarrassments of motherhood that no gorgeous. They live in Paris. Ouch. I just lecture, there was a party where she was longer embarrass me. I heard her order The woman paused and considered. in the insecure position of being a stu- a quarter pound of salmon. The loneli- She tried again. Her voice even louder, dent among people who were done est fish order ever. I stepped away with- as if it were another chorus, a building being students. And though everyone out ordering, scared her emaciated lone- symphony of mortification. was staring at her—they knew the liness might be contagious. She kept her wife—no one wanted to talk to her or chin lifted. Some people enjoy humilia- Hi. I’m on the bus back from San Francisco. welcome the grad student into the land What a day. I saw Philip. He had a concert at the tion. Maybe I used to be one of those conservatory. His wife is gorgeous, glamorous, ev- of scholars. people, but I don’t feel humiliation any- erything I’m not. They live in Paris and their kids This was not acceptable. She liked more. The body sloughs off cells every attention. She liked performance. She day, aging. After all that, what is left to She paused again. Take three. Loud cleared her throat—and the noise from feel humiliated? Very little indeed. and utterly desperate. Words falling apart. the room—as if readying for a toast. She • stood on a low coffee table. Everyone Saw Philip and his gorgeous wife. Conser- The commuter bus that runs be- vatory. Paris. Kids. I just stopped drinking. In a loud, clear voice, tween here and the city is one small one that must still reverberate in her part of America where silence still I turned to the window, which, al- ears, the academic’s ears, everyone’s ears lives. It’s a cylinder of peace moving though sealed, at least reminded me (it even managed to reach mine), she through the world swiftly enough to what fresh air meant, what it was to said, “You’re just angry because of what blur it. breathe without the toilet leaking air I do with my queer vagina.” Once, on a return bus, there was a freshener, without having to hear that On my living-room wall I keep a woman seated in front of me. People woman’s echoing regret. photo of my Victorian great-grand- do not speak on the bus. At least, no • mother engaged in a game of cards with one who rides with regularity. We un- People should be more careful with three of her sisters. These women main- derstand that this hour of being rocked their language. People shouldn’t infect tained a highly flirtatious relationship and shushed is the closest we’ll get to innocent bystanders with their drama. with language. “Queer” once meant being babies again. But this woman There’s a man I hardly know, an ac- strange. “Queer” once meant homosex- was not a regular. She’d gone down to ademic. He began sleeping with a grad- ual. “Queer” now means opposition to the city for the day. She was ten to uate student when his wife was preg- binary thinking. I experience a melan- fifteen years older than me, mid-fifties, nant, but everything was cool, because, choly pause when meaning is lost, when though I never saw her face. I could you know, everyone involved read crit- words drift like runaways far from home. feel she was buzzing. She’d taken a icism and all three of them really wanted How did “queer” ever come to mean a risk travelling to the city by herself, to test the boundaries of just how much philandering penis and vagina in a such a risk that accomplishing it had that shit can hurt. roomful of bookish, egotistical people? emboldened her to try other new I imagine that shit can hurt a whole How did common old adultery ever things, like the voice-recognition soft- lot. become queer? ware on her smartphone, that new- Every time I hear about another I feel the grad student’s late-bloom- fangled device purchased for her by professor with a student, I think, Wow, ing humiliation. How she came to re- an older child who’d grown tired of that professor I know is way more messed alize, or will one day soon, that her having a mother who lived in a tech- up than I ever thought. Stealing confi- words were foolish. I remind myself nological backwater. dence from eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty- there in bed, Don’t talk. Don’t say words There was nothing wrong with her year-olds. to people, because words conjure images. hands, but she wanted to demonstrate Nasty. Her words created a likely unwanted that even though she was middle-aged This professor, he cleared the fuck- idea of an organ that, like all our or- and less loved now than she’d been in ing of the graduate student with his preg- gans, is both extraordinary and totally the past, she could be current with the nant wife, and for reasons I don’t under- plain. Some flaps of loose skin, some modern world. She could enjoy the stand the wife allowed him to dabble in hair, some blood, but, outside the daily toys of the young. So, on the quiet bus, younger, unwed women while she ges- fact of its total magnificence, it is re- she began to speak into her phone as tated their child, while her blood and ally not queer at all. if recording books for the blind, loudly bones were sucked from her body into and slowly. Everyone could hear her. their fetus. am alone with these thoughts, these There on the silent bus, the woman Though the wife is an interesting I women. shouted multiple drafts of an e-mail part of this triangle, it’s neither her What is taking him so long to come to a friend, laying plain her regret, nor the husband I’m thinking of here back? fumes of resignation in the tight, en- in bed while Sam bleeds out his last “Sam?” I climb out of bed. “Sam?” I closed area. drop of life on our living-room floor. call from the top of the stairs, placing Hi. Just on my way home. I spent the day I’m thinking of the poor, stupid grad- my hand against the window in the hall. with Philip and his glamorous wife. He had a uate student. There, I hear that awful sound again. A

76 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 man outside coughing in the night. “Sam?” Each step down the stairs takes years. I’m frozen by terror. The photos lining the stairwell don’t anchor me. Pic- tures of my girls at birthdays, the beach, riding ponies. “Sam?” I call from the bot- tom stair. The front door is locked, but the knob begins to turn against the lock and I can’t move. Someone is trying to get inside. He’s here, the man who has come to chop us into bits. The lock holds, but I am petrified. The man tries the doorknob again. “Sam? Where are you?” “I’m out here.” He turns the locked knob. “You?” Sam is the man. “How’d you get locked out?” I grab a corner of the kitchen table. “Are you kidding?” He coughs again. It is Sam. He’s at the door. I see him through the glass, coughing. Sam’s the “Needs more bread crumbs.” man who’s come to chop us to bits. No wonder I kicked him out. No won- der I changed the locks. Sam cannot •• save me from death and I am so angry. If he cannot stop me or my babies man to kill the coyotes at night, to bring “Yeah,” I say. “Right.” And I’m glad from dying, what good is he? Why is my babies meat. But I don’t want that he gets that. he even here? kind of love. I want a love that exists out- Sam cocks his head the way a coyote “Open the door.” side my body also. I don’t want to be a might, a coyote who’s been temporarily I look at the night that absorbed my chemistry project. confused by a question of biology ver- life. How am I supposed to know what’s “In what ways are you not simple?” sus morality. love and what’s fear? “If you’re Sam, who he asks. What’s the difference between living am I?” I think of the women I collected up- and imagining? What’s the difference “I know who you are.” stairs, how they’re inside me. I’m think- between love and security? “You do?” ing of molds. I’m thinking of the sea and “Unlock the door,” he says again. “Yeah.” plankton. I’m thinking of my dad when This family is the biggest experiment “Who am I?” I ask. Don’t say wife, I he was a boy, when he was a tree bud. I’ve ever been part of, an experiment think. Don’t say mother. I want to know “It’s complicated,” I say, but words aren’t called: How do you let someone in? if I am anyone without my family, if I going to be the best way here. Don’t talk. “Unlock the door,” he says again. am anyone alone. I put my face to the How can I tell him something that’s just “Please.” glass, but it’s dark and I don’t reflect. Sam coming into existence? I turn the knob. I open the door. and I watch each other through the win- “I get that now,” he says. “But you’re That’s the best definition of love I can dow of the door. He coughs some more. going to have to try to explain it.” imagine. “I want to come home,” he says. “I We see each other through the glass. Sam comes inside. But when I go to want us to be O.K. That’s it. I’m simple He lifts his hand to my face. We wit- shut the door behind him he tells me and I want to come home and be with ness each other. That’s something, to be no. “Leave the door open.” As if there my family.” seen by another human. Sam’s seen me were no doors, no walls, no houses. “But I am extremely not simple,” I since we were young. That’s something, “Open?” tell him. My body’s coursing with secret too. Love over time. Love that’s mov- “Yeah.” genes and hormones and proteins. My able, invisible, love like a liquid or a gas, “What about skunks?” I really mean body made eyeballs and I have no idea love that finds a way in. burglars, gangs, evil. how. There’s nothing simple about eye- “Unlock the door.” “Let them in if they want.” balls. My body made food to feed those “I don’t want to love you because I’m If they even exist. If I didn’t make eyeballs. How? And how can I not know scared.” them up. “Really?” I ask. or understand the things that happen “So you imagine crazy things about “Really,” he says, and pulls the door inside my own body? There’s nothing me? You imagine me doing things I’ve open wide, as open as it can be.  simple here. I’m ruled by elixirs and com- never done to get rid of me? Kick me pounds I don’t even know. Maybe I love out so you won’t have to worry about NEWYORKER.COM Sam because my hormones say I need a me leaving?” Samantha Hunt on motherhood and identity.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 77 THE CRITICS

ON TELEVISION HARSH REALM

The bleak historical kaleidoscope of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

BY EMILY NUSSBAUM

hen Hulu’s adaptation of Mar- to sue publishers. It was a peculiar era It isn’t what you meant, but it exists.” Wgaret Atwood’s dystopian novel in which to be a teen-age girl, equally In Gilead, men run the state, and “The Handmaid’s Tale” débuted, in prudish and decadent: the era of Trump women are split into types. Wives, April, nearly every review commented Tower and cocaine, AIDS and “Just Say dressed in blue, oversee the home; Mar- on its grotesque timeliness. It’s true that, No.” It also made me a free-speech ab- thas, in green, cook and clean; Hand- early on, the Trumpian parallels are hard solutist, wary of any clampdown on ex- maids, in long red cloaks, with white to miss. It’s a story about a government pression. My strongest memory of read- bonnets that hide their faces, have in- that exploits fear of Islamic terrorists ing Atwood’s book is the rude jolt of a tercourse once a month, in a ritualized to crush dissent, then blots out wom- joke between college students like me. threesome, a state-sanctioned rape. An en’s reproductive rights. It’s about fake “You’re so trendy,” the narrator, Offred, environmental disaster has caused mass news, political trauma, the abnormal recalls teasing her friend Moira, about infertility, and Handmaids are the solu- normalized. There’s a scene that so di- the subject of a term paper. “It sounds tion—the regime’s goal is to get women rectly evoked the Women’s March that like some kind of dessert. Date Rapé.” not merely to accept their roles but to I had to hit Pause to collect myself. This was the context in which At- embrace them. There are also “un- But, for many readers of my genera- wood wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale,” women,” sent to clean toxic waste, and tion, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is also a which is set in a nightmare world called “gender traitors,” hanged. Later, we time machine back to the Reagan era, a Gilead, where consensual sex is an il- discover a wanton underworld called mightily perverse period for sexual pol- lusion and gender a cruel hierarchy— Jezebel’s, full of women in vintage Play- itics. Just a decade earlier, a woman could and traditional marriage is compul- boy Bunny attire, which provides a ca- be denied a credit card without a man sory. It’s told in the voice of a forced thartic outlet for powerful men. to co-sign, and yet, by 1985, when the birth surrogate, or Handmaid, whom Atwood’s book has echoes of New novel was written, the media was de- we know only as Offred (for “Of-Fred,” England Puritanism, along with atroc- claring that feminism was over, dunzo, the name of the Commander who owns ities drawn from sources including Saudi defunct—no longer necessary, now that her); she’s stuck inside her head, des- Wahhabism, the Third Reich, Ameri- women wore sneakers to jobs at law perately making dark jokes to stay sane. can slavery, and the East German sur- firms. At the same time, sexual danger The plot reflects the era’s obsessions: veillance state. It’s constructed not as a was a national obsession, seen from trainers force the Handmaids to watch realistic story, however, but as an eye- two opposing angles, each claiming to porn, as a lesson about how men treat witness account, presented in a highly protect women. On the right, there was women; Offred remembers throwing self-conscious, wordplay-drenched text, the anti- abortion New Christian Right— kink magazines into the flames with meant for an imagined reader, like Anne led by figures like Phyllis Schlafly and her feminist mother. Gilead, the new Frank’s diary. It’s deeply narrow, the the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker— name for the United States, is Bibli- story of a slave grieving her past—her intent on restoring traditional marriage. cal fascism sold with faux-feminist lost child, her ex-lover—as her memo- On the left, there was the anti-porn icing. “Freedom from,” Offred’s trainer ries recede. The recurrent motif is Scrab- movement—spearheaded by the femi- Lydia insists, is as valuable as “freedom ble: the Commander enlists Offred in nist philosopher Catharine MacKinnon to.” Offred thinks, bitterly and long- a secret game. (Women are not allowed and the gonzo polemicist Andrea Dwor- ingly, of her mother, a second- wave to read.) He gives her a women’s mag- kin—which argued that consensual sex feminist from whom Offred had some- azine, samizdat that floods her with nos- was often an illusion and gender a cruel times felt alienated, viewing her polit- talgia. She finds a carved message in her hierarchy. These weird sisters co-wrote ical struggles as ancient history. “You bedroom from an earlier Handmaid, laws that reframed pornography as a wanted a women’s culture,” she imag- who hanged herself: “Nolite te bastardes

civil-rights issue, allowing rape victims ines saying. “Well, now there is one. carborundorum,” faux Latin for “Don’t BRIAN REA ABOVE:

78 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 The adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel dramatizes Offred’s claustrophobia through gorgeous tableaux of repression.

ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKKA DUNLAP THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 79 let the bastards grind you down.” But, parallel sequence, a lesbian Handmaid Offred is a witness, not a heroine. She’s mostly, Offred observes. She hides a named Ofglen (played, silently, by the often ashamed and numb. She’s even a match in her mattress, but never lights terrific Alexis Bledel) is gagged and kid- little cold. It’s painful for her to remem- it. Eventually, she uses sex, with the house napped by the Secret Police, forced to ber her daughter, but her drive isn’t to driver, Nick, as a drug to distract her see her lover hanged, and then given a find her family; it’s to stay sane. Her from resistance. Toward the end of the clitoridectomy. In the end, Ofglen stands thoughts about Luke are complex, too: book, a black van pulls up, and she steps in her white hospital room, in shock, she suspects that when her power re- in, but we never find out where it takes reaching into her medical stockings for ceded he liked it, a little. At one point, her. In the final chapter, we get the bril- the bandage on her crotch. It’s a scene Offred finds herself desperate to do nee- liantly dark punch line: Offred’s future out of a Cronenberg film: abstract, gro- dlepoint, thinking of paintings that she’d reader turns out to be a smug know-it- tesque. And yet the two scenes com- seen, of harems and concubines. They all, a future professor of Gileadean stud- plement and intensify each other. The were meant to be erotic, she realizes, ies, who deconstructs her like a bug. Her show doesn’t try to replicate the near- but they actually depicted women wait- desperate message was received, but mis- pointillist density of the book, but at ing, being bored. “Maybe boredom is understood, because the future inevita- its best it manages to suggest some- erotic,” she thinks. “When women do bly imagines itself superior to the past. thing of its allegorical weight, its rec- it, for men.” ognition of the futility of trying to sep- A television show, especially one that TV show that replicated the book’s arate the personal from the political. intends to run many seasons, can’t bore. A poetic compression, its formal Some of the smartest moments in And so, inevitably, the stakes are raised. strangeness, would be hard to pull off. the show—like Ofglen’s story, and one The characters of Serena Joy and the But the Hulu adaptation doesn’t try. In- featuring a Handmaid named Janine— Commander are played by sexy actors, stead, it is heavy-handed in the best are radical edits from the book, making expanding the potential for love trian- way, dramatizing Offred’s claustropho- a passive plot active. Other changes, gles. Offred gets a more overt goal: to bia through gorgeous tableaux of re- however well-meaning, muddy the mes- find her family. A few episodes in, we pression. It makes everything blunter sage. In the book, Gilead is a white- leave Offred’s perspective. There’s an and more explicit, almost pulpy at times; supremacist culture. In the show, black episode for Serena Joy, who, like Mel- among other things, we learn Offred’s actors play Moira and Luke. The result lie on “Scandal” or Claire on “House of true name, June, right away. She tells is an odd trade-off: we get brown faces, Cards,” is softened by a backstory; then us, “I intend to survive.” The first three but the society is unconvincingly color- we visit Luke, a brave rebel up in Can- episodes, directed by Reed Morano, blind, as if race had never existed. ada. Step by step, you feel the show min- sketch Gilead’s outlines. There’s the op- There’s a more unsettling change, ing Offred’s story for something that’s ulent mansion in which Offred (Elis- however, which only fully crystallizes in more aspirational, less psychological; abeth Moss) is fed like a prize pig, over- the fourth episode. Most of that hour less horror, more thriller. There are still seen by the Commander’s wife, Serena is a sharp exploration of Offred’s airless many pungent scenes. But the icky, id- Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), a former tel- circumstances: she plays Scrabble; she iosyncratic force of Morano’s early ep- evangelist; the wall where traitors are flirts with Nick; her doctor offers to im- isodes dims slightly, as the show hints hanged; and the grim dorm where older pregnate her. And then, in flashback, at a more conventional path: “Escape women torture and tutor. Offred’s nar- we learn about a failed escape, after from Gilead.” Maybe this move is in- ration retains some of her wit and fury. which Offred was beaten on the soles evitable; it might succeed. But there’s But the emphasis is visual, making vi- of her feet. So far, so grim—“Game of something lost along the way—the spe- olence as beautiful as a nightmare: red Thrones” grim. The final sequence is a cial beauty of a bleak ending. On tele- dress, blue dress, white sheets, black van. montage. As tinkly music plays, we see vision, that’s no longer impossible. (Just The third episode is a chilling show- Offred on her bed, healing. One by one, look at “Happy Valley” or “American piece, dramatizing Gilead’s tilt from other Handmaids place gifts by her pil- Horror Story.”) But it can’t happen here. liberal democracy into fascism, nimbly low. Then we’re back in the current day, The sexual politics of 1985 survive today shifting from intimate scenes to grand where she walks the streets side by side only in distorted form, reordered like ones, making one form of drama frame with fellow-Handmaids. In red, they Scrabble tiles. Our President is a Playboy- the other. There’s a graceful moment glide, in slo-mo, their habits blooming brash predator; his Vice-President is in the apartment June shares with her against the dull street. The scenario is pure Gilead. The anti-porn movement husband, Luke, as she, Moira, and Luke familiar to anyone who has seen a Taran- is as dead as the Shakers; naked photos bicker in the aftermath of significant tino film or “The Craft”: the storm gath- are practically second-date etiquette. In political events: the women’s money has ering, the team uniting. June’s internal pop culture, the eighties are often por- been drained, their jobs taken away. All monologue adopts the defiance of a trayed as cartoonishly sexist: “Well, it was the characters feel like real people; their Nike ad: “We are Handmaids. Nolite the eighties, after all,” goes the excuse. It’s dialogue is unhurried. It’s a scene about te bastardes carborundorum, bitches.” like the fifties, if you lived in the eight- power—Luke now has all of it—but it That go-girl moment made me sit ies. Atwood’s story may now be an arti- doesn’t grandstand. Yet this intimate up straight—and pull back. I could feel fact about an artifact, but it retains its moment is bracketed by deliberately it being hashtagged, like “she persisted.” great power as a reminder of the thin tis- operatic, even bombastic gestures. In a The book is never inspiring, not explicitly. sue between the past and the present. 

80 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 Kennedy with an easygoing detach- LIFE AND LETTERS ment, rather as Kennedy tended to view himself; he laughed along with the affectionate Vaughn Meader im- JACK BE NIMBLE personations and the Mad magazine spoofs of J.F.K. that I added to his Trying to remember J.F.K. reading of the New York World- Telegram, a middlebrow broadsheet BY THOMAS MALLON unaware that, along with men’s hats and women’s cotton gloves, it was on the brink of death. I recall how Phyllis Mindell, the twenty-three-year-old teacher who had notated my height and weight, assigned our class to watch the first Kennedy- Nixon debate. As Kennedy’s inaugural arrived, Mrs. Mindell gave us a letter- writing exercise: we could send our congratulations to the incoming Pres- ident, or offer the outgoing one our thanks. I loyally chose Eisenhower, and duly received an acknowledgment post- marked February 6, 1961, from Wash- ington. The card inside was headed “Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.” Eisenhow- er’s bold printed signature (not dissim- ilar to John F. Kennedy’s) sat where a stamp should have been—my intro- duction to the franking privilege—and as I look at the envelope more than five decades on I’m arrested by its lit- tle bits of archaism. There is no Zip Code, and the addressee, “Master Thomas Mallon,” might as well be Pen- rod Schofield. The following June, in her last set of report-card comments, Mrs. Min- dell observed that “Tommy has ex- pressed great interest in being a poli- tician someday.” The excitement of the election had clearly lingered.

n November 8, 1960, I voted for John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism cut ennedy would have been a hun- ORichard Nixon. I had turned nine little ice with many of the Irish ex- Kdred years old on May 29th. His the week before. According to my New Dealers who lived on our street. centenary brings with it new books, fourth-grade report card, from that Sep- Their liking of Ike proved to be more the most notable of which is probably tember, I stood four feet one and a quar- than a fling, and by 1960 they were “The Road to Camelot” (Simon & ter inches tall and weighed fifty-five beginning to feel permanently at home Schuster), a wearyingly titled but pro- pounds: small enough to be permitted in the Republican Party. Affection for vocative reconstruction of his “five-year entry into the curtained voting booth my wry, sweet-tempered father, mean- campaign” for the White House. The in the Stewart Manor School, on Long while, left me immune to much of authors, Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Island, where my father let me pull the J.F.K.’s chivalric glamour. My father Wilkie, both veterans of the Boston lever for Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge. always called him Ke-NAH-dy, a pro- Globe, locate the effort’s origin in a “car- It was a reach: during Nelson Rocke- nunciation meant to sound haut Wasp, diac double-header” from the summer feller’s long Albany reign, the Repub- which from his point of view this rich, of 1955, when President Eisenhower lican ticket occupied the top row on educated New Englander might as and Lyndon Johnson, then Senate Ma- New York State’s mechanical ballot. well have been. But he also viewed jority Leader, suffered serious heart attacks. Joseph P. Kennedy, confident

HANK WALKER/GETTY The retellings of Kennedy’s story are by now known more than the story itself. of Johnson’s recovery but not of Ike’s,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 81 Still, he had more work to do with the Party’s left than with its right. Ken- nedy took a forthright stance against French colonialism in Algeria, preview- ing his Peace Corps-style competition with the Soviets in the newly indepen- dent Third World. The columnist Jo- seph Alsop thought that Kennedy had potential to become “a Stevenson with balls,” though the Senator’s principal intraparty antagonist, Eleanor Roosevelt, still longed for Stevenson himself. Un- forgiving of Kennedy’s softness toward Senator Joseph McCarthy, Mrs. Roo- sevelt is believed to have been the first to recommend that J.F.K. show “less profile and more courage.” The former First Lady was “brutally brusque” to him during the ’56 Convention. When she finally endorsed him, well into the 1960 “It takes a while to kick in, but this should do nothing.” campaign, she conceded in conversation that Stevenson might not have made such a good President after all. “I almost •• peed in my pants,” Kennedy told a crony who had heard the admission. suggested to L.B.J. that he consider a was made weeks after Stevenson’s de- Oliphant and Wilkie occasionally race for President in ’56, with Kenne- feat, at Thanksgiving dinner in Hyan- get tough with their young subject— dy’s son, the junior senator from Mas- nis Port. Joe Kennedy had already the coverup of his health problems, his sachusetts, as a running mate. pledged “whatever it takes” from his “feckless” behavior with his wife— Johnson wasn’t amenable to the idea, own fortune. Oliphant and Wilkie sug- though they exhibit a lingering Bos- but J.F.K.’s Vice-Presidential prospects gest that the actual rationale for Ken- ton tendency to sentimentalize the were nearly fulfilled when Adlai Ste- nedy’s candidacy lay in his understand- Kennedys. “Profiles in Courage” is de- venson, trying to jump-start his sec- ing of “celebrity,” as well as a confession scribed as a “genuine collaboration” be- ond doomed campaign against Eisen- he made to a group at Washington’s tween Kennedy and Sorensen, an odd hower, told delegates at the Democratic Metropolitan Club: “It’s not that I have description for a book officially at- Convention to make their own choice some burning thing to take to the na- tributed to the single author who took for the bottom of the ticket. Out in tion. It’s just, ‘Why not me?’ ” a Pulitzer Prize for it. Political dirty Chicago, Jack Kennedy made a fast, This is the Kennedy now frozen in tricks that would be otherwise deemed strenuous grab at the nomination, and Isabel McIlvain’s statue outside the reprehensible are just colorful displays posted a respectable loss to the Ten- Massachusetts State House: a youth- of feistiness when executed on Jack’s nessee senator Estes Kefauver. Months ful figure, regal and a little aloof, whose behalf. Of one Kennedy operative, who, before, Kennedy’s young aide Theo- high, straight-ahead gaze isn’t so much in “an attempt at reverse psychology,” dore Sorensen had run an extensive set visionary as unapproachable. Accord- likely mailed thousands of crude anti- of numbers showing how a Catholic ing to “The Road to Camelot,” Ken- Catholic pamphlets to Catholic vot- on the Democratic ticket could stem nedy was regarded by some Senate col- ers, we’re given the amused judgment recent defections to the Republican leagues as “an indifferent Democrat of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.: “He took Party by groups like those newly sub- with occasionally independent tenden- cheerful delight in causing trouble and urbanized Irish Catholics on Dover cies,” and he needed to do more than in reorganizing the truth.” Parkway in Stewart Manor. Sorensen’s the usual amount of broken-field run- “The Road to Camelot” is replete report held that Al Smith’s crushing ning to please the Democratic Party’s with antique names and strategies, and defeat in 1928 had resulted from his sturdy but mad coalition of segrega- not all readers will want to follow it into stance against Prohibition, not his re- tion and social justice. Between 1956 the weeds of bygone political science. ligion; Smith would have done worse and 1958, looking southward, he hinted Nonetheless, the best and most robust still had he not been Catholic. at disagreement with Eisenhower’s de- part of the book is an early chapter that Kennedy spent the fall of ’56 cam- cision to send troops to Little Rock; has Kennedy, at a brawl of a meeting in paigning for Stevenson but picked his offered campaign help to George C. Boston’s Hotel Bradford, establishing own venues, ones that could redound Wallace, a candidate for the Alabama dominance over the Massachusetts to his benefit four years later. A deci- governorship; and put a Confederate Democratic Party by ousting the state sion to try for the Presidency in 1960 legislator into “Profiles in Courage.” chairman and putting in his own man.

82 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 Jack was willing to countenance and ready to put my undersized shoulder supply whatever it took: trickery, mus- to the wheel. Project Mercury (an Ei- cle, even the shaking of hands. senhower program, I feel conservatively compelled even now to point out) had oth my grandfathers had died long found in the new President a leader Bbefore I was born, a reason per- who looked as if he could himself be haps, those mailed good wishes not- one of the seven astronauts in whose withstanding, for my never feeling any- progress I took an obsessive interest. I thing personal toward Eisenhower. was most comfortable surrendering to With Kennedy, politics aside, every- Kennedy when he was in the company thing was intimate, aspirant, literally of those pilots, making postflight calls, seen from below. From the inaugural pinning on medals, or just being at ceremony (I was home from school for Cape Canaveral with them, wearing a snow day) to the assassination (I was his Ray-Bans. The incipient sexual di- absent, with a cold, playing chess with mension of all this is obvious to me my uncle), I experienced most of the now. Why should I have been less vul- thirty-fifth Presidency lying on our nerable than anyone else to the pro- braided living-room rug, head tilted jection of desire onto Jack and Jackie? upward to the television. Even eleven-year-olds may have real- Rhetorically, the Administration was ized that this President, his hand al- an aural experience, heard through the ways furtively in and out of his jacket radio-style mesh of the TV speaker. pocket, had his own barely kept secrets. Some of its less remembered lines fas- The Administration was a family tened themselves to me more lastingly story, part drama—the loss of two-day- than the ghostwritten flourishes that old Patrick Kennedy during its last have entered historical memory. “It shall summer—and part raucous sitcom: the be the policy of this nation to regard pool parties at the home of J.F.K.’s kid any nuclear missile launched from Cuba brother Bobby, the high-strung Bea- against any nation in the Western Hemi- ver to his Wally. The patriarch inter- sphere as an attack by the Soviet Union ested my own father, who always called on the United States, requiring a full him Papa Joe and admired him, how- retaliatory response upon the Soviet ever grudgingly, as a roguish son of a Union.” On October 22, 1962, the syl- bitch whose interest in his children logistic nature of this sentence seemed was evident and intense. Oliphant and to impress me as much as the possibil- Wilkie insist that Jack Kennedy was ity it discussed. These were the words more, and earlier, independent of the I reported to my father when he came old man than is generally believed. The through the door, arriving home from ambitions fuelled by Papa Joe’s dubi- work past the middle of the speech. ously made money were J.F.K.’s own. A year later, when Kennedy made After December, 1961, Joseph Ken- his civil-rights address, it was a rhetor- nedy, mostly mute and occasionally ical question, one that followed a list moaning, sat trapped inside the effects of indignities suffered by American of a stroke—another sort of “Twilight Negroes, that registered with me: “then Zone” scenario that I began to ponder who among us would be content to with phobic regularity. The most emo- have the color of his skin changed and tionally striking, and uncharacteristic, stand in his place?” This exercise in photographs of the President show him empathy had guaranteed appeal for an kissing his helpless father on the top imagination susceptible to the weekly of his head, pictures I may have con- premises of “The Twilight Zone.” I templated with some premonition of could try to do this in the same way I the illness that would one day cross our had tried to see myself as Henry Bemis, cheerful family doorstep and prema- the Burgess Meredith character who turely ravage my own father. breaks his glasses just after realizing he has a lifetime of peaceful post-nuclear- e are now as far from John apocalypse reading ahead of him. WKennedy’s time as his was from My paternally inspired devotion to Theodore Roosevelt’s. Available living Nixon remained weirdly keen, but Ken- memories are growing scarce. Here in nedy was now my leader, and I was Washington, the Kennedy Center, visible

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 83 from my study window, feels as much BRIEFLY NOTED an established marble fact as the Lin- coln Memorial, a few blocks away. Only one of Kennedy’s eight siblings sur- Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead). The central vives, his eighty-nine-year-old sister, character of this vivid, unrelentingly funny memoir is the Jean, who visits a son in the Watergate, author’s father—a Catholic priest whose first stirrings of more or less next door to the Kennedy faith came, after he was already married, by way of repeated Center. As I write, a single buckeye sits viewings of “The Exorcist” while he was serving in the on my desk, a souvenir from John Navy. Lockwood, a poet, is a “long and fatally lapsed” Cath- Glenn’s Ohio funeral, brought to me olic, but, she writes, “All my life I have listened to what by the daughter of his successor in orbit, people will let slip when they think you are part of their Scott Carpenter, the subject of an early we.” Her stories of growing up immersed in the pro-life novel of mine. He, too, is gone, like the movement and in Church arcana—and, later, of taking her rest of the Original Seven. ailing husband to live with her parents in their rectory— It is all by now a story whose retell- are both savage and tender, shot through with surprises and ings are remembered more than the revelations. story itself. But those reiterations con- tinue to be made, in peculiar and un- Six Encounters with Lincoln, by Elizabeth Brown Pryor (Vi- stable forms. Pablo Larraín’s recent film king). By focussing on meetings that President Lincoln had “Jackie” presents a surprisingly heart- with lesser-known figures, such as John Ross, chief of the less version of the First Lady in the Cherokee, this history aims at deconstructing Lincoln’s week following the assassination. She mythic reputation as the Great Emancipator to arrive at a plans a funeral for her husband that is more nuanced view. The man who emerges had a short based on Lincoln’s, and stage-manages temper and a penchant for bawdy, off-color humor; sup- the famous “Camelot” interview with ported abolition only insofar as it would help expedite the Life. Woe betide anyone who won’t end of the war; and voiced concern for the welfare of Na- march to her exact tune behind the tive Americans but turned a blind eye to corruption in his casket. The film’s smallest pieces of set Administration that led to the routine pilfering of tribal decoration and costuming are slavishly lands. Pryor paints a provocative historical portrait while accurate, while bigger things are off. testing common assumptions about an American icon. Peter Sarsgaard is a strangely irreso- lute Bobby, with no suggestion of a Mikhail and Margarita, by Julie Lekstrom Himes (Europa). Black- Boston accent. The production ends listed by the Soviet authorities, Mikhail Bulgakov, the great up being more historical porn than his- Russian satirist, spent much of the nineteen-thirties unpub- torical fiction, with its version of the lished and living in penury. This richly imagined retelling of fatal Frame 313 of the Zapruder film those lean years—which gave rise to his phantasmagoric novel being held off until late in the picture: “The Master and Margarita”—mixes fact and fiction to cre- the money shot. ate a narrative that is both foreign and familiar. Readers ac- Jacqueline Kennedy is also the cen- quainted with Bulgakov’s work will recognize the memorable tral figure in Michael J. Hogan’s new tropes: a burning manuscript, a delirium tremens diagnosis, study, “The Afterlife of John Fitzger- linden trees at Patriarch’s Ponds. Yet the novel is not a tribute ald Kennedy” (Cambridge). She co- but a complex and original work, written in a style that is the stars in an Administration that Hogan polar opposite of Bulgakov’s antic magic realism. views as a thirty-four-month-long “per- formance.” Mrs. Kennedy, from the The Fortunate Ones, by Ellen Umansky (William Morrow). Lincolnesque funeral onward, remained The restitution of art works stolen by the Nazis provides in charge of her husband’s image for the background for this début novel. A Chaim Soutine the next thirty years, operating some- painting called “The Bellhop” unites two women: Lizzie, a times with taste and sometimes with lawyer mourning the death of her extravagant, difficult father, grandiosity, occasionally deploying the and Rose, a former Kindertransport refugee with dark mem- vindictive manipulations that “Jackie” ories of Vienna, Britain, and Los Angeles. The painting regards as her essence. She drove hard belonged to Rose’s family before the war; later, Lizzie’s fam- bargains with Roger Stevens, the first ily, amassing a fortune in California, owned it for a while. head of the Kennedy Center, threat- Umansky shrewdly avoids letting the issue of stolen art crowd ening to take her husband’s name off out other aspects of the story, to which she gives a feminist the building if she didn’t have a voice tilt. Reconciling career ambitions with the pressure to have on the board; “blasted” even Schlesinger, children occupies Lizzie and Rose as much as the crimes of the President’s most enduring apolo- the past do. gist, when he wouldn’t further perfume

84 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 his J.F.K. history, “A Thousand Days”; ring, while Reaganite supply-siders sists of little more than “that he was and helped drive an exhausted Wil- viewed Kennedy as a tax-cutting con- young and that he died young.” liam Manchester, the family-appointed frère. Ted Cruz, as Hogan points out, I had come to the library to recon- chronicler of the assassination, into a got on board this train of thought in nect with a small piece of personal his- hospital. 2013. I suspect that my father would tory, the missing half of an epistolary Hogan’s thoroughly researched book have remained cheerfully impervious exchange. At home, for fifty-five years, is aware of the bullying that accom- to it, whereas I find myself making use I’ve kept a letter sent to me, in the sum- panied the family’s memorialization of the argument from time to time, not mer of 1962, with a four-cent Project of the President (“a relentless war just to win a political point but to feel Mercury stamp, by the Kennedy White against countermemories or alterna- further ensnared by those seductions House. It was signed by Special Assis- tive narratives”), but he tends to beat of Camelot that a half century before tant to the President Ralph A. Dun- a guilty retreat from any barrage of I covertly craved and loyally resisted. gan, the man, in Hogan’s “Afterlife,” irony or skepticism as soon as he’s whose White House office became the launched it. The spell that Mrs. Ken- o reconnect with Kennedy at this spot from which Kennedy’s family and nedy casts at the funeral (“the very per- Tlong temporal remove, one still aides worked “red-eyed through the sonification of strength and grace under needs to go to Boston, from which his nights in order to plan all aspects of pressure, of dignity, nobility, and maj- image was first projected, and where, the president’s funeral.” On July 20, esty, of gallantry and composure, of even now, it receives its most active 1962, Dungan assured me that Ken- duty and self-sacrifice”) never breaks and serious freshenings. The chief nedy was “always appreciative of the for long, and no threnody goes un- monument to J.F.K., more important interest of those boys and girls who sounded: “In Bolivia, people every- than all those built or renamed in the write to him,” and enclosed a partial where wept openly.” first decade of family-directed fealty— transcript of the President’s recent press The most useful portion of this “Af- the myriad schools, the space center, conference, to “clarify [my] understand- terlife” is Hogan’s sine-curving of three the airport, the performing-arts cen- ing of the President’s position.” historical waves that have carried Ken- ter—is his Presidential Library and I had evidently complained about nedy’s memory through the past fifty- Museum. After a period of surprising Kennedy’s urging Americans to “sup- four years. Jackie-sanctioned reverence resistance by the residents of already port the Supreme Court decisions even remained “largely intact for most of overbuilt Cambridge, the library even- when we might not agree with them.” the decade” after Dallas, giving rise tually opened in Columbia Point, in The decision in question was Engel v. to everything from Schlesinger’s and the Dorchester section of Boston, Vitale. On June 25th, the Court had Sor ensen’s reverent reconstructions to in 1979. The I. M. Pei design, jut- ruled the New York State Regents’ “Clare Barnes’s lovely book on Kenne- ting toward the ocean, dominates the prayer—which public-school students dy’s scrimshaw collection.” Then came coastline, and even in sunny weather recited “voluntarily,” generally after the the revisionists, with pertinent ques- winds tear across a plaza near the Pledge of Allegiance—to be an imper- tions about Kennedy’s foreign-policy visitors’ entrance. On the April morn- missible intrusion of church upon state. failures, domestic hesitations, and pri- ing I visited, the entire place was lashed At his press conference, the President vate morals. Hogan doesn’t deny the with rain. dodged the issue of constitutional legitimacy of their work but does cluck Inside, Stacey Bredhoff, the muse- amendments that might overturn the over the way they “seemed to sprout um’s curator, led me into a room where Court’s ruling, but suggested that like mushrooms from the dank soil of some of the one hundred objects for a Americans pray more at home and in American politics.” (From what ground centenary exhibition were being pre- church: “That power is very much open did the hagiographic lilies spring?) pared. It seemed a sort of Pointillist, to us.” If revisionism had, by 1990, “nearly inductive assemblage, some of the items The library has an Engel v. Vitale shattered the idealized image” of Ken- political and others personal, includ- subject file of citizen mail whose con- nedy, both it and a third wave of “post- ing an assortment of J.F.K.’s neckties tents generally range from the icy (“I revisionism” ended up being, to a great and pieces of the scrimshaw that hate to think that you are acting like extent, beside the point. As polls made brought forth a whole book. If the gath- Pontuis Pilot”) to the venomous: “Your clear, public opinion “remained largely ering conveys a different impression of support of the Supreme Court in put- indifferent to what scholars and pun- Kennedy from the one made by the ting God out of our public Schools, dits had to say.” Even revelations of museum’s permanent display, it’s per- and putting the Niger in our schools, the President’s Olympian infidelities haps, Bredhoff said, “a sense of his am- is truly the most disgusting thing I were assimilated into the legend, in- bition.” The leather, unwheeled suit- have heard yet.” My own handwrit- fusing it with a priapic, pop-cultural case he used on his pre-Presidential ten letter has survived, improbably vigor. travels lay on a table next to a flag from enough, in Box 1709 of an alphabet- Among the ideological waverings PT-109. A spokesperson for the Ken- ical Name File, inside a folder marked of Kennedy’s reputation, one finds a nedy Library Foundation, in the room “MALLO,” where far-flung Mallons conservative regard first being test- with me and Bredhoff, said that knowl- variously praise the President on Cuba, driven in speeches by Ronald Reagan, edge of the President among the mu- urge the impeachment of Earl War- who focussed on J.F.K.’s Cold War- seum’s youngest visitors sometimes con- ren, and excoriate the proposed wheat

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 85 sale to the Soviet Union: “Our mor- Even the local aspect of Engel v. Vi- tal enemy is in dire trouble so we prop tale—the plaintiffs and the defendant him up. How idiotic!” Only the con- were from New Hyde Park, right on text they provide makes me look less the other side of Stewart Manor’s main belligerent: street—seems unlikely to have impelled 111 Dover Parkway my letter. What I hear in it, actually, is Stewart Manor, L.I. my father’s extollings of Barry Gold- June 28, 1962 water, who by that point had (tempo- President Kennedy rarily) replaced Nixon in his political White House affections. “The Conscience of a Con- Washington D.C. servative” was on a shelf in our house, perhaps even next to “John Fitzgerald Mr. President: Kennedy: Youngest President,” which I was very disappointed when at your news I had bought at the school book fair, conference (June 27) you talked in favor of its title no doubt appealing to my na- abolishing the prayer we say in our fifth grade class every morning. scent political careerism. I don’t think I feel that the Supreme Court made a very my father had much interest in the Re- grave mistake abolishing this prayer and that gents’ prayer, but I was already accus- you made a very bad error supporting them. tomed to his inveighings against the If the country can’t pray in public how come Supreme Court, absorbing them in the In God We Trust is written on our money which circulates openly, and daily. course of our sunny and secure filial This is your administration’s most terrible romance. mistake. I do, however, have to reckon with Yours truly, my use of “Yours truly,” a closing that, Tom Mallon I remember being taught, was less for- mal and businesslike than “Sincerely.” Not even “Dear” Mr. President! The And while I didn’t go so far as to call dudgeon and scolding are such that, myself “Tommy,” I didn’t use “Thomas,” had my pen not reached the bottom- either. As if employing a secret dou- right corner of the page, I no doubt ble password, I believe I was signal- would have added “yet” after “most ter- ling to the President that, despite my rible mistake.” The Glenn and Car- indignation—and even at the risk of penter space flights, epochal events for betraying my father—we were friends. me, had both occurred in the past few Underneath all that fustian, I can in fact months, but I was cutting Kennedy no find something attributable to John F. slack on their account. The whole lit- Kennedy, to a climactic line of his Con- tle screed, based on a misapprehension vention acceptance speech: “I am say- (Kennedy was not supporting the ing to you that my decisions on every Court’s decision per se), shows a stiff public policy will be my own, as an anger. American, as a Democrat, and as a Did the nuns—the ones who gave free man.” public-school pupils like me “religious I recall the words as a thrilling rhe- instruction” each Wednesday after- torical experience of parallelism, triad, noon—put us up to this protest? I and crescendo, no matter that I didn’t doubt it. They would not have felt yet know those terms. A latter-day much fervor for the anodyne haste of parse leaves the sentence looking the Regents’ prayer. (Here it is, in its slightly off—surely, to preserve the entirety: “Almighty God, we acknowl- ascent in importance, “Democrat” edge our dependence upon Thee, and should precede “American”—but it we beg Thy blessings upon us, our lives in my memory as the single most parents, our teachers and our Coun- resonant piece of Kennedy oratory, try.”) For another thing, the letter’s beyond the syllogism of the missile- date, June 28th, indicates that we were crisis speech or the empathetic exer- already free of the nuns: Kennedy’s cise proposed in the civil-rights ad- televised press conference occurred dress. Here I am, lambasting the Pres- during the first week of my summer ident as a fifth grader, an unregistered vacation. I had nothing but rug-rat Republican, and a free man, a sense leisure to watch the afternoon broad- of myself that even now, after decades cast all on my own. of identity politics and bitter political

86 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 disappointment, feels ineradicable. noting that “the yet unborn children And I know that it came, in some mea- of the world will remember you as one sure, from the Boston-accented voice who helped to eliminate the evil of the my father used to mock. atomic bomb.” She does not remem- ber writing the letter—is astonished efore the nine-thirty school bell that it’s turned up—but the circum- Brang on April 12, 1961, Phyllis stances of its composition remain vivid. Mindell called me up to her desk to It was occasioned by Kennedy’s hav- ask if I knew “what happened today.” ing reached an agreement on the lim- I said that Franklin Roosevelt had ited nuclear-test-ban treaty with the died sixteen years ago. That this was Soviets, on July 25th. the fact I answered with—rather than At the time, Phyllis was twenty-six the hundredth anniversary of the firing and had been married to Marvin Min- upon Fort Sumter, then being com- dell, an engineer, for almost five years. memorated in newspapers and mag- She had once miscarried, and the cou- azines—indicates to me that she was ple were reluctant to bring children right about my political ambitions: into a world that seemed on the brink Presidents were more important than of nuclear extinction. But the late events. summer of ’63 appeared to be the be- “No,” Mrs. Mindell replied, with ex- ginning of a more promising time, citement. “I mean what happened with the test-ban treaty and the March today—this morning. The Soviet Union on Washington. They made a small put a man into space.” contribution to the Southern Chris- The World-Telegram was an eve- tian Leadership Conference that sea- ning paper, and I hadn’t heard the news son, and Phyllis now tends to think about Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight. of the whole period as being more “Oh?” was, I believe, all I said. Could the “King era.” But her memories of she really be seeing this as good news? Kennedy remain warm, if unblinkered. To me, the space race was more about “You can be a sane man and have feet the Cold War than about wonder, and of clay,” she says. In the end, “that’s I was immeasurably distressed by what our problem, and we have to figure I took to be a definitive American de- out how to sort that out.” feat. I walked back to my desk as if I Newly hopeful, Phyllis again be- were having one of my Khrushchev came pregnant late in October, 1963, dreams; he sometimes made personal on a trip that she and Marvin took appearances, angry and accusatory, to Rome. Back on Long Island, she during my slumbers. miscarried the baby on the morning On April 12th of this year—a week of November 22nd. She learned of after my trip to Boston and fifty-six Kennedy’s assassination later that day, years to the day after she gave me the from the weeping woman who had news about the Soviets’ leap into or- come to take care of her and had heard bit—I have lunch with Phyllis Min- the news on the radio. dell, now eighty, an active and accom- By 1966, Phyllis had given birth to plished widow with thick, stylish white two sons. One of them, David Min- hair, if no longer the Jackie Kennedy dell, an M.I.T. professor, is an impor- clothes she jokes about once having tant theorist of space exploration and favored. We talk about the vagaries a leading scholar of the Apollo lunar- of memory and wonder if she did not, landing program. The political victory after all, assign her students to watch that that effort provided will eventu- the Kennedy-Nixon debates, since she ally be a paltry thing compared with and her husband did not own a tele- the actual human transcendence that vision, a decision whose cultural pre- it initiated, however fitfully so far. Proj- tentiousness she now laughs at. ect Apollo seems to me, even at this We also talk about a letter that she remove—and surely in the fullness of wrote, in 1963, to John F. Kennedy, one time—what mattered most about John F. that I was able to find through an ar- Kennedy’s life. It was he who commit- chivist’s search of the Name File at the ted us to it, six weeks after Professor J.F.K. library. In it, she thanks the Pres- Mindell’s mother made me look to the ident for being “a sane man,” before sky with a stiff upper lip. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 87 lowers gathered to see him fulfill his BOOKS promise to fly up to Heaven. Instead, he was committed to a lunatic asy- lum, and became immortalized in a FLY AWAY ditty sung by the novel’s schoolchil- dren: “Bedward jump, and Bedward A new novel of the sacred and the profane in backlands Jamaica. bruck him neck!” In “Augustown,” however, Bedward the flying preacher, BY LAURA MILLER buoyed up by the faith of his con- gregation, really can fly, and, tethered by a team of deacons, he enters his church bobbing like a Macy’s Thanks- giving Day Parade balloon. Ma Taffy can swear to this, because when she was a girl she saw this feat with her own eyes. “Augustown” doesn’t match the ste- reotype of a “poet’s novel”—that is, it isn’t introspective, replete with long passages of description, and scant of plot. Instead, it is stuffed with the characters and stories of hardscrab- ble Augustown, a former hamlet on the outskirts of St. Andrew founded by slaves freed in 1838. (It bears, as an introductory note explains, “an un- canny resemblance” to the real village of August Town, which was absorbed into the sprawl of Kingston.) The chapters tell of the flying preacher, but also the histories of Ma Taffy; her brainy niece, Gina; Clarky, a Rasta- farian fruit vender bullied by police- men; a young gang leader who hides a cache of weapons under Ma Taffy’s house; the affluent light-skinned prin- cipal of Kaia’s primary school; and Mr. Saint-Josephs, a teacher at that school who triggers what Jamaicans n his poem sequence “The Cartog- The richness and heft that is lost call an “autoclaps,” or catastrophe, I rapher Tries to Map a Way to Zion,” in the making of official accounts of when, in a fit of pique, he cuts off the Jamaican writer Kei Miller has a the world is one of Miller’s favorite Kaia’s dreadlocks. Rastaman engage the title character themes. Another of his poems spec- Like Jane Austen’s “Emma,” “Au- in a debate. The cartographer explains ulates that a law the British Empire gustown” is a village novel, and, even his work: established on how to handle mer- if (unlike “Emma”) it wears its poli- maids (in essence: turn them into co- tics on its sleeve, it exemplifies the What I do is science. I show belief that everything you want to the earth as it is, without bias. lonial subjects) led the marvellous I never fall in love. I never get involved creatures to withdraw from all fur- know about human beings can be with the muddy affairs of land. ther contact with the human race. In found in an overlooked, out-of-the- his novel “Augustown” (Pantheon), way little community, as long you But the Rastaman has his doubts: his third, a canny old blind woman pay it sufficient attention. Further- . . . draw me a map of what you see named Ma Taffy tells her grand- more, as the novel’s mysterious, dis- then I will draw a map of what you nephew Kaia the story of Alexander embodied, and omniscient narrator never see Bedward, a Baptist preacher in the explains from a perch somewhere in and guess me whose map will be bigger than whose? parish of St. Andrew, outside Kings- the sky above Augustown, “Each day Guess me whose map will tell the ton. As history would have it, in 1920 contains much more than its own larger truth? a large assembly of Bedward’s fol- hours, or minutes, or seconds. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say Kei Miller’s story-stuffed “Augustown” resists the stereotypes of the “poet’s novel.” that every day contains all of history.”

88 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY The day during which the novel’s the Nazirite tradition of the Hebrew cans have found themselves in some main action takes place, the day of Bible, never to let a “blade” touch version of a conversation that Ma the autoclaps, is April 11, 1982, but their heads. But, to Mr. Saint-Josephs, Taffy’s niece has with her rich white the roots of what happens on that Kaia’s dreads aren’t emblems of faith; boyfriend. “What am I supposed to day go far back. they make him into “some dirty lit- do about it, Gina?” he asks. “Find Where the poet’s touch in “Au- tle African from the bush, and sit- every striking person on this island gustown” becomes detectable is in ting right there in front of me, so that have less money than my fam- the novel’s epigrammatic concision brazen with his hairstyle.” The teacher ily does and say sorry to them? I’m and in the loping, conversational ca- understands nothing, not even the so sorry that I’m white. I’m so sorry that dence of so many of its sentences: received wisdom he thinks he re- my father makes a fuckload of money. “Some days have more roads than spects. As part of a strict regimen I’m so sorry that I speak good English. others, and some roads more dis- designed to tamp down the many Would that help?” tance, so that when a woman com- parts of himself he’d rather not ac- “Augustown” isn’t without its story- plains how long the day is, maybe knowledge, Mr. Saint-Josephs starts telling flaws. A scene set in the offices she is counting its roads rather than every day reading two pages each of the colonial authorities in 1920 is its hours.” The barely perceptible from the Bible and from “On the stilted and anachronistic; a tantaliz- Caribbean lilt in Miller’s prose ex- Origin of Species,” although “that ing early appearance of one Soft- erts a hypnotic effect that is one of the two books contradict each other Paw, a gang leader renowned for his the great pleasures of “Augustown,” is not a thought that ever occurs to silent footsteps, ends with him slink- even if every so often he uses it to him.” ing away, carrying rucksacks full of deliver a horror like the story of Ma According to the narrator of “Au- guns, never to appear again. (This Taffy’s blinding. (An enormous rats’ gustown,” Alexander Bedward’s sec- reader spent the whole novel wait- nest burst through her ceiling as she ond-in-command collaborated with ing for him to come back.) But these lay in bed at night, and the panicked another preacher to write “The Prom- are the peripheral stumblings of an animals gouged her eyes.) This is ised Key,” “widely regarded as the expansive talent, of a writer stretch- the language of “old-time stories— first book of Rastafari,” and a work ing to catch up with his own curios- things that have never been written deeply influenced by Bedward’s Af- ity and fertility. The center of the down and that live only in the re- rocentric creed. The preacher, in the novel, Miller’s portrait of Augustown, cesses of people’s minds,” the nar- alternate, Augustown version of his holds. The wind rustles the bread- rator tells us. It stands opposed to story, was not a lunatic who tricked fruit trees, the voice of a radio-talk- the supercilious voices of journal- his flock into thinking that he could show host named Mutty Perkins ists, officials, and other mouthpieces teach them how to fly back to the echoes from the open windows of for “Babylon,” that wondrously flex- motherland but, rather, one of the every house, and the unofficial news ible Jamaican slang term for sys- unsung prophets of a new religion. of the neighborhood spreads in the temic power. Babylon is, as Ma Taffy To say that Bedward really could fly usual way: “For everyone who gets describes it, “all them things in this isn’t merely “magic realism,” the nar- the story, they want to be the first to life that put a heavy stone on the rator admonishes: “This is not an- have told someone else, so it goes heads of people like you and me— other story about superstitious island from fence to fence and from phone all them things that cause we not people and their primitive beliefs. to phone, circling its way around Au- to rise.” No. You don’t get off that easy.” Rather gustown several times, so that those Babylon exercises its power di- than ask yourself whether you be- who were the first to deliver it will rectly, particularly in the novel’s vi- lieve it, “you may as well stop to con- be satisfied to receive it again in just olent climax, but Miller is more con- sider a more urgent question . . . a short space of time from other cerned with the inner Babylon that whether this story is about the kinds sources, like a gift returned to them. has seeped unawares into the people of people you have never taken the Then they can say, ‘Yes, man! Is just of Augustown. Mr. Saint-Josephs, time to believe in.” now you hearing?’ ” It will never ap- the schoolteacher, is a fallen man It’s a tendentious question, espe- pear in any newspaper or history even before he commits the unfor- cially when addressed to someone book, but it is real.  givable offense of cutting off Kaia’s who is at that moment reading a novel 1 dreadlocks. His wife has left him, about such people and finding them Correction of the Week and every morning this dark-skinned, very easy to believe in. Occasionally, From the Times. round-faced man looks in the mir- “Augustown” does lecture, although ror and persuades himself that he these passages become part of the November 16, 2016 sees a light-skinned, square-jawed emerging revelation of the narrator’s An Op-Ed article on Monday about the man, “so strong and so desperate is identity. To a non-Jamaican, the novel death of Leonard Cohen rendered Mr. Co- his belief that he is other than what sometimes gives the impression of hen’s Hebrew name incorrectly. It is Eliezer ben Nisan ha’Cohen, not Eliezer ben Natan he actually is.” eavesdropping on a family quarrel, ha’Cohen. It also misstated the title of a Cohen Rastafarians like Ma Taffy and but, then, all family quarrels are in song. It is “I’m Your Man,” not “I’m in Your her family make a vow, drawing on some way alike, and many Ameri- Man.”

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 89 store cacao beans. The glass-covered MUSICAL EVENTS upper structure lunges vertically from the foundation in a way that somehow reminds me of Neuschwanstein, King TEMPLES OF SOUND Ludwig II’s hilltop castle in Bavaria. Yet there are no gemütlich touches. The glass Two spectacular concert halls open in Germany. exterior is cool, undulating, shimmering; the brick walls below have an industrial, BY ALEX ROSS almost military look. Far from welcom- ing you in, the Elbphilharmonie glow- ers imperiously, as if prepared to repel a sneak attack on the Hanseatic League. As expenses and delays mounted, the Elbphilharmonie—Elphi, locals call it— was seen in some quarters as an inde- fensible waste of public money. Since the opening, in January, much of the ill will has ebbed away. Every concert has sold out—even the “blind date” programs, about which nothing is divulged in ad- vance. Each day, thousands of visitors take tours of public areas within the struc- ture. The excitement serves as a reminder that classical music has not lost its ex- alted position in German culture. Ac- cording to the German Orchestral As- sociation, more than eighteen million people attended classical concerts in the 2015-16 season. The association’s direc- tor noted that this figure was consider- ably higher than the number of people who had gone to see soccer games in Germany’s main professional league. The interior of the Elbphilharmonie is spectacularly staged. First, you glide upward on what is billed as the world’s first arched escalator—a two-and-a-half- minute ride in a sci-fi-ish white-walled tube. (The journey has been documented in dozens of YouTube videos.) You then oncert-hall design has entered its held the crown for a little while, but its arrive at the plaza level, taking in vertig- Cgrand mannerist phase, or, some notoriety was soon eclipsed by that of inous views of city spires and harbor might argue, its age of decadence. Two the Elbphilharmonie, which took a de- cranes. Finally, you ascend handsome, years ago, the sensation of the music world cade to build and consumed eight hun- unadorned oak staircases to either of two was the Philharmonie de Paris, a silver- dred and sixty-six million euros. The first halls: a large auditorium or a chamber and-black cultural spaceship that had billion-dollar hall is not far off. space. The entire place exudes loftiness, landed in the Parc de la Villette. This The conventional wisdom in Amer- in terms of both height and cultural as- season, it is the Elbphilharmonie, in Ham- ica is that concert halls have too often piration. Nevertheless, because of public burg, Germany—a brick-and-glass co- seemed like fortresses, and must become funding, tickets are more affordable than lossus that resembles an avant-garde ocean more down to earth. Such is not the phi- they are at the Met or the New York liner docked in the city’s harbor. The new losophy guiding the Elbphilharmonie, Philharmonic. Youngsters in sweatshirts European halls seem to be competing which was designed by the Swiss firm and jeans mingle with the burghers. with one another to see which can run of Herzog & de Meuron. It towers three The large hall, which holds around up the most staggering bills and gener- hundred and thirty-five feet above the twenty-one hundred people, follows the ate the most outraged headlines. With a ground, the concert-hall portion of the now fashionable “vineyard” plan: as at price tag of three hundred and ninety-one complex resting atop a massive brick the Paris Philharmonie, the Berlin Phil- million euros, the Paris Philharmonie warehouse that formerly was used to harmonie, and Disney Hall, in Los An- geles, the performers occupy the center, The Elbphilharmonie, in Hamburg’s port, resembles an avant-garde ocean liner. surrounded by terraced rings of seats.

90 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY VINCENT MAHƒ Even at the back of the highest level, you next season, a Telemann festival. If the baritone Roman Trekel and the pianist are no more than a hundred feet from Elbphilharmonie can sustain its appeal Oliver Pohl gave an all-Schubert program: the podium. (At Lincoln Center’s David over time, it will have confirmed what a meticulous, reserved performance in Geffen Hall, the distance is a hundred the Bavarian tourist industry long ago which the subtlest nuances registered. and twenty feet.) The décor is sober and discovered with Ludwig’s fairy-tale cas- The next night, Barenboim led the West- subdued, at least until you get close to tles: that extravagance sometimes pays Eastern Divan in the final three sympho- the walls: they are made of plaster and off in the end. nies of Mozart. In the first half, I sat in are pockmarked by cavities, bringing to the upper gallery, and felt that I was hear- mind a beehive or a coral reef. The critic fter two nights in Hamburg, I trav- ing these hyperfamiliar pieces for the first Jens Laurson has written that sitting in Aelled to Berlin to see the latest ad- time. Each instrument sounded distinctly, the space is like being “on the inside of dition to a crowded musical landscape: and yet was integrated into a resonant a gigantic musical animal”—the whale Pierre Boulez Saal, a chamber hall just whole. Barenboim used forty strings, which that swallowed Hamburg. south of the Staatsoper. Boulez Saal is in most venues would have swamped the The sound is a mild disappointment, the brainchild of the pianist and conduc- winds and the brass, but here the latter at least on first encounter. The acousti- tor Daniel Barenboim, who envisioned held their own. Down below, there was a cian was Yasuhisa Toyota, who has engi- a performance space and a music school slight loss of cohesion and a palpable gain neered a string of triumphs, including allied with his West-Eastern Divan Or- in visceral impact. The “Jupiter” Symphony Disney. His signature achievement has chestra, which brings together musicians lived up to its name, storming in the air. been to add resonant warmth to the clin- from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim back- Barenboim elicited performances at once ical clarity that defines so many modern grounds. Unlike the Elbphilharmonie, weighty and vital. halls. In Hamburg, though, something is the Paris Philharmonie, and many other The modernist master for whom off. In late April, I saw a performance of high-profile projects—including the ren- Boulez Saal is named was a relentless Mahler’s gargantuan Eighth Symphony, ovation of the Staatsoper, which has been critic of classical music’s fixation on the with the Hamburg State Philharmonic going on since 2010—Boulez Saal went past. Aptly, the hall’s programming hon- and two hundred choral singers under up quickly and painlessly. It was built in- ors the present; the inaugural season, the direction of Eliahu Inbal. This score side a nineteen-fifties building that pre- which began in March, has featured the provides a good acoustical test, its dy- viously housed Staatsoper sets. Frank Iraqi oud player Naseer Shamma, the jazz namic range running from celestial pia- Gehry, who served as the architect, first guitarist John McLaughlin, and the Da- nissimos to apocalyptic thunder. The for- made sketches in 2012, and construction mascus Festival Chamber Players (with mer floated out beautifully: the flutes began in 2014. The total cost for the com- a program of Syrian composers). Classi- seemed just feet away. The climaxes, alas, plex was a relatively modest thirty-five cal music has been recast here as a mod- were a brittle jumble, missing the mel- million euros. ern, global, socially conscious art. The low blend you’d find in a hall with greater Even if a mediocre hall had resulted, singular element is the Barenboim-Said resonance. Also, the bass lacked oomph: the avoidance of the usual cultural- Academy, as the educational wing is when the lower end dug in, the floor- political imbroglio would have been known. Barenboim was a close friend of boards didn’t tremble sympathetically. newsworthy. But Boulez Saal is a mas- the Palestinian-American scholar Ed- Some of these issues can be addressed terpiece of its kind. It consists of two ward Said, and the West-Eastern Divan over time, although it is not easy to change elliptical-shaped seating areas, one on arose from their conversations. The acad- the sound of a finished structure. the ground level and one suspended emy’s students, who come mostly from The chamber hall, which seats five above, each tilted on a different axis. The the Middle East and North Africa, re- hundred and fifty, should need few ad- floor of the upper ellipse also curves up ceive not only musical training but also justments. I saw the pianist Kirill Ger- and down, giving the hall an unfixed, a liberal-arts education. Mena Mark stein play an ambitious and bewitching fluctuating profile. As in Disney Hall, Hanna, the academy’s dean, told me that program consisting entirely of études: bright wood tones—Douglas fir, cedar, one class had been discussing motifs of Liszt’s Transcendental twelve, three and red oak—predominate. The capac- Orientalism and degeneration in Schoen- by Scriabin, two by Ligeti, and several ity is six hundred and eighty-two. Lis- berg’s textbook “Harmonielehre.” All this Gershwin tunes arranged by Earl Wild. teners are never more than fifty feet from fulfills the institution’s Boulezian slogan: Here the sound was fuller and richer, the musicians, who are often placed at “Music for the Thinking Ear.” though still a touch dry. Rippling oak the center of the auditorium. Those in In the fall of 2015, Gehry went to walls give the auditorium a curious ap- the front row could turn pages, if asked. Boulez’s home, in Baden-Baden, bring- pearance, again vaguely organic. In all, the atmosphere is convivial and ing with him a model of the hall. Boulez Soon enough, Elphi will be super- unshowy, despite the flamboyance of was in poor health, and had only a few seded by some other Instagrammable Gehry’s swooping lines. months to live. Nevertheless, he exam- wonder. For now, the hall has a chance Toyota again planned the acoustics, ined the model for hours, his eyes alive to entice the Hamburg public away from and his longtime relationship with with interest. His understanding of sound the tried and true. Happily, its artistic Gehry—they collaborated not only on was uncanny, and he may have sensed team has embraced that mission, offer- Disney but also on the New World Cen- that the structure bearing his name would ing an inventive array of programming, ter, in Miami—has again yielded a mar- take its place among the great concert including a John Zorn marathon and, vel. On the first night I was there, the halls of the world. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 91 away from house music, in favor of hip- POP MUSIC hop and R. & B. This lack of a sup- port structure meant that there were no gatekeepers to please, so the music MOOD MUSIC became faster, weirder, and more pro- fane. These aggressively jittery varia- Jlin’s operatic dance album. tions on house music took different names, most of which—like footwork BY HUA HSU and its predecessors, juke and ghetto house—were interchangeable. The only real distinction was what you were using the music to do: dance with people or against them. Until the release of “Bangs & Works,” in late 2010, the easiest way to keep tabs on footwork was either to live on the South Side of Chicago or to seek out the music on the Internet. But lis- tening to tracks on sites like MySpace or imeem conveyed only half the story. Watching footwork dance battles on YouTube helped explain why the music was so punishingly frenetic: it existed to serve the dancers. Circles of kids competed to corkscrew their bodies at breakneck speeds, and often looked as though they were tap-dancing across hot coals. The battles were conversa- tions between musicians and danc ers, each pushing the other toward more extreme rhythms. By some estimates, the most agile dancers could take five steps per second, and the blurry qual- ity of the videos made their moves seem even more superhuman. The dance floor’s welcoming throb had been reimagined as a series of carefully cho- reographed pirouettes and stumbles. People became pure kinetic energy. Patton admired footwork from afar. n June, 2010, Jerrilynn Patton sent a whelming sound: a controlled deluge She was born and grew up in Gary, In- IFacebook message to Mike Paradi- of skittering snare and kick drums, diana, about thirty miles from Chicago; nas, a British producer who runs the bass lines that you feel rather than she has a memory of hearing footwork adventurous electronic-dance-music hear, and a chopped-up sample of the for the first time when she was four. label Planet Mu. She had heard that theme from the famous computer She was a curious, introverted student, Paradinas was putting together a com- game. Paradinas was nearly done with and spent much of her spare time in pilation of footwork, a niche form of the compilation, and he told her that college making music. In her twenties, club music that originated in Chicago. she could be on the next one. They unsure of what to do with her life, she Many of footwork’s practitioners were kept in touch, and Patton recommended took a job at a steel mill. surprised at Paradinas’s plans; they some producers whose music Paradinas Patton used MySpace and Face- were barely known outside the Mid- had never heard. She also suggested book to connect with producers she west, and it was hard to imagine that that he name the compilation for one admired, befriending artists like RP people in Europe had been paying at- of its standout tracks, DJ Trouble’s Boo and DJ Rashad. At first, she learned tention. Patton, who records as Jlin, “Bangs & Works.” by emulating the greats. She became shared a track she had been working Chicago dance-music d.j.s and pro- a disciple of Chicago’s DJ Roc; her on, called “Tetris Freak.” It was a fine ducers often say that, in the nineties, early productions were so indebted to distillation of footwork’s at times over- the city’s radio stations and clubs turned his style that she was often referred to as Roc, Jr. Though Gary was less than Jlin’s music seems to channel dancers’ surges of adrenaline and melancholy. an hour from Chicago, the distance

92 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN LOWRY proved to be liberating. Dance music focus on the moods that dancers were sputtering rhythm. This is the most en- has always been utilitarian—an excuse trying to exorcise rather than on the chanting aspect of “Black Origami”— to throw a party, a reason to commune movements of their feet. its willingness to turn anything into a with strangers. But having little direct beat. There are kick drums and high hats, engagement with footwork’s epicen- atton’s new album, “Black Origami,” tambourines and claves, handclaps and ter, particularly its live element, al- Pis an astonishing global exploration foot stomps, the staccato stabs of a sing- lowed Patton to play around with the of what drums can do. Each track feels er’s voice; I also felt as if I were hearing genre’s structures and dynamics. When like an experiment in a different rhyth- the sound of change clattering around Patton sent Paradinas the songs that mic idiom. “Hatshepsut” starts off like in a bowl or a car door being slammed, he included on “Bangs & Works Vol. 2,” a marching band taking the field at someone dropping a drum kit down a in 2011, she had discovered a style of halftime, before a jagged synthesizer flight of stairs. her own. begins gnawing away at the confident When I first heard footwork, I thought One of the most unnerving aspects strut of cymbals and timpani. The of go-go music, and how its laid-back, of footwork is how it withholds ca- echoes of a Bollywood score run through call-and-response funk jams never really tharsis. Drums and samples stutter re- “Kyanite.” The squalling synthesizers caught on outside of Washington, D.C. peatedly, like a gas stove that sparks and open spaces of “Never Created, There are plenty of regional styles that but never lights. It can feel relentless, Never Destroyed” call to mind contem- never travel the world, and footwork has uptight, spooky, and desperate; you porary hip-hop production, except that no doubt benefitted from releases such don’t nod along so much as try to find no booming payoff ever arrives. I kept as the “Bangs & Works” compilations, your path through a maelstrom of way hearing Tone-Loc’s “Wild Thing” in and from the Internet’s capacity for mak- too many snares and high hats. Sam- the festive opening seconds of “Nya- ing faraway subcultures seem both mys- ples are sped up to a surreal, chipmunk kinyua Rise”; but then the song coiled terious and digestible. Thanks to artists whir or slowed down to a dirgelike into a fierce, tribal stomp, its slivered like Patton, who regard footwork from pace, at times clashing with the furi- vocals at war with one another. a loving remove, the genre continues to ous rhythms. But there’s something Many people argue that we’ve ex- mutate. Some of my favorite music of hypnotic about the sound of different hausted the possibilities of the human the past few years has explored what hap- rhythms coming together on a track. voice, and that this has led pop artists to pens when you take a preëxisting model The music and the dancing can feel tinker with digital processing. Listening and build it with different materials; the wildly free, or aspirational, as though to “Black Origami,” I wondered if the producers Foodman and SELA., for ex- it’s up to the rest of the world to catch same could ever be said about rhythm. I ample, imagine an intersection between up to their speed and vision. keep returning to the album, because it footwork and blissful, dreamy pop. In 2015, Planet Mu released Patton’s keeps me off balance. A song begins with Patton’s music has ended up in un- début album, “Dark Energy.” She had a steady rhythm, and then its parts rear- expected places. The designer Rick internalized footwork’s sensibility, that range themselves into something fren- Owens used one of her early songs, of the controlled freak-out, and turned zied and nightmarish. Nothing is where “Erotic Heat,” for his 2014 runway show. it into something different. Her music you expect it to be. “Holy Child”—a col- This October, she will collaborate with was dense and operatic, based less on laboration with the minimalist composer the British choreographer Wayne Mc- the hectic energy of sampling and more William Basinski—seems austere and Gregor for his company’s latest work, on immense, moody swells of synthe- slow, as a woman’s chants are tracked by “Autobiography.” But success has also sizer. Her chattering drum patterns sparse, muted drumrolls. Her voice is brought her to places she’s always be- verged on claustrophobia-inducing. slowly stretched apart, then reinserted longed. Last summer, she performed The music seemed to respond to surges alongside a massing riot of snares and at the Pitchfork Festival. It was her of adrenaline and melancholy, and to kicks, until it becomes its own kind of first time playing in Chicago. 

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THE NEW YORKER, MAY 22, 2017 93 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Robert Leighton, must be received by Sunday, May 21st. The finalists in the May 8th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 5th & 12th issue. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ” ......

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“So when are you two taking the plunge?” William Anderson, St. Louis, Mo.

“You must be the hostages.” “He calls it Ishmeow.” Kurt Rossetti, San Rafael, Calif. Ronnie Raviv, Chicago, Ill.

“If you get a choice, the East River is nice.” Thomas Culbertson, Westlake, Ohio