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6 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 13 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Nicholas Lemann on Liz Cheney and the G.O.P.; Black cuisine meets the small screen; a socially distanced slam; the scattering of Gem Spa; David Byrne’s dance revival. LETTER FROM ENGLAND Rebecca Mead 18 A Giant Mystery Searching for the origins of a folk-art monument. SKETCHBOOK Peter Kuper 21 “The Brood” SHOUTS & MURMURS Paul Rudnick 25 The Heartful Home AMERICAN CHRONICLES Jill Lepore 26 It’s Just Too Much The durability of burnout. THE SPORTING SCENE William Finnegan 30 Blood on the Tracks Is horse racing too cruel to continue? PROFILES Michael Schulman 42 Hot Topic Wendy Williams says what she thinks. FICTION Keith Ridgway 50 “The Party” THE CRITICS BOOKS Joan Acocella 60 The corporeal art of Francis Bacon. 67 Briefly Noted ON TELEVISION Doreen St. Félix 68 Barry Jenkins adapts “The Underground Railroad.” THE THEATRE Vinson Cunningham 70 “Zoetrope,” “The Forbidden City.” THE ART WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 72 Frieze emerges from the pandemic. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 74 “The Dry,” “The Perfect Candidate.” POEMS Richie Hofmann 37 “Under Limestone” Rachel Hadas 56 “In the Cloud” COVER Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu “Venturing Out”

DRAWINGS Roz Chast, David Sipress, Elisabeth McNair, Frank Cotham, Charlie Hankin, Carolita Johnson, John O’Brien, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Seth Fleishman, Barbara Smaller, Paul Noth, Lars Kenseth, Liana Finck, Sam Gross, Christopher Weyant SPOTS Ryan Peltier NEW ROUTES TO NEW CUSTOMERS

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Scheduled delivery date and time depend on origin, destination and Post Office™ acceptance time. Some restrictions apply. For additional information, visit the Postage Calculator at http://postcalc.usps.com. For details on availability, visit usps.com/pickup. PROMOTION CONTRIBUTORS

William Finnegan (“Blood on the Tracks,” Rebecca Mead (“A Giant Mystery,” p. 30) became a staff writer in 1987. His p. 18), a staff writer since 1997, most book “Barbarian Days” won the 2016 recently published “My Life in Mid- Pulitzer Prize for biography. dlemarch.”

Jill Lepore (“It’s Just Too Much,” p. 26), Michael Schulman (The Talk of the a professor of history at Harvard, is the Town, p. 16; “Hot Topic,” p. 42) is a staff host of the podcast “The Last Archive.” writer and the author of “Her Again: Her fourteenth book, “If Then,” came Becoming Meryl Streep.” out last year. Keith Ridgway (Fiction, p. 50) has writ- Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu (Cover) is a ten five novels, including “Animals,” Turkish artist. “Hawthorn & Child,” and “A Shock,” which will be out in July. Joan Acocella (Books, p. 60) has been a staff writer since 1995. Her most recent Wyna Liu (Puzzles & Games Dept.) is book is “Twenty-eight Artists and Two an associate puzzle editor at the New Saints.” York Times and an assistant editor at the American Values Club crossword. Peter Kuper (Sketchbook, p. 21), the 2020-21 Jean Strouse Fellow at the New Richie Hofmann (Poem, p. 37), the au- York Public Library’s Cullman Cen- thor of “Second Empire,” will publish ter, has been contributing to The New a new poetry collection, “A Hundred Yorker since 1993. Lovers,” in 2022.

Rachel Hadas (Poem, p. 56) will pub- Paul Rudnick (Shouts & Murmurs, lish a new book of poems, “Love and p. 25) is a regular contributor to the Dread,” and an essay collection, “Piece magazine. His new novel is “Playing by Piece,” this year. the Palace.”

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A I N I G R CULTURAL COMMENT ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY I V

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The term “involuted” has entered the Anna Louie Sussman reports on the H G I R

Chinese lexicon to describe a burned- promise and the perils of a new spate ; G N

out generation, Yi-Ling Liu writes. of fertility startups. A Y

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SCOOT! we move fast without e-scooters. If the city and the state want to allow New John Seabrook’s article on the arrival York to be the next battlefield in the of electric scooters in New York City scooter wars, the mayor had better reg- points out that many riders are shift- ulate them with a firm hand. ing to scooters from public transit, not Paul Castaybert Commemorative from cars (“Scooter City,” April 26th & 1Larchmont, N.Y. Cover Reprints May 3rd). This may be the case, but it doesn’t cast a negative light on the new PORTRAIT OF A DAUGHTER Search our extensive e-vehicles. Scooters offer better door- archive of weekly step-to-doorstep travel than bus and I appreciate that Hilton Als, in his re- rail lines, and they are available at a mo- view of the Alice Neel retrospective at covers dating back to ment’s notice, rather than on a specific the Met, highlights motherhood’s com- 1925 and commemorate schedule. Discouraging the use of scoot- plicated role in Neel’s life and in her a milestone with a ers because they result in a “mode shift” paintings (The Art World, April 26th & New Yorker away from mass transit would be the May 3rd). When I was in art school in cover reprint. wrong approach. Instead, New York New York City, I was told by a female newyorkerstore.com/covers should take advantage of its late entry faculty member—who had the best in- on the scooter scene by adopting best tentions—that the secret to having a practices its peers have learned: require career as a female artist was not to have docking devices to avoid sidewalk clut- kids. It was routine among the child- ter; remove at least one car-parking less artists I looked up to at the time PRICE $8.99 OCT. 24, 2016 spot on each block, to provide bike and to refer pejoratively to younger artists scooter areas; and move forward with who decided to have children as “breed- the creation of bike lanes, which make ers.” Als has graciously set an example riding less perilous and therefore more by exploring the rich and complex iden- accessible to people diverse in age, gen- tity of an artist who is also a mother; der, and ethnicity. we all deserve an art world that cele- Marcel Moran brates such work. Dept. of City and Regional Planning Emily Davis Adams Ph.D. candidate, U.C. Berkeley 1El Cerrito, Calif. San Francisco, Calif. WHAT’S FOR DINNER? Seabrook’s piece on e-scooters raised my blood pressure. I am a third- Thanks to Roz Chast for the delight- generation New Yorker, which surely ful Sketchpad about the many terms entitles me to kvetch about the city’s people use for making a meal out changing modes of transportation. of odds and ends around the kitchen When I have visited friends and (The Talk of the Town, April 26th & family in San Francisco, Paris, and May 3rd). In Chast’s household, it’s Copenhagen, I have run into, tripped called “fending”; in ours, it’s “spinmas- over, swerved around, and generally tering”—spinning whatever is in the been harassed by e-scooters. When the refrigerator into a new and totally dif- 6 train runs late or breaks down, it’s an ferent take on what it was. In other inconvenience but not a hazard. I am words, the art of re-creation. not a Luddite, and I have faith that John Paoli micro-mobility in the form of scoot- Missoula, Mont. ers can help to solve the “last-mile problem”; the prospect of reducing • vehicle-miles travelled and carbon Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, emissions is genuinely exciting. But address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited New York is not Silicon Valley—our for length and clarity, and may be published in ethos is not “Move fast and break any medium. We regret that owing to the volume things.” Broken things piss us off, and of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 24, 2021 5 In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many New York City venues are closed. Here’s a selection of culture to be found around town, as well as online and streaming; as ever, it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements.

MAY 19 – 25, 2021

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

After crashing loudly onto American shores with the album “PUNK,” in 2019, the Japanese band CHAI returns with the mellower follow-up “WINK.” The quartet—the twins Mana (lead vocals, keys) and Kana (guitar), the drummer Yuna, and the bassist and lyricist Yuuki—have reimagined their song- craft for cozy dance music. With their creative process reduced to Zoom and phone calls, they traded in their maximalist pop for a more groove-friendly sound, inverting the CHAI formula to great effect.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KENTA NAKAMURA 1 I saw the logic in it: Neel has too many artistic and turned away from the viewer, shadowed A RT layers for a straight chronological show. There’s in violet-magenta on a saturated goldenrod a profound spiritual component to the work; her ground. An arm, nearly obscured by the flesh of intense and casual surfaces feel like a wall that her torso, extends a hand to the viewer, looking Monika Baer she wants her subjects’ souls to walk through brightly gory in the picture’s lurid light. This Gestural, pastel-colored atmospherics and re- to meet ours. At times, her focus, her desire to striking show is a tantalizing prelude to the curring motifs—notably matchsticks rendered understand who her subjects are and, by exten- upcoming Semmel retrospective at the Penn- with trompe-l’oeil precision—bring a unify- sion, who you might be, can have you rushing sylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, aptly titled ing sense of order and constraint to the airy, out of the galleries for a breath of air.—Hilton “Skin in the Game.”—J.F. (alexandergray.com) eerily suspenseful works in Baer’s new show Als (metmuseum.org) at Greene Naftali, titled “loose change.” The 1 German painter, who divides her time between L.A. and Berlin, seems to resist both stylistic Joan Semmel DANCE and narrative coherence—instead, the events in This electrifying New York painter has ded- her paintings appear to have occurred by chance. icated herself to feminist figuration for sixty Titles such as “Yet to be titled” underscore the years, and the characteristically glorious works “Afterwardsness” expectant mood that attends this new series in “Balancing Act” (on view at Alexander Gray One of the advantages of being in a fifty-five- of spare works, each of which features a back- Associates, in Chelsea, and upstate, in Ger- thousand-square-foot venue is that it’s prac- drop-like element: a tree trunk with ominously mantown) prove that her vigor hasn’t waned. tically like being outdoors. The Park Avenue peeling bark, a low stone wall. But however Semmel’s ever-evolving conceit is the collapse Armory’s performances are among the first much the scenes may read as empty stages, no of the artist-model divide: the nude figure she live, in-person events to take place indoors character ever arrives. Unless, that is, you count portrays is her own. Leaning, twisting, folded in the city since last March. The protocols the jarring blue-and-red teardrop affixed to the poses are made even more dramatic by fore- are extensive: ten-per-cent audience capacity, surface of one of Baer’s pictures, which seems to shortened views and the use of a supernatu- rapid testing at the door (or proof of vaccina- have landed from another dimension to defy the rally hued chiaroscuro. “Red Hand,” from 2019, tion), and carefully coördinated entrances and very idea of pictorial depth.—Johanna Fateman depicts the artist’s octogenarian body, seated exits for audience members. Bill T. Jones, a (greenenaftaligallery.com)

“Grief and Grievance” IN THE MUSEUMS This terrific show, subtitled “Art and Mourning in America”—whose starry roster includes Kerry James Marshall, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Theaster Gates—was originally intended to open at the New Museum last October, amid the furors leading up to the Presidential election. The pandemic scotched that. But “Grief and Grievance,” the brainchild of the late Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor, doesn’t have a use-by date, because it celebrates what artists are good at: telling personal truths through aesthetic form. Works by thirty-seven artists emphasize interiority and the patterns of feeling that attend Black experience in America, channelling the emotional tenors of the history, and the future, of race in this country. Playing in a darkened room near the start of the show is Arthur Jafa’s video-montage masterpiece “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death.” The quantity of rapid clips, ranging from violent scenes of the civil-rights movement to chil- dren dancing, overloads comprehension—so many summoned memories and reconnected associations, cascading. The experience is like a psychoanalytic unpacking, at warp speed, of a national unconscious regarding race. Irre- sistibly exciting and profoundly moving, the piece will induce a heightened state of mind One of the earliest pictures in “Dawoud Bey: An American Project,” the and heart to accompany you throughout the exhibition.—Peter Schjeldahl (newmuseum.org) Whitney’s concise and thrilling retrospective of the Black photographer’s Y R

E forty-five-year career (on view through Oct. 3), is “Three Women at L L

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a Parade” (above), from 1978. The elegant trio, clearly dressed for the , G Y Alice Neel R N

E occasion, seem oblivious to Bey’s camera. What emerges is a portrait of E

L A commonplace observation about great por- T L S A

N traitists is that they are always, in some way, inner lives—of women seeing as much as being seen. The image is part of G A

R Y painting themselves. Neel’s genius was to make L B

“Harlem, U.S.A.,” the artist’s first series, made nimbly in the streets using L A E us understand not just her interest in her subjects N K

E a handheld 35-mm. camera; it earned him his first solo show, at the Studio

N but why we are interested in one another. The R

A D E Met’s spectacular retrospective of the American Museum in Harlem, in 1979. For subsequent projects, many of them in S N

A Y

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S painter, co-curated by Kelly Baum and Randall

Y color, the Chicago-based artist has turned to more methodical, large-format E R T

E Griffey with clarity and rigor, is organized ac- R L

U cameras (including a two-hundred-pound Polaroid). The question of how L cording to eight dominant themes in Neel’s life O A C G

as a woman and an artist, including home, moth- a photograph can honor a subject that vision can’t register remains at the /

R Y E T E erhood, and the nude. Within those categories, I heart of Bey’s work, notably in the magnificent “Night Coming Tenderly, B

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D the paintings are mostly hung chronologically, so D

U Black,” from 2017, a series of penumbral black-and-white landscapes, made N

O that we can see how Neel developed and changed E H W P

A vis-à-vis each theme. At first, this felt a little at sites in Ohio along the Underground Railroad, that convey both the E D

T too regimented to me, but after a second visit —Andrea K. Scott S © nighttime fear of a fugitive and the beauty of freedom.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 24, 2021 7 situated in Tivoli, New York, will hold a two- MUSICAL THEATRE ONLINE week multidisciplinary festival (May 20-30), featuring discussions with local experts on food and foraging, concerts by Patti Smith and Yo La Tengo, and evening dance performances by American Ballet Theatre, the Mark Morris Dance Group, dancers from Alvin Ailey, and others. Kaatsbaan has also commissioned a site-specific work, “American Lyric” (May 27- 28), which involves the pianist Hunter Noack playing a concert of classical and new works while dancers perform in spots around the property.—M.H. (kaatsbaan.org)

Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith For fifteen years, Lieber and Smith have been refining and deepening an artistic partnership of remarkable intimacy and intense equality. Beauty was apparent from the start. What has become clearer is their mission to resist the objectification of women by repurposing imagery usually used in such objectification. This pursuit continues in “Gloria,” the duo’s latest hour-long dance, which they perform in the outdoor amphitheatre of Abrons Arts Center, May 20-22.—B.S. (abronsartscenter.org)

Are the stresses and the heartbreaks of the past fourteen months any more “Platform 2021: The bearable as musical theatre? Early in the pandemic, the fiction writer Jodi Dream of the Audience” Picoult and the playwright Timothy Allen McDonald conceived the idea For its latest “Platform” series, Danspace Proj- for “Breathe,” a collection of five interconnected pocket musicals, written ect has brought back curators of past “Plat- and directed by various teams, that tell stories of COVID in miniature. forms”—Ishmael Houston-Jones, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake, and Reggie Wil- In earnest, poppy one-acts, each with a tidy twist, we meet characters son—and asked each to create a new short video coping with symptoms, lockdowns, and injustices: a pair of harried par- work. First up, live-streaming on May 21, is ents with three kids, a Black Lives Matter protester and his policeman Houston-Jones, a master improviser whose film continues an improvisational collaboration father, a well-to-do married couple separated by death. A concert version, with several Bay Area artists, including Keith filmed in an empty recital hall at the 92nd Street Y, is now streaming Hennessey.—B.S. (danspaceproject.org) (see breathemusical.com, through July 2), featuring Broadway performers such as Denée Benton, Kelli O’Hara, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and the Tap Family Reunion real-life couple Patti Murin and Colin Donnell.—Michael Schulman For the past few years, a dream team of tap- dance stars—Jason Samuels Smith, Derick K. Grant, and Dormeshia—have been presenting a cabaret-style show to celebrate National Tap choreographer whose work often responds to Dance Day. This time around, it’s virtual (avail- what is happening in the world at large, has Dancing the Gods able through the Joyce’s Web site, May 21-June created a new hour-long piece, “Afterwardsness” In the midst of the horror of the pandemic 3), and more directly focussed on the life of (May 19-26), for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane in India, here is something beautiful. This Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, whose birth date Company. Built on stories told to Jones by his festival of classical Indian dance, normally fixes Tap Day on the calendar. Danced episodes dancers, it touches upon familiar themes, includ- held at Symphony Space, is virtual this year, recount Robinson’s early years as a gambler, ing the isolation brought on by the pandemic and consists of two long and two shorter dance his rise through vaudeville and Broadway, the and the trauma of racial violence. The music, by films. The longer ones were created by eminent Shirley Temple period in Hollywood, and the Oliver Messiaen, Holland Andrews, and Pauline dancer-choreographers based in India, each philanthropy that earned him the honorary title Kim Harris, is performed live.—Marina Harss working in a different style. Rama Vaidyana- Mayor of Harlem.—B.S. (joyce.org) (armoryonpark.org) than (May 22) is a brilliant exponent of bharata natyam. Surupa Sen (May 23), the director 1 of the Nrityagram Dance Company, has ex- LaTasha Barnes panded the range and complexity of dances in MUSIC “The Jazz Continuum,” the title of Barnes’s the Odissi style. Both focus on abhinaya, the as- new project, is as good a phrase as any for pect of Indian dance most centered on drama, what she effortlessly, astonishingly embod- expression, and storytelling. The evenings are Flying Lotus: “Yasuke” ies. A champion house dancer who found her introduced by the series’ curator, Rajika Puri, ELECTRONIC It’s no surprise that the Los Angeles way into the Lindy Hop scene, Barnes can and also include shorter films, by the dancers post-hip-hop producer Flying Lotus would draw on at least a century’s worth of Black Jin Won, on May 22, and Sonali Skandan, on create an anime soundtrack, especially for a I dance tradition in her improvisations, all as May 23.—M.H. (worldmusicinstitute.org) show he helped develop—his music’s deep T T an in-the-moment expression of her own com- contrasts and outsized grandeur have always O C munion with music. On May 19, in two live been intensely visual. (3-D glasses are handed L O S performances at the Guggenheim, part of the Kaatsbaan Spring Festival out at his concerts, which usually have a video Y B museum’s “Works & Process” series, Barnes Last year, amid a barren landscape in the per- component.) FlyLo’s work is often defined by a N O gathers together musicians, a d.j., and expert forming arts, the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park built boisterous low end and maximal arrangements, I T A

practitioners of various Black dance styles to an outdoor stage on its gorgeous Hudson Val- but that changes with his score for Netflix’s R T reconnect and reveal the roots and branches ley grounds and ran a safe, welcoming dance “Yasuke”—it’s lean and efficient, befitting the S U L

of jazz.—Brian Seibert (worksandprocess.org) festival. Building on that success, Kaatsbaan, show’s liny animation style, each track a glim- L I

8 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 24, 2021 1 mering miniature that blossoms in tandem with uses the first part of this challenging and often the onscreen imagery.—Michaelangelo Matos bracing dual-disk set to feature her cohesive MOVIES working unit with the drummer John Hollen- beck and the pianist Matt Mitchell on four LSDXOXO: pieces that nestle fervent improvisation amid L’Atalante angular compositions. Making use of the larger The only feature film by Jean Vigo—who died “Dedicated 2 Disrespect” band, Webber’s disk-long “Idiom VI” offers at age twenty-nine, in 1934, soon after its re- ELECTRONIC The Berlin-based d.j. and producer more varied and inviting passages. Despite lease—transfigures the sooty metal of heavy LSDXOXO makes spiky, near-iridescent house alluring moments—Adam O’Farrill’s fetching industry and the strivings of its survivors with music, full of distortion-heavy riffs and buzz- trumpet passage on “Interlude 2,” the spooky a romantic illumination so intense that the ing percussion that cuts through a room like intro on “Interlude 3”—listeners can never film is at once a great working-class drama, a silver suit. Even better, he talks dirty over really let down their guards. Webber is here to an exalted love story, a lusty comedy, and the it, pulling from the stylings of ghetto house, a consciously stretch the orchestral jazz tradition, most magical of musicals. The title refers to subgenre minted in Chicago during the nine- not to make nice.—Steve Futterman a barge that plies the rivers of France with ties. His new EP, “Dedicated 2 Disrespect,” a crew of three—the earnest young captain, earns its title by festooning its four tracks with Jean (Jean Dasté); old Jules (Michel Simon), come-ons, or perhaps shameless oversharing, Seth Parker Woods a tattooed and wise goat-man with a woman in and he manages to make it sound like the most CLASSICAL Working under the auspices of the every port; and Toto (Louis Lefebvre), Jules’s freewheeling good time around.—M.M. genre-crossing Ecstatic Music series, the com- boy Friday. Jean marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), pelling cellist Seth Parker Woods presents a village girl who quickly feels confined by a multimedia streaming event derived from the cigar-shaped can that is now her home. Lisette Oropesa: his concert program “Difficult Grace.” The Irresistibly lured by an itinerant merchant’s program is inspired by the Great Migration, flirtatious song, she flees to Paris, but recon- “Ombra Compagna” historical articles published in the Chicago ciliation was never swifter nor sweeter. Vigo CLASSICAL Mozart’s concert arias are long, in- Defender in 1915, acts of translation, and more; raises the ordinary charm of each moment to a tricate pieces that don’t have the benefit of a the concert includes music by Fredrick Gif- dreamlike ecstasy of passion and stifled revolt: familiar plot from one of his operas, but, in ford, Monty Adkins, Nathalie Joachim, Freida he celebrated life and embraced humanity the hands of a great singer, they can be every Abtan, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, and with the desperate ardor of one who knew bit as enthralling as a solo scene for Countess incorporates text, choreography, video, and he was not long for them. In French.—Rich­ Almaviva or Fiordiligi. On Lisette Oropesa’s film elements.—Steve Smith (May 25 at 7; ard Brody (Streaming at MOMA, the Criterion new album, “Ombra Compagna,” the thirty- kaufmanmusiccenter.org.) Channel, and other services.) seven-year-old soprano demonstrates that she has the natural elasticity, warm timbre, and altitudinous notes to match this repertoire. Take the high E in “Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!”: ROCK Oropesa floats up to it with the weightlessness of a dandelion seed climbing a breeze, her voice spinning freely the entire time, as the conduc- tor Antonello Manacorda reduces the players of Il Pomo d’Oro to a whisper. Surely one of the finest technicians of her generation, Oropesa makes these pieces sound heartfelt instead of merely hard to sing.—Oussama Zahr

Rachael and Vilray JAZZ In Rachael Price’s other band, Lake Street Dive, her powerhouse voice steers the group through a range of pop styles cherry-picked from various decades. This project, Price’s duo with the mononymous guitarist and singer Vilray, zooms in on a single era—the nine- teen-thirties and forties, when New York wits penned breezily romantic, deceivingly sophis- ticated pop standards. The pair’s self-titled début album, released in 2019, draws almost entirely from original compositions by Vil- ray, who smuggles mischievous crumbs of the modern world into songs otherwise faithfully crafted from a mold of the past. (Warning: this extends to scatting.) The musicians of Rachael and Vilray’s source material searched for joy, The British post-punk band Squid keeps testing its own limits—and the hope, and glamour as America twisted through depression and war. On May 21, the duo bring limits of those who would try to define it. Since 2017, the group has released that spirit to City Winery’s chic new digs along a string of songs, each a bit weirder than the last. Squid’s new début album, the Hudson River, among the first clubs to “Bright Green Field,” likewise cannot be pinned down. The surreality of open since the start of the pandemic.—Jay Rut­ tenberg (May 21 at 7; citywinery.com.) not being able to tell the real world from dystopian fiction powers the A T

L record’s unstable, sprawling orchestrations. But, despite a sombre tone and A M

. a sense of unease, the album is far from joyless. Even as the band surveys F Anna Webber: “Idiom” N

H JAZZ Anna Webber’s music, whether scored the sad state of the workforce (“Paddling”) and right-wing propaganda O J for a lean trio or amplified by way of a twelve- (“Pamphlets”), being on edge produces a certain delirious immediacy that Y B piece ensemble, demands much of unsuspecting N gives the songs an energy boost. This isn’t pandemic music, but, in the wake O

I listeners. A saxophonist and flutist fascinated T

A of one, the convergence of fantasy and fidelity—the conceptual and the

R with extended technique—encouraging un- T

S conventional sounds from her instruments experienced—is impossible to ignore. As Squid drifts into a grim world U L

L (as well as those of her bandmates)—Webber —Sheldon Pearce I of its own making, the one outside draws a little closer.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 24, 2021 9 a swaggering self-made rancher whose willful Blaze The Flowers of St. Francis pride leads to financial imprudence. He’s ready- Ethan Hawke’s 2018 film tells the little- The Italian title of Roberto Rossellini’s natural- ing his tough, smart daughter, Vance (Barbara known tale of Blaze Foley (Ben Dickey), a istic portrayal of transcendent faith sums it up: Stanwyck), to take his place, but the two men country singer, yarn-spinner, guitar player, “Francesco, Giullare di Dio”—“Francis, God’s in her life get in the way. Juan Herrera (Gil- and herculean drinker who was shot dead in Jester.” As the joyful visionary and his band of bert Roland), a squatter on the land, is Vance’s 1989. The movie, ruminative and unrushed, holy innocents romp through the thirteenth-cen- devoted friend and the obstacle to a bank loan divides its time. We get flashbacks to ear- tury Italian countryside, they resemble nothing that T.C. needs; Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey) is lier days, when Blaze met and married Sybil so much as the kind of cult you’d pay to have your the gambler she loves—and T.C.’s sworn enemy. Rosen (Alia Shawkat), with whom he lived child kidnapped from. They preach to warlords Meanwhile, Flo Burnett (Judith Anderson), the in the woods; an interview with two of his and landowners as if in quest of the beatings new woman in T.C.’s life, also has designs on friends, Zee (Josh Hamilton) and Townes Van they receive, exemplifying the divine madness the ranch. The director, Anthony Mann, stages Zandt (Charlie Sexton), not all of whose rem- of their radical Christian devotion. Rossel- the action as a series of mighty, clangorous iniscences should be believed; and excerpts lini depicts these brazen geniuses of humility confrontations; the movie’s jarring violence from Blaze’s final night, much of it spent with an expressive simplicity akin to Giotto’s; pales beside the titanic clashes of immense performing and talking at the Roundhouse, in his nonjudgmental clarity reflects both the egos and the disputes between new banking Austin, Texas. The ursine Dickey is an affable way they lived and his sense of wonder that anyone interests and long-standing claims on the land. presence—more so, one suspects, than the could ever have done so. Released in 1950. In Ital- His stark images provide a fitting stage for the real Blaze was when steeped in alcohol—and ian.—R.B. (Streaming on the Criterion Channel.) splendid actors’ brazen rhetorical battles and Hawke doesn’t make the mistake of cranking grand romantic flourishes.—R.B. (Streaming on up his hero into a major musical figure. It’s Amazon and Hulu.) a tolerant tribute, graced by stirring songs The Furies and a cameo from Kris Kristofferson.—An- The frontier comes off as positively Elizabethan thony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 9/10/18.) in this roiling, hard-edged Western melodrama, Hooligan Sparrow (Streaming on Netflix.) from 1950. Walter Huston plays T. C. Jeffords, The Chinese-born, U.S.-based director Nanfu Wang returned to China to film this documen- tary, about the women’s-rights activist Ye Hai- WHAT TO STREAM yan’s campaign for the prosecution of two men, a school principal and a government official, who allegedly raped six girls, aged eleven to fourteen. Wang’s film shows the Chinese government instead subjecting Ye (whose nickname lends the movie its title) and her fellow-activists to relent- less surveillance and ruthless harassment—and doing the same to Wang, whose movie is also a personal drama of persecution. As Ye and her young daughter, Yaxin, flee city after city to keep a step ahead of the authorities, Wang films their quest for refuge; when police try to confiscate Wang’s camera and recordings, she works ever more boldly, using a tiny camera on her eyeglasses and a hidden microphone. Wang reveals the Chinese government treating public protests against official abuses as graver offenses than the abuses themselves; she documents a regime of violence that suppresses dissent and sustains impunity. Released in 2016.—R.B. (Streaming on the Criterion Channel and Kanopy.)

Marvin Seth and Stanley Stephen Gurewitz directs and co-stars in this touching and hilarious Minnesota Jewish ver- sion of “Shit My Dad Says.” The story is simple: two grown sons, Stanley (Gurewitz), a neurotic struggling actor, and Seth (Alex Karpovsky), an

The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s career is paradoxical: he aggressive media guy whose marriage is break- E V I

began by working with substantial budgets within industry norms, but ing up, return home to Minnesota for a camping H C

trip with their aging, divorced father, Marvin R A after winning international acclaim, about fifteen years ago, he scaled back (played by Gurewitz’s real-life father, Marvin). M L I

to scant budgets and quick shoots in a series of self-produced features The observational comedy is enriched by ac- F

E

(seventeen since 2009) that are among the most inventive of the time. tual lifelong observation, a pitch-perfect ear R N

for the impacted emotion of offhand remarks, E G Two of his early films are streaming this month at Metrograph, starting,

and a patiently avid camera eye that pounces N

“Woman Is the Future of Man,” A

on May 18, with from 2004. It’s the story on quiet moments of revelation. Karpovsky is C I R of an aspiring filmmaker named Hyeon-gon (Kim Tae-Woo) who, after fiercely uninhibited as a bastard in pain who’s E M

fortunate to have a family to take it out on, and A

completing his studies in the United States, returns home to Seoul and E

Stephen Gurewitz brings dignity and decency H T

recruits his friend Mun-ho (Yoo Ji-Tae), a fledgling art professor, to help to Stanley’s proud frustration. As for Marvin D N A him track down his former girlfriend Seon-hwa (Sung Hyun-Ah)—who, Gurewitz, he’s got the role of a lifetime, and he O

invests it with a lifetime of experience and just E D

unbeknownst to him, had an affair with Mun-ho in his absence. Hong’s I

enough bemused skepticism to steer the story V

boldly fragmented drama is built as much around its intellectual characters’ away from bathos and sentiment. Released in W O

2014.—R.B. (Streaming on Vimeo.) R heavy drinking as around their extended dialogues; the intimate action R A

Y lays bare the cruelties and humiliations of youth—with an emphasis on 1 S E T men’s ruthless pursuit of sex, which Mun-ho deems, with no apparent R For more reviews, visit U —Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town O irony, a blight on Korean culture. C

10 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 24, 2021 came an extension of her personal brand. and-honey sourdough. Blanks, who has Meckler returned to New York, where cooked at Le Coucou and Lamalo, a she found a bakery, Partybus Bakeshop, Middle Eastern restaurant in NoMad, on the Lower East Side, to take on the doesn’t shy from starter. day-to-day bread-making, allowing her The boxes are inspired by the “potluck 1 to focus on her broader mission: incor- of different cultures,” as Blanks puts it, porating challah—which is Eastern Eu- that inform the cuisine in Israel, and es- TABLES FOR TWO ropean in origin, and plays a ceremonial pecially by dishes that bring him comfort. role in Ashkenazi Jewish culture—into When he served in the Israeli Army, a Challahpalooza the mainstream. Challah Dolly loaves friend’s Yemeni mother would bring them are now available at New York City spe- kubanah. Blanks and his wife, an Israeli In March of last year, Dolly Meckler, like cialty markets, including Murray’s Cheese, of Moroccan origin, are not particularly so many others, decided to try her hand in the West Village, and Greene Grape observant Jews, but both grew up eat- at sourdough. “And then I read a recipe,” Provisions, in Fort Greene, and by mail ing cholent, a stew—usually some mix she told me the other day, “and I saw this order nationwide. When I received the of legumes, potatoes, barley, and lamb thing called starter, and I was, like, ‘Hell “Trifecta” variety pack, I was surprised by or beef chuck—that religious Jews start no.’ I was not about to grow something in the slimness of the package, which con- cooking on Fridays before sundown and E

T a jar for two weeks.” Her thoughts turned tained plain, everything, and honey-cin- leave simmering until Saturday lunch. R A

W to sweet, egg-rich, braided challah, which namon loaves, each about the size of a One of Blanks’s salatim, a cup of baked S

T

S she hadn’t made since Jewish summer Nerf football. If you’re used to a heftier pinto beans, potato, and wedges of hard- O O

J camp but remembered as being easier. challah, as a centerpiece of a Shabbos or boiled egg, pays homage to the dish.

Y B Indeed, for challah, she didn’t need holiday dinner, you might think of a Chal- “There’s something very soothing N O I

T a starter, but she did need yeast, which lah Dolly loaf as more like a banana bread, about challah,” Blanks told me. “It’s so soft. A R

T was scarce across the country; Meckler to be whittled down in the course of sev- It’s a rich, brioche-type dough, but it’s also S U L

L had recently moved to Los Angeles, from eral days—Meckler’s recipe, an heirloom almost like Wonder Bread.” Like Meckler, I

; R

E her native Manhattan, to look for jobs in passed down from a friend, insures an he sees its potential. A Parchment box, he K R

O social-media marketing. An odyssey, on extra-moist crumb—although it’s equally said, “could morph into anything from Y

W foot, through the grocery stores of West suited to sweet and savory applications. a snack”—a slice of challah swiped in E N

E Hollywood, which she documented on Meckler’s are not the only challahs Blanks’s ethereally silky hummus, or in H T

R Instagram, finally led her to leavening. I’ve recently had delivered. Last year, his North African-inspired matbucha, a O F Not long after posting pictures of her Erez Blanks, an Israeli-American liv- mash of slow-cooked peppers, tomatoes, A D

A first loaves, she began to field orders from ing in Brooklyn, started Parchment, cauliflower, and zucchini—“to a base for a M A H

followers impressed by her plaitwork. (She offering weekend pickup and drop-offs Friday-night meal, just add your protein.” O K watched multiple YouTube videos.) Soon of bread boxes, featuring either Yemeni- Or add his: a stellar whole chicken comes O Y K she was selling dozens a day. It wasn’t style kubanah—a round of laminated on and off the menu, smoked in harissa Y B

H the work she’d imagined, but the enter- pull-apart rolls—or challah, along with and dripping in juices that beg for squishy P A

R prise befitted her skills: she already had salatim (salads, sides, and dips). The bread. (Challah Dolly challahs $12 per loaf; G O

T a podcast called “Hello Dolly”; Challah kubanah is flecked with scallions and Parchment boxes from $39.) O H

P Dolly, as she named her new business, be- nigella seeds; the challah is buttermilk- —Hannah Goldfield

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 24, 2021 11 Watch our new event series.

Join us for The New Yorker Live.

We look forward to welcoming you as the award-winning actress, singer, and dancer Rita Moreno takes the virtual stage with the New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman to discuss her storied career, from “West Side Story” and “Singin’ in the Rain” to “One Day at a Time,” and more.

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COMMENT Powerful America.” She consistently op- known neocon and a longtime ally of CHENEYISM posed Trump’s inclination to bring home Liz Cheney’s—they co-founded an or- American troops who have been on long ganization called Keep America Safe— obody should mistake Liz Cheney’s deployments abroad. A harbinger of her endorsed Joe Biden for President. Nexpulsion from the leadership of vote to impeach Trump in January was But hawks are now homeless in both the Republican Conference in the House her vote in December to override his parties, actually, and that poses a chal- of Representatives for a sign that she veto of a defense bill that would have lenge to Joe Biden, whose tendencies are is headed out of her party, to some slowed his efforts to remove American non-isolationist but also un-Cheney-like. unknown, possibly moderate political forces from Afghanistan and Germany. The Republican megadonor Charles Koch destination. Cheney grew up in a firmly Trump, for his part, likes to call Cheney recently teamed up with George Soros conservative and politically partisan a warmonger. to start the Quincy Institute for Respon- household, and never noticeably rebelled. The Republican Party has always sible Statecraft, dedicated to reversing the She has been in the family business— uneasily encompassed both isolation- American “pursuit of military dominance.” government—since she was in her twen- ists and interventionists. Right now, it The voting base of each party is even less ties, and she will run next year to keep may look as if the significance of drawn to Cold War internationalism than the Wyoming seat that her father, Dick Cheney’s ouster from the Party’s lead- the funding élite is. Perhaps the only thing Cheney, held for years. ership is that it demonstrates Trump’s Barack Obama and Donald Trump have The cause of her divorce from her continuing dominance. In the longer in common is that public reaction against House colleagues is not some incipient run, the more important message may the Iraq War—of which Dick Cheney shift in her core identity; it is Donald be that interventionists have no place was a key architect and Liz Cheney a Trump. Cheney has said that she voted in the Party anymore. Neoconservatives, strong supporter—helped put both of for Trump in November, but it could not the G.O.P.’s most visibly hawkish co- them in the White House. Even if Trump have been with enthusiasm. His florid, hort in the twenty-first century, have somehow lost his grip on Republican pri- undisciplined style and utter lack of in- always been deeply uncomfortable with mary voters, few G.O.P. officeholders terest in the details of statecraft are about Trump. Bill Kristol, perhaps the best- would feel safe in espousing the kind of as unlike Cheney as you can get. So is foreign policy that Liz Cheney likes, and the abject terror of most House Repub- the Democrats won’t find it easy to con- licans at the prospect of incurring Trump’s vince their voters that they can engage displeasure. Cheney is willing to say pub- vigorously around the world in more pro- licly that Trump’s final innings were un- ductive ways. acceptable, and that is to her credit. Surely the last place the Biden Ad- On policy, if you had to say who’s ministration would have chosen for a farther to the right, Cheney or Trump, tryout of its preferred international role

A it would probably be Cheney. The dif- is Israel and Gaza, which were engulfed D N

E ference shows up most obviously in for- in violence last week. The Middle East Z A F

eign policy, where Cheney, like her fa- offers Republicans a rare opportunity to O Ã ther, is a committed hawk and a believer demonstrate bellicosity without stray- O J

Y in the aggressive use of American power ing into the Trump-era danger zone of B

S

N (and that doesn’t mean soft power) committing American forces abroad. O I T

A around the world. Her most recent book, They can react to what looks like the R T

S which she co-wrote with him, is called beginning of a war simply by saying, as U L L I “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Liz Cheney did on Twitter last week,

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 13 “America stands with Israel.” Biden in- “he got down on his knees and said the the American presence in Afghanistan. tended to depart from the practice of only three words that he knew in En- In recent years, foreign-policy-mak- his predecessors by not staging a highly glish that his mother taught him before ers in both parties have engendered pub- public initiative in the region. He has the war—God bless America.” (Blinken’s lic mistrust, presiding over not just end- distanced himself from Benjamin Net- paternal grandfather, who fled Russian less wars but also a spectacular collapse anyahu’s government, which Trump em- pogroms, was an important advocate of of the global economy, a poorly handled braced uncritically, with the aim of show- the creation of the state of Israel.) This immigration crisis, and, most recently, a ing that low-profile U.S. engagement is not the perspective of a retrencher. pandemic that didn’t have to be as dev- can promote peace and justice. Yet the Biden Administration, so am- astating as it is. It’s going to be a daunt- You can get a sense of what the Biden bitious in domestic policy, has been far ing task for the Biden Administration Administration would like to achieve in quieter in foreign policy. It has clearly to create a meaningfully different new the world from an article that Antony paid close attention to Trump’s success role for America, one that entails nei- Blinken, the Secretary of State, co-wrote at tapping into the populist resentment ther withdrawing from the world nor with the prominent neoconservative Rob- of, to use one of his favorite terms, glo- vainly attempting to assert dominance. ert Kagan, in 2019. They began by not- balists. The Blinken-Kagan article crit- Israel has now presented itself as a test ing ruefully that “President Trump’s icized the Obama Administration, in case, and it offers a good example of the ‘America First’ foreign policy—or its pro- which Blinken served, for “doing too limitations of the impulse to celebrate gressive cousin, retrenchment—is broadly little” in Syria, and criticized Trump for Cheney. Better to endorse her stance on popular in both parties.” At the announce- pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Part- Trump, and to find a part for the U.S. to ment of his appointment, Blinken told nership. But Biden has not reversed those play in the Middle East that involves a story about how, when his late stepfa- policies, or dramatically rejected most trying to reduce bloodshed and suffer- ther, a Holocaust survivor, was rescued of Trump’s other foreign-policy posi- ing, not provoking it. by an American tank in Bavaria, in 1945, tions, including his intention to end —Nicholas Lemann

CLOSEUP DEPT. it isn’t exactly her show. The producers generation take its lead, which makes FOOD STORY Fabienne Toback and Karis Jagger bought me feel old,” she continued. “I am in that the rights to the book; they brought in first episode only by accident.” the director Roger Ross Williams and The accident occurred on July 13, hired the writer Stephen Satterfield— 2019—Harris remembered, because it tall, smoldering, swooningly intelligent— was the day before the annual Bastille to be the series’ host. Most of the show’s Day dinner that she hosts at her house creative leads are Black. “It’s been inter- on Martha’s Vineyard. She’d gone to a ne recent Monday evening, Jessica B. esting to see how Fabienne and Karis screening of “The Apollo,” a documen- OHarris sat at the counter at Rever- saw the book, especially with an eye to tary directed by Williams, who was then ence, a tasting-menu restaurant on a leafy youth,” Harris said. She is seventy-three in preproduction for “High on the Hog.” Harlem corner, gazing down at a small and wears her graying hair in a high po- Harris was wary of the cadre of Holly- bowl. The restaurant is normally closed nytail. She periodically fussed with a psy- wood types who now had custody of on Mondays, but for Dr. J., as Harris’s chedelic Hermès scarf draped around her favored child. But, when she and fans call her, the chef and owner, Rus- her shoulders. “I’m watching the younger Williams met, “it was like the Vulcan sell Jackson, had opened. Harris is argu- mind meld,” she said. After the screen- ably America’s leading scholar of Black ing, the two of them stayed up late at culinary history. She is a professor emerita Harris’s house, drinking wine and talking. at Queens College and a prolific author. Later, Harris recalled, “Roger said, ‘You Her twelfth book on food, “High on the need to be in this show!’ And I was, like, Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa ‘I could have told you that.’ ” to America” (2011), is the inspiration for The initial episode takes place in a four-part series, which débuts on Net- Benin, a place that Harris first visited flix next week. in the early seventies, during a research “Did you say this was an oyster?” Har- trip for her doctoral thesis on Franco- ris asked Jackson, considering the bowl. phone theatre in West Africa. The re- “I can’t do shellfish, I’m so sorry.” Jack- gion figures prominently in her books. son, horrified, whisked the plate away Satterfield is new to the country, and and leaped balletically to a storage bin, Harris guides him through markets, from which he drew a frilly cluster of restaurants, and villages on camera. (It mushrooms. “I’ll make you something was important for Harris to ground the else,” he declared, and began to slice. narrative of her book in Africa, to root The television version of “High on the culinary story of a diaspora. The se- the Hog” is based on Harris’s work, but Jessica Harris ries follows suit.)

14 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 Harris was reminiscing about the trips to North and West Africa that she used to take with her parents when her iPhone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, reaching into her bag. Across the open kitchen, Jackson rose from where he’d been positioning a garnish. “Is it an emergency?” he said, with a cocked eyebrow. He is a meticulous custodian of the vibe at Reverence; diners must agree in advance to a code of conduct that includes a no-electronics policy. “Mea culpa!” Harris said, putting the phone away. The episode in which Harris appears culminates in a powerful moment near the Door of No Return in the city of Ouidah. It is a memorial arch set in the sandy beach, honoring the enslaved Af- ricans who were sent from Benin’s shores to the Americas. As Harris explains the hellish conditions on the slave ships, Satterfield breaks down, sobbing, and she takes him in her arms. “I’ve been there too often at this point to cry,” she said, over Jackson’s aged duck breast •• with a strawberry-vinegar sauce. “But the enormity of it, the extraordinary un- resolvedness of it—and the unbeliev- Mother pheasant pluckers will peck the The videographer interrupted: “I’m able need to make one’s personal peace eyes of / pleasant feather-fisted phuckers we sorry, can you start over? They were with it, in order to get on to surviving— lap dance / under lion’s gaze. moving the mannequins behind you!” is all knotted up in there, in some kind It was Sunday, and at 10 A.M. a store Shvarts’s lip quivered as she waited for of tight little wad.” manager ushered Shvarts inside and another mannequin to be hauled away. Jackson reappeared, bearing choco- up a neon-lit escalator, past a manne- “Take a couple deep breaths, my love,” late-lavender tarts and two small, flaky quin wearing a Cooladapt tank top the producer said. pies with burnished crusts. His an- ($40) and Velocity Nitro shoes ($120). In normal times, the contest to join nouncement that they were Tyler pies A microphone, a tripod, and a profes- the New York City Poetry Slam Team was met with a blank stare. “It’s an sional videographer awaited her arrival. is a sold-out performance held at the Edna Lewis dish,” he said, referring to “This is my first slam!” she said. “It’s Apollo Theatre, in Harlem; this year, the legendary Black chef and cookbook nice to be doing something outside the the twenty-second annual slam was vir- author. Harris brightened. “Well, O.K.!” house.” By ten-fifteen, Shvarts, who tual. The following week, a panel of she said, and explained that she hadn’t wore cuffed jeans and a denim jacket, judges—Flo Ngala (a personal paparazzo read all of Lewis’s books. “Y’all are had removed her mask, checked her to Cardi B), Laura Stylez (a Hot 97 FM studying Edna; I just knew her.” lipstick on her iPhone’s camera, and d.j.), J. Ivy (a poet who collaborates with 1—Helen Rosner begun to read: Kanye West and Jay-Z), Kel Spencer (a Grammy-nominated multimedia MOUTHS OF BABES My mother doesn’t smile in photos. / Nor exec), and Jasmine Mans (a slam-team does her mother— SLAM DUNK alumna)—would select five teens for the A producer interrupted: Would it be city’s team. possible for her to change into a com- Shanelle Gabriel, the interim exec- plimentary Puma T-shirt? (All poets utive director at Urban Word NYC, got sneakers and a T-shirt.) Shvarts which hosts the contest, wanted to du- obliged, and began again: plicate the excitement of the Apollo online. Rather than have the twenty fi- lizabeth Shvarts, a sixteen-year-old My mother doesn’t smile in photos. / Nor nalists appear via Zoom, from their bed- from Staten Island, was standing in does her mother / Or her mother or her mother’s rooms or fire escapes, she decided that E mother. At least, their mouths / Curl like up- the rain outside the Puma flagship store, turned orange peels and if you trace your / Finger the competitors would record their per- in midtown, reciting a spoken-word poem along our family tree the branches / Brachiate formances at the Puma store. “Every- to calm her nerves: into generations of resting bitch-face— one’s housing isn’t secure. We didn’t

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 15 1 want to assume that everyone could LEGACIES Then the pandemic hit. Patel added create a quiet space to record their EGG CREAM DREAMS Gem Spa to delivery apps and sold merch poem,” she said. “We also wanted to online, but that wasn’t enough to cover make sure there’s no cats running around the $20,500 monthly rent. “My mother in the background.” said, ‘Let it be. You’ve tried your best.’ ” By noon, a dozen poets had ar- For a while, Patel put Gem Spa’s re- rived. Several paced the sneaker sec- mains—including the awning, the egg- tion, frantically whispering their met- cream station, and the yellow storefront aphors, anaphoras, and onomatopoe- signs that became emblems of East Vil- ias to themselves; others scrolled f all the time-worn New York lage grungy chic—in storage, but that TikTok. A few snapped approval as Oinstitutions that finally gave out got expensive, too. So she decided to fellow-finalists recited pulsing tro- during the pandemic, few inspire auction everything off, using the profits chees and accentual slant rhymes. Alex the cultish affection of Gem Spa, the to help pay for her father’s care. “If the Guzman, a nervous sixteen-year-old cigarette-and-candy shop that stood stuff is in some loving new home, at least who wore glasses held together with at the corner of Second Avenue and there’s some life,” she said. Scotch tape, wandered into an empty St. Marks Place, under various names, The first item to go was a glass “Gem room at the back and bellowed his for a century. Like Patti Smith, who Spa” sign that appears behind Courtney stanzas into the dark: went there for egg creams with Robert Love in the 1999 movie “200 Cigarettes.” Mapplethorpe, the place harked back It sold for a thousand dollars, along with I’m not the caster kid, ghost top, casper to the tattered cool of bygone counter- one of the shop’s two metal roll-down lid / No one ever merciless / Always mercy that or mercy this / But never mercy kids / Give cultures, which it attracted in waves: gates (three thousand), to Chris Maltby, ’em more work cause life is merciless. Beats (Allen Ginsberg mentioned Gem a writer in Red Hook. “Back when I was Spa in a poem), then hippies, then a kid, I’d play hooky from school, and Across the store, Kai Giovanni, a punks. Madonna filmed a scene there I’d get a pastrami sandwich from the high-school freshman from Bedford- for “Desperately Seeking Susan”; Jean- Second Avenue Deli and then an egg Stuyvesant, who wore ripped jeans and Michel Basquiat named a painting for cream at Gem Spa,” he said. He once hand-painted boots, joked around with the place. Until it packed up, last May, left his keys on a pile of magazines, and their father, Thomas, an attorney for the shop still sold egg creams, which, David Johansen, the New York Dolls the City of New York. “He says crap lore had it, originated there. front man (and a Gem Spa regular), all the time, and he doesn’t write it “We never thought this store would found them. Maltby is planning to put down, so I have to!” the poet said. The not be with our family,” Parul Patel, its the Gem Spa relics in a refurbished barn dad laughed. most recent proprietor, said the other next to his new house upstate. At the mike, Meera Dasgupta—a day. Patel took over in 2019, from her Claudia Besen, a retired speech pa- former New York City Youth Poet father, Ray, who had been the owner thologist, bought the other metal gate, Laureate, and the reigning National since 1986. As a teen-ager, she worked as a fifty-seventh-birthday present to Youth Poet Laureate—introduced her summers, back when the big sellers herself. (The gates, graffitied by the art- poem. (Amanda Gorman, who per- were magazines and foreign cigarettes. ist Paul Kostabi, were installed two years formed at President Biden’s Inaugu- “I did everything from handling the ago, after Patel could no longer keep the ration, was the National Youth Poet register to making egg creams,” she store open twenty-four hours.) Besen, Laureate in 2017.) “I wrote this yester- said. She went on to work as a finan- an alt-rock fan with dyed pink hair, lived day at 10 p.m.,” Dasgupta said. “I had cial adviser at Morgan Stanley, man- on St. Marks in the nineties and used a poem already memorized. I was ready, aging some forty million dollars, until to stop by Gem Spa on her way home but I didn’t like it as much as I like she quit to raise two kids. By 2018, her from the Pyramid Club. “I saw Chris this one”: father was suffering from progressive Farley there once—he had on a ton of I am used to being watched like prey, some- supranuclear palsy, a disease akin to black eyeliner,” she said. “It was sort of thing to be hunted. / As an Indian American Parkinson’s, and Patel started filling in. a beacon of light on my way home, as woman, you don’t have to tell me to / Cover my She found the business in a precarious dawn was breaking.” She plans to hang skin because I learned to fear being brown be- state: foot traffic was down, people were the gate in her living room in Connecti- fore / I learned to fear being woman. / When stealing newspapers. After an employee cut, or maybe out on her patio. “I smile my mother plans my wedding while every day, I plan my funeral. / Wear makeup and dress like was caught selling cigarettes to minors when I think about Gem Spa,” she said. a boat that has found a broken lighthouse at (Patel suspects a setup involving a “mas- “And then I cry.” the shore. / Smiling as I swim towards you, the sive conspiracy”), her tobacco and lotto Jason Sheehy nabbed one of the big jagged rocks. / Smiling like another stranger. / An- licenses were suspended, torpedoing yellow storefront signs (seventy-five hun- other daughter. / Another lover. / Another sis- eighty-five per cent of the business. She dred dollars), plus a milkshake machine ter. / Smiling like a second on the evening news. worked twelve-hour days trying to turn (three-fifty). Sheehy lives on a grain farm When she finished, a young man in things around: she sold e-cigarettes, in Ohio, but “the East Village has al- white Yeezys shouted, “Damn, whaaaat? launched a T-shirt line, set up an In- ways just been my jive,” he said. Both Damn!” He offered an elbow bump. stagram account. By last March, she items will live in his nineteenth-century —Adam Iscoe was breaking even. farmhouse, part of which he has turned

16 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 by bicycle. “Forty years in New York, and a playlist, ranging from Afrobeat to you never run out of stuff to see,” he said. Benny Goodman. When it was locked, Still, even for the professionally curious Byrne, at home, recorded a commen- there’s a point at which solitude starts tary. Some parts were instructions for to yield diminishing returns. “Rhythm, line dances; others were more abstract live music, getting people together and (“Let me see you move like you’re in a getting them moving—that’s always been new world”) or historical (“This song is a part of me,” he said. Cooking with by the first interracial band to play Car- paper is fine, but what is life, really, if negie Hall”); some were idiosyncratic you can’t throw a dance party? Byrnisms (“C’mon, baby, let’s think about Byrne descended a vast staircase and your tendons”). While Byrne and Jones walked into the Drill Hall, an enormous stood in the Drill Hall, half shouting room that was once used for mustering above the thumping bass line of “I Just Union soldiers and is now used for per- Want to Dance,” Jones noted the lyrics formances and art installations. Spaced (“I get kind of mad/Mad, mad, mad / across the floor were ninety-six circular We lost another life”). “They’re talking rugs, spotlighted in a variety of colors— about the police murdering Black men, mini-stages for solo dancing. A synco- and yet it also connects to anyone who’s pated track—“I Just Want to Dance,” lost someone in the past year,” she said. into an Irish pub, furnished with a bar by Sault—was playing over a powerful Then Byrne’s prerecorded voice said, and stools from O’Lunney’s Times P.A. system. “Oh, that’s a funky groove “All of us have had loss . . . this loss needs Square Pub, another pandemic casualty. now,” a voice said. It was Byrne’s, prere- to be acknowledged.” The previous night, Diana Goldfeder Stewart, a graphic corded, reverberating through the raf- several dancers burst into tears. artist in San Francisco, bought an egg- ters. The corporeal Byrne stopped, cocked The co-creators had spent months cream sign for her kitchen (three thou- his head, and turned to a woman with hashing out the details: d.j. or no d.j.? sand dollars). Her family operated the a blond-streaked ponytail. “Do we need They settled on a compromise; the store from the twenties through the fif- that last part?” he asked. “Might give it soundscape would be premixed, but a ties, when it was called Goldfeder’s. She more room to breathe.” performer would pantomime on a plat- grew up hearing stories about her great- The woman, Christine Jones, was form in the center of the room, fist-pump- grandfather Nathan’s chocolate-sauce also wearing a jumpsuit, which she said ing and laptop-fiddling. (For the two- recipe. (“He served what was called Gold- was not premeditated: “David and I are week run at the armory, last month, the feder’s Famous Egg Cream.”) Like a both really into jumpsuits.” The show performer Karine Plantadit played the lot of Gem Spa fans, she was anxious they were working on was in previews, role of DJ Mad Love.) Next: how could about what will replace it. “That cor- and they were still tweaking it. Jones is a hundred strangers, self-conscious and ner—it’s a magical corner for so many an artist-in-residence at the armory, al- rusty from lockdown, be made comfort- people,” she said. “It can’t be just noth- though for the past year the “residence” able enough to let loose? A combina- ing there.” part has been notional. She spent most tion of low light and a disorienting disco 1—Michael Schulman of the pandemic at home, in what she ball helped, as did a team of “dance am- calls the Lower Lower East East Side, bassadors”—nine ringers who would be MAKING DO DEPT. where her two teen-age kids killed time sprinkled through the crowd, so that, DANCING WITH MYSELF by teaching her dances from TikTok. “It wherever you looked, someone within was liberating, and surprisingly collab- your line of sight would be a mysteri- orative,” she said. “You’re across the room ously capable and enthusiastic dancer. from each other, but you’re also having Half an hour before the house opened, this collective release.” the ambassadors found their circles. Jones won a Tony as the set designer “Let’s try the Bus Stop one more time,” for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” Yasmine Lee, the choreographer, said. avid Byrne sat alone on the sec- Last summer, while that show’s chore- She cued up the song. A third of the Dond floor of the Park Avenue Ar- ographer, Steven Hoggett, was stuck in ambassadors missed the downbeat. They mory, wearing a blue jumpsuit and his London, he and Jones dreamed up, over tried it again. Success. trademark shock of white hair. The room Zoom, the not-quite-oxymoronic idea “Walk me through it one more time?” he was in, like most rooms in the ar- of a socially distanced dance party. If Byrne said. He was still missing the mory, was ornately appointed—trompe- square footage, rapid testing, and air fil- downbeat, and most of the beats after l’oeil ceilings, mahogany woodwork— tration were no object, they realized, it that. Lee, Jones, and the ambassadors but he didn’t seem to notice. “I got much just might work. “I asked, ‘What if some- formed a semicircle around him. “You better at cooking,” he said, of his pan- one taught dance steps to a room full of got it,” one of them said. demic year. “I learned how to bake fish strangers?’ ” Jones said. “Steven imme- “No, but I will,” Byrne said. “I swear in paper.” He also spent time with his diately went, ‘It should be David.’ ” I’m gonna get it.” daughter, upstate, and explored the city The three started collaborating on —Andrew Marantz

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 17 Papworth was not, on this occasion, LETTER FROM ENGLAND concerned with the giant’s most nota- ble physical feature. He and a small team of colleagues planned to excavate A GIANT MYSTERY the crooks of the figure’s elbows and the soles of his feet. Because of rain- Is an enormous chalk outline of a naked man an ancient image—or a modern joke? water runoff on the steep hillside over the centuries, these areas have built up BY REBECCA MEAD a dense layer of chalk mixed with silt and spoil, like the ingrained grime of he sun was still low in the sky on made part of the landscape: the Cerne a returnee from sleepaway camp. For Tthe spring morning last year when Giant, an enormous figure of a naked, as long as records have existed on the Martin Papworth, an archeologist for armed man, carved into the chalk of giant, he has been kept intact by the the National Trust, arrived in the vil- the hillside. regular clearing away of weeds from lage of Cerne Abbas. Setting off along The Cerne Giant is so imposing that the chalk trenches. Over the past cen- a wooded path at the foot of Giant Hill, he is best viewed from the opposite tury, at least, the figure has been even he carried in each hand a bucket loaded crest of the valley, or from the air. He more clearly delineated by the intro- with excavation tools. Cerne Abbas, in is a hundred and eighty feet tall, about duction, every few decades, of fresh a picturesque valley in Dorset, about as high as a twenty-story apartment chalk carted in from elsewhere. Pap-

The Cerne Abbas Giant, in Dorset, is so imposing that he is best viewed from the opposite crest of the valley, or from the air. three hours southwest of London, is an building. Held aloft in his right hand worth’s goal was to dig through the lay- ancient settlement. At one end of the is a large, knobby club; his left arm ers of chalk and silt until he reached village, beneath a meadow abutting a stretches across the slope. Drawn in an the level at which the soil had never burial ground, lie the foundations of outline formed by trenches packed with been disturbed. He hoped that an analy- what was, a thousand years ago, a thriv- chalk, he has primitive but expressive sis of soil samples recovered from those ing abbey. Close by is a spring-fed well facial features, with a line for a mouth depths would date the giant’s creation, named for St. Augustine, a monk who and circles for eyes. His raised eyebrows helping to solve the puzzle that the fig- was sent by Rome in the sixth century were perhaps intended to indicate fe- ure, with his raised brows and penis, to convert Britain to Christianity, and rocity, but they might equally be taken has long presented: who inscribed such who became the first Archbishop of for a look of confusion. His torso is well a ribald image on a hillside, and why Canterbury. According to legend, he defined, with lines for ribs and circles did they do it? caused the spring to stream forth by for nipples; a line across his waist has striking the ground with his staff. Atop been understood to represent a belt. ill figures, or geoglyphs, are scat- Giant Hill lies an earthwork, possibly Most well defined of all is his penis, Htered across southern England, dating from the Iron Age: a rectangu- which is erect, and measures twenty-six where chalk downs offer ready-made lar enclosure, known as the Trendle, feet in length. Were the giant not pro- canvases to landscape artists. Some geo- that may have been a temple or a burial tectively fenced off, a visitor could com- glyphs are relatively recent, such as the mound. The object of Papworth’s in- fortably lie down within the member Osmington White Horse, a represen- terest was another mysterious man- and take in the idyllic vista beyond. tation of King George III on horse-

18 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY BILL BRAGG back, which was etched into a coastal The giant’s unmodified member would, cal survey of the hillside led to specu­ hillside about ten miles south of the at human scale, measure “a perfectly lation that a lion skin had once dan­ Cerne Giant in 1808, to celebrate the normal” six inches. gled from the giant’s left arm, which monarch’s patronage of the seaside town Local folklore has long held that in­ would explain the figure’s somewhat of Weymouth. (Local lore has it that fertility might be cured by sitting on— ungainly pose, and might buttress the the image—which shows the king rid­ or, for good measure, copulating upon— Herculean identification. Two decades ing out of town, rather than into it— the giant’s penis. In the nineteen­e ighties, later, Castleden, the historian, carried so offended him that he never returned.) the sixth Marquess of Bath, the late out further geophysical investigations, Other hill figures are much older. The Henry Frederick Thynne, told a reporter which convinced him that it was a cloak, Uffington White Horse, an abstracted, that when he and his second wife, the rather than a lion skin, that once swung elongated figure in Oxfordshire, looks former Virginia Tennant, were having beneath the left arm, “as if the Giant as if it might have been drawn by Ma­ trouble conceiving a child, they paid is running or because he is waving his tisse but dates from the late Bronze Age the giant a visit. “We were very much arm like a matador.” or early Iron Age. Geoglyphs can have in the dark about what he could do,” After exploring some bumps on the a clear significance, such as the Fovant Lord Bath recalled. “I explained the hillside, Castleden claimed to have made Badges, a sequence of regimental insig­ problem and sat on him.” A daughter an even more sensational discovery: the nia cut into a Wiltshire hillside during was born about ten months later. She outline of a face surrounded by a mop the First World War by soldiers train­ was christened Silvy Cerne Thynne, of hair, which might be, he speculated, ing for the trenches. The meaning of and the name of G. Cerne was given “the lime­encrusted dreadlocks of a other hill figures, such as the Long Man as godfather. Celtic warrior decapitated in battle.” of Wilmington, in East Sussex, is more Among the first to propose that the The evidence included by Castleden in obscure. At two hundred and thirty­ giant had ancient origins was an anti­ his 1996 study, “The Cerne Giant,” was five feet, the Long Man is even taller quarian named William Stukeley, who, inconclusive: a belief that the giant is than the Cerne Giant, and holds two in 1764, noted that the inhabitants of holding a severed head may be a pre­ staffs in his hands, like walking poles. Cerne Abbas “pretended to know noth­ requisite for perceiving one in the in­ The figure was long presumed to be ing more of it than a traditionary ac­ distinct photograph included in the ancient, but until recent decades no count among them of its being a deity book. Castleden acknowledged that peo­ technologies existed for dating such an of the ancient Britons.” He said that ple doing detective work on the giant earthwork. Now they do, and analysis locals then called the giant Helis. As might be seduced by evidence that oth­ of the chalk on the hillside has revealed Stukeley saw it, the figure’s raised club ers couldn’t see. He declared himself un­ that the image was created in the mid­ suggested that it was a representation able to back up a suggestion, made by sixteenth century, making it a perplex­ of Hercules, and therefore dated from another author, that lower down the ing early­m odern gesture rather than, the era of Roman occupation of Brit­ slope lie the traces of a gigantic terrier­ say, a Romano­British cult figure or an ain, which began in 43 A.D. Other an­ like dog. Staring at Giant Hill could Anglo­ Saxon warrior. tiquarians were more skeptical of the feel like staring at clouds. The Cerne Giant has also been sub­ giant’s religious or mythic significance. jected to broad speculation about his In 1797, a scholar named Dr. Maton he notion that the figure was an­ age. “It is supposed to be above a thou­ granted that the figure was ancient but Tcient prevailed in popular discourse sand years standing,” an anonymous dismissed it as schoolboy humor pre­ for decades, assisted by the giant’s in­ correspondent to the Gentleman’s Mag- dating the schoolroom—“the amuse­ corporation into folksy rituals. Since azine wrote in 1764. The text was ac­ ment of idle people, and cut with lit­ the nineteen­sixties, May Day has been companied by an illustration—the ear­ tle meaning.” marked in Cerne Abbas by a team of liest published drawing of the giant, By the twentieth century, scholars Morris dancers in traditional English including measurements—which indi­ were venturing more grounded theo­ costumes, with bell pads on their shins, cates that in the mid­eighteenth cen­ ries to account for the giant’s existence. ascending the hill before dawn to per­ tury the giant had the additional physical In the nineteen­twenties, Sir Flinders form high­stepping, handkerchief­ feature of a ring­shaped belly button. Petrie, an archeologist, argued that the waving choreography within the bounds It was only when this was—perhaps figure’s proximity to nearby earthworks of the Trendle. The event used to draw accidentally—merged with the erect suggested that it was from the Bronze only a few committed onlookers, but penis directly below it, in the early twen­ Age, which extended approximately in recent years as many as a hundred tieth century, that the giant acquired from 2300 to 800 B.C. Stuart Piggott, villagers have climbed up to watch the the prominent apparatus for which he another archeologist, linked the name sun rise and the Morris men dance while is known today. “We need to make due Helis with that of an obscure pagan draining a barrel of beer that has been allowance for scale,” Rodney Castleden, figure, Helith, who, according to a hauled up the hillside. This is followed one scholar of the giant, has written, thirteenth­ century chronicler, Walter by a full English breakfast, and more calculating that the penis as it currently of Coventry, was once worshipped in beer, at one of the local pubs. Four years stands is equivalent to nine inches for the Cerne area. (Few contemporary ago, Jane Still, the wife of the vicar of an adult male of average height—“a writers have championed this notion.) St. Mary’s Church, which was estab­ prodigious though not unknown length.” In the nineteen­seventies, a geophysi­ lished in Cerne Abbas in the fourteenth

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 19 century, launched the annual Cerne to Stonehenge, in a work called “His- important to appreciate his fierce, un- Giant Festival, to celebrate the figure toria Anglorum,” by Henry of Hunting- yielding temper.” In 1629, Holles had as a genius loci—a protective spirit who don, was recorded around 1130, but no been among several M.P.s who forci- symbolizes the interaction of human- reputable scholar would suggest that bly held the Speaker in his chair while ity with the landscape. Still, a biology the stone circle wasn’t erected until the the House passed anti-monarchist res- teacher, told me that she was persuaded twelfth century. Indeed, some have ar- olutions. The mock trial, a daylong event by the theory laid out in the 2013 book gued that the lack of any earlier refer- open to the public, sifted through the “The Cerne Giant: Landscape, Gods ence to the Cerne Giant could sup- evidence on both sides. In a vote taken and the Stargate,” by the Wiltshire au- port his longevity: he might have been before the proceedings, seventy per cent thor Peter Knight: that the giant had so familiar a presence as to be not worth of the audience believed the giant to be been created in the Iron Age, during mentioning. It is surprising, however, ancient; afterward, support for the gi- which time he had aligned with the ge- that the handful of sixteenth- and sev- ant’s antiquity dropped to fifty per cent. ometry of the Orion constellation. Last enteenth-century travellers who de- (Around this time, a story began circu- Halloween, another ritual was born, scribed the area’s historical and archi- lating in Cerne Abbas of a female res- when villagers paraded through the tectural features failed to mention an ident of a certain age who insisted that town by candlelight, past the church enormous ithyphallic figure carved into she could tell reporters exactly how old and the Royal Oak pub, bearing over- a hillside. the giant was: “Obviously, he’s in his sized willow-and-tissue-paper puppets The suggestion that the giant was early twenties.”) made under the direction of Sasha Con- created in the seventeenth century has Last summer, Brian Edwards, a vis- stable, an artist who lives in the village, a lengthy provenance of its own. John iting research fellow at the University and with the help of Jig Cochrane, a Hutchins, whose work “The History of the West of England, Bristol, pro- puppet master. A representation of the and Antiquities of the County of Dor- posed an alternative seventeenth-cen- giant was fifteen feet tall and featured set” was published in the seventeen-sev- tury origin story. In an article in Cur- a bobbing penis. enties, reported being told by the stew- rent Archaeology, Edwards argued that An equally rich counter-narrative ard of the local manor that the giant the giant was indeed a Hercules fig- contends that the giant is younger than had been created at the behest of Lord ure, and pointed out that the date of the Royal Oak pub, which is thought Holles, whose wife had inherited the the giant’s first recorded renovation, to have been built in the sixteenth cen- estate. Denzil Holles, who was born in in 1694, coincided with an annual cel- tury, with stones repurposed from the 1598, was a well-heeled Member of Par- ebration of King William III’s birth- abbey after it was demolished during liament. In the sixteen-forties, he sup- day and also with the anniversary of the reign of Henry VIII. The fact that ported the Parliamentary cause against his invasion of England, in 1688, when a powerful and wealthy monastery once King Charles I in the standoff that be- he was the Prince of Orange. Edwards lay at the foot of the hill is often mar- came the English Civil War, which cul- said that, of all British leaders, Wil- shalled as evidence against the idea that minated in the trial and execution of liam III was the one most often linked the giant dates back that far. Would the the king—and in the institution of a with Hercules. When I spoke to Ed- monks at the abbey—who included Æl- republic under the leadership of Oliver wards not long ago, he told me that he fric the Grammarian, the preëminent Cromwell. Notwithstanding Holles’s had never been convinced by the iden- Anglo-Saxon scholar and writer of the original Parliamentary leanings, he tification of the giant with Cromwell. late tenth century—have tolerated the swiftly withdrew support from Crom- “Cromwell was frequently drawn and inescapable representation of such a well, whom he regarded as excessively caricatured in the seventeenth cen- carnal, and likely heathen, figure? (Æl- radical. Charles II, to whom the throne tury, and they are all brilliant images fric’s works include the “Colloquy,” a was restored after the death of Crom- of him, with his wild hair,” he said. Latin instructional text that consists of well, rewarded Holles with the title of “The giant looks nothing like him. The an imaginary dialogue about profes- baron, in 1661. giant has no hair.” The giant, with his sions then characterizing village life: Cromwell was sometimes depicted small ovoid head and startled features, plowing, hunting, herding, and the like. as Hercules. A statue at Highnam Court, does not look very much like William No mention is made of a giant.) a stately home in Gloucestershire, rep- III, either—at least so far as we can The earliest documented reference resents the long-haired Lord Protector tell, though none of William’s portraits to the figure is from 1694, when the with a club in hand, naked but for a show him without his wig on. ledger book of the parish churchwar- tastefully positioned loincloth. Could dens notes that three shillings was ex- Holles have ordered the creation of the artin Papworth and his team pended “for repaireing of ye Giant.” giant as a political lampoon, like a sev- Mspent five days on the hillside, The giant had been around long enough enteenth-century Banksy? In 1996, digging four holes at different points to need fixing up—at least a decade or during a mock trial about this theory on the giant’s outline. They carefully two, but not necessarily any longer, held at the Cerne Abbas Village Hall, trowelled through layers of chalk that given how quickly his edges can be the historian Joseph Bettey argued, “To had been introduced, during the past blurred by weeds and weather. Yet ab- appreciate that Holles was certainly ca- century, in re-chalkings conducted sence of evidence is not evidence of pable of a grand gesture of defiance roughly every twenty years. Two feet absence: the first surviving reference such as the creation of the Giant, it is down, they found a series of wooden

20 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 SKETCHBOOK BY PETER KUPER

A multitude of cicadas emerge from hibernation every seventeen years. Scientists say Brood X, this year’s class, may be the largest hatching seen since its last cycle, in 2004. As temperatures rise, trillions of insects flood the sky—you might hear them.

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 21 stakes that they presumed had been put todianship of the giant. Soil samples discovery. “I wanted him to be prehis- there in 1897. In a blog post, Papworth were collected for analysis on the final toric,” he went on. “That kind of ico- described a birthday celebration for one day of Papworth’s dig, just before Prime nography is the type of thing we see in of his colleagues, Nancy Grace: “She Minister Boris Johnson announced the prehistory. There are prehistoric mon- filled the glasses, lined us up along the United Kingdom’s first lockdown mea- uments in the landscape around him. Giant’s 8m long penis,” and, after set- sures on account of the coronavirus. There are Iron Age sites just above his ting the timer on a camera, “just had The study of the samples, which was head. And there are Bronze Age sites time to settle herself comfortably be- to be undertaken by Phillip Toms, the on the land over which he looks. We tween his balls before the shutter clicked.” leader of the Environmental Sciences know that the prehistoric communities By the end of the third day of digging, Group at the University of Glouces- from the Bronze Age onward were liv- Papworth had reached chalk bedrock, tershire, was delayed by the closure of ing on the chalk downs, farming with the lowest point at which there was any the university, and commemorative herds of cattle and sheep. That was their trace of human intervention on the hill- events were cancelled. home. To have them placing a marker side. He wrote, “We had gone beyond In the meantime, a separate analy- in the landscape saying, ‘This is ours’— the place where history could be linked sis was undertaken by another mem- that would have been nice.” to archaeology.” ber of the National Trust team, Mike Papworth had last spent time with Allen, a geoarcheologist who studies bout a year after Papworth climbed the giant in the nineteen-nineties, land-use history by sieving soil for mi- AGiant Hill, I paid a visit to Cerne when, as a young archeologist, he was croscopic traces of mollusks. The pres- Abbas. England was still under strict part of a team that rebuilt the giant’s ence of certain mollusks in the soil can lockdown: the village’s three pubs were nose, after an examination of the site also provide information related to dat- closed, as was the church. Only the had indicated that this organ had once ing. There are about a hundred and village shop was open. Canned goods been depicted in three-dimensional re- twenty snail species in the United King- were stocked alongside postcards and lief, and had since eroded. (The nose dom, some of which have been found boxes of fudge bearing the giant’s fa- is the one feature on the giant that is there for ten thousand years, ever since miliar image. The village, which has not outlined: it is a grassy bump in the rising sea levels cut off the British Isles a population of nine hundred, would center of the giant’s face, resembling from the European mainland. But other be postcard-worthy even without the the kind of fuzzy protrusion one sees species have been introduced much presence of its most famous resident. on a Muppet.) Around the same time, more recently—deliberately by the Ro- There are thatch-roofed houses, hand- the Ufngton White Horse was dated mans, as food, and inadvertently in the some Georgian façades, and, opposite by a company called Oxford Archae- medieval period, in straw used to pack St. Mary’s Church, a row of much pho- ology by means of optically stimulated goods shipped from the Continent. tographed, half-timbered, chronically luminescence—a technique measuring These stowaway snails—which mea- slumping cottages, which were built the amount of nuclear radiation that sure only a few millimetres in diame- by the nearby abbey in the early six- a sample of sediment has absorbed ter across their shells, and are typically teenth century. since last being exposed to daylight. found in even smaller fragments—are I had arranged to meet Gordon The longer a sample has been covered hard to detect, but their presence in a Bishop, the chair of the Cerne Histor- up, the greater the absorbed dose. For ical Society, and we strolled through very old samples, the method cannot the burial ground near the foot of Giant identify the precise year, or even de- Hill. It was a pleasant, misty day, the cade, that the sediment last saw the skies softened with a skein of cloud; light of day: rather, it yields a span of the grass was dewy underfoot. Bishop, centuries. The Ufngton White Horse a retired barrister, was skeptical that the was shown to have been created some- National Trust’s investigation would time between 1380 and 550 B.C. Op- prove anything definitive. Even if it ap- tically stimulated luminescence, as im- peared that most of the digging had precise as it can be, has a clarifying been done in the seventeenth century, power: in the case of the horse figure, sample indicates that it dates from the he said, that wouldn’t necessarily rule it proved that it is not a modern cre- medieval period or after. By last sum- out the giant’s having been there be- ation, or even a medieval one. mer, Allen had some preliminary data fore, especially if the figure had at some A plan was made to analyze the suggesting that soil deposits contem- point been allowed to grass over or be- Cerne Giant using optically stimulated porary with the giant’s creation con- come thick with brambles. “Personally, luminescence, but funding was lacking tained these late-arriving snails. I feel it’s a rather primitive figure,” he until 2019, when the National Trust— “The indication of whether the giant said, as we passed near where the abbey which has owned the land that the giant was prehistoric or medieval was imme- is thought to have stood. “If you were occupies since 1920—finally decided to diately answered,” Allen told me re- landed gentry, would you want to pay pay for it. The results were to be pub- cently. “Clearly, with these snails, he is your men to make it, just to annoy Ol- lished in the summer of 2020, to cele- medieval—or later.” Allen admitted iver Cromwell? Not likely.” brate a hundred years of the Trust’s cus- that he was disappointed by his own Later, I called Lord Digby, the local

22 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 landowner whose estate encompasses the parts of Giant Hill not owned by the National Trust. He shrugged off the difficulties of enlisting one’s ten- ants and neighbors to create a giant on a hillside: “Most people around would probably work for whoever owned the land, and he would just say, ‘We’re going to do it,’ and so it would be done.” Lord Digby, the thirteenth to hold the title, noted that he had once single-hand- edly mowed the hill, because he had permitted a large figure of Homer Simpson to be painted alongside the Cerne Giant, as a publicity stunt for “The Simpsons Movie,” and had got into some trouble with local environ- mental authorities when the image of Homer—holding aloft a doughnut in- “Thanks for coming to talk to me, guys. It really means a lot.” stead of a club—had failed to wash away. He grew up at Minterne House, •• a seventeenth-century mansion two miles north of the giant, and remem- bers running around the giant’s trenches at the University of Southampton, was decked overnight with bits of plastic, as a small child. (Lord Digby’s aunt Pa- awaiting the outcome of the National in the shape of petals and leaves, so that mela Harriman, the late Washington Trust’s investigation with interest. But it resembled a flower. According to an hostess and U.S. Ambassador to France, some locals were suspicious of the anonymous note that the perpetrator also grew up at Minterne House, as the Trust’s arrogation of control over the left at the village shop, the intention daughter of the eleventh Lord Digby. giant. Vic Irvine, a co-owner of the was “to elevate the giant into a human According to an obituary, at the age of Cerne Abbas Brewery, which produces rather than a binary gendered ‘him.’” twelve she rode her horse up to the small-batch beers in the village, said Irvine told me, firmly, “I took excep- giant and jumped over his penis, ex- scornfully, “The National Trust can’t tion to this. It’s an erect penis, and an claiming, “God, it’s big!”) The current own him—he’s been around longer than erect penis is an erect penis.” Several Lord Digby had no opinion on the they’ve existed.” We met at the brew- weeks after the incident, on the night question of the giant’s age, but he wel- ery, which lies at the bottom of a cow before May Day, he and Moore, along comed the National Trust’s investiga- pasture. Irvine poured me samples of with the village electrician and the vil- tion. “The more information the bet- two of the brewery’s products: a deli- lage plumber, ascended the hill after the ter,” he said. cious amber beer infused with water- pubs closed, carrying battery-run L.E.D. Gordon Bishop was not alone in cress, which the monks allegedly grew lights, which they set up to illuminate wishing for the giant to be ancient. I for its medicinal properties, and a darker the giant’s penis and eyes, in an effort spoke with Patricia Vale, who, at ninety- brew called Mrs. Vale’s Ale, named for to restore his compromised dignity. seven, is among the village’s oldest res- the village’s redoubtable nonagenar- idents. Her preferred theory is that the ian. Their labels featured a modified n April, a little more than twelve giant was created by Roman infantry- version of the giant, with a smile and Imonths after the National Trust’s men as a regimental insignia, like the a thumbs-up. Irvine explained that, excavation of the giant, Phillip Toms, Fovant Badges of Wiltshire. “If you whenever the brewery developed a new the University of Gloucestershire sci- don’t keep troops busy, they make trou- beer, he and his business partner, Jodie entist, finished his analysis, and the re- ble,” she told me. “Maybe somebody Moore, would climb the hill at night— sults were not what anybody had ex- said, ‘Go and put your cap badge on often with friends—and hop the fence pected: the figure was neither ancient that hill.’” For evidence that a Roman surrounding the site. Then they’d pour nor modern in origin but, rather, was regiment might have a phallic, club- some of the beer into the giant’s mouth, created in the murky centuries in be- bearing figure as its insignia, Vale rec- “as a libation.” tween. The sample taken from the deep- ommended I visit a museum in Amiens, “I’m very much mindful and respect- est layer of the giant dated from be- France, which owns a Roman-era bronze ful of him,” Irvine said. “He’s our giant. tween 700 and 1100 A.D., most likely statuette of Hercules similar to the giant, You look after him, and he’ll look after near the midpoint of that range, around complete with club and erection. you. Don’t upset him, because he’ll come the tenth century. Vale, who co-wrote a book about off the hill and eat all the children.” On Mike Allen, the snail specialist, ac- the parish of Cerne Abbas with her International Women’s Day a few years knowledged that optically stimulated late husband, Vivian Vale, a historian ago, the giant’s penis was stealthily be- luminescence was a more definitive test

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 23 than his own. He was astonished by the giant’s origins were beside the point, what the giant is, and that is what the the news that the giant is a late-Saxon Still proposed, in a phone call before monks would have been trying to do.” or early-medieval creation. “No one, in my visit. “The giant is absolutely es- Outside Still’s church, of which he is any of the academic arguments and dis- sential to what this place is, and who the forty-sixth vicar in a lineage stretch- cussions and meetings and publications, these people are,” he told me. “He is ing back seven centuries, he urged me ever considered him to be that date,” an active personality in this commu- to look up at the building’s façade. he told me. “It shows that we, as arche- nity, and that is far, far, far more im- Carved into the stone of the tower, ologists, are fickle and can be wrong.” portant than when anyone constructed which dates from the early sixteenth The latest evidence also suggested that him.” As with any work of art, Still century, were several grotesque images the figure, after being scraped into the went on, the giant’s significance lay not of oversized figures eating smaller fig- chalk hillside, had at some point be- in what his makers intended but in his ures. “I had grotesques on my previous come overgrown, and remained that reception through the ages, and in the churches, but I’m not aware of images way for decades or even centuries, until emotional response that he stirred in of giants eating people,” he said. He’d it was re-dug. During this interregnum, all who encountered him. “He is an ar- never noticed them before that after- the giant would have been detectable tifact, and he is undeniable,” he said. noon, while waiting outside the church only as a shadow on the hillside, occa- “He just is.” for our appointment, he told me. “You sionally legible in certain conditions of The vicar had experienced the gi- just walk past things, and you don’t see light and vegetation growth. “He went ant’s strange potency one night, he them,” he said. to sleep,” Allen said. said, when he and a house guest—a Martin Papworth was equally in- naval-chaplain friend—climbed up the efore leaving Cerne Abbas, I walked trigued by the findings, which he thinks hill in the company of Vic Irvine and Bpast the site of the former abbey to will prompt new lines of inquiry from Jodie Moore, the brewers, in whose the foot of Giant Hill, and then started historians and new theories from schol- business Still holds the role of spiri- my own ascent up the well-worn path. ars. Knowing the range of centuries in tual director. Irvine and Moore had The gradient was formidable: it was which the giant appeared only raised brought plastic jugs filled with their like climbing a long staircase. As I more questions. “I expect we will hear latest brews—an offering for the giant. walked on the tussocky grass, patches about Helith again,” Papworth told me, “It was a clear night, about half past of chalky soil became exposed. It took referring to the pagan deity. twelve, and we could see the whole concentration to keep my balance; to In any case, the presence of the giant valley in the blue moonlight,” Still re- dig a trench at this angle would have would now have to be reconciled with called. “It was freezing cold, with the required poise as well as strength. The the overlapping presence of the abbey. smoke curling up from the chimneys giant was enclosed within a fence and Papworth reminded me that he and below. We sat up around the giant’s marked with a sign forbidding entrance, his colleagues had not taken samples head—which is totally illegal—and we and so I set off around the perimeter. from the giant’s penis, and therefore tasted this one, and that one, and we Close up, the markings on the hillside could not say whether it is contempo- poured some into the giant’s mouth.” were hard to discern, and even harder rary with the rest of the giant, or of After about an hour of sitting and to make sense of. Without the benefit later provenance. Indeed, an aerial lidar drinking, Still said, an extraordinary of distance and height, the giant was scan—which uses laser beams to re- thing happened: “We poured this beer indecipherable, reduced to bare lines cord the morphology of the ground into the giant’s mouth, and we saw his and patches of chalk. with great detail—indicates that the Adam’s apple go up and down as he At the top of Giant Hill, I paused beltlike line across the giant’s waist may swallowed it.” and surveyed the surroundings, and at one time have continued through When Still and I spoke, the scien- thought, for the first time, not about the area where his penis now lies. “He tists had not yet presented their sur- what the giant looked like but what he may once have worn trousers!” Pap- prising revelations about the giant. But gazed upon: a still unspoiled valley of worth said. A large figure on the hill- the vicar told me that any suggestion pasture and woodland. The vista would side without an eye-catching penis that the monks of Cerne Abbey would remain recognizable to whoever first would send a much different message. have been horrified by the presence of created the giant, and to all those who He might even have served as a sign- a naked figure on the hillside failed to have climbed up to him in the centu- post, welcoming travellers seeking hos- comprehend the aspirations of the clois- ries since. All day I had been waiting pitality at the abbey. “Like a pub sign,” tered life. “The most difficult part of for the mist to lift, but it hadn’t, and as Mike Allen suggested. being a monk is coming to terms with the sun dropped toward the horizon While I was in Cerne Abbas, I met yourself and your own existence,” he the landscape was still gauzily shrouded, up with Jonathan Still, the personable said. “Benedict said, ‘Remain in your tinted in watercolor shades of gray and vicar of St. Mary’s Church. The Rev- cell, and your cell will teach you every- green and amethyst. The giant’s view erend Still took over the parish a de- thing.’ You have to stay in your place, was lovely enough to make any onlook- cade ago and has successfully reinforced in your spot, and come to terms with er’s spirits surge. In its mysterious ob- connections between the church and who you are. So the link with the giant scurity, the scene was even more beau- the village, including the possibly un- would be about being frank and hon- tiful than it would have been if the skies holy figure on the hill. Questions about est about what we are. That is exactly were clear. 

24 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 remarks about my taste in men. I’m SHOUTS & MURMURS sorry, Mom, but I do not “pick hus- bands as if they were Ikea area rugs— cheap, too small, and ugly.” Clients often ask me, “Clarisse, do I really need a home office?,” to which I reply, “A home office is the appen- dix of a residence’s digestive system: it will never be used, but for some rea- son it’s there.” I like to include an im- maculate glass slab of a desk, with an artfully opened MacBook displaying a cheating husband’s recent e-mails to a Tampa hand model/entrepreneur with her own line of sweatpants silk- screened with images of wealthy pet- store-franchise owners. As I approach the master bath, I always remind myself, “Clarisse, we don’t call it a master bath anymore, be- cause that word is offensive.” Now I use the terms “primary bath,” “main bath,” or “Le Poopatorium.” The bath- THE HEARTFUL HOME room is the cherished secret that our home reveals only to guests who’ve BY PAU L RUDNICK eaten my special Shrimp Chowder with Herb Drop Biscuits Casserole. Sheets are the undergarments of the bed. surmounted by a sixty-inch flat-screen. It must feature double sinks that look —The Times’ real-estate section. Cashmere throws should be strewn like accusing eyeballs gushing bitter across welcoming armchairs like ban- teardrops, a shower stall that will ap- s the foremost professional inte- dages on an oozing tweed sore. A cof- pear in the realtor.com listing as a fifth Arior stylist in the proudly gated fee table, the rectum of any hosting bedroom, and a soaking tub expansive community of East Albacore, Flor- zone, should be attractive and func- enough to hold a decapitated body in ida, I, Clarisse Harbley-Gargle (pro- tional, overflowing with stacks of art an eventual “Dateline” episode enti- nounced “Garjelle”), could not agree books, bloodstained marble candle- tled “Designed to Kill.” A truly luxu- more with this statement. In fact, I’d sticks, and court orders. Remember, rious, spa-like bathroom will allow any add that pillows are the breast implants your Great Room should encourage betrayed spouse to apply her makeup of the headboard, and a well-considered guests to exclaim, “What a great room, before a well-lit vanity mirror while duvet is the tongue of the boudoir. Ci- Clarisse! I feel like I’m in a home ap- she listens to the wails of her husband vilians don’t realize that assembling a pealingly staged to be sold following as he discovers that the locks have tasteful homescape is a scientific chal- a vicious tabloid divorce!” been changed and his golf trophies lenge, which is why I wear a crisp white Custom cabinetry, the heart and and male-support garments are out in lab coat over my leopard-print chiffon lungs of our kitchen’s chest cavity, the street. jumpsuit when creating an open-con- must be filled with neutral-toned, or- So we end our tour in the most com- cept kitchen/great room, or, as I call it, ganic flax and bran cereals decanted modious bedroom, no longer referred Clarisse Without Borders. into matching semitransparent bins to as the “master” but as the Room Our Great Room must include a purchased during a manic spending Where Love and Other Things Died. sectional sofa, which is the lower colon spree at the Container Store after the The bedside tables are the ears of our of the sitting area. Atop the sectional, discovery of a spouse’s multiple in- suite, the vintage Murano lamps will contrasting yet coördinated throw pil- fidelities, for a feeling of “I need to be our Q-tips, and the dressing area lows serve as the militia of our up- hurt him with expensive homewares shall be what I call My Birkin Museum. holstery, defending our combined ot- the way he savaged me with a Soul- I’ve been asked, “Clarisse, is your de- toman, love seat, and chaise from Cycle instructor named Dyanne.” A sign philosophy based entirely on your accusations of “being like two couches farmhouse sink, a double oven, and a own bad choices, heartbreak, and in- shoved together.” Internet comments walk-in microwave complete our pa- adequate settlement cash?” To which Z E

R can be so cruel, especially the ones from rade of fixtures and appliances. Some- I respond, “I never liked you, Amber- R É I

T my estranged adult children. A fire- times I enjoy leaving these in crates Janine. The CoolSculpting on your U G

I place, the overheated genitalia of the piled in the middle of the room, when lower-back fat is uneven, and you’re C

U  L room’s entertainment pelvis, will be I can’t stop obsessing over my mother’s no longer my second-best friend.”

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 25 To be burned out is to be used up, AMERICAN CHRONICLES like a battery so depleted that it can’t be recharged. In people, unlike batteries, it is said to produce the defining symp- IT’S JUST TOO MUCH toms of “burnout syndrome”: exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of efficacy. Around Has burnout become the human condition? the world, three out of five workers say they’re burned out. A 2020 U.S. study BY JILL LEPORE put that figure at three in four. A recent book claims that burnout afflicts an en- tire generation. In “Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Gen- eration,” the former BuzzFeed News re- porter Anne Helen Petersen figures her- self as a “pile of embers.” The earth itself suffers from burnout. “Burned out peo- ple are going to continue burning up the planet,” Arianna Huffington warned this spring. Burnout is widely reported to have grown worse during the pan- demic, according to splashy stories that have appeared on television and radio, up and down the Internet, and in most major newspapers and magazines, in- cluding Forbes, the Guardian, Nature, and the New Scientist. The New York Times solicited testimonials from read- ers. “I used to be able to send perfect emails in a minute or less,” one wrote. “Now it takes me days just to get the mo- tivation to think of a response.” When an assignment to write this essay ap- peared in my in-box, I thought, Oh, God, I can’t do that, I’ve got nothing left, and then I told myself to buck up. The burnout literature will tell you that this, too—the guilt, the self-scolding— is a feature of burnout. If you think you’re burned out, you’re burned out, and if you don’t think you’re burned out you’re urnout is generally said to date to where and has existed forever, even if, burned out. Everyone sits under the B1973; at least, that’s around when it somehow, it’s always getting worse. One shade of that juniper tree, weeping, and got its name. By the nineteen-eighties, Swiss psychotherapist, in a history of whispering, “Enough.” everyone was burned out. In 1990, when burnout published in 2013 that begins But what, exactly, is burnout? The the Princeton scholar Robert Fagles pub- with the usual invocation of immediate World Health Organization recognized lished a new English translation of the emergency—“Burnout is increasingly se- burnout syndrome in 2019, in the elev- Iliad, he had Achilles tell Agamemnon rious and of widespread concern”—in- enth revision of the International Clas- that he doesn’t want people to think he’s sists that he found it in the Old Testa- sification of Diseases, but only as an “a worthless, burnt-out coward.” This ment. Moses was burned out, in Numbers occupational phenomenon, not as a med- expression, needless to say, was not in 11:14, when he complained to God, “I ical condition. In Sweden, you can go Homer’s original Greek. Still, the notion am not able to bear all this people alone, on sick leave for burnout. That’s prob- that people who fought in the Trojan because it is too heavy for me.” And so ably harder to do in the United States War, in the twelfth or thirteenth century was Elijah, in 1 Kings 19, when he “went because burnout is not recognized as a B.C., suffered from burnout is a good a day’s journey into the wilderness, and mental disorder by the DSM-5, pub- indication of the disorder’s claim to uni- came and sat down under a juniper tree: lished in 2013, and though there’s a chance versality: people who write about burn- and he requested for himself that he it could one day be added, many psy- out tend to argue that it exists every- might die; and said, It is enough.” chologists object, citing the idea’s vague- ness. A number of studies suggest that Pandemic burnout is the latest form of an enduring, exhausting complaint. burnout can’t be distinguished from de-

26 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY TAMARA SHOPSIN pression, which doesn’t make it less hor­ spair and desperation. Freudenberger behind the parking lot. Meanwhile, rible but does make it, as a clinical term, visited the Haight­A shbury clinic in Freudenberger extended the notion of imprecise, redundant, and unnecessary. 1967 and 1968. In 1970, he started a free “staff burnout” to staffs of all sorts. His To question burnout isn’t to deny the clinic at St. Marks Place, in New York. papers, at the University of Akron, in­ scale of suffering, or the many ravages It was open in the evening from six to clude a folder each on burnout among of the pandemic: despair, bitterness, fa­ ten. Freudenberger worked all day in attorneys, child­care workers, dentists, tigue, boredom, loneliness, alienation, his own practice, as a therapist, for ten librarians, medical professionals, min­ and grief—especially grief. To question to twelve hours, and then went to the isters, middle­class women, nurses, par­ burnout is to wonder what meaning so clinic, where he worked until midnight. ents, pharmacists, police and the mili­ baggy an idea can possibly hold, and “You start your second job when most tary, secretaries, social workers, athletes, whether it can really help anyone shoul­ people go home,” he wrote in 1973, “and teachers, veterinarians. Everywhere he der hardship. Burnout is a metaphor dis­ you put a great deal of yourself in the looked, Freudenberger found burnouts. guised as a diagnosis. It suffers from two work. . . . You feel a total sense of com­ “It’s better to burn out than to fade confusions: the particular with the gen­ mitment . . . until you finally find your­ away,” Neil Young sang, in 1978, at a eral, and the clinical with the vernacular. self, as I did, in a state of exhaustion.” time when Freudenberger was popu­ If burnout is universal and eternal, it’s Burnout, as the Brazilian psycholo­ larizing the idea in interviews and pre­ meaningless. If everyone is burned out, gist Flávio Fontes has pointed out, began paring the first of his co­written self­ and always has been, burnout is just . . . as a self­diagnosis, with Freudenberger help books. In “Burn­out: The High the hell of life. But if burnout is a prob­ borrowing the metaphor that drug users Cost of High Achievement,” in 1980, lem of fairly recent vintage—if it began invented to describe their suffering to he extended the metaphor to the entire when it was named, in the early nine­ describe his own. In 1974, Freudenberger United States. “Why, as a nation, do teen­seventies—then it raises a histor­ edited a special issue of the Journal of we seem, both collectively and ical question. What started it? Social Issues dedicated to the free­clinic individually, to be in the throes movement, and contributed an essay on of a fast­spreading phenome­ erbert J. Freudenberger, the man “staff burn­out” (which, as Fontes noted, non—burn­out?” Hwho named burnout, was born in contains three footnotes, all to essays Somehow, suddenly, burning out Frankfurt in 1926. By the time he was written by Freudenberger). Freuden­ wasn’t any longer what happened to you twelve, Nazis had torched the synagogue berger describes something like the when you had nothing, bent low, on to which his family belonged. Using his burnout that drug users experienced in skid row; it was what happened to you father’s passport, Freudenberger fled his experience of treating them: when you wanted everything. This made Germany. Eventually, he made his way Having experienced this feeling state of it an American problem, a yuppie prob­ to New York; for a while, in his teens, burn-out myself, I began to ask myself a num- lem, a badge of success. The press lapped he lived on the streets. He went to ber of questions about it. First of all, what is up this story, filling the pages of news­ Brooklyn College, then trained as a psy­ burn-out? What are its signs, what type of per- papers and magazines with each new choanalyst and completed a doctorate sonalities are more prone than others to its on- category of burned­out workers (“It slaught? Why is it such a common phenome- in psychology at N.Y.U. In the late non among free clinic folk? used to be that just about every time nineteen­s ixties, he became fascinated we heard or read the word ‘burnout’ it by the “free clinic” movement. The first The first staff burnout victim, he ex­ was preceded by ‘teacher,’” read a 1981 free clinic in the country was founded plained, was often the clinic’s charis­ story that warned about “homemakers in Haight­A shbury, in 1967. “ ‘Free’ to matic leader, who, like some drug ad­ burnout”), anecdotes (“Pat rolls over, the free clinic movement represents a dicts, was quick to anger, cried easily, hits the sleep button on her alarm clock philosophical concept rather than an and grew suspicious, then paranoid. and ignores the fact that it’s morning. . . . economic term,” one of its founders “The burning out person may now be­ Pat is suffering from ‘burnout’”), lists wrote, and the community­based clin­ lieve that since he has been through it of symptoms (“the farther down the list ics served “alienated populations in the all, in the clinic,” Freudenberger wrote, you go, the closer you are to burnout!”), United States including hippies, com­ “he can take chances that others can’t.” rules (“Stop nurturing”), and quizzes: mune dwellers, drug abusers, third world The person exhibits risk­taking that Are you suffering from burnout? . . . Look- minorities, and other ‘outsiders’ who “sometimes borders on the lunatic.” He, ing back over the past six months of your life have been rejected by the more domi­ too, uses drugs. “He may resort to an at the office, at home and in social situations. . . . nant culture.” Free clinics were free of excessive use of tranquilizers and bar­ 1. Do you seem to be working harder and judgment, and, for patients, free of the biturates. Or get into pot and hash quite accomplishing less? 2. Do you tire more easily? risk of legal action. Mostly staffed by heavily. He does this with the ‘self con’ 3. Do you often get the blues without ap- volunteers, the clinics specialized in that he needs the rest and is doing it to parent reason? drug­abuse treatment, drug crisis inter­ relax himself.” 4. Do you forget appointments, deadlines, vention, and what they called “detoxi­ The street term spread. To be a burn­ personal possessions? fication.” At the time, people in Haight­ out in the nineteen­seventies, as any­ 5. Have you become increasingly irritable? 6. Have you grown more disappointed in Ashbury talked about being “burnt out” one who went to high school in those the people around you? by drug addiction: exhausted, emptied years remembers, was to be the kind of 7. Do you see close friends and family out, used up, with nothing left but de­ kid who skipped class to smoke pot members less frequently?

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 27 8. Do you suffer physical symptoms like his claims about “burnout syndrome,” ered executive: “Not only did the long pains, headaches and lingering colds? the battle fatigue of Vietnam veterans hours and the unremitting pressure of 9. Do you find it hard to laugh when the was recognized by the DSM-III as post- walking a tightrope among conflicting joke is on you? 10. Do you have little to say to others? traumatic stress disorder. Meanwhile, interests exhaust him; they also made 11. Does sex seem more trouble than it’s some groups, particularly feminists and it impossible for him to get at the con- worth? other advocates for battered women trol problems that needed attention. . . . and sexually abused children, were ex- In short, he had ‘burned out.’” Burnout You could mark questions with “X”s, tending this understanding to people kept spreading. “College Presidents, cut out the quiz, and stick it on the who had never seen combat. Coaches, Working Mothers Say They’re fridge, or on the wall of your “Dilbert”- Burnout, like P.T.S.D., moved from Exhausted,” according to a Newsweek era cubicle. See? See? This says I need military to civilian life, as if everyone cover in 1995. With the emergence of a break, goddammit. were, suddenly, suffering from battle fa- the Web, people started talking about Sure, there were skeptics. “The new tigue. Since the late nineteen-seventies, “digital burnout.” “Is the Internet Kill- IN thing is ‘burnout,’” a Times-Picayune the empirical study of burnout has been ing Us?” Elle asked in 2014, in an arti- columnist wrote. “And if you don’t come led by Christina Maslach, a social psy- cle on “how to deal with burnout.” down with it, possibly you’re a bum.” chologist at the University of Califor- (“Don’t answer/write emails in the mid- Even Freudenberger said he was burned nia, Berkeley. In 1981, she developed the dle of the night. . . . Watch your breath out on burnout. Still, in 1985 he pub- field’s principal diagnostic tool, the come in and out of your nostrils or your lished a new book, “Women’s Burnout: Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the stomach contracting and expanding How to Spot It, How to Reverse It, following year published “Burnout: The as you breathe.”) “Work hard and go and How to Prevent It.” In the era of Cost of Caring,” which brought her re- home” is the motto at Slack, a company anti-feminist backlash chronicled by search to a popular readership. “Burn- whose product, launched in 2014, made Susan Faludi, the press loved quoting out is a syndrome of emotional exhaus- it even harder to stop working. Slack Freudenberger saying things like “You tion, depersonalization, and reduced burns you out. Social media burns you can’t have it all.” personal accomplishment that can occur out. Gig work burns you out. In “Can’t Freudenberger died in 1999 at the among individuals who do ‘people work’ Even,” a book that started out as a viral age of seventy-three. His obituary in of some kind,” Maslach wrote then. She BuzzFeed piece, Petersen argues, “In- the Times noted, “He worked 14 or 15 emphasized burnout in the “helping creasingly—and increasingly among hours a day, six days a week, until three professions”: teaching, nursing, and so- millennials—burnout isn’t just a tem- weeks before his death.” He had run cial work—professions dominated by porary affliction. It’s our contempo- himself ragged. women who are almost always very rary condition.” And it’s a condition of poorly paid (people who, extending the the pandemic. “ very age has its signature afflic- military metaphor, are lately classed as In March, Maslach and a colleague Etions,” the Korean-born, Berlin- frontline workers, alongside police, fire- published a careful article in Harvard based philosopher Byung-Chul Han fighters, and E.M.T.s). Taking care of Business Review, in which they warned writes in “The Burnout Society,” first vulnerable people and witnessing their against using burnout as an umbrella published in German in 2010. Burnout, anguish exacts an enormous toll and term and expressed regret that its mea- for Han, is depression and exhaustion, surement has been put to uses for which “the sickness of a society that suffers it was never intended. “We never de- from excessive positivity,” an “achieve- signed the MBI as a tool to diagnose ment society,” a yes-we-can world in an individual health problem,” they ex- which nothing is impossible, a world plained; instead, assessing burnout was that requires people to strive to the point meant to encourage employers to “es- of self-destruction. “It reflects a human- tablish healthier workplaces.” ity waging war on itself.” The louder the talk about burnout, Lost in the misty history of burn- it appears, the greater the number of out is a truth about the patients treated people who say they’re burned out: har- at free clinics in the early seventies: produces its own suffering. Naming that ried, depleted, and disconsolate. What many of them were Vietnam War vet- pain was meant to be a step toward al- can explain the astonishing rise and erans, addicted to heroin. The Haight- leviating it. But it hasn’t worked out spread of this affliction? Declining Ashbury clinic managed to stay open that way, because the conditions of doing church membership comes to mind. In partly because it treated so many vet- care work—the emotional drain, the 1985, seventy-one per cent of Ameri- erans that it received funding from the hours, the thanklessness—have not got- cans belonged to a house of worship, federal government. Those veterans were ten better. which is about what that percentage burned out on heroin. But they also suf- Burnout continued to climb the oc- had been since the nineteen-forties; in fered from what, for decades, had been cupational ladder. “Burnout cuts across 2020, only forty-seven per cent of Amer- called “combat fatigue” or “battle fa- executive and managerial levels,” Har- icans belonged to an institution of faith. tigue.” In 1980, when Freudenberger vard Business Review reported in 1981, Many of the recommended ways to ad- first reached a popular audience with in an article that told the tale of a knack- dress burnout—wellness, mindfulness,

28 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 and meditation (“Take time each day, even five minutes, to sit still,” Elle ad- vised)—are secularized versions of prayer, Sabbath-keeping, and worship. If burnout has been around since the Trojan War, prayer, worship, and the Sabbath are what humans invented to alleviate it. But this explanation goes only so far, not least because the emer- gence of the prosperity gospel made American Christianity a religion of achievement. Much the same appears to apply to other faiths. A Web site called productivemuslim.com offers ad- vice on “How to Counter Workplace Burnout” (“There is barakah in earn- ing a halal income”). Also, actually pray- ing, honoring the Sabbath, and attend- ing worship services don’t seem to prevent people who are religious from burning out, since religious Web sites and magazines, too, are full of warnings about burnout, including for the clergy. (“The life of a church leader involves a high level of contact with other people. Often when the church leader is suf- fering high stress or burnout he or she will withdraw from relationships and fear public appearances.”) You can suffer from marriage burn- out and parent burnout and pandemic “If one of your ears was inside out, would you want someone to tell you?” burnout partly because, although burn- out is supposed to be mainly about work- •• ing too much, people now talk about all sorts of things that aren’t work as if they were: you have to work on your mar- onto the individual worker. Petersen people, has come to feel like a battle- riage, work in your garden, work out, argues that this burden falls especially field, and daily life, including politics work harder on raising your kids, work heavily on millennials, and she offers and life online, like yet more slaughter. on your relationship with God. (“Are support for this claim, but a lesson of People across all walks of life—rich and You at Risk for Christian Burnout?” one the history of burnout is that every poor, young and old, caretakers and the Web site asks. You’ll know you are if generation of Americans who have cared for, the faithful and the faithless— you’re driving yourself too hard to be- come of age since the nineteen-seven- really are worn down, wiped out, thread- come “an excellent Christian.”) Even ties have made the same claim, and bare, on edge, battered, and battle-scarred. getting a massage is “bodywork.” they were right, too, because overwork Lockdowns, too, are features of war, as Burnout may be our contemporary keeps getting worse. It’s this giant mess if each one of us, amid not only the pan- condition, but it has very particular his- that Joe Biden is trying to fix. In ear- demic but also acts of terrorism and torical origins. In the nineteen-seven- lier eras, when companies demanded mass shootings and armed insurrections, ties, when Freudenberger first started long hours for low wages, workers were now engaged in a Hobbesian bat- looking for burnout across occupations, engaged in collective bargaining and tle for existence, civil life having become real wages stagnated and union mem- got better contracts. Starting in the a war zone. May there one day come bership declined. Manufacturing jobs nineteen-eighties, when companies again more peaceful metaphors for an- disappeared; service jobs grew. Some demanded long hours for low wages, guish, bone-aching weariness, bitter re- of these trends have lately begun to re- workers put newspaper clippings on gret, and haunting loss. “You will tear verse, but all the talk about burnout, the doors of their fridges, burnout your heart out, desperate, raging,” Achil- beginning in the past few decades, did checklists. Do you suffer from burn- les warned Agamemnon. Meanwhile, a nothing to solve these problems; in- out? Here’s how to tell! wellness site tells me that there are “11 stead, it turned responsibility for enor- Burnout is a combat metaphor. In ways to alleviate burnout and the ‘Pan- mous economic and social upheaval the conditions of late capitalism, from demic Wall.’” First, “Make a list of cop- and changes in the labor market back the Reagan era forward, work, for many ing strategies.” Yeah, no. 

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 29 hat happened at the Breed- ers’ Cup World Champion- W ships in late 2019 looked like the end of horse racing in California, maybe in America. It was the twelfth and final race of a two-day series, at Santa Anita Park, the storied track near Los Angeles. Sixty-eight thousand people packed the Art Deco grandstand, the apron, the infield, the high-priced suites. The “handle”—the total betting for the day—was a healthy hundred and seven- teen million dollars, but thoroughbred racing itself was on life support. Since the beginning of the year, thirty-five horses had died at Santa Anita. Public dismay had risen to the point that Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, had told the Times that racing’s “time is up” if it did not reform. Dianne Feinstein, the state’s senior senator, had released a let- ter calling the Breeders’ Cup races a “crit- ical test for the future of horseracing.” Outside the track, animal-rights ac- tivists had been heckling racegoers under a banner that read “HORSERACING KILLS HORSES.” They had a call-and-response going, street corner to street corner: “Horses don’t want to be forced to run!” “Just like us!” “Horses feel pain!” “Just like us!” Heather Wilson, a nurse anes- thetist, wore huge fake eyelashes and an absurd cocked hat. “I’m making fun of the women who think that killing horses is glamorous,” she told me. “My hat is quasi-glam.” She had been arrested at a previous protest at Santa Anita. “Right now, our focus is on California,” she said. “Just get it on the ballot.” She meant a statewide referendum, which she felt sure would result in a ban. Santa Anita management and Breed- ers’ Cup officials were desperate to have their event run smoothly. Their foremost THE SPORTING SCENE concern, they told anyone who would listen, was the safety of their “equine ath- letes.” They had flooded the zone with BLOOD ON THE veterinarians and expensive imaging equipment, screening for preëxisting con- TRACKS ditions. The animals were repeatedly tested for banned drugs. During morn- ing workouts, vets used binoculars to Horse racing’s deadly reckoning. study their gait on the track. Thorough- BY WILLIAM FINNEGAN breds, which can weigh twelve hundred pounds, have notoriously delicate ankles. The Breeders’ Cup Classic, which is a mile and a quarter and offers a six-mil- lion-dollar purse, came late in the day. The sun was sinking into the palm trees In 2019, dozens of thoroughbreds died at California’s Santa Anita Park. As outrage built, the indust

30 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 s outrage built, the industry was forced to contend with an existential question: Is racing inseparable from cruelty to animals?

PHOTOGRAPH BY VINCENT LAFORET THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 31 west of the stables as the horses, eleven look at a horse’s coat in the walking ring horse was missing. Mongolian Groom of them, were loaded into the gate. Mon- before a race. If it’s bright, rippling with had disappeared from the race, pulled golian Groom, a dark-bay four-year-old just the right amount of sweat and mus- up by his jockey, Cedillo. The bigger van gelding, had beaten the favorite, Mc- cled excitement, the beast is believed to was an equine ambulance. Kinzie, just a few weeks before, right be ready to run. Was Mongolian Groom’s The show went on, with television here on this track. The handicappers coat bright? It looked bright enough. lights illuminating a scene of jubilation: didn’t think he could do it again; he was His rider, Abel Cedillo, a journeyman flower wreaths, a shining horse, exultant a 12–1 shot. The whole group had raced from Guatemala, was patient, the gate connections. The liquored-up crowd par- together, in various combinations, at Sara- staff slightly less so. The horse’s owner tied on. The turf writers hustled down to toga and Churchill Downs, Belmont and was there that day: Ganbaatar Dagva- get a quote from the owners, Vinnie Viola Del Mar, in Pennsylvania and Louisi- dorj, a Mongolian tycoon who made his and Mike Repole, who were incoherent ana. They were all campaigners, with first fortune in post-Communist super- with joy. But the news, it seemed to me, maxed-out airline-loyalty accounts. Some markets. He and his friends wore tra- because I’m not a beat reporter, was back seemed more enthusiastic than others. ditional robes, big leather belts, and vel- on the track, in the gathering dusk. One thing you could safely say about vet caps that came to a shiny point. Mongolian Groom, we eventually the horses was that they were thirsty. The eleven horses finally settled, and learned, had broken his left hind leg. A They had all been injected that morn- broke cleanly from the gate. The track small stress fracture had propagated up- ing with Lasix, a diuretic, noted on the was dirt, rather deep and slow. War of ward, splitting a ligament and smaller racing form with a boldface “L.” The Will, that year’s Preakness champion, bones and shattering the cannon bone given reason for Lasix is to prevent took an early lead and held it around and the fetlock joint, damaging soft tis- pulmonary bleeding, which hard run- the clubhouse turn. Mongolian Groom sue and blood supply. That is a fatal in- ning causes in many horses. The bleed- was just off the pace, with McKinzie, a jury. The vets who euthanized him could ing can be dangerous, and can certainly small-framed bay, a nose behind him. have fought a hopeless battle for a few be unsightly, leaving horse and jockey Horses are prey animals, who instinc- days, with the horse in agony, if they painted with blood—not a good look tively prefer the safety of the middle of had wanted to postpone this announce- these days. But only a small minority the pack. But being in the middle of ment for publicity reasons. That wasn’t of thoroughbreds are serious bleeders, this pack would have been miserable— what they did. and for decades nearly every thorough- dirt getting kicked in your face, noth- bred in the U.S. has received race-day ing to see but horse butts. he day that Mongolian Groom died, Lasix. The drug’s diuretic function causes In the backstretch, the pack started TNick Alexander had a horse at Santa horses to unload epic amounts of urine— running into the last of the sun. From Anita, too. His filly Just Grazed Me, the twenty or thirty pounds’ worth. The ad- the shadowed grandstand, horses and reigning star in his stable, won the day’s vantage of running light is obvious, as riders were drenched in pinkish light, first race: the Senator Ken Maddy Stakes, is the reason that critics consider Lasix moving with huge strides and hypnotic named for a politician from Fresno who a performance-enhancing med. Race- smoothness. War of Will had the in- supported racing. day Lasix is banned in Europe, Asia, side position, hugging the rail, but on Alexander grew up down the street, and Australia. the far turn you could see that he was in Pasadena, and he knew the track in The activists outside, suggesting that tiring, despite his jockey’s whip. Mc- its heyday, in the fifties. “When I was horses don’t like to race, were half right. Kinzie and Mongolian Groom surged growing up, horse racing was pretty Running fast comes naturally to thor- past, with McKinzie a half length ahead. much the only game in town,” he said. oughbreds, but racers need to be trained Then, at the top of the stretch, Vino “No Dodgers, no Lakers, just the Rams. to outrun opponents. Most, it is thought, Rosso, a big chestnut colt, made a pow- But I was already a Dodgers fan, be- need “encouragement”—whipping—to erful move on the outside. Sixty-eight cause of Jackie Robinson. We were both continue going hard when they’re tired. thousand humans switched from cheer- from Pasadena.” Alexander, who is sev- Racehorses, especially those running on ing to shrieking. (Betting on a horse is enty-eight, lanky, and blue-eyed, with a oval tracks, give their lower legs a ter- a known intoxicant. Also a stimulant.) sun-blistered nose and a white soul rible pounding, straining ligaments, ten- The Classic turned into a two-horse patch, names horses for old-time Dodg- dons, joints. Mongolian Groom’s lower race, Vino Rosso and McKinzie, and ers: Johnny Podres, Pee Wee Reese. “First hind legs were wrapped in blue ban- mass hysteria seemed to crackle the air. bet I placed here, when I was ten or dages, which is not uncommon; horses Vino Rosso pulled away and won by eleven—two dollars on Gold Man,” he tend to kick themselves. He wore a heavy four lengths. told me. “Won twenty dollars. I’ll never blue hood, to keep him concentrated I was on my feet in the press box, forget it.” As a teen-ager, he landed a on what’s in front of him, and a shadow along with dozens of other reporters. job as a “get-ready boy” at a car lot. He roll across his nose. Horses can startle But I noticed a turf writer next to me, later had his own dealership, which he at shadows on the ground, and the roll peering through binoculars at the top of advertised on the radio with the slogan reduces the number they see. the stretch. There was a commotion on “Nick can’t say no!” Old locals still greet At the starting gate, Mongolian the track—workers throwing up a green him with that one. “KNX, everybody Groom balked. Horses who balk—are tarp wall, a van, a pickup, a bigger van. listened to it. Santa Anita used to ad- they frightened, angry? Bettors like to It took me a moment to realize that a vertise on there. They’d broadcast the

32 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 stretch call, from the eighth pole. Re- ally exciting—you could hear the crowd. I say we should do that again.” Thoroughbred racing, once the most popular spectator sport in America, has been in decline since Alexander started on the car lot. Attendance at Santa Anita was bad even before covid-19. The grace- ful old track, now eighty-six, is smartly maintained, with striking semitropical gardens and life-size statues of Seabis- cuit and Zenyatta. But only a handful of the old teller windows, which run for city blocks under the grandstand, are open on an ordinary racing day. In a dank, shadowy men’s room, I found the lon- gest unbroken rank of urinals I’d ever seen, without a single shuffling patron. Away from the private suites and the reserved seating upstairs, the crowd is mostly working-class men, who period- ically gather to stare up at banks of TVs “Are you going to eat this sandwich I made for you, or are you in the bowels of the grandstand, even as just going to snarl at me from the monkey grass?” beautiful horses gallop just outside in the sunshine. The TVs broadcast races •• from all over the country, even from Peru and Argentina, so it’s hard to tell who has bet on what. But the curses, many and the gaming lobby is often described dying during workouts, during races, on in Spanish and Chinese, that rise with as the state’s most powerful. Horse-rac- turf and on dirt. Colts, fillies, geldings. the stretch runs and occasionally end ing subsidies did not come to pass. Rac- Obscure claimers, first-time runners, a with a triumphant hoot have the rhythm ing has little cachet left in California. famous stakes winner during a work- and ring of universal imprecations. It’s been aeons since Bing Crosby and out. The deaths started to make the Los When Alexander was a kid, horse rac- Spencer Tracy were track regulars and Angeles Times, and social media picked ing enjoyed a monopoly on legal gam- horse owners. Even Alex Trebek has up the scent. More protesters appeared bling in nearly every part of America left the building. at the track. People for the Ethical Treat- outside Las Vegas. Then, in 1978, the first The terrible parade of dead horses ment of Animals demanded that New- casino opened in Atlantic City. More at Santa Anita in 2019 drove the sport som shut down Santa Anita. “Some- than a thousand casinos have opened into an identity crisis, and not just in thing is drastically wrong,” Art Sherman, since, many of them on Native Ameri- California. I heard it when I talked to a trainer in his eighties, told the Times. can reservation land. State lotteries also horse people in Florida, Maryland, New “I’ve been around a long time and have boomed, siphoning off more of the gam- York, and especially bluegrass Kentucky, never seen this.” bler’s dollar. In the past two decades, the the industry’s headquarters: the defen- In March, 2019, when the season’s over-all national betting handle at race- siveness, the virtue signalling, the pleas death count hit twenty-one, the track’s tracks has fallen by nearly fifty per cent. for understanding—but we love our owner, a Canadian conglomerate called Dozens of tracks have closed. Racing is horses. The opponents of racing seemed the Stronach Group, halted racing for still a fifteen-billion-dollar industry, but increasingly confident that it would soon three weeks. The president, Belinda the number of races and the size of the go the way of circus elephants, dolphin Stronach, released a public letter, “about thoroughbred-foal crop are less than half shows, dog racing, all the discredited the Future of Thoroughbred Racing in what they were in 1990. animal entertainments. California.” The letter focussed almost Some racetracks adapted by build- entirely on drugs. “The Stronach Group ing casinos on their grounds—racinos— hat went wrong at Santa Anita? will take the unprecedented step of de- and many went to state legislatures for WThe abolitionists liked to say it claring a zero tolerance for race day med- help. Racing commissions and legisla- was just business as usual—horse tor- ication,” she wrote. Lasix and other meds, tures were often old friends, and in many ture and murder. The apologists said it including anabolic steroids, would be states a percentage of casino profits was was business as usual, too—racehorses banned at Santa Anita. This was a “par- directed to the tracks and the horse- have always died, even before bleeding- adigm shift”—never mind that anabolic breeding industry. Things went differ- heart outsiders started paying attention. steroids had been effectively banned a ently in California. Native American But it wasn’t business as usual. Horses long time ago. The letter also addressed tribes have built sixty-nine casinos there, were dying every single week. They were “the growing concern about use of the

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 33 riding crop” and included an encomium dle in the Coast Ranges north of Santa Frankie Rodriguez, who has been with from PETA, thanking Stronach for “stand- Barbara. The mountains are thick with him for sixteen years. They have a big ing up to all those who have used any chaparral and oaks, the valley full of vine- barn full of mares in foal who need eyes means to force injured or unfit horses to yards and orchards and enough horse on them at all times. Alexander, in an run.” That meant trainers and owners, ranches to guarantee an adequate sup- untucked old oxford shirt, sneakers, and presumably, not her own executives. ply of equine veterinarians. That’s im- a Dodgers cap, doesn’t cut a jefe del ran- Nick Alexander didn’t believe that the portant, because Alexander’s life seems cho figure. He does look like a guy who problem was Lasix, but he thought to revolve largely around vets. One of his would shovel manure if needed. Stronach’s intervention was brilliant, horses has just had surgery. “Gabby Hayes, At a pasture, three horses come to in a way. “She didn’t know Lasix from a huge two-year-old, had a big throat the fence to get their ears scratched. a piece of gravel,” he told operation this morning for “Boys and girls can stay together as me, in early 2020. “But she a stuck flap,” he says. “Four weanlings,” Alexander says. “Then they shifted the focus away from thousand five hundred dol- gotta be separated. Boys start coming the bad racetrack and onto lars. Sure hope he can race.” into their testosterone, start picking fights. the trainers who were send- Alexander’s ranch is two This group of boys here, new yearlings, ing out their horses. She hundred and eighty-five they’re in a long, narrow field, see? So changed the narrative, and acres. Some of the land is they can race each other, gallop as hard it worked.” The first twenty- in winter hay, now dark as they like.” The scene is peaceful, the three horses who had died green. “Forage hay, it’s kind yearlings handsome. “But they’re like during the crisis of 2019 were of a gamble. We need rain teen-agers. One will do something to undergoing necropsies at in the next ten days to get another one, they’ll start running, whole the University of California, a decent crop.” He became bunch will start rodeoing around, buck- Davis. The results had not yet been re- a farmer out of necessity, he says. Get- ing and farting. They’re insane.” The leased, but Alexander said that he’d be ting feed delivered was too expensive. hard work of breaking these colts to the surprised if they indicated any banned He grows his own oats. He also has al- saddle is still ahead. Then comes the substances or excessive levels of permit- falfa fields. “I’ll cut and bale that and training for racing. ted meds. A few weeks later, the results sell the first cut to the cattle guys. Cows Alexander gets a text with bad news. came out, and they showed no traces of will eat anything. They got four stom- A filly, Alice Marble, stabled for a race anything chemically amiss. achs. It’s too moist for horses.” at Santa Anita, is not well. “She’s got some Even if Lasix had nothing to do with Alexander bought his first racehorse fluid in one lung. It can go from a snotty catastrophic breakdowns, it represented, in 1978. “It was a distraction from the nose to something serious really quickly. to many people, the abuses of Ameri- stress of running a dealership,” he says. This sounds like pneumonia. We need can racing. Jeff Blea, a respected race- “Once I started keeping mares, though, to trailer her up to the clinic right now.” track veterinarian who was a jockey until I had to get more educated.” Today, he He texts instructions to his trainer, Phil a bad spill forced a career change, be- has thirty-six broodmares and two stal- D’Amato. “I love that horse. But this is lieves that some horses need Lasix. “But lions. His son runs the dealership. He a totally typical call. They never call about the public doesn’t want horses medi- has never raced outside California, but my slowest horse. It’s always my best cated on race day,” he said. “So . . . we’ve he did send one of his mares to Ken- horse, just before their first race.” got to maintain our social license to op- tucky, to breed with a high-priced stal- The fragility of horses is ubiquitous, erate.” I thought that racing’s social li- lion named Arrogate. The resulting foal not confined to the racetrack. “Some- cense was probably already revoked, but was disappointingly scrawny. “But his thing spooks them and they run, almost this was one of the ambient ironies of mama took right to him, talking to him blindly,” Alexander says. “They can break its twilight predicament: the outrage immediately. She got him up on his feet, a leg, get hung up on a fence. Their feet about horse welfare was causing horse lifted up a leg to help him find a tit. She are delicate and problematic. Their di- experts to think harder about public was so cute.” gestive system tends to back up. A wad perception, even at the expense of horse Was raising horses less stressful than of hay gets stuck in their intestine. They welfare. Rick Arthur, another promi- selling cars? Oh, yes. “You gotta make can twist a bowel by rolling in the grass nent veterinarian, said, “The fate of rac- money three out of five years or the when they’re happy. You need to spot ing will be decided by people who’ve I.R.S. will bust you and call it a hobby. that and address it right away. They’re never been to the races, know nothing But we’ve always managed to stay ahead not rugged, like a cow.” about horses, have probably never even of that.” Alexander spends as much Alexander’s stallion Grazen, when not touched a racehorse.” time at the ranch as possible. “Just work- on duty, lives in his back yard. Grazen ing with horses is so satisfying,” he says. has sired most of his runners. He also “ ’m the manure shoveller,” Nick Al- “They’re amazing animals. Charismatic, “covers” outside mares, for six thousand Iexander says. funny, brave. Crazy. It’s a long, arduous dollars per live foal. “He’s like an annu- We’re hiking around his horse ranch, process, gaining their trust. But they’re ity,” Alexander says. “He helps balance in the Santa Ynez Valley. He’s found a right up there with dogs.” the books.” Like everyone else, Alexan- shovel near a hay barn and something It’s a cool, sunny February afternoon. der obsesses over the breeding of his to do with it. The valley is a wide sad- Alexander checks in with his foreman, horses, sweating over how to make a fast

34 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 horse that won’t break down. “You’re al- ing, an ex-mobster testified that he had dred members, and the legislation it ways puzzling about what would make controlled many jockeys, who could be supported slowly gathered sponsors in a good cross—which mare, which stal- persuaded to lose races they were ex- Congress. The era of permissive medi- lion, which lines,” he says. “But then you’re pected to win. cation seemed to be waning. always getting surprised. You’ll get a great The advent of modern medications Not that people ever stop looking for horse out of a couple of nobodies.” confused the doping picture. Powerful an edge. Every racing publication car- painkillers and anti-inflammatories de- ries advertisements for supplements and very registered thoroughbred in the signed for humans bled over, as it were, gizmos to make your horse go faster. Eworld is descended from one of into race preparation. That was not good After this month’s Kentucky Derby, the three stallions: the Byerly Turk, the Dar- for horses, who might run because they winner, Medina Spirit, failed a drug test. ley Arabian, and the Godolphin Ara- could not feel the soreness warning them His trainer, Bob Baffert, the most suc- bian. These “foundation sires” came to not to. Antipsychotics, anti-epilepsy cessful trainer of the modern era, has had England from the Middle East around products, growth hormones, blood dop- horses fail tests thirty times. He always the turn of the eighteenth century, and ing—racing officialdom couldn’t keep denies wrongdoing, and has been only their offspring turned out to have an up with the new drugs, and lacked the lightly sanctioned. Inside the murky pre- unprecedented combination of speed, testing capacity to detect many of them. cincts of racing, the investigations and agility, and endurance. Thoroughbred Penalties for broken rules were gener- the appeals often drag on for months, racing was born. Of course, people have ally weak. A trainer punished for a dirty and never come to a real resolution. been racing horses since shortly after test in one jurisdiction could simply But, in March, 2020, the U.S. Attor- they were domesticated, which is thought move to the next. In 2008, the trainer of ney for the Southern District of New to have occurred about six thousand a horse called Big Brown, who won the York indicted twenty-seven people for years ago. How shortly? My guess is a Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, their roles in an alleged large-scale dop- week. They started cheating, by my guess, boasted publicly about the powerful legal ing operation. The F.B.I. had tapped the a week after that. steroid that his superstar was getting. phones of the principals and recorded The Romans, according to the vet- Big Brown’s fix was withheld before the several years’ worth of talk about how to erinarian and scholar A. J. Higgins, used Belmont Stakes. He finished dead last. get away with doping. a mixture called hydromel to increase A backlash against drugs led to the The indicted included two prominent their horses’ endurance. The punish- founding, in 2012, of the Water Hay thoroughbred trainers, Jorge Navarro and ment for cheating in races was report- Oats Alliance, a group of industry in- Jason Servis. Navarro and Servis had edly crucifixion. A British prohibition siders that advocated for a single na- dominated racing at Monmouth Park, on “exciting substances and methods” is tional regulatory body and a ban on per- in New Jersey, and then began to com- said to have been introduced in 1666. A formance-enhancing drugs. The alliance, pete successfully at higher levels. A Ser- stable lad named Daniel Dawson, ac- known as WHOA, grew to eighteen hun- vis-trained horse, Maximum Security, cused of poisoning a racehorse, was hanged on Newmarket Heath in 1812. Once thoroughbred racing crossed the Atlantic, the United States gained a rep- utation for the innovative use of per- formance aids: cocaine, heroin, strych- nine, caffeine. In 1897, the Jockey Club, the breed registry for thoroughbreds in North America, sought to “put an end to the reprehensible practice of ‘doping.’” The concern seemed to be less about dam- age to horses than about unfairness to bettors and owners. California banned wagering on racing in 1909, again not to promote horse welfare but to stamp out the attendant criminal element. The state lifted the ban only after a ballot measure passed in 1933. Santa Anita opened the next year. There are, of course, many more ways to fix a race than by juicing a horse. In England, a successful doping ring in the nineteen-sixties would bribe its way into barns and “nobble” a favorite, make it sick or woozy, and then bet heavily against it. At a 1972 congressional hear- “ . . . but I’m not just here to plug my podcast.” had just won the Saudi Cup, the richest beings should not be treated as com- killed—they don’t die, they are killed— race in the world, and had come in first modities. Singer compares speciesism to each year in this country, all for, as he at the 2019 Kentucky Derby, though stew- sexism and racism—they are all the same puts it, “two-dollar bets.” Racing peo- ards later disqualified him for interfer- mechanism, the same self-serving delu- ple are not having an identity crisis, he ence coming into the stretch. Navarro sion of superiority. told me: “They know exactly what they had earned the nickname Juice Man, and There is a broader abolitionist move- are. They’re animal exploitation.” had been fined in New Jersey for con- ment, opposing “animal slavery,” mean- duct “extremely detrimental to racing.” ing livestock and pets. Battuello, in a col- ick Alexander’s wife, Mary, doesn’t So far, three of the accused—suppli- umn, put the pet part succinctly: “Adopt, Ncome to the ranch much. “She pre- ers of dubious and mislabelled perfor- don’t buy. The ultimate solution, how- fers town,” he says. It’s an old theme in mance-enhancing drugs—have pleaded ever, is sterilize to extinction. A petless their fifty-two-year marriage. When guilty. Navarro and Servis, along with society is compassionate. A petless soci- their children were small, they moved many others, have pleaded not guilty, ety is rational. A petless society is prog- to rural Northern California, to a place and nobody has gone to trial. But tran- ress.” He advocated the same approach, called Boonville. Nick got a job shear- scripts of the recordings quoted by the “sterilize to extinction,” for racehorses— ing sheep. “I loved it. But I used to come prosecution are stomach-turning. One thoroughbreds, quarter horses, standard- home with my pants all covered with of the accused refers to the effects of breds, “and everything in between.” sheep barf, green stuff, black stuff, lan- Navarro’s drugging: “You know how It is speciesist to ride a horse, to per- olin, blood from castrations. I wasn’t re- much trouble he could get in . . . if they petuate the property status of animals. ally all that welcome.” He laughs. Mary, found out . . . the six horses we killed?” Animal-rights abolitionists look for at home with the kids, saw their chil- Indeed, two months before Navarro’s ar- inspiration to the methods and the dren’s futures writ in the local poverty rest, his horse X Y Jet, who had won eventual success of classical abolition- and isolation. She informed Nick that more than three million dollars in twen- ism in destroying chattel slavery. They she and the kids were going back to Los ty-six races, dropped dead of an appar- are on thin ethical ice when they equate Angeles. Nick, though sad to leave, fol- ent heart attack in Florida. Afterward, human beings and draft animals, just lowed, and returned to selling cars. Navarro released an emotional state- as they are when comparing the live- “I have this recurring nightmare,” he ment: “I do not say goodbye to a horse, stock industry to the Holocaust. But, told me. He’s back in the Army, stuck I say goodbye to a friend that I will carry in the nineteenth century, the move- on base. “Everybody’s got a weekend forever in my heart.” ment to end cruelty to animals was on pass but me. Mary’s got the same night- a parallel track to the abolitionist move- mare, but she’s stuck in Boonville.” ports doping is a live issue everywhere. ment, with some of the same players. The Alexanders’ ranch house sits at SHere comes the Russian Olympic And it was met with incredulity, much the end of a magnolia-lined drive, near team. There goes Robinson Canó. But as anti-slavery sentiment was in the several enormous live oaks, which have doping animals is different. There is no American South. been there since before California was fat contract and no consent. To critics, Today’s abolitionists tend to scorn claimed by the United States. The house’s horse racing isn’t even a sport. “welfarists”—reformers whose goals big front room has a potbellied stove, a Patrick Battuello, who runs the ac- are incremental, basically meant to row of filing cabinets, lots of books and tivist group Horseracing Wrongs, calls magazines and Persian rugs. There’s a the idea of racing-as-sport “the Big Lie.” framed photograph of Alexander with Its athletes are drugged, whipped, trained his grandkids at a Dodgers game, and and raced too young, pushed to the another of his daughter riding in a breaking point and beyond; though show-jumping event. And horses, rac- they’re social animals, they spend most ing thoroughbreds, everywhere, on all of their work lives in solitary confine- the walls. Here’s Sunday Rules, an Al- ment in a stall. Among those not killed exander horse, winning the Kalookan by racing, a great many—PETA estimates Queen Stakes. Here’s one of Alexander’s ten thousand American thoroughbreds favorites, Pee Wee Reese, winning a stakes annually—will ultimately be slaugh- produce a “happy slave.” When PETA race at Santa Anita, beating a horse tered, nearly all of them in Canada and works with the horse industry to re- named Eddie Haskell. There’s . . . Moose Mexico. Q.E.D. duce whipping, the harder-line activ- Skowron? “Never name a racehorse after Peter Singer, the Australian philoso- ists consider it contemptible appease- a slow first baseman,” Alexander says. pher who wrote the founding text of the ment. Battuello maintains a database “That’s the only race he ever won.” modern animal-rights movement, “An- of racehorse deaths, filing Freedom of Alexander lost one horse in 2019 at imal Liberation,” in 1975, attacks animal Information Act requests with state Santa Anita, a three-year-old named ownership itself. “If possessing a higher racing commissions to come up with Satchel Paige. He blamed the track sur- degree of intelligence does not entitle figures far higher than the Jockey Club’s. face. “There’s no spring to it,” he said. “A one human to use another for his or her He counts training breakdowns and horse’s leg works like a big spring. The own ends, how can it entitle humans to stall deaths, and estimates that more flexor tendon on the back stretches and exploit non-humans?” he asks. Sentient than two thousand racehorses are then rebounds. That’s what lets a horse

36 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 trainers. Nor did owners whose goal in life was to win the Kentucky Derby, which UNDER LIMESTONE was always going to be run on dirt. Santa Anita’s first synthetic track didn’t drain It rained in fluted torrents, properly, and its replacement wasn’t much the earth smelled of manure. better. Within a few years, Santa Anita It was like desire had gone back to dirt. entering and possessing you quietly. Alexander could see Stronach’s cor- We undressed. porate perspective. “We’re an under- The sun through the windows made shapes performing asset,” he said. “They came on the couch I lay face down on. in here with a model developed at their Our jeans were soaked Eastern tracks. They make money run- and wrinkled on the radiator, our socks heavy. ning a lot of races with really big fields. Then your eyes were opening a little. But it wasn’t going to work here, and Then you could hear the mopeds starting up again. then the rain ruined the track, and they When it was dry enough, we found a small bistro decided to keep going anyway.” where we had prosecco and fries, and took pictures of one another in our damp clothes rank Stronach, a horse-mad billion- under trees and buildings Faire from Toronto, bought Santa of the hated regime. Anita in 1998, after making a fortune in auto parts. He also bought Golden —Richie Hofmann Gate Fields, in the Bay Area, and two major tracks in Maryland, Pimlico and Laurel Park, as well as Gulfstream Park, run far and fast.” Satchel Paige had not the driest years in state history. The in Florida. Stronach absolutely shov- broken his maiden—had not yet won a drought finally ended in early 2019, when elled money into racing. He started a race—when he died. “You can’t relax if Pacific storms dumped eighteen inches breeding farm in Kentucky, with branches your horses are at Santa Anita,” Alexan- of rain on Southern California in two in Canada and Florida, raced his own der said, at his kitchen table. “You just months. Rain alone, a sloppy track, is not horses, won the Preakness and the Bel- live in fear, waiting for a phone call, every necessarily dangerous for racing. But this mont. He tore down the grandstand at time they go out to work.” He raised his was more rain than Santa Anita almost Gulfstream Park and turned the place hands, a helpless gesture. ever sees. Alexander said, “If we get half into a racino. He bought and sold smaller Trainers fixate on track conditions, an inch, we can deal with it. We’d see tracks, becoming the biggest owner of a complex interplay of surface, weather, rain coming, seal the track. Half a day racetracks in North America. He even and horse anatomy. Overly soft tracks later, unseal, harrow, and we’re off.” Seal- bought a company that builds and runs cause damage to soft tissues. Overly hard ing a track means compacting its upper the tote boards that display betting ones cause microfractures in the many layer with rollers or with heavy plates odds at tracks worldwide, as well as bones below the hock, which sometimes called floats, pulled by tractors. Sealing a major platform for wagering online heal and sometimes, as with Mongolian prevents the surface from absorbing mois- and by phone. Then he steamed off to Groom, burst into injuries that a horse ture, or, if it’s already wet, squeezes some Austria, where his family was from, and can’t survive. Alexander had been think- of it out. “The problem is, if you seal a in 2012 started a political party, dedi- ing about stabling his horses at Los track every night, you eventually get a cated to the ideals of classical liberal- Alamitos, a minor track near Long track that’s unforgiving,” Alexander said. ism, plus a renunciation of the euro. Beach. It was no Santa Anita, but the That was basically what happened at Because saving Austria from the wel- surface was better. “The horses come Santa Anita. Stronach had recently ap- fare state was a full-time job, he handed back from workouts bouncing,” he said. pointed new management, and a vet- the reins of the Stronach Group to his “At Santa Anita these days, they come eran track superintendent had left. At daughter, Belinda. back panting.” He could ship them across one point, the track was sealed nine days Belinda Stronach was a former Ca- town for races. Take the whole string in a row. “The preponderance of horses nadian M.P., with experience in the down to Del Mar for the summer meet. got hurt right where the tractors make family auto-parts business and no known When Stronach released the letter U-turns, at the head of the lane,” Alex- affection for horse racing. But, when about what went wrong at Santa Anita, ander said. Frank returned from his adventure in there was only one sentence about track In 2007, after an earlier outcry about Austrian politics, she declined to hand conditions. But many of the trainers and horse deaths, state officials ordered Santa the reins back to him. He sued her owners I talked to contended that the Anita and others to install synthetic track. and her allies for some five hundred track was a huge part of the problem. Breakdown rates plummeted, by more million dollars, claiming that they had Everyone agrees that it started with the than a third. But the jockeys didn’t like stolen the company out from under weather. California suffered a mega- synthetic—they said that falls on it were him. She countersued, pouring scorn drought, beginning in 2011, that included more dangerous—and neither did many on his money-losing “passion projects,”

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 37 race-ready horses in California. It did not anticipate a winter of unusual rain. Five weeks into the season, with a dozen racehorses already dead, a Santa Anita trainer publicly complained that she’d had trouble scratching a horse when she considered the track unsafe. Tim Ritvo told the racing magazine BloodHorse, “I don’t want to hear the track is unsafe, because that’s untrue. We wouldn’t run if the track was un- safe.” In the next three weeks, five horses died. Then two more suffered cata- strophic breakdowns within minutes of each other, during a morning workout on the main dirt track, which had re- cently been sealed. One of them was Just Forget It, trained by Librado Ba- rocio. Barocio was distraught. He’d had another horse die at Santa Anita ear- “You’re such good company, impulsively purchased lier that month, while racing on a track jumpsuit from last spring!” that had been sealed for three straight days. He told state investigators that he was “always afraid of a sealed track.” •• Soon afterward, he quit training and sold the horses he owned. “I was afraid which mostly meant his horse-related had a history. Seven years before, he that I might lose another horse,” he told investments. They and their lawyers had been the racing secretary at Aque- me. Ritvo, who has since left Stronach, were still in court when the manure hit duct, the track in Queens. A casino had could not be reached for comment. the fan at Santa Anita. just opened there, and race purses had There had been speculation that the been increased. Fields got bigger—there “ think he’s going to be a gray,” Nick Stronach Group, with Frank no longer was more money for owners to win, I Alexander said. “There’s a little bit in charge, would start shedding some and thus perhaps more tolerance for of gray on his legs.” of its equine interests. Instead, Belinda risk, and certainly more profit to the It was 2 a.m. Alexander was crouched leaned into them. Stronach sent Tim track—and more horses, predictably, beside a newborn foal sprawled on Ritvo, an executive known for knocking started breaking down. Twenty-one bloody hay, gently stroking his lower heads, to Gulfstream, where he helped horses died in three months. Governor legs. The newborn’s legs were impossi- turn a middling business into an ex- Andrew Cuomo ordered an investiga- bly long. He looked jet black to me, but tremely profitable one, running enor- tion and ended up seizing control of he was still bloody and wet. His mother, mous numbers of horses. He went on the New York Racing Association, one Miranda Rose, was slowly licking to Maryland, where Stronach owned the which operates Aqueduct. A task force him clean. He had a great white blaze dilapidated Pimlico Race Course, the he appointed produced a report that down the center of his face, and he home of the Preakness Stakes. After cited an “inappropriate dynamic” be- looked both exhausted and intensely years of neglecting Pimlico, the com- tween the racing office and track vet- curious. His mother paced the spacious pany wanted to move the Preakness to erinarians, who sometimes wanted to birthing stall, working off the pains of Laurel Park, a racino in the suburbs. Bal- scratch an injured horse but were over- parturition, with half the placenta, neatly timore officials were aghast at losing the ruled. Stronach hired Campo not long tied up by an attending stable hand, still race, which has been running since 1873, after these events. (Campo declined to hanging out of her. A dark bay, she had and the state ultimately agreed to in- comment for this story.) been a pretty good runner in her day, vest nearly four hundred million dol- At Santa Anita, the plan was to run mainly at Golden Gate Fields. Her grand- lars in Pimlico and Laurel Park. Stronach as many races as possible, with fields as father was a dashing Chilean, who had committed to leaving the Preakness large as possible. If trainers didn’t want come north mid-career and immediately where it was, having offloaded the risk to run their horses, to help fill out the won the Santa Anita Handicap, back onto the State of Maryland. race card, they might have to forfeit when that was a major race. This boy’s Then Stronach sent Ritvo to Santa their stalls at the track. Veterinarians father was the sturdy Grazen, who was Anita, with an assignment to make the inclined to scratch horses they consid- gray, and whose offspring also tended fabled track more profitable. Ritvo put ered unfit would have to deal with pres- to end up gray. another Stronach executive, P. J. Campo, sure from the racing office. The plan The foal, who wouldn’t be named for in the racing office in late 2018. Campo did not reckon with the shortage of a year or more, began struggling to stand.

38 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 Alexander got out of the way. The proj- enties, and we got those slab fractures owners in France, where racing remains ect looked unlikely, if only because of down eighty to eighty-five per cent. We super populaire. His great-grandfather, the ludicrous length of the baby’s legs, should be able to do the same with fet- also known as the Aga Khan, reportedly but his mother encouraged him. Horses lock injuries.” kept an excellent stable in nineteenth- usually give birth in the middle of the The biggest thing most racehorses century Bombay. night, which makes sense, since that’s need is rest, but prescribing rest is un- Sheikh Mohammed presented the when they are less likely to be disturbed popular among trainers and unprof- racing world with a reputational dilemma by predators. But foals need to be able itable for vets. “You only get paid for last year. A high court in London found to move with the herd at daybreak. treatments, for meds, which is all wrong,” that he had conducted a campaign of in- Hence the rush to find his feet. After a Ferraro said. “A lot of trainers won’t ac- timidation against his sixth wife, who few flops and crashes, he somehow stood, cept a prescription of five days’ rest— had fled to Britain with their two chil- and was soon staggering around the stall ‘You don’t care about my horse. I’ll dren, and that he had abducted two grown behind his mother. get a different vet.’” Trainers, of course, daughters from an earlier marriage, al- People in horse racing, like Alexan- answer to owners. “Some owners are legedly torturing one of them. Sheikh der, share the goal of winning races, and impatient. They want success. If they Mohammed says that the abductions some pursue it at the horses’ expense. have a three-year-old, they want to win were search-and-rescue missions. One of But all of them are close to the animals, the Derby.” the daughters, who was taken off the in a way their critics rarely are. Meet- Racehorse ownership has undergone street in Cambridge, has not been seen ings of the California Horse Racing a sea change. When I asked Mike since 2000. The two women are now, at Board, which are open to the public, Smith—Big Money Mike, perhaps the best, detained under unknown circum- had become a nightmare for horsemen, most renowned jockey of the past few stances in Dubai. In the United States, Alexander told me. Animal-rights ac- decades—what had changed during his Sheikh Mohammed is a member in good tivists dominated the public-comment career, he said, “Owners. Used to be one standing of the Jockey Club, which is by period, giving speeches. They had a lot big guy you were riding for. Now it’s invitation only and has strict rules against to say about how the horses suffered, syndicates.” Syndicates are partnerships cruelty to horses. although they never seemed to know that allow investors to own a piece of a much about horses. It was tempting to racehorse, often divvying up the shares he movement to abolish horse rac- direct their attention to the beef and among hundreds of people. They were Ting—its cultural indictment as an- pork and chicken industries, if animal unheard of a few decades ago, but now imal slavery—has been gaining momen- suffering was their main concern. they seem to be everywhere, and their tum, particularly on social media, for years. In racing, the tolerance for death and prevalence has strengthened the industry’s In the U.S., things seemed to reach a suffering is less than it used to be. Greg- bottom line. Racehorse ownership has breaking point with the front-page bust ory Ferraro, the chairman of the Cali- been somewhat democratized. (There of Jorge Navarro, Jason Servis, and their fornia Horse Racing Board, began work- are “microshares” that go for a hundred twenty-five indicted confederates in the ing as an equine veterinarian in 1971. “I dollars a year.) The stereotypical im- East Coast doping ring. The Washing- started at Del Mar,” he told me—a jewel- patient owner these days is not some ton Post ran an editorial that advocated box seaside track north of San Diego. toffee-nosed plutocrat but a clueless abolition now. “No other accepted sport “They used to put horses down in the hedge funder demanding a Kentucky exploits defenseless animals as gambling parking lot. Just leave them there, peo- Derby winner, of which he might own chips,” the editors wrote. “No other ac- ple walking by, till the knacker man half a hoof. cepted sport tolerates the cruelties that would show up and haul them away. I Perhaps more important to racing’s routinely result in the injury and death said no. We built an enclosure.” Still, bottom line, however, have been the ex- of these magnificent animals. The rot in Del Mar draws animal-rights protest- traordinary investments in breeding horse racing goes deep. It is a sport that ers virtually every day during its sum- farms and racing stables by Saudi roy- has outlived its time.” mertime meet. als, and, especially, by the ruler of Dubai, By the second week of March, 2020, The old normal wasn’t confined to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al the racing industry seemed to be reeling, racetracks. In 1880, New York City had Maktoum. These investments have been indefensible. By the end of that week, fifteen thousand horse corpses a year, in Ireland, England, Europe, Australia, however, we were in a new epoch, rung lying in its streets waiting to be taken and Japan in addition to the United in by the thunderous bell of Covid-19. away. Ferraro has seen brutal veterinary States, and have lately extended to host- Racing disappeared from the headlines. practices—blistering, which is as it ing races that offer the largest purses in People, those speciesists, were worried sounds, and the firing iron—vanish or the world—the Saudi Cup pays twenty about people now. become rare. Some chronic conditions million dollars. Sheikh Mohammed’s Many racetracks were shut by the have improved. “Slab fractures in the operation, called Godolphin, has a cou- pandemic. Santa Anita kept running till third carpal bone were a major prob- ple of stunning horse farms in Kentucky. late March: no live fans, the jockeys liv- lem,” he said. “But, once we figured out He has yet to win the Derby, though ing in trailers in the parking lot. Then how to take an X-ray from up above a not for want of trying. Another Mus- Los Angeles County closed the track flexed knee, we could see things we lim potentate, the Aga Khan, is among as a nonessential business, whereupon never saw before. That was the late sev- the largest thoroughbred breeders and Stronach argued that, with seventeen

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 39 hundred horses in stables and seven First-time gamblers were offered three the inefficiencies. The most successful hundred people living there to care for hundred dollars for a risk-free bet. known whales of this type belong to them, the facility simply could not sit As sports nearly everywhere disap- the Elite Turf Club, which apparently still. The horses needed daily exercise. peared, people were betting on anything has only twelve members and is based By mid-May, the races were back on. that moved. Soccer in Belarus, table ten- in Curaçao. The Stronach Group is the Horse fatalities were relatively low for nis in Ukraine, the weather at O’Hare. club’s majority owner, which suggests the year—less than half their terrible Organized crime staged “ghost games” that the company is on both sides of 2019 totals—and the handle, strangely, in Ukraine—a soccer tournament that the deal. Win-win. Stronach has taken was up. Horsemen seemed happier. never actually happened, brought to you to describing itself as “a world-class Aidan Butler, who replaced Tim Ritvo, by either the Turkish mob or one from technology, entertainment and real es- told me that the old system, in which Belarus. The level of match-fixing was tate development company with Thor- racetrack management unilaterally de- infinite, and basically everybody lost. oughbred racing and pari-mutuel wa- cided when to run, had been “antiquated.” Next to this sort of shadiness, a race at gering at the core.” Belinda Stronach, His team was consulting with trainers Will Rogers Downs, outside Tulsa, whose legal battle with her father was and owners on all such decisions. looked wholesome. finally settled in August, leaving her in Thoroughbred racing generally was American horse racing was bolstered charge, says she is determined to mod- having a good pandemic. TVG, an by the big bettors, known as “the whales,” ernize what she calls “the last great all-racing channel included in many who came back to the game in the sum- sporting legacy platform.” sports cable packages, found enough mer. The whales are not obese billion- The Water Hay Oats Alliance had live racing to run 24/7—the overnights aires sprawled on yachts, as I originally its dream come true in 2020: legislation were filled by races in Japan, Hong Kong, thought, but serried ranks of high- passed that will establish a national Australia. In the U.S., with major sports octane computers, operated by individ- regulatory body, under the aegis of the leagues suspended, horse racing found uals who know nothing about horses United States Anti-Doping Agency. For a wave of new fans, all presumably locked but everything about betting. They bet nearly a decade, the biggest holdout in down in front of their TV sets, where on high-payoff combinations like tri- the industry was Churchill Downs, Inc. ESPN had been reduced to broadcast- fectas and pick-sixes, and with the re- C.D.I., despite its ownership of the fa- ing cup stacking, cherry-pit spitting, bates they get from tracks, along with mous track, makes most of its money and old World Series games. TVG began the exclusive access they reportedly get from gaming and casinos, and its strat- to provide a newcomer’s glossary of rac- to the details of the existing pool bets, egists apparently did not see a profit in ing terms—“tout,” “weanling,” “sloppy.” they are able to analyze and exploit all cleaning up racing with the help of the federal government. In 2020, C.D.I., whose major shareholders include some very generous patrons of Mitch Mc- Connell, signalled its allies, and sud- denly the legislation was tucked into the year-end omnibus spending bill. What changed? My theory is that even the most hardheaded moneymen in rac- ing began to worry. The new authority is scheduled to start work in July, 2022. The hope is that the U.S. may then finally move closer to Europe and other venues in basic horse-racing safety. But racing is a creaky old pastime here, with few young fans. It feels like something left behind by an earlier America, a relic of the agricultural past. It assumes a relationship with horses rooted in the ancient projects of pre- modern war, transport, work, and play. It attracts old money, new money, dy- nastic money, even some smart money (the techies of the Elite Turf Club), but it has long depended on the common gambler, and thus been soaked in all the grift and sorrow that come with gam- bling. Grift at the level of the Kentucky Derby, and the trainer Bob Baffert’s ca- reer of breezy impunity, only deepen its disrepute among the general public. The all those mountains, at the base of the 126 went up the Santa Clara River governor of Pennsylvania has been talking San Gabriel Range, was Santa Anita. valley. Not the direct route. “It’s still about slashing his state’s huge subsidies Alexander was thinking about Alice little Mexican family farms. Old Cal- to horse racing and diverting the funds Marble and her breathing problems. She ifornia. Nobody’s bought them out, and to education. would probably miss both of the stakes they can’t build casinos.” In California, where alligator shoes races that he had planned to put her in We took 101. I asked Alexander if he have been banned and a ballot mea- this meet. He just hoped that was all. was worried that opponents of racing sure to improve the lives of farm ani- Alexander did move his horses to Los might get the sport’s future on the bal- mals passed by a huge margin, the fu- Alamitos, but he kept racing at Santa lot in a statewide referendum. He was ture of horse racing is hard to see. But Anita. He had a horse in the fourth today, not, he said. At least not yet. Getting on the state’s Native American gambling a son of Grazen whom he had named the ballot was expensive. You needed juggernaut has a new ballot measure in George Herman Ruth, after some old- more than half a million signatures to the works for 2022. It proposes to con- time ballplayer. Young Ruth start. What did worry him fine the next wave of gaming, “sports had been hapless in his was that the Governor would betting,” to its casinos and approved début, finishing a distant stack the California Horse racetracks, meaning Santa Anita, Del eighth out of nine. But that Racing Board with his “min- Mar, Golden Gate Fields, and Los Al- race had been only five and ions,” putting himself in a amitos. Why voters would approve the a half furlongs, and today’s position to shut down racing. measure is an open question. Why the was eight. It could be that Newsom was erratic, reac- casinos, with their deep pockets, would he just needed more room tive, politically thin-skinned. extend this proposal to the tracks is an- to lengthen his stride. “I George Herman Ruth other. When it was put to the outgoing think he’s a two-turn horse,” was a big gray colt with a chairman of the California Nations In- Alexander said, hopefully. sharp eye. He was calm in dian Gaming Association, Steve Stall- Ruth would be running the paddock but had his ings, he said that he thought the race- on race-day Lasix. Santa Anita had still head up and turning as if he had some- tracks “need some shoring up to stay not banished it, despite Belinda Stronach’s where to be. His trainer, Phil D’Amato, competitive.” They do. letter announcing a ban the previous a beefy tan guy with a racing program March. Because Alexander was the chair- sticking out of a pocket, saddled Ruth lexander left his ranch for the track man of the Thoroughbred Owners of and gave Alexander a quiet thumbs-up. Aearly one morning, driving a BMW California, he had been in subsequent The oddsmakers were sending Ruth sedan that his son had loaned him from negotiations with Stronach over Lasix off at 10–1. That was good. Abel Cedillo, the lot. There was patchy fog in the fields, and other meds. The sides compromised the jockey, swung aboard in the walk- no traffic on 154. Santa Ynez slipped past on a phased-in ban of Lasix, with older ing ring. Mary Alexander was there, all on the right. The town’s claim to fame horses getting a reduced dose and the smiles. This was the fun part. Nick hur- these days was the Chumash Casino next crop of two-year-olds getting none ried off to a betting window. He had a Resort: twelve stories, the tallest build- at all. Alexander was not pleased. “Lasix stack of cash to bet for the guys on the ing in the valley by far. The Chumash is a therapeutic medication, not a drug,” ranch who liked this horse. The track were the indigenous people of the re- he said. “It lowers blood pressure. Some- was turf, listed as firm. gion—Malibu was from a Chumash where along the line, I guess, we’ve bred Ruth broke well and took a place in word—but there were few tribe mem- them into being bleeders. But without the middle of the pack, running easily. bers left, and their language was lost. The Lasix I think many of my horses just On the first turn and the backstretch, Santa Ynez Band had a tiny reservation, won’t run. I’d sure rather give them a Cedillo kept him within two, three but enough land for the casino and its shot of Lasix than deprive them of water. lengths of the lead. Then, on the far parking lots. Before the pandemic, they That’s cruel.” turn, Ruth and Cedillo swung wide, bused in gamblers from nearby farm Despite their differences, Alexan- running three deep. The pack seemed towns—Paso Robles, Santa Maria, Lom- der is not basically hostile toward Be- to drift out, and they had to swerve poc (another Chumash word). Most were linda Stronach. They at least have the wider, now four deep, to find a clear working-class Latinos. Alexander was same goal—to keep racing viable, and lane. This was the hard way, more ground grateful that none of his ranch hands to make it safer for the horses. “I think to cover, but Ruth didn’t falter. He began had become casino regulars. having all the extra vets has been good,” to gain ground rapidly at the top of the The road climbed out of the fog he said. “And it’s really to Belinda’s stretch, with Cedillo whipping non- into morning sunshine, then past the credit that they’re spending five hun- stop. Slipping back inside, they edged sandstone outcrops of San Marcos Pass. dred thousand on this big fancy new ahead of a gelding called Tropical Ter- At the pass, there was suddenly an ex- standing X-ray machine. That’s going ror, and Ruth took the lead. The out- travagant view: the ocean, the Chan- to save a lot of horses.” Still, he didn’t come was uncertain, at least to my eye, nel Islands, the city of Santa Barbara like the track surface. until the last few strides. But Ruth below, the long coast south, and a se- We were zipping past Ventura on crossed the finish line first, and it felt ries of transverse mountain ranges run- Highway 101. like you could hear the vatos cheering ning off to the southeast. Down past “101 or 126?” all the way up in Santa Ynez. 

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 41 PROFILES HOT TOPIC

Listening to Wendy Williams’s kitchen-table talk.

BY MICHAEL SCHULMAN

endy Williams sat on a tor from Maryland with a bald head and wives” antics. “Her talent is being Wendy,” plush red sofa facing a trio a glass of white wine. “What’s your idea the CNN anchor Don Lemon, who has W of L.E.D. screens, each of of a fun date with me?” Williams asked. guest-hosted the show, told me. “She has which showed a man who was vying to Mike suggested ringside seats at a Lamar this degree of comfort on television, like enter her tumultuous, open-book life. Odom celebrity boxing match. Bachelor she’s sitting in your living room talking It was a February episode of her syn- No. 3, Tyrone, was a sultry-eyed security to you.” The audience acts as her confi- dicated talk show, and the segment, guard nearly twenty years younger than dantes and her Greek chorus—or, in the “Date Wendy,” was the culmination of Williams. “Age really don’t mean any- case of “Date Wendy,” her wingmen. You a monthlong search. Williams had on thing to me,” he assured her. “If our vibes don’t have to know the people she’s dis- a tousled blond wig, yellow sneakers, can connect, we can connect.” The stu- cussing to be engrossed by her chatty, and a stretchy patterned dress. “My dio audience—usually a hundred and opinionated commentary, which converts hands are sweaty,” she had confided ear- forty screaming fans but, these days, a even operatic gossip into relatable mini- lier, during the daily monologue that dozen socially distanced staffers—oohed. dramas. Assessing the news that Kim she calls “Hot Topics.” Met with reas- Watching from the wings, a handler Kardashian was keeping a sixty-million- suring applause, she suddenly teared up, asked me which guy I thought Williams dollar mansion after her divorce from and, as a stagehand proffered a Won- would choose. I said Julian, who seemed Kanye West, Williams shrugged and der Woman tissue box, she confessed, age-appropriate and sincere. Tyrone was concluded, “It’s best for the kids. The “No, I’m teary because I can’t believe I sexy but too young, and Mike had some kids know the house.” have a show.” slimy lines that smelled like trouble. (“If Williams’s style, in contrast to her ca- “The Wendy Williams Show,” taped you’re feeling the fever, I’ve got the pre- sual tone, is glam bordering on camp. live in the Chelsea neighborhood of Man- scription.”) After a commercial break, Where other daytime shows favor beige hattan, is in its twelfth season, an eternity Williams called for a drumroll and an- couches and houseplants, her set is hues in daytime years. It averages more than nounced her choice: Surprise! It was of lavender and champagne. She is five a million live viewers a day, with hundreds Mike, who danced around pumping his feet ten, and her outfits are drag-queen of thousands more catching up online. fists. She said that she would call him bold. She rotates through about a dozen Its audience—“Wendy watchers,” in the later that night. wigs, since a thyroid condition stemming show’s parlance—regards the fifty-six- from Graves’ disease has thinned her hair. year-old hostess as an ultra-fabulous, in- illiams is an anomaly on daytime It also causes her already large eyes to the-know gal pal. Williams came to prom- Wtelevision. Unlike her competitor pop, as if in mid-epiphany. In the past inence as a radio jock, and she has a Ellen DeGeneres, she’s not a standup few years, her personal life has been su- talent for talking to millions of people comedian, and, unlike Kelly Ripa or the persized as well. Last year, she finalized (her viewership is mostly female, but she women of “The View,” she doesn’t have her divorce from Kevin Hunter, her sec- also has a big gay following) and mak- co-hosts. She’s her own sounding board, ond husband and her manager, after he ing them feel like they’re on a dishy phone capable of filling endless time with off- had a baby with a longtime mistress, cap- call with a friend. “Traditionally, for the-cuff, bawdy talk, delivered in a Jer- ping off a series of dramas—stints in women at home, watching a daytime-TV sey accent. Her rambling spontaneity is rehab, unplanned hiatuses—that spilled show is ‘me time,’ ” Alexandra Jewett, a an antidote to the cheery polish of the into the tabloids and, inevitably, onto her programming executive at Debmar-Mer- “Today” show; she’ll interrupt a celebrity show. In January, Williams released a cury, the show’s production company, told tidbit to tell a story about her weekend, pair of autobiographical TV movies on me. “It’s a very intimate experience.” then lose her place. She barely uses a Lifetime, one a dramatization and one For “Date Wendy,” hundreds of suit- teleprompter and won’t wear an earpiece. a documentary, which recast her travails ors had been narrowed down to three. Although her show features such day- as a journey of self-empowerment. In On the air, Williams addressed Bache- time staples as interviews, shopping seg- “Wendy Williams: The Movie,” she was lor No. 1, a jazz musician named Julian: ments (“Trendy@Wendy”), and advice played by Ciera Payton; in “Wendy Wil- “What do you do in your down time?” (“Ask Wendy”), its core is “Hot Topics,” liams: What a Mess!,” the real Williams “I like to make sure this body—this tem- ostensibly a gossip roundup but really a lay on a daybed in her apartment, sobbing ple—is up to par, so I love to work out,” kind of free-associative performance art, as she narrated the same events, with the he said, earning a smile from the host- in which Williams riffs on celebrity di- viewer in the role of best friend. Together, ess. Bachelor No. 2 was Mike, a contrac- vorces, pop-star feuds, and “Real House- the movies represented a brazen act of

42 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 “If you don’t allow yourself to be a work in progress, you’ll always be stuck on stupid,” Williams says.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARTIN SCHOELLER THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 43 pop solipsism, with the raw fury of a her ex-husband as a mermaid and a mer- wears heels, and her walk is a tentative breakup album. man. Last spring, after her studio shut shuffle.) She talked non-stop—about When I asked Williams if, as the down because of the pandemic, Williams pandemic dating, about fans who make documentary title suggests, she consid- hosted “Wendy @ Home,” an abridged her hold their babies—in what felt like ers herself a mess, she smirked and said, edition of her show, from her dining- a seamless extension of her show. After “Yes, but a well-put-together mess.” It room table, introducing viewers to her a while, she returned to her Krazy Glue, was after the “Date Wendy” episode, and cats, Chitchat and Myway, and to her life- which had hardened in the tube. “I’m she was in her backstage office in a street size Betty Boop statue with painted-on not doing this tonight. I’m tired!” she wig, sitting on a leopard-print couch be- black skin. The results were so lo-fi ab- said. “How dare you, Krazy Glue?” Ex- neath a bedazzled swordfish that was surd that John Oliver devoted a segment asperated, she held up her half-finished made by a fan. (“They’re real Swarovski to the show on “Last Week Tonight,” objet d’art and said, “But you see where crystals!” she said.) The dating contest, calling it “an oasis of truth in a world full I’m going with this?” she insisted, was not a stunt. “I studied of lies.” He delighted in the “weirdly the guys very closely,” she said, peeling dominant manner” in which Williams eeks later, Williams was in her off her false eyelashes. “I said, ‘I want to ate a lamb chop. Nevertheless, Williams Wmakeup chair at 8 A.M., wearing date for the potential of this becoming pulled the plug on the home edition a turban and a black robe. A television my boyfriend.’ ” She explained that her after seven weeks, citing fatigue from tuned to local news mumbled overhead, final choice was practical: Tyrone was Graves’ disease. But she told me that the and her makeup artist, Merrell Hollis, too young, and Julian, the jazz man, experience had felt intrusive, even un- dabbed at her cheeks. “Me and Jones had would be on the road all the time. “How safe: “Anybody could be watching to such a good time this weekend,” Wil- do I know that he’s in Turkey with a case the joint.” liams said, recounting a girls’ day out one-month residency and not screwing As we talked, she laid out supplies with a former radio colleague (and one- around?” she said. Mike runs his own for a craft project: a tube of Krazy Glue, time rival) known as Miss Jones. “Some successful business, “so we can both sit a glass case that was left over from a people remember that we weren’t get- in first class, and we both know what flower delivery, and four crystal cabinet ting along, but we weren’t getting along fine dining is.” She added, “But that’s knobs, souvenirs from the New Jersey because Kevin was, like, ‘Fuck her.’ When not what I want all the time. I like the house that she used to share with Hunter I opened the door, we had our masks on, cheesesteak from around the corner as and their college-age son, Kevin, Jr. She but we hugged.” well, and I like to eat it in bed.” wanted to attach the knobs to the bot- Hollis mm-hmmed as Williams ex- We took a black S.U.V. to her apart- tom of the case as legs, place inside it a plained that they had gone to two dif- ment, in the financial district: sleek black Supreme-branded wrench that her son ferent steak houses: first to Peter Luger, walls and crystal chandeliers, accented had bought her, and display it as a de- in Brooklyn, then to the Strip House, in with colorful glass figurines, animal prints, sign object. She took off her shoes and Manhattan. “That was the spot,” she said. and antique urns. “Chaka Khan did that stuck out a bare foot, which, owing to “The men were everyplace. The ladies for me for my fiftieth birthday,” she said, lymphedema, had become swollen and looked really beautiful. But we were defi- pointing to a painting depicting her and gray, “like an elephant.” (She no longer nitely outnumbered. And all you smelled was garlic and money.” She assured Hol- lis that her salad, which she had Insta- grammed, wasn’t only lettuce: “There was seafood, extra crumbles of blue cheese. We had so much food that we had bags and bags to take home—only for me to ask for the check and find out some man paid already.” “Aw, ‘Sex and the City’!” Hollis cooed. “My boobs looked really good,” Wil- liams continued. “And we were home in time for the eleven-o’clock news.” Hollis touched up some shiny spots. “What else happened over the weekend?” Williams asked herself, then gasped. “Nicki Minaj’s mother is suing!” It was a classic “Hot Topics” segue. On TV, Williams re-creates the laid-back rap- port of a woman talking to her makeup artist. Watching her in the mirror, I re- alized that she was trying out material on Hollis, honing anecdotes and sharp- “First, the dishwasher broke—now we have an insane boulder.” ening opinions. “Mike is coming to town on Wednes- because she gave him an ultimatum.” Williams returned to her dressing day,” she said, as Hollis applied eyebrow Williams watched a clip and consid- room to put on her show wig. Before pencil. It had been four weeks since “Date ered her take. “That’s the immaturity each episode, she prays at a makeshift Wendy,” and she and Bachelor No. 2 of dealing with a young girl,” she said. chapel, to a drawing of God that her were becoming an item. “Dr. Oz invited “He’s a thirty-seven-year-old father of son made when he was little. At ten me for dinner, and so I text him back, three, lives a very complicated life. Find o’clock, she burst through the double ‘Can I bring a friend?’ So Thursday night an age-appropriate man and stop try- doors, greeted the sparse audience with is dinner at the Ozes, with all the kids ing to be grown. You’re not.” Case closed. her kittenish catchphrase (“How you running around. It’s a really beautiful In the early seasons of the show, a doi-i-i-in’?”), and sat on her tufted scene. Plants. Servants. Not even house- “Hot Topics” segment lasted for around throne. “My friend Jonesy came to town keepers—servants, you know, with the ten minutes, and the producers experi- to see me,” she began, as an Instagram clothes on. But all with a smile. And I mented with traditional talk-show fare: photo flashed behind her. “We went out didn’t tell Mike where we’re going.” comedy skits, panel discussions. “What to two different steak houses. . . .” When Williams was done in makeup, we found was that people so enjoyed her she consulted with the rest of her glam giving her opinion on ‘Hot Topics’— mong the thousands of people who squad, Jazmin Kelly (wigs) and Willie that’s really what drove the show,” Per- Ahave sat in Williams’s studio audi- Sinclair III (wardrobe). Sinclair had ler told me. The segment now lasts as ence is Tanisha Ford, a history professor pulled a pleated Kenzo dress and white long as twenty-five minutes. But letting at the CUNY Graduate Center. “Wendy Stan Smiths, an ensemble that he de- Williams riff unfiltered has its pitfalls. does what she calls ‘kitchen-table talk,’ scribed as “very simple, very spring, very She once questioned the concept of his- a phrase that comes straight out of Black light.” Kelly, whom Williams called “an torically Black colleges (“I would be re- American and Black diasporic culture,” evil-brilliant wigologist,” had paired it ally offended if there was a school that Ford told me. “The kitchen table was a with an “effortless” wavy do, dark with was known as a historically white col- place where the Black women, the el- golden highlights. She told me that each lege”); after fans threatened to boycott ders in your family, would sit around and day she imagined Williams’s look as that the show and Chevrolet dropped its talk about all the gossip, dish all the dirt, of a different character. Today’s was “a sponsorship, she apologized. And she’s tell how they felt about Pastor So-and-So. woman who shops at Bergdorf ’s,” Kelly been hit with occasional defamation law- As children, we would try to be in ear- said. “She doesn’t have a job, and she’s suits, most recently from a man who was shot of the kitchen table, so we could fab. It’s the lady that lunches, dahling.” taking pictures near Hilary Duff’s son hear all the grown folks talk. So she’s Out on the set, three producers gath- in a public park, which Williams called bringing that kind of Black vernacular ered for the daily “Hot Topics” briefing. “creepy.” To ward off legal challenges, to mainstream television.” “Boss is walking,” someone said, as Wil- Perler watches from the control room, Williams was born in 1964, in As- liams approached. She sat on a tufted consulting (over Zoom) with the show’s bury Park, New Jersey, to Thomas and purple chair, from which she presides lawyer. Whenever Williams wades into Shirley Williams, both educators. She each morning. “So, weekend talk,” a pro- dicey territory, the lawyer alerts him, and had an early instinct for asking nosy ducer named Jennifer Brookman began. he hits a button that makes the word questions. “I’d come in the kitchen and “I know you were with Miss Jones.” “allegedly” flash on the teleprompter in say, ‘Aunt Marilyn, is that new hair? Are “And that wasn’t just a salad full of big yellow letters. you wearing a wig?’” she recalled. “And lettuce,” Williams interjected. “That was “A lot of the time, it comes up two Aunt Marilyn would say, ‘Yeah, Wendy, a monstrosity.” David Perler, the show- or three seconds too late, so Wendy says as a matter of fact I am.’ ‘Well, push it runner, had new pictures of Mike to ‘allegedly’ to something that wasn’t re- up a little. It’s too far down on your fore- display. “The paparazzi was outside my ally the thing that we needed her to say head.’” In an attempt to rein her in, her house again today,” Williams said. ‘allegedly’ about,” Perler said. Williams parents developed a code: T.L. (too loud), “They’re waiting for Mike to show openly complains about this on the air— T.F. (too fast), and T.M. (too much). up,” Brookman said, then moved on to “Lawyer lady hit the button!”—as if “Whenever she looked at a person and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.” “The being zapped by an electrode. was quiet, we knew something was com- only thing that stood out to us was this At the “Hot Topics” meeting, the ing up,” her father told me. “She’d tilt new woman—LaToya—fighting with producers ran through the rest of the her head to the side and ask a question, what’s-her-name,” she said, referring to day’s stories: the public breakup of the whatever came to her mind. We’d say, an incident in which a housewife in- rappers Saweetie and Quavo (“Take it ‘Wendy, be quiet. Don’t ask!’” sulted the hostess of a Halloween party. off social media,” Williams ruled), a fan The summer of the 1970 race riots The producers played Williams a clip of who broke into Pete Davidson’s house in Asbury Park, the Williamses moved the hostess ranting. “Do we think she (“Remind me who Pete Davidson is? to Wayside, a mostly white suburb in was disrespected?” Perler asked. The white guy, right?”), a man who Ocean Township. Thomas and Shirley “Yes,” Williams boomed, with an im- sneaked his toddler into the elephant taught their three children to present plied “duh.” enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. “This “a good package,” but Williams vacil- Next: “Keeping Up with the Kar- is another corona thing,” Williams said. lated between projecting middle-class dashians.” “This is good,” Brookman “It’s making everybody do things that respectability and saying the unsayable. said. “Scott said he broke up with Sofia they wouldn’t do.” She felt like an outcast in her family;

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 45 her older sister, Wanda, was the over- I use?’” Williams would paint her nails a boss, through tears. “Go get married achiever (she became a lawyer), and her bright colors to get noticed when hand- and have some babies,” he advised her. little brother, Tommy, was the boy, “so ing over paperwork, and she parlayed Instead, she sent audition tapes all over he could do no wrong,” she said. In her charisma into a weekly segment re- town and wound up at 98.7 KISS-FM— elementary school, she gained weight, capping “Dynasty,” the “Real House- an urban station—where she filled in and her parents put her on a strict diet wives” of its day. Her parents, who thought for her idol, Carol Ford, for the after- of tuna and mustard, with a side of that she might become a nurse (“Wendy noon drive. Vinny Brown, then the music grapes. The dieting instilled a body-im- liked bandaging wounds and what have director, recalls, “She was strong enough age insecurity that outlived (and drove) you,” her father said), were skeptical, es- to hold the room.” When he was pro- her later embrace of plastic surgery. pecially when she moved to the U.S. Vir- moted to program manager, he put her “Once it’s put in your head gin Islands to accept a radio on the morning show, “The Wake-Up that you have a weight gig in St. Croix. Club,” to “give some female perspective.” problem—and once you Scheming to crack the Along with the traffic reports (and Nu- see it yourself in the mir- New York market, Williams trisystem promotional spots, to get extra ror—that’s a lifelong thing,” took a job at an oldies sta- airtime), Williams did a gossip segment she told me. tion in Washington, D.C. called “Dish the Dirt.” “She made it her As an adolescent, Wil- Her time there was marked own—and made it the most popular liams developed her flam- by two misfortunes. She de- feature on the radio station,” Brown told boyant sense of style, ripping veloped a cocaine habit, and, me. “Dish the Dirt,” he said, featured up T-shirts, studding her she has said, an R. & B. art- stories about “the artists that we played jackets with rhinestones. She ist she interviewed on air in- on the radio, who probably did not get was one of four Black grad- vited her to a party one night the same attention in mainstream media.” uates in her high-school class, but the and then raped her in his hotel room. It The blowback was immediate. Brown only interest they had in common, she was the height of the AIDS crisis, and said that he had to deal with record ex- says, was smoking weed. Because of her Williams got tested every month. Her ecutives who “called up and said, ‘Hey, honking accent, they called her the “white paranoia morphed into a devil-may-care your girl is talking about my artist!’ ” He girl,” and her white classmates were com- hedonism that drove her further into co- went on, “I can’t tell you the amount of fortable enough around her to use the caine. She would spend days in a coke times that people like Bill Cosby, Puffy, N-word, adding, “Not you, Wendy.” “I stupor, and she lost almost fifty pounds. Russell Simmons called me directly, and never went to the prom, because that was In 1988, she got her shot at a New I just had to let them go off about some- before you could ask a Black girl to the York station, hosting the graveyard shift thing that Wendy said. And I’d be smil- prom—but I saw the boys looking,” she at HOT 103. Radio was largely segre- ing without them knowing.” Occasion- recalled. “I would say, ‘I can’t wait to get gated between the white “general mar- ally, he added, “I had to tell her that these out of this one-horse town. And I’m com- ket” stations, which played dance music things that she is reporting are ‘allegedly.’ ” ing back to our first reunion and I’m and rock, and the Black “urban” stations, KISS was influential enough to be able going to give it to ’em good.’ ” which played R. & B. and, increasingly, to rebuff artists who demanded that Wil- Her grades were abysmal, but her hip-hop. Williams recalls being the only liams be fired, and Brown moved her to “good package” got her into Northeast- Black staffer at HOT 103 (which became a solo shift. As her popularity increased, ern University, in Boston, where she HOT 97), but she knew from her Way- she got tips not just from the gossip pages joined the campus radio station. In her side days how to make it work. In her but from listeners she met at parties, mind, the d.j.s she grew up listening to, 2003 memoir, “Wendy’s Got the Heat,” where she arrived with a two-person en- like WBLS’s Frankie Crocker, occupied she wrote,“I was just black enough to tourage that she called Skeletor and a glamorous world of parties and cham- represent black without being a real ‘sis- Bulge. In 1993, Billboard named her Best pagne—although the women were tah’ to them. I was black but I didn’t On-Air Radio Personality. mostly sidekicks, “and I knew that I did threaten the pH balance of the Debbie Her rise followed that of Howard not want to be a sidekick.” One of the Gibsons and the Pretty Poisons and Paula Stern, who had turned “shock jock” into exceptions was Carol Ford, on New Abduls.” By then, she was snorting or a new genus of celebrity. It also coincided York’s 98.7 KISS-FM. “Carol got hired smoking two grams of coke a day, four with the nineties hip-hop explosion. Wil- when I was in college, and sometimes days a week. During her shift, she would liams exemplified the genre’s blinged- I would come home for the day and sit play an extended track of Noel’s “Silent out style and braggadocio (her Eagle in Penn Station with my Aiwa, because Morning,” which gave her just enough Talon had “WNDY” vanity plates), with it had a recorder,” Williams said. time to sneak into the bathroom and get a rap diva’s flair for shit-stirring. “So much During college, she got an internship high. One night, she took a hit so hard of the way that YouTubers frame their at Boston’s KISS 108, where the morn- that it knocked her unconscious, and, gossip segments is based on Wendy Wil- ing host was Matty Siegel. “Wendy when she came to, the air had been dead liams,” Tanisha Ford, the CUNY histo- wanted to be on the air,” Siegel told me. for more than three minutes. Fortunately, rian, said. “Wendy created the model for “I look at interns as people who are going her bosses weren’t listening. how you spill tea. And she was doing to bring me my coffee. But she, from Day She was fired not long afterward. this in the nineties, before social media.” One, went, ‘O.K., which microphone do “What am I going to do now?” she asked During a photo shoot at the Roxy, a

46 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 lesbian photographer showed Williams rapper boyfriend was gay. In 1997, after cast details about her personal life, deep- a hip-hop magazine with an item about weeks off the air, she sued to get out of ening her relationship with her audi- a gay rapper, and she read it on air. In- her contract and reached a settlement. ence. During her Philly years, she talked nuendo about who was (allegedly!) on She was barred from taking another openly about her past drug abuse and the “down low” became one of her spe- New York radio job for eight months, her multiple miscarriages. When she cialties. Few topics were more taboo in so she moved her act to Philadelphia’s became pregnant again, her doctors ad- the hip-hop world, and the backlash Power 99. Don Lemon, who was then vised bed rest, so she did her show from came hard. She spread a rumor that Tupac a local NBC correspondent, recalled home. Two months after Kevin, Jr., was Shakur had been raped in prison. He de- Williams outing him after he was spot- born, in 2000, Williams caught Hunter nied it, and hit back, in “Why U Turn ted at the gay bars on Twelfth Street. on the phone with a lover; she later dis- on Me,” released posthumously: “Any- “Listen, was it uncomfortable? Yes,” he closed the infidelity in her memoir. She body ever seen Wendy Williams’s fat ass? told me. “Was I in the closet? Not re- was also open about her plastic sur- Why you always wearin’ Spandex, you ally. I just didn’t talk about it. Was it gery—liposuction, tummy tuck, breast fat bitch?” Williams was unfazed. “I love something where I was, like, ‘I wish this implants—which gave her the bomb- anytime somebody mentions me,” she woman would shut up and stop talking shell figure she’d always wanted. (Ford told me. “Thank you, Tupac.” about me’? Yeah.” Williams’s penchant points out that many Black women view for outing hasn’t aged well, but her gay their cosmetic surgery as “a thing that illiams met Kevin Hunter in 1994, fans seem to have forgiven her. “Black we were raised to keep private. But Wat a dance party at a roller rink queer folks create a sense of commu- Wendy Williams says, ‘Hey, I’m gonna in Union, New Jersey. She was coming nity through throwing shade, through own it.’”) In 2001, having boosted Power off a five-month marriage that ended spilling the tea,” Tanisha Ford said. 99’s listenership, she returned to New when the guy (allegedly!) spit in her face. “Wendy is coming out of that commu- York to reclaim her throne as the queen (He did not respond to a request for nal tradition of joy and healing. There of radio, doing weekday afternoons at comment.) Hunter, who owned a beauty is something restorative in revelling in WBLS. Hunter was now a vexing pres- parlor in Brooklyn, attracted Williams all of your imperfections. Wendy has ence in her professional life. “He was because she was looking for a “thug,” become a voice for the weirdos, the out- banned from the station a couple of she wrote. “He was the one who pro- casts, the people who say, O.K., you times,” Tony Gray, who had hired Wil- tected her,” Vinny Brown recalled. “She don’t want me? Well, I want me.” liams at KISS and later consulted for had threats on her life. People were send- When I asked Williams if she still WBLS, recalled. “He would get into ing dead fish wrapped in newspaper to considered people’s sexuality fair game, these shouting matches with people, the radio station.” When Williams trash- she said, “Well, I have a different career using a lot of profanity.” (Hunter did talked the girl group Total on air, and now, on TV.” In recent years, her snide not respond to requests for comment, its members staked out the station to remarks about Caitlyn Jenner and but he did call his characterization in confront her, Hunter pulled up and androgynous fashion have drawn charges the Lifetime documentary “inaccurate” shooed them away. The relationship also of transphobia, and in one case Wil- and “false.” Last week, he shared a meme motivated her to quit cocaine, which, liams responded with a teary apology on Instagram that said, “Once you ma- she says in her memoir, she swapped for video, saying, “I never do the show in a ture, you realize that silence is more the fulfillment of romance. But Hunt- place of malice.” powerful than proving a point.”) er’s role in her life—as husband, man- Along with scandals, Williams broad- In early 2003, Whitney Houston’s label ager, and bulldog—wasn’t completely benign. “It was as if she was addicted to Kevin, in a weird way,” a former col- league of Williams’s told me. “She sort of dropped the drugs and picked up him, and he was just as bad for her.” By the mid-nineties, Williams was back at HOT 97, which by then was a major hip-hop station. Her bosses shielded her from the music power bro- kers she blabbed about—until she crossed the wrong people. Sean Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, ran the label Bad Boy Records, and he and his art- ists were getting a lot of airplay. After Williams refused to tamp down her gos- sip about them, the station sidelined her. She also got into a shoving match with a co-worker, Angie Martinez, after hinting on her Web site that Martinez’s trial run, broadcast in four test cities, when Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, of “The Apprentice,” came on to pro- mote her book. “I will not be disre- spected,” Manigault-Stallworth said, about some perceived slight, as she sat on the couch. Williams circled a finger in Manigault-Stallworth’s face and warned, “This is not the time for you to look for your moment.” She did broaden her range of content, mixing in names like Brad and Angelina with hip-hop gossip, and the reality-TV boom gave her a colorful new cast of characters to dissect. Williams studied herself on cam- era—how she walked, how certain an- gles looked—and made adjustments. “That would involve slower talk, preg- nant pauses, and direct eye contact with the camera,” she told me. “Not looking around or wringing my hands. But I love the camera, and I know exactly where to look when the red light is on.” Williams and Hunter were living in Livingston, New Jersey, projecting a “O.K., besides a baby brother, what did you get me?” “good package” of suburban family life. But their professional dynamic was •• fraught. “A lot of times, he wanted her to wear something that made her look sexy, maybe a little risqué,” David Per- approached WBLS about interviewing instructed her not to share the tape. “It ler recalled. “My bosses would text me the singer to promote her new album. was a way that they’d never heard Whit- and say, ‘Why was she wearing that on But Houston’s handlers reneged when ney Houston before,” he said. When air? That’s not daytime-friendly.’ ” W hen they learned that Williams would conduct Houston died, in 2012, Williams gave an she tried to socialize with the crew, Wil- the interview; Houston had recently made emotional eulogy on her show, and it was liams says, Hunter would wave her back her disastrous “crack is whack” appear- clear that her antagonism toward Hous- into her office. A former staffer describes ance with Diane Sawyer, and Williams ton had come out of deep identification. Hunter as a “horrific force” who would hadn’t held back in discussing Houston’s “Whitney and I—same age,” she said, in disrupt meetings and berate people. “Ev- strung-out demeanor. “I thought the issue a trembling voice. “And both plagued eryone knew about his girlfriend, and it was dead,” Vinny Brown, the station man- with the demon of substance abuse.” was hard for people who were closer to ager, recalled. “The next thing I know, Wendy to keep that from her,” the for- Wendy is running down the hallway, tell- illiams had shot various TV pi- mer staffer said. “I think she didn’t have ing me, ‘Boss, you ain’t going to believe Wlots during her radio years, but any life outside of him, and he controlled what I got on tape!’” Houston had called none had been picked up. “She’d come her completely.” the station directly, and she and Williams back discouraged and tell me, ‘Ah, I’m Eventually, Williams hired a private had got into a heated twenty-three-min- going to give up. I’m just going to be a investigator, who confirmed that Hunter ute off-air conversation. Williams had radio girl,’” Brown recalled. She wanted had a girlfriend. They even had a house recorded it—which was legal, since Hous- to flaunt her outrageous style, but the together, just nine miles from the house ton had willingly called a radio station— TV people usually asked her to wear he shared with Williams. In a rage, she and Brown gave her permission to air flat-front khakis and to limit her wigs went there, glued the lovers’ mailbox it. (Sample: “You are very defensive, Whit- to three. “I’m, like, No! There’s a wig shut, and spray-painted “Kevin + Wendy ney.” Houston: “I have to be, Wendy. for every occasion,” Williams said. 4ever” on the garage door. She refrained You talk about me every fucking day!”) When Debmar-Mercury approached from divorce proceedings until their son “That was the shot heard around the her, in 2008, she recalls, “they were the went to college. In the meantime, world,” he recalled. “Wendy called me first people who actually wanted me to Hunter kept an office at the show, even and said, ‘You ain’t gonna believe it. “Ac- just be me.” as the details of their disintegrating cess Hollywood,” “Entertainment To- Any notion that Williams might marriage trickled into the tabloids. night,” “Inside Edition”—everybody’s in adopt a softer, Oprah-like image for tele- On Halloween, 2017, Williams was the hallway wanting an interview.’” Brown vision evaporated during her six-week dressed as the Statue of Liberty for an

48 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 on-air costume contest. Mid-sentence, subject of salacious gossip had changed After the show, Wax Wendy took a she stumbled and passed out on the her perspective on talking about other van to the wax museum in Times Square, floor. After an emergency commercial people, she said no. “And you know why? while Real Wendy followed in a car. break, she was back on camera, explain- Because this is what I do,” she told me. Lurching through traffic, she said that ing that she had been overheated under Her “don’t dish it out if you can’t take the honor had been “worth every mo- her robe. “I was in the process of the it” ethos is ultimately her world view: ment: my career climb, even being mis- early stages of my divorce,” she told me. People talk, so why not do it in the open? understood. Worth every single second, “My son was going to college, so I was In September, 2019, Williams began because that’ll live in infamy. They’re now free to pack up the house, to fight.” her eleventh season, her first without catching me at the height of my beauty, She was also drinking wine more Hunter. In her Lifetime movies, this is as far as I’m concerned: beautiful on the frequently, although she insists that she a feel-good ending: Wendy unshackled inside, beautiful on the outside.” Grin- didn’t have a problem. “If you were in and in control. But the drama hasn’t faded ning, she added, “Now I can make Kev- love, and you were going through what entirely. One day last October, she gig- in’s life miserable forever, because I’ll be I was going through, why wouldn’t you gled and paused in a strange, halting way at Madame Tussauds in New York, or, come home and drink wine?” she said. during a “Hot Topics” segment, inviting if he goes out to L.A., he’ll see me on In 2018, she recalled, Hunter told her speculation about her well-being. After the Walk of Fame.” (Things with Mike that they were going to a resort in Flor- her mother died, late last year, Williams had fizzled. “She deserves to be with ida, and she flew there by private plane. and her brother publicly disputed whether someone who may have more time,” he When she arrived, her cell phone was or not Williams had attended the fu- told Page Six.) confiscated, and she discovered that it neral. Asked if she had made peace with Her son, who had come home from was a high-end recovery facility. “See, him, she said, “Who? Next!” For her college for the occasion, was in the back he needed someplace to shelter me, so viewers, the messiness only adds to her seat, in a hoodie and jeans. “I thought I wouldn’t hire P.I.s, read magazines, allure. “I think we’re all works in prog- it was her when I first saw it,” he said, talk on the phone, and catch him in the ress until we perish,” Williams told me. of Wax Wendy. “I was, like, ‘Why is she act,” she told me. She charmed the staff, “If you don’t allow yourself to be a work just sitting there smiling?’” offering to peel potatoes, until some- in progress, you’ll always be stuck on stu- At the museum, Wax Wendy had one sneaked her a phone. “I called him pid. And one thing I’m not is stupid.” been set up for a press unveiling in an up and said, ‘Look, get me back to New ersatz Oval Office, facing a gallery of York and get me someplace to stay, be- ast Monday morning, Williams came world leaders that included Wax Pope cause I’m not coming home to you.’ ” Lthrough the double doors of her set Francis, Wax Richard Nixon, and Wax At the start of 2019, “The Wendy Wil- and said, “I’m feeling overwhelmed.” It Golda Meir. (Wax Wendy’s home would liams Show” went on an extended hia- was a big day: a year ago, she had been be a room down the hall, across from tus, owing to Williams’s Graves’ disease. one of the last celebrities before the shut- Wax Don Draper holding a Scotch.) She changed her medical team, so that down to sit for a Madame Tussauds Amid a flock of photographers, the Hunter couldn’t have contact with the wax figure. For eight hours, artisans had “Good Day New York” anchor Rosanna doctors. The tabloids speculated that her scrutinized such particulars as her teeth, Scotto introduced Real Wendy, who drug problem had returned, and her staff her hair color, and the width was wheeled out on a chaise worried that the show might be over. of her nail beds. “They mea- by two shirtless men. “You When Williams came back, after three sured how far apart my eye- may have better placement months, she revealed on the air that she balls are,” she told me. The than the Holy Father,” was living at a sober house. She now says replica was constructed in Scotto said. that her thirty-day stay at the house, in London, with a head made “He’s supposed to look Queens, had been a compromise with of beeswax and Japan wax over all of us, so his place- Hunter, who, she claims, convinced her cast from a plaster mold, ment should not be impor- family (falsely) that she was in dire con- and human hair, inserted tant,” Williams declared. A dition. At the same time, Hunter’s mis- one strand at a time; it was reporter asked what advice tress (Williams calls her “the girl”) gave dressed in a papaya-colored she had for aspiring Wen- birth to a daughter. Hunter (allegedly!) jumpsuit and Gucci sneak- dys, and she said, “It’s a had the phone lines in Williams’s office ers from Williams’s own closet. The fig- climb that you have to do alone.” cut—her cell phone was still confis- ure had crossed the Atlantic in a cargo Wax Wendy had only one inconsis- cated—to prevent her from getting help. ship and was about to be revealed on air. tency, on her left hand. Since model- She continued hosting the show, even “Drumroll, please!” Williams said, ling for the figure, Williams had en- as her life came to resemble the celeb- and a red curtain parted to reveal Wax larged the diamond flower ring that she rity meltdowns she had made a career Wendy, smiling wide, on her own “Hot wears on the show for luck. “It’s a mari- out of rehashing. “Unlike other hosts, Topics” chair, an arm flung over the gold,” she had told me. “A marigold is she didn’t keep a lot of it secret,” Perler back. “My gosh,” Williams said. “They one of the most resilient flowers that said. “She would talk about it. And, all got copies of all my bracelets!” She you can plant, because they’re the ones of a sudden, she became the hottest topic.” peered at her doppelgänger and said, that the rabbits and squirrels don’t like. When I asked Williams if being the “You’ve got the rounds of my breasts!” They don’t mess with the marigold.” 

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 49 FICTION

Keith Ridgway

50 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY EIKO OJALA he fries an egg but leaves it then, gether like this, certainly not at her other one was laughing at his boy- lying in the pan until it is com- door, and she looked from one to the friend’s minute, barely felt discomfort, S pletely cold. She bites at her other and was baffled as to what was laughing at this small faux pas which nails and glances repeatedly at the going on, what on earth they were he had stumbled into in this old wom- window, seeing nothing but her tiny saying or what they wanted. She in- an’s kitchen, and the fact that both of empty garden and the tiny empty sky, vited them in. them were laughing a little too much until eventually she sighs and lowers —It won’t be insane. at this was making them laugh a lit- the blind. She feeds the cat, though —No, no, not at all, I mean it won’t tle more, laughing at the fact of their not with the egg, which she seems to even be, it certainly won’t be . . . Oh laughing, and it was only when all this have forgotten. While wiping the this is lovely. was going on that she fully under- table she stops suddenly and listens. —We’re keeping numbers down, oh stood that they were telling her they There is silence but for the usual it is lovely. were going to have a party. sounds of the house in the evening —Is this bigger than ours? It looks . . . She goes upstairs again, stepping and a light breeze outside—no hint —It looks it doesn’t it? It’s lovely into each room, looking around. It’s of rain—and the tick of the kitchen though. Much brighter, feels bigger warm. She stares out of windows, but clock. Perhaps it was that. She re- doesn’t it? You have the sink under the the sky is clear and in the back bed- sumes wiping, and brushes absolutely window, that’s much better, ours is in room she scowls at it, gives a panto- nothing into her cupped hand, which that corner. Oh, well, that corner I sup- mime shake of the fist. There’s never she examines briefly then slaps against pose, ha, it’s confusing . . . any rain. There hasn’t been rain in her hip. —It’s a mirror image isn’t it? weeks. The cat follows for a while, Her neighbors had knocked on her —Yes, I know, the same but opposite. complaining, then disappears. She can’t door during the week, on Thursday, She nodded and smiled and mo- hear anything, but the cat is skittish. just as she was finishing her tea. Two tioned at chairs, but they didn’t seem But maybe she is making the cat skit- boys. No, no. Men. They’re men, and to notice and all three of them were tish because she is skittish. Skittish, it annoys her, the way a part (what just standing there, the two boys she says out loud. Skitt. Ish. part?) of her brain insists on them as looking at her sideboards as if a lit- In her bedroom she closes the cur- boys. They aren’t boys. They are cer- tle annoyed. tains almost completely, leaving a gap tainly men, and almost or perhaps —It was done, she said, ending a which she tests to make sure that it even middle-aged men. Objectively. small silence that had risen like gas. gives her a view of the front of their They are younger than her but they Last year. The presses. I mean the cup- house. Impossible to see the door. Just are not young. How could they be, boards. The floor, new taps, work, uh, their patch of gravel next to her patch buying a house? In fact, they are prob- work surfaces? All that. of gravel. And the bins, theirs and hers, ably the same age she was when she —So bright. Cheerful. back to back with the wall between and . . . her husband had bought their —We should start saving. them, the colors matching, green, blue, house. Her house. So, thirty. About —We’ll add it to the list! and brown. Had they done that on thirty. Probably they are older because —The infinite list! purpose? Maybe it’s a coincidence. it takes so long now to find the money. And they just stood there for a mo- Maybe the bin men did it. She looks They are either older or richer. Prob- ment, smiling at her. The two young at her watch and the cat reappears, a ably both. To be able to buy, just the men, in her kitchen, with their faces living thing at her legs. A motorbike two of them, a house like this. It was and their hands and their necks. roars by. She sits on her bed and then exactly like her house, mirrored. When —Do you want to sit down? I can lies on her bed, and then the cat joins they walked through their front door make some more tea? her and she gets up. they had everything on the right that —No no no please don’t, no need —No, she says. she had on the left. for that at all, thanks very much. She goes to the wardrobe, deciding A couple, full of smiles, loud —We only wanted to let you know that she wants to change her clothes. friendly voices, one of them north- really. They had offered her things. For ern, bits of tattoos poking out from —As I said, we’re keeping the num- the noise. Not that there would be much under collars and cuffs, earrings, nice bers down, and it’s not going to be a noise. It would not be very loud, they boys, men, and there they were at her wild affair, we promise. We’re too old said. They hoped, they said, that it door, one of them with a bag and both for that now. would not be very loud. They had just speaking more or less at once, all They both laughed loudly at this, wanted to tell her in person, rather smiles, though, and they have never which she didn’t really understand than sticking a note through her let- done this before, it’s always been chats until she realized they weren’t laugh- terbox. Notes through letterboxes wasn’t over the wall in the summer, meeting ing because they thought it was funny, very neighborly, was it? Bit passive- out the front sometimes, the north- they were laughing because they aggressive somehow said one of them, ern one calling over when they had thought she was old, and the one who and Yes, I suppose so said the other. So a leak, worried that it would spread, had said it had said it without think- they’d argued about that. One of them, but it didn’t, but she had never, ing and he had laughed to cover his that one, had said Let’s just stick a note she thought, had the two of them to- very slight embarrassment, and the through the stupid old cow’s letterbox. Or

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 51 something like that. Anyway, they said, He laughed and showed them get going until after nine or something. we thought we’d just call around. Really to her. A little box from Boots. He They looked at each other. sorry to interrupt your tea. And bring put them down on the table. —Eight, nine. Whenever people some things, said the other one. —It might get a bit loud at some show up I suppose. With the long eve- —What things? point said the other one. You know. nings no one thinks it’s evening until —Well, where are we, here we are, And they, the earplugs I mean, might the sun goes down. Especially if it’s a this is a just let you get to sleep or whatever. nice day, which is what’s forecast. He was pulling some sort of, what Because you know the way these —Saturday? on earth, headphones? Big black things, things go. They can go late some- —Yes, Saturday. This Saturday. You’ll with the big fat pads for the ears. times, people won’t leave. So the ear- be here? —Headphones here, for this, which plugs might just —Yes. Yes, I’ll be here. is this old —Well, O.K. Thank you. Where else would she be? They all A small . . . a phone? She had her own earplugs. She didn’t looked at each other. —An iPod. My old iPod. And I have an iPod. —That’s everything. I think. don’t know what you like obviously, or —And this is in case none of that They moved toward the door, even if this is a stupid idea, you might works said the other one. He was hold- quieter now. She had not helped, she not want to listen to anything at all, ing a bottle of wine. He laughed, put thought. She had been silent and they but there’s playlists on there, some it on the table. It’s a nice red, well, we could see her face. She wanted to easy-listening things, some pop stuff, like it. In any case, that’s yours. smile and laugh and joke with them. and some classical as well, you can, will —Thanks. There’s no need for that. Tell them that it was fine, they weren’t I show you what, will I show you how —Well, it’ll do no harm. And to worry, they should have a nice this works? here’s some chocolate mints, if you night, make as much noise as they —I know how an iPod works she like that sort of thing. I love them. I liked, she wouldn’t mind. But she said. I have an iPod. could go through a whole box with- did mind. She felt anger. She was —Oh! Oh, well, there you go. out even noticing. angry. That, in any case, was what she He started to put it back into the —He could, and he does. told herself. bag, laughing again. —Anyway, that’s the lot. —Such a lovely house. —Well, you’re all set for that al- She looked at what they’d brought —So lovely. ready then, not that I think, you know, for her. She pictured herself in the liv- —Thank you. like we said, I really don’t think it’s ing room, in the armchair, her ears —Bye! going to be all that, well you never plugged with foam, drinking wine and —Bye! know, anyway, most likely just the eating the After Eights. —Bye. music, the bass, and a bit of, ha, bab- —What time is your party? ble, and here are some earplugs as well —Oh, I don’t know. I imagine it won’t he runs her hands over the wall as Sshe goes downstairs. Over its pe- culiar bumps and mounds. She has put on a pair of pale cotton trousers which are too baggy but cool, and an ancient top that had been his. Hers. Hers then his now hers. It is difficult to explain. The cat is annoying her, following her, looking at her, making plaintive little noises. —I don’t know what you want. In the kitchen she runs her hands over the wall between the fridge and the cooker. Stares at it. Turns her head and rests her ear against its cool lumpy surface. Everything is quiet. Every- thing. Nothing. Her hand in front of her is wrinkled, its skin doesn’t look like her own. She lives less in her body now, she thinks. After all that. Her body is ceasing to be relevant, even to her. It has less and less to do with her. And it is healthy, it remains healthy, which is the strangest difference. It is “I don’t fear the wrath of God, but His nervous like having an elderly friend who you laugh scares the hell out of me.” rarely see. The paint on the wall is a very pale ing to make out what was going on. and blinks her eyes and breathes again, green. She has no interest in repaint- Maybe that had been a party as well. and again. She has slept for far too ing anything. Ever, she thinks, child- Maybe it had. And if so, perhaps this long, a couple of hours maybe, and is ishly. Ancient. Lives are like buttons. one would be the same. Not so bad confused and frightened, though she She takes her head away from the in other words. Perhaps no one would is also, as she begins to understand wall and steps back and wonders if she’s turn up. Perhaps they were unpopular the situation, still alive, and still her- got the day wrong. She glances at the and no one would come. Perhaps it self, and this is the room where she clock, and at her watch. It’s far too early was too warm, perhaps it would rain, sleeps and has slept for most of her of course, but why aren’t they in their perhaps the world would end sud- life. Various incorrect ideas about what kitchen, making preparations? Perhaps denly and without warn- is happening fall away they are very organized. ing and the only remaining from her and are imme- She looks at the dent. It’s up near trace of humanity would diately lost as she closes the top of the wall, out of her reach. be those robots, wandering in on the truth, remem- A dent. She doesn’t know what hap- through the cold empty bers who is dead, who lives pened. She thinks that it can’t have universe like old women next door now, who is hav- been there before he died because he in empty houses. ing a party, that this is the would have fixed it. But she also thinks She laughs. party, that it has started, that he might have dented it—banged She goes out to the hall that what she is hearing into it with a ladder or hit it with a again. Another motorbike is laughter and voices and stray hammer when he was doing roar. Then voices. Outside. they are not in her house something else, and that maybe he’d She stops where she is. It’s they are next door, and intended to fix it but died instead. too early, surely. It is too early. They that she cannot hear any music. She His domestic life had been a cycle of are just passersby. Cars every few min- lies there, confused, still frightened, breaking things then fixing them. utes. Sirens down on the main road. in a paralyzed grip, the grip of every- Clocks, shelves, the boiler, himself. The rumbling planes. She thinks she thing which feels about to fall apart But maybe it had always been there. might open the front door. She’s al- in her life, her diminishing life, and Always. An ancient indentation. Is lowed to do that. She lives here. Open why is there no music? But she is not that even the right word? A triangu- the front door. Go out to her gate. paralyzed. She raises her head. The lar bit of the plaster pushed in. A dark Stand there looking up and down the cat is curled up beside her but is also black upper edge to it—the start of a street. People do that. It’s a perfectly confused, and stares at her. hole—that seemed wider now than acceptable thing to do. Balmy eve- —Yes. Don’t worry. it had been. ning. Neighbors, passersby. Hello. Yes, She strokes the cat and they make In winter she imagines that a draft how are you? She had wondered, quite stupid noises at each other. comes through it and thinks briefly, often, if the CUNT was her. If they Then the music starts up. She for the duration of a slightly colder had been shouting so that she could freezes. breath of air across her shoulders, that hear. If they were drunk and they hated —My God. she should fix it. On the one or two her and it hadn’t been an argument It has probably started up not for times when she has been aware of noise at all but rather a bout of abuse, a the first time but again. It is a throb from next door, she has looked at it bout of neighborly elder abuse, and and a pressure. The cat jumps off the suspiciously, as if it is responsible. Per- she was the CUNT and they had bed and onto the wardrobe shelf and haps it would be a good place to put shouted it so that she would have no burrows into cardigans. She usually her ear. They’d had a fight once. doubt. She had thought all this sev- forbids that. But now she lets it hap- Couldn’t make it out. Except, perhaps, eral times and knew it was simply not pen. She might climb in there too. She CUNT, very loudly, and a big, serious true, that it was a manifestation of might. This is awful. It occurs to her silence then. A door slammed. Maybe paranoia engendered by her depres- that perhaps the music stopping was she was making that up, the door slam. sion, by the feeling of loneliness, what had woken her. Perhaps she could She couldn’t remember if there had worthlessness, with which she had have slept all the way through it if the been anything else. struggled since his death. music hadn’t stopped. Her dream had The dent is a couple of inches long, So, whatever way you looked at it, been something . . . something sharp, like a corner peeled back on a yogurt it was her fault. but it has fled now. tub. No. Like a corner pushed in on She goes upstairs again and lies on She could go out. something. The way you open a box the bed and falls asleep. It is too late. There would be no- of tissues. It was a year ago proba- where open. Nowhere for her. bly, the argument. It had embarrassed hen she wakes, the party has She could just walk. her more than anything. And there Wstarted and she cannot move. She eases herself off the bed and had been another time, not long after It takes her a little while to fully re- stands up. The cat watches her. She they moved in, when she had heard alize anything. The room is dim, as if is stiff and her mouth is dry and she music and laughing and loud voices forgotten. Her body has settled and thinks she will brush her teeth and and had stood looking at the dent try- failed. She is dead. Then she breathes find her earplugs. When she turns to

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 53 A little white island with a little yel- low lake. Obviously there is an explanation. She fried an egg and forgot about it. Has she eaten? She can’t remember. Is she hungry? She stands by the sink and pulls the side of the window blind toward her and peers through the gap. She can see a couple of people. Three or four peo- ple. Young people. One of them throws their head back and she thinks they’re laughing but . . . he, maybe, he . . . is drinking from a can. Another has sun- glasses pushed onto the top of their head. But the fence is quite high and all she can see are the top halves of faces, or just hair, or skin, butterflies amongst them. They might all be naked, she thinks. The sky is a deep dark blue, far from turning black, and a plane crawls across it, and it is still warm. She takes the pan and scoops the egg into the bin and feels tearful and “I just can’t wait until all this is over.” goes to sit in the living room. She’s put the earplugs down somewhere. She thinks she should eat something. The •• noise is ridiculous. She sits in the arm- chair in the corner and looks out at the leave the cat makes a furious protest, the laughter, the huge bursts of laugh- hall. She stares at the wall, she thinks and then leaps out to join her. She ter that come every few seconds, which she can see it moving, the way you can walks along the corridor in the gloom, punch through the wall as if directed see a pulse in a neck or a wrist. But she not daring to turn on any lights, to at her personally. She stands in the can’t see that. It’s not moving. the bathroom, wary of the wall, imag- bathroom staring astonished at her It occurs to her suddenly that the ining that it is bulging with sound, own face in the mirror and just lis- shared wall between two terraced houses like the skin of a drum, though of tens. The cat at her legs. is often called the party wall. course it is doing nothing of the sort. Downstairs she considers what lights She laughs. But this is so loud. She is still half to turn on and settles for the lamp in —Party wall. asleep, and she knows that she is, but the living room which throws light into She’s right isn’t she? She thinks about this is so loud, this is not what she the hall, and one of the kitchen lights, it and decides that she is. This seems had expected, surely it can’t be this the one over the table. She isn’t sure inordinately funny. It changes some- loud? The cat is mewling behind her, why she is thinking about lights so thing. She laughs out loud, actually following her all the way into the bath- carefully, or at all. It is something to claps her hands together, has a little fit room—no rules tonight, bauble—and do with her presence in her own house. of the giggles. The party wall. What’s she splashes her face and brushes her She is . . . wrong with her? Why is she sitting teeth and rummages in the drawer There is a fried egg sitting in the miserably in the gloom in her own for her earplugs, which are many years frying pan on top of the cooker. house, just because next door is hav- old, and all the while there is the throb What an astonishingly odd-look- ing a party? Yes, it’s loud, but parties of next door at her back, a boom and ing thing. are loud. She has made plenty of noise press of bass, like a heat against the She thinks then that she might have in her time. It will not last forever. It wall, like a fire, and sometimes the left the ring on, and is momentarily will, in a few hours, be over. This is not haze, the flick of other things on top furious, but of course the egg is cold, Hell. Let them have their party. For of it, singing and instruments and as is the pan. She has no explanation. God’s sake. melody, things jumping and spitting The earplugs are still in her hand. She gets up and finds the earplugs on a pan. And the voices, all the voices She is trying not to attract attention. beside the cooker and puts them in her boiling together, people having to She is trying not to disturb the people ears and that improves things too. It shout to make themselves heard, who are making the noise. She is try- muffles and distorts the noise. And it shouting out, and you might think ing to be unobtrusive next to this. makes her own breathing and her own they’re dying in there if it was not for What is wrong with her? voice when she talks to the cat loud

54 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 and warm in her head and she likes surd. What could she do with all that still battling something, or because of that and talks more because of it. The time? Although. It felt like no more the wine—she laughs very loudly, a cat won’t leave her side. I would put than the click of a couple of seconds great explosion of mirth, good Lord, earplugs in your ears too baby, but you’d since he’d died, and a minute or two and stops. have my eye out wouldn’t you? You’d have since they’d met, and maybe half an Would they hear that? my eye out! hour since she was a girl. Since Ireland. She hopes they did, but they wouldn’t She wanders around for a while. The whole thing was absurd no mat- would they? Impossible to judge with She looks out into the back again. No ter which way you turned. And how the earplugs in. She probably hadn’t one there now. She goes to the front banal, she thinks, how predictable and been loud at all. No. Maybe one of door, peers through the glass and can dull, to think of time at all. them might have heard her. Young, half see some shapes in front of their There is only now, in all its perpet- good ears. A shy girl in their hall, lean- house. She pulls back when she real- ual detail, as deep as a well. ing against the shared wall—the party izes that she is a face at the glass. She She goes upstairs and spies on them wall! what is wrong with you? it’s not goes upstairs and goes through the through the back bedroom. Youngsters. that funny—pretending to be inter- complicated procedure of lying on the Light summer clothes. Chatting and ested in her boyfriend’s conversation floor to peek through the curtain. They laughing. Drinks, joints, cigarettes. with his friend, but bored really, or that are smokers mostly out there, the rise Those machines with the big clouds. variation on boredom that comes chiefly and fall of their orange dots. They mur- It is a big party. Well done them. She from shyness, from wanting to be else- mur and laugh a little. She worries that goes downstairs and has more wine. A where. She would be listening to them she can be seen and ducks her head novel thing these days, wine. She musn’t have a conversation about politics, about and lies flat. The cat climbs on top of overdo it. sport . . . no, more likely politics, about her and she laughs. She waits for a After a while she finds herself with the . . . what . . . the eccentric, in inter- while, to catch her breath, and the cat her ear to the kitchen wall again. It is national terms, confusion of the Brit- settles, and then she tries to crawl back- muffled. She takes out her earplugs and ish left. She would be drifting off in ward from the window and the cat is immediately puts them back in. She her mind, thinking how nice it would on her shoulder, confused, and she is stares at the hole above her head, and be if she were on her own, at home, laughing again, more giggles, and this looks around for a while. The hole looks reading a book, watching something, is just ridiculous, look at her, lying on terribly interesting. She wonders if it asleep, instead of here at this mostly the floor with the cat practically sit- goes all the way through to the other male—but allowed, because also mostly ting on her head, and it is no small side. Whether she can look through it. gay—party, where the straight women thing for a woman of her age to get Let’s go to the party! Let’s make some are ostentatiously welcome, where the up from down here, with an animal new friends! Find out what the young gay men think of themselves as the attached, what on earth was she think- people are like now. See what they get up best sort of men, rather than what they ing, and she makes it eventually to the to. Come on. I’ll look after you. This, his might profit from, which was to not bed, still laughing, and manages to get voice, still so easy to remember, and to think of themselves at all, or certainly awkwardly to her feet, calling herself hear saying these things, not as much, and to refuse a ludraman. or things like them, though that particular tail pinned London, she thinks to herself. In only glancingly. When she on that particular donkey, England. Of the world’s many ludicrous tries to slow it down, to but very few of them think places she had to choose London. actually imagine his face, like that, attached as they She goes downstairs, opens the bot- and his voice, it falls apart. are to the business end of tle of wine, and pours a glass. Not because she cannot re- things, which they cannot, member, but because there most of them—maybe she fter a while, more people drift out is too much to remember was being unfair—most of Ato the garden at the back. Or they and it all comes at once, them cannot separate from drift out there again. She can hear them. and she is cowed by the the naming of the thing, A clearer sort of laughter, more human, scale of her loss. It seems and the naming rights, the understandable, coming to her through too important and vast to be hers alone. bragging rights . . . now she has lost the kitchen. She goes and looks, but —Shoo shoo, baby, she says, bright her train of thought. the fence makes it pointless really, just as she can, ostensibly to the cat. The cat has vanished. the tops of heads, just young hair and She goes to the cupboard under the She stares at the stepladder. Yes. She fringes and she wonders how long she stairs where there is a stepladder and had laughed. So maybe some shy girl has to live. Of course, she might die she moves a couple of boxes to get at on the other side of the wall who was tomorrow. He did. But if everything it. The boxes are light, just decorations, not enjoying the party very much might keeps declining at the same rate, and tinsel, and the stepladder is good, new— have heard her. That was all. That was given the age of her mother when she’d she bought it online after she fell from the thought. What if the girl, being cu- died, and adding on a few years for bet- a chair while changing a light bulb in rious, were to ask someone, Who lives ter drugs and what have you, she might the living room. It was nearly the dying next door? And on finding out that it last another decade. That seemed ab- room she thinks and—because she is is—what would they say—it’s an old

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 55 woman, some deaf old woman who lives on her own, what would happen if the girl, being curious, were to wan- IN THE CLOUD der out of the house then, being just a little curious and quite a lot bored, hav- I made a list I can’t find now ing said to her boyfriend something (where did all my folders go?) like I’ll be back in a minute, not that he of words my students didn’t know. cares anyway, talking now as he is loudly Turmeric, poultice, fallacy, about the failure of social-democratic cadence, meringue, Antigone, parties in Europe, and off she wanders, last but not least Persephone away down the hallway, down their cor- are just a few that stick with me, ridor hallway to the front door, which plucked from the poems that we read is open, excusing herself past people, (I tried to stay a week ahead) squeezing past people, and out into the between September and December. little patch of gravel, probably walking Many more I don’t remember. on the gravel because the path has peo- But think of all the words they knew ple standing on it, and out the gate and or thought they knew. I thought so, too. to the right and then again to the right, Thinking too hard, though, doesn’t do. and through this other little patch of Words deeply pondered start to freeze— gravel, two steps up the path which she as when before our tired eyes has entirely to herself, and she lifts the Zoom stalls and stops (and no surprise), knocker and lets it drop. leaving a dark screen, a blank hour Moments are eternal. to fill with after and before. She steps back a little. Sticks her Nonsense syllables devour head around the corner of the cupboard denotations. Happy, sad; under the stairs and looks at the front door. Just shadows and glows. Noth- ing sharp or definite, nothing moving. What would she have done if a tipsy girl came calling? She laughs again, but away. Because how can you tell your life, the shopping and the library and much quieter now. No one would hear story? How, now? There was a person the visit once in a while from people that. No one would ever hear that. She I loved. Who says person? A man I who were friends but who now are imagines the awkwardness. The girl at loved. A man? A woman who became strange old men, strange old women, her door trying to make friends with a man. Yes. There was someone I loved. who sit in her living room and talk her, trying to escape the boring party, And there it is. And I love him still, about the television and their internal wanting to come in, expecting tea be- more than I can possibly explain, in organs, so that they confuse one with cause she is so tired of these lukewarm that way that she doesn’t have to ex- the other, and she confuses them one sweet drinks that fuzz up her head and plain, in that way that everyone already for the other and they ask her how all she wants is a good refreshing tea understands, apparently, that same way she’s doing and she says all right. All and the chance to sit down for a nice that is not very different to anyone else right. I loved a person. She died. He chat with an old lady, a chat about what, who loves a person, a dead person, a died. That is all there is to it. A per- tell me about your life she’d ask, tell me gone person, as if all love is the same son. Love. Death. It is stupid. It is barely about the war, what bloody war what in the end, a click of the tongue, a sin- a story. It is not a story. are you talking about I’ve never been gle tear, and people nod and know, isn’t It is not a story. in a bloody war, no more than you have that terrible, she loved a man and he died, She tuts at herself and takes the you idiot and there is no girl she does God love her, but better to have loved stepladder to the kitchen. not exist. and died, loved and died, loved and . . . It is her life. She picks up the stepladder. She Because he died, the end of all stories, puts it down again. and all stories are the same story, and t feels foolish. To open the ladder If a girl like that existed she would here I am, the leftover part, the unre- Iand to set it sideways against the not be so rude. So stupid. You are sim- solved plot, the loose end, the woman wall. So she does that and then stands ply deflecting away any possibility of in the house, the house in the woman, back and looks at it, smoothing out her empathy, connection, offer of friend- the cat, the unkempt garden, the clothes top with her hands. The cat has reap- ship. You are running away from your in the wardrobe that she cannot throw peared. The noise now is something own story. You are bitter and lonely out and cannot wear, the furniture she she imagines. Perhaps it has stopped. and terrified that you will be like this moves so that she can forget, and moves She goes and takes a sip from her for the rest of your life. But if some- back again so that she can remember, wineglass in the living room, fiddling one were to knock on your door and and remembering anyway whatever as she walks back with one of the ear- ask you your story you would turn them she does, lost in a little roundabout plugs, reassuring herself that things are

56 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 head, and then slightly bigger than her head. She sticks her head in it. Defi- nite damp. A leak, she hopes. Rather than rising. She taps on the other side joyful or lonely; good or bad: of the cavity. Also damp. She can even What does this mean to you? I said. see, a little to her left, but lower down, What does beautiful really mean? a bit of light, which seems to be a small I asked them as I tried to lean hole, on their side, through which . . . into the noncommittal screen, The noise is slightly louder, especially scanning until my eyes were sore the voices. A dozen conversations rid- for the soul in each black square. dled with laughter. She thinks of tak- Were there really people there? ing out her earplugs. Did each name hide a secret face He’d have been laughing at her by sheltering somewhere in place, now. He is dead and there is nothing some unimaginable space? of him left in the world at all. No one Each word they may have learned from me remembers him except her. He liked in Gen. Ed. “Reading Poetry” parties, liked people. He would talk to carries its meaning quietly, all of them, her hovering shyly at his concealed behind the livid glow shoulder. There are some who still re- of all we learned we didn’t know. member him of course. She assumes. Alone together, here we are, But they have stopped coming. And in stranded in our shared nowhere, any case, they had not known her. marooned in space, while, free from time, She is surprised by the cavity. Sur- meanings proliferate and chime prised that it seems empty. There are as words, unfettered, dance and rhyme. wooden beams and there are wires and cables and there is something silver like —Rachel Hadas a trestle to her right, and there are bricks beyond that. Old dark bricks and that’s where the damp smell seems stron- as bad as she imagines them to be, and size of her fist. She drops the clump and gest—in that direction. There will be they are. But they are no worse. pulls at another. It feels a little like damp mice. The cat does a good job, but they She climbs the ladder and sees the clay, like soil she tore as a child from have their paths and the tunnels and kitchen from a new angle. The top of the bank of a stream at the edge of a their halls, and the inside of the wall— the fridge is covered in dust. The table field, and she hasn’t remembered that she thinks, and thinks it’s the way it looks small, the chairs childish, the sink in years. It would come off in big pieces should be—belongs to them. The cat below the window looks cheap and that held for a moment, then collapsed. does a good job. Where is the cat? useless. She hovers for a moment close She drops another clump and the She leans too heavily and the plas- to the ceiling, looking down. It is like cat runs off. ter at her hands gives way suddenly and a doll’s house. She turns and peers into —Sorry, button. she sways slightly sideways, feeling the the hole. She can’t see anything. She She used to tell him about the place ladder tip away from her and for a mo- pokes her finger into it and immedi- she grew up. He would get her to de- ment she thinks she is going to fall ately feels a drop in temperature. The scribe it all in great detail, because he completely, but she doesn’t, she’s fine, rim of the hole feels almost damp. She wanted he said to draw a map of it in the ladder rights itself, and she is caught pinches an edge and it crumbles be- his head. She would ask him to do the by the plaster on the left of what is tween her fingers, plaster and paint same, but he had grown up in a place now, suddenly, a very considerable hole. dropping to the floor. She takes her he did not want to remember, and he They’ll have heard that, surely. finger out and presses her eye to it. She would make things up, castles and for- She gingerly regains her balance, can’t really see anything. A gap, then ests and elaborate and impossible for- grabbing one of the wooden beams in something dark and flat, presumably tresses cut into the sides of cliffs. That the cavity as a support. The cat has re- the wall on their side. Why are there was their exchange. She took him back appeared and is lecturing her, the squeaks no bricks? She is surprised that there in time to a small farm and tiny adven- finding a way through the complicated seems to be nothing between two sheets tures. He took her to places that had hum of her earplugs, and they look at of plaster. Is that how they do it? It never existed. each other for a moment, one looking can’t be. It seems absurd. It’s nothing. He’d have taken her to the party. down, the other looking up. The pile of There is a definite smell of damp. He’d have negotiated an invitation with shattered plaster on the floor seems She gets a decent grip. Tugs, ner- a breezy laugh and a bottle of some- smaller than the gap it has left behind. vously, too gently. She tugs harder and thing. He knew how to have people in She slowly descends the ladder. a small clump of plaster comes away in a house. Now what? her hand and the hole opens up to the Soon there is a hole the size of her She goes and has another sip of

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 57 wine. She doesn’t care. He would hate She thinks that if she tugs a line of the world has wrapped itself around this. He’d be angry. It will cost a for- plaster out on her side, as far as the her, embraced her house with music tune to fix. What have you done? His hole on their side, she will be able to and laughter. The world is here. And anger would be incredulous and would see through. As she is thinking about she feels she should say hello. stretch and snap into laughter. He liked this she rests her hands on the plas- fixing things, improving them, mak- ter just below the level of her chest, he takes her time. She dries her ing them over. She laughs at this as if she is looking over a fence, and Seyes. Fishes a tissue from her pocket thought. Everything is far too compli- she must think that’s what she’s doing, and blows her nose. She climbs slowly cated to explain. because she goes up on her toes, puts to her feet, gripping the backs of the Back at the coalface. The cat is on too much weight on it, and the whole chairs, the table. She is lucky she wasn’t the table, staring at the hole, astonished. thing suddenly crumbles and falls— knocked out but still feels that she —I know, baby. I know. plaster, paint, a great rubble of Sheet- might have been. She washes her hands and peeks rock, falling on her legs and her feet, Perhaps she is dead? outside again. The dark is rising now, and for a second she thinks that the She checks herself again for blood and the tops of the heads are silhou- whole lot is coming down, the whole or bumps but there is nothing. ettes. She looks at the clock. She tries wall, the whole house, and she stum- —Gather round, she says to the cat. to forget how to read the time. She bles backward and loses her balance Gather round and hear how sad I am. is . . . it is as if she is stuttering through and falls with a clatter into the chairs Boo-hoo. time or time is stuttering by her, ar- around the table. After washing her hands again, and rested as she is every few moments by Clarity. shifting some of the rubble with her some internal or external distraction Not one then the other. Not day and feet, and pulling away the last of the which catches her, snags her, holds her then night. Not a woman and then a plaster above the skirting board, she tries somewhere away from herself for an man. There is only one moment, and to extend the big hole in her side of the instant and when she snaps back to it continues. The body had changed wall so that it meets the tiny hole in now it is a different now to the now but there was only one face. In her theirs so that she can look at the party. from which she was, she feels, some memory, there was only one. In the But all the remaining plaster is solid seconds ago, abducted. Again and again, parks sometimes, they would laugh and now, she can’t break it. She hurts her in her own kitchen, kidnapped by some the rain would never fall. fingers trying. She presses herself into minute and ridiculous mechanism of She finds herself sitting on the floor. the hole and turns her head to the left violence. She thinks of it as violence. She feels fine. But also feels that she and shuffles as far as she can in that di- For every time she is propelled back may very briefly have lost conscious- rection, inside the cavity, toward the into now she has a definite though ob- ness. She has been away, somewhere. light. She laughs. She is this thin. scure sense of damage. Something took her and now she is —Mother of God, she says, and She snaps away from the sink, back back. She feels her head, and looks at laughs again. The cat is on her foot. to the hole. The cat is on the ladder, her hand. Nothing. Her legs are cov- She shuffles back and turns her head looking in, the brave thing, ered in a chalky dust. The and tells him to get off. but jumps down as soon cat is standing in the door —Go asleep now, button. Go have as she approaches. She with a look of disbelief on a nice sleep. You’ll be all right. looks at her work. It is the his face. He appears to be She thinks then about feeding him. shape of a rough bell, a talking to her, but she can- There are hours until breakfast. Why battered bell swinging not hear anything except would she feed him now? Neverthe- right. The bottom of it is the smothered confusion less. She finds herself refilling his water low enough for her to in her ears and she takes at the sink and shaking some new chew- move the ladder out of the a moment to remember ables into his bowl. What is she at? way and look in. Wooden the party and to establish She’s not going anywhere. He follows, beams. A narrow frame, that it is still going on. She peering at her, his eyes wide, chatter- plasterboard hung on each leans forward and peers ing away as if she’s not listening, which side of it. Cheap idea of a wall. Bricks over the cat toward the front door. she isn’t, but as if she should be, as if to the right, the house proper. The What an idiot. this is very important, this information. kitchens of course were added on, and She does not have words. —I don’t know what you want, baby. must have been added at the same There is a dictionary on a shelf in Shush now. time so why bother with bricks. She the living room. But it works the wrong And she goes back into the wall. reaches in and feels around. Quite a way around. There is no combination She holds her breath and tries to wide cavity. The damp is just on her of words that can even begin. squeeze further along, her left arm out- side. Theirs is more solid, drier. To her Yes, there is. stretched toward the light, such as it left, at about eye level, there is light. Why now? is, a glow from their kitchen. Definitely some sort of hole into their Why not? She pulls in her stomach, her chest, kitchen. She reaches for it, knocking She is trapped in the place where moves another couple of inches. Behind a little more plaster off in the process. she hides from the world and suddenly her she can feel the plaster shift but it

58 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 doesn’t give. She turns her head. It is difficult. She cannot quite. He was very funny. Always very funny. The two of them in stitches on the bus. As a child she had always made her brothers laugh. Then a long time without laughter. Then she met him, and the laughter started up again, and didn’t stop. Until he died. And since then it had been the mem- ory only, and the stupid jokes she would fall into and he would be back for an instant then gone again, and the dam- age, the damage was considerable. Laughter, no laughter, laughter again, and then the ghosts. Two ghosts with the one face. There is a rib of wood at her back stopping her. She pushes with all her might against it. She is not mighty. But something shifts. She moves another inch, another two, and she can see now, “You may be a good wrestler, but you’re a terrible dancer.” sideways, through the tiny hole. Light, shapes, the movement of figures. She •• pushes back and sideways again and she gets her head turned a little to the front and she can see. is crisper, clearer, of people, so close, and Her hand is still above her shoul- She can see them. she can practically hear the words. But der. She can’t seem to lower it. As it’s It’s as if they are not allowed near it’s quieter now. The music has stopped. there, she puts a finger in the hole and the wall. They stand instead to her left, What is happening? There is laughter. pulls a little at the edges. It is smaller near the garden, and in front of her, They are all looking at the door out of than her eye. The song is maybe French. leaning on the counters, in little groups, the kitchen, the door into the rest of She works at it with her finger, so that moving past each other. She realizes the house. Boys. Not boys. Young men. it becomes as large as her fingertip, that there is a table against the wall. She Young women. She sees them. In their then as large as the first of her knuck- can see the tops of bottles and cans down T-shirts and tops, with their drinks. les. She pulls her finger out. It is as there. She can see the young people. She She sees a couple with linked arms. She large as her eye now. The voice is beau- can see their full faces, their lips, their sees a young man with a beautiful smile, tiful. Full of emotion. She puts her eye shoulders. She can see them happy. leaning on another man’s shoulder. She against the hole and holds it there and This is great. sees the bored girl. Well, goodness. Her looks at the girl. —Take off your life like trousers, bored girl. There she is. That’s abso- The singing stops. There is a mo- she says. lutely her. But she doesn’t look so bored. ment in which nothing happens. She can’t remember what that’s from. She looks anxious, poor love. She is Then there is applause, and there Then the music stops. What is this? standing with her arms folded, leaning are raised voices and all the people The music has suddenly disappeared. against where the sink must be. in the kitchen seem to crowd around Have they seen her? Oh, God. She thinks she can hear whistling. the door. She tries to move back the way she Then a voice begins to sing. A man’s Except for the bored girl. She isn’t came, but she can’t. She is. She can’t voice. A single voice. Singing. He used bored though, she’s curious. She has be. She is. They aren’t looking at her. to sing. She, too. The voice never re- moved toward the table. She stands They are looking toward the door. She ally changed, one to the other. Noth- peering at the hole, an expression on can still feel the wooden rib at her back. ing did. Not really. They had loved each her face. What is she doing? Oh. She She is stuck. She thinks she’s stuck. other better, maybe. More carefully. is staring at the eye. Which is what she Possibly stuck. She cannot turn her This voice, though. It’s very good. Very sees. An eye in the wall. head. Oh, dear Lord. full. It is commanding. It carries a mel- She lifts her hand. She goes through a complicated pro- ody, strongly. It’s a good voice. Famil- She opens her mouth. cedure of raising her hand in the crev- iar, almost. ice and holding it out to her side and Then the whistling again. ut wait. Wait until I tell you. then over, and bending it above her Then the voice. B This story I have.  shoulder, out and over, and she pulls The bored girl has closed her eyes the earplug from her right ear, and im- to listen. She no longer looks anxious. NEWYORKER.COM mediately drops it, idiot, but the sound She is smiling. She is very pretty. Keith Ridgway on the idea of home.

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 59 THE CRITICS

BOOKS ART MADE FLESH

The life of Francis Bacon.

BY JOAN ACOCELLA

have always been very moved by All of this went into Bacon’s work. “ pictures about slaughterhouses In his “Head I” (1947-48), now in the I and meat,” the painter Francis Metropolitan Museum, in New York, Bacon said to an interviewer in 1962. we see a head sliced off just below the He regarded meat with fellow-feeling. nose. The mouth is open, screaming, “If I go into a butcher’s shop, I always and the teeth are a mess. Bacon included think it’s surprising that I wasn’t there that picture in his first major one-man instead of the animal,” he later said. show, in 1949, in London. The critics We have a photograph of him gazing had a field day at this exhibition. They serenely out at us from between two told their readers that if they went they sides of beef. Cloven carcasses—in- would see “a tardily evolved creature deed, piles of miscellaneous innards— which had slithered out from below a recur in his paintings. Basically, he liked large stone that had been in a noisome whatever was inside, as opposed to out- cellar for a century or two.” Wyndham side, the skin. Lewis described “shouting creatures in His favorite body part was the mouth. glass cases, . . . dissolving ganglia.” Once, in a bookshop in Paris, he found Yet the ganglia were interesting, Lewis an old medical treatise on diseases of found: “Bacon is one of the most pow- the oral cavity. The book had beautiful erful artists in Europe today.” Likewise, hand-colored plates, showing what the critic of the Sunday Times. While Bacon called the “glitter and color” of “nothing would induce me to buy one the inside of the mouth, the glistening of Bacon’s paintings,” he wrote, “a rep- membranes. He bought the book and resentative collection that did not con- cherished it all his life. He said that he tain one would lack one of the most always hoped he could paint the mouth definite and articulate statements made as Monet had painted sunsets. by contemporary art.” In fact, curators The moment that the mouth showed and collectors were not initially eager to its insides most unashamedly, Bacon re- buy: how could you hang something so

alized, was when it screamed. In his stu- unpleasant on your wall? Bacon caught T E L

dio, he kept a still of the Odessa Steps on in France faster than he did in En- U O R -

massacre from Eisenstein’s “Battleship gland or the United States, but eventu- T I T E

Potemkin”: an old woman, gashed in ally he caught on everywhere. For the P

E P

the face by one of the imperial soldiers, opening of a 1977 show in Paris, so many P I L I

screams violently, her shattered pince- people showed up that the police had H P

: E

nez hanging from her eyes and blood to close off the street. “You are the Mar- T I S

coursing down her cheek. When Bacon ilyn Monroe of modern art,” a French O P P O

saw Old Master paintings of the Cru- minister said to Bacon that night. During ; T S

cifixion—he especially loved Matthias the few decades before his death, in 1992, A N

É

Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, with his celebrity doubled and redoubled, and D N

Jesus almost rotting on the Cross—they it has gone on growing since. In 2013, O C

lined up in his mind with the meat and his triptych portrait of Lucian Freud set © the screams. what was then a world record for an art Bacon in his studio in 1962. He wanted his pict

60 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 e wanted his pictures to leave “a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events as the snail leaves its slime.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY IRVING PENN THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 61 rica and retiring in 1903 with the hon- orary rank of major. By the time Fran- cis arrived, Eddy was a gentleman horse trainer. He didn’t earn any money, but that wasn’t a problem. His wife, Win- ifred, from a Sheffield steel family, had come with a considerable dowry. Fran- cis, shy, girly, and asthmatic, was a poor fit for Eddy’s idea of what a son of his should be. Eddy tried to straighten him out. He got the grooms in his stables to thrash the boy regularly, but this didn’t change him, or not in the direction that Eddy intended. If we are to believe what Francis later suggested, the stablemen, when they got tired of beating him, liked to sodomize him. If this is true, it pre- sumably nurtured his lifelong associa- tion of sexual pleasure with physical punishment, and with men. Homosexuality was hardly unknown in Francis’s world—many of the young men of his class were probably bisexual, if only by virtue of having attended all- boys schools—but a firm intent, in an adult male, to confine his sexual rela- tions to men was widely regarded as disgusting. Until 1967, homosexual acts were illegal in Britain, and subject to harsh punishment. George V, upon being informed that someone he knew “Do we need any pollen?” was homosexual, is reported to have said, “I thought men like that shot themselves.” When Eddy happened •• upon the sixteen-year-old Francis dressed only in his mother’s underwear, work sold at auction—more than a hun- that many art books are too high-minded he threw him out, Bacon later said. The dred and forty-two million dollars. to get into. Such exhaustiveness can be banishment was not entirely brutal. Many books have been published on deadening, but here, for the most part, Winifred gave Francis an allowance of Bacon since his death, but now he has it isn’t. Swan and Stevens are very good three pounds a week, enough to live on been accorded the Big Biography treat- storytellers. Also, the book is warmed in London, where he landed, taking ment, “Francis Bacon: Revelations” by the writers’ clear affection for Bacon. odd jobs—cook, house cleaner, dress- (Knopf ), by the husband-and-wife team They enjoy his boozy nights with him, shop assistant. Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan—he they laugh at his jokes, and they admire Soon afterward, Eddy, still hoping a former art critic for New York, she a his bloody-mindedness. They do not to make a man out of his disappoint- former arts editor for Newsweek. The believe everything he said, and they let ing son, suggested that Francis accom- pair won a Pulitzer for their 2004 biog- us know this, but they are always in his pany a cousin of theirs, a certain Cecil raphy of Willem de Kooning, and the corner, and they stress virtues of his that Harcourt-Smith, ten years older than new book is a comparable achievement. we wouldn’t have known to look for: his Francis—a fine young man, Eddy It is enormously detailed; we get the gregariousness, his love of fun, his eru- thought, from a fine family—on a trip details, and the details’ details. When dition, his extreme generosity. However to Berlin. Harcourt-Smith collected some friends come to visit Bacon in many people were at the table, he al- Francis, took him to Germany, and in- Monte Carlo and go off on a side trip ways picked up the tab. troduced him to all the raunchiest sex without him, we hear about their side clubs of Weimar Berlin. And then? trip. When he pays for his brother-in- acon was born in Dublin in 1909, Bacon was never willing to say, on the law’s funeral, we learn how much the Binto an English family that might record, but he seems to have confided bill came to. We’re told about the busi- have preferred a different sort of boy. in his friend John Richardson, the ness of art—prices, taxes, exhibitions, His father, Eddy, had been an Army future Picasso biographer, who reported catalogues, catalogue essays, shop talk man, serving in Burma and South Af- that Harcourt-Smith was an “ultra-

62 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 sadistic sadist” and, according to Ba- wealthy older men seeking a young com- terminating not in a head, exactly, but con, a man who “fucked absolutely any- panion. “Well, Francis, look here. . . . ” just an open mouth, with two rows of thing.” Whatever Francis may have she would say, when she found a good threatening teeth, and a dripping ban- learned from his father’s grooms was prospect. Later, when he held illegal dage where its eyes might be. In the enlarged by this postgraduate education. roulette parties in his apartment, it was right-hand panel is the most horrible After a couple of months, Harcourt- she who collected the fees for use of figure. Vaguely female, she rises from a Smith tired of Francis and took off the bathroom. By the time Nanny patch of spiky grass, long neck thrust with a woman. Lightfoot died, in 1951, she and Fran- forward. Her mouth, too, is open—she Abandoned, Francis was somehow cis had lived together for twenty-odd is ready to eat us—but, apart from the not discouraged. He knew little of the years. It broke his heart that her end one leg and also one ear, that is all Bacon world. He had been to school for only came when he was out of town. Every gives us of her. a year and a half. (He kept running away week, for years afterward, he visited the This piece may be the most disturb- from the place, until, he said, his par- friend of hers who had looked after her ing painting produced in Britain in the ents finally gave up and let him stay in her final days. twentieth century. Executed when Bacon home.) But he’d surely heard that Paris Bacon was included in a few group was thirty-four, it was the first one, ap- was the capital of the European avant- shows in London in the mid-thirties, parently, that truly satisfied him. In any garde, and he headed there, learning the but, insulted by the reviews, he de- case, he did not destroy it. Eric Hall, language, making friends and seeing, stroyed most of what he had made. his respectable older boyfriend at the for the first time, art shows, art books, When the Second World War began, time, bought it before it could be ex- and art magazines. He encountered Pi- he was excused from military service hibited. (Hall later donated it to the casso’s work and was stunned. “At that on account of his asthma. (Reportedly, Tate, Britain’s national showplace for moment I thought, well I will try and he hired a German shepherd to stay modern painting, where it hangs, doubt- paint too,” he recalled. He went to a few with him the night before the medical less scaring the pants off anyone who group classes—the only art education examination, to exacerbate his condi- passes by.) With this picture, Bacon he ever had. tion.) He then worked for the Red said, “I began.” That is, he had found At the end of 1928, Bacon returned Cross and Air Raid Precautions, a pro- his artistic core—a reigning emotion of to London, which remained his head- gram that helped protect Londoners suffering and menace. The discovery quarters, more or less, for the rest of his during the Blitz, but the dust from the was influential. “There was painting in life. For a while, he tried to start a career bombardments eventually irritated his England before the Three Studies, and in furniture design. But slowly, fitfully, lungs to the point where he had to painting in England after them,” the he inched his way toward painting. leave the city. critic John Russell later wrote. “No Toward the end of the war, Bacon one can confuse the two.” Damien Hirst, acon as a young man had a face seems to have felt the forces in his life, who often cites Bacon as a hero, has Blike an angel, together with beau- as in the world, converge, and in 1944 observed, of a different Bacon Cruci- tiful manners and a ready wit. He had he painted a triptych that he called fixion, “That splat over the head of the some bad habits, but they were of the “Three Studies for Figures at the Base brush is definitely like brains.” This is regular, walk-on-the-wild-side variety. of a Crucifixion.” The figures in ques- probably the first time that the color of He enjoyed the company of sailors and tion were not those one ordinarily saw brain matter has been discussed in re- petty thieves. When he was hard up, in paintings of the Crucifixion. There lation to the Crucifixion. he didn’t mind doing a bit of escort work. As an adult, he was drunk most hy, in a period when abstraction nights, and in the course of his revels Wwas the going thing in Western he offended a fair number of people. painting, did Bacon insist on doing fig- Come morning, however, they could urative painting? It’s worth remember- expect to find on their doorstep a note ing that British art, relative to its Con- of apology and a bunch of roses. tinental neighbors, had long been con- He was a kind, loyal, and generous servative. Years after Picasso produced friend. A good example of this was his “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” Blooms- treatment of his childhood nanny, Jes- bury artists were still doing pictures of sie Lightfoot. When he moved to Lon- was no Madonna in her blue cloak, no one another sitting in their tastefully don, he took Nanny Lightfoot with Mary Magdalene in red, but, rather, three furnished parlors. The Tate didn’t ac- him. (What? You’re British, and you Furies from Aeschylus’ Oresteia, gray- quire its first Picasso until 1933, and the move to London with no money, and white creatures, monstrously truncated, piece was from 1901, a nice picture of a you don’t have your nanny with you? looming from a livid orange background. vase of flowers. When Bacon was coming Suppose you’re drunk and can’t get up- In the left panel is a shrouded figure, its up, probably the most respected painter stairs?) When he was young and poor face ominously turned away. The crea- in England was Graham Sutherland, and scrounging for a living, she would ture in the middle panel is an ovoid shape, who made his reputation with landscapes shoplift groceries for them. She scanned seemingly trapped in the corner of a and then with portraits. Lucian Freud, the newspapers to find personals from room. Its long neck sticks out to the side, Bacon’s foremost competitor—and, for

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 63 many years, his best friend—was a por- ioned. Indeed, because his work was so like a snail, leaving a trail of the human traitist, too. often gruesome he was not just figura- presence and memory trace of past events But national trends can’t fully ex- tive but Grand Guignol, they said: a as the snail leaves its slime.” This is plain Bacon. For all his intelligence, he shock jock. Others grouped him with oblique, but not a bad description. You was an instinctual artist, and he couldn’t German Post-Expressionists of the New are drawn in, then repelled, then drawn really operate without the human fig- Objectivity school, such as Otto Dix in, then repelled. ure. It was always before his eyes. If, and Christian Schad, an association Bacon spoke about his paintings with when discussing his forebears, he wasn’t Bacon indignantly rejected. Nothing honesty and intelligence. There is a book, talking about Velázquez, he was talking was further from his intentions than “Interviews with Francis Bacon,” of the about Grünewald or Rembrandt or the objective representation of reality, conversations he had with the art critic Degas. The human body—the face, which he called “illustration,” or, God David Sylvester, who was also a friend, the joints, the armpits, the angles of forbid, “narrative,” the mobilization of between 1962 and 1986. Sylvester asks the spine—spoke to him, told him the such representation for a story. the most important questions: Why did story he wanted to hear, and make us Some critics, sensing this, took the Bacon so often destroy his early paint- hear. When describing to interview- position that Bacon was both figurative ings? Why, a firm atheist, did he paint ers what he was aiming for, he often and abstract, and that the power of his the Crucifixion again and again? Why used the language of physiology. He art derived from the tension between did he obsessively paint meat? What said that he wanted his images to strike the two sources. Bacon sometimes gave was it with him and meat? the viewer’s “nervous system.” (He had a tentative nod to that position, but he Almost better than reading these a diagram of the human nervous sys- was insistent that, however distorted exchanges is looking at them, which tem pinned on his studio wall.) He his figures, he was not an abstraction- you can do on YouTube. Sylvester asks wanted, he said, to “unlock the valves ist. (Most artists believe that they are his questions, and Bacon, looking him of feeling.” Again and again, he used sui generis, and, above all, that they are straight in the eye, answers him directly. the word “poignant”—not in the sense not part of the big new craze. In the Yes, he says. No, he says. Well, he says, of “sad” but in the archaic, concrete fifties, when Bacon came to promi- what interested me about meat was . . . sense of “piercing,” and thereby mak- nence, the American abstractionists Artists don’t owe us explanations of ing one’s opponent bleed. Bacon wanted were the new craze. Bacon said that their art, and many aren’t able to pro- to make us bleed, and in order to do Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings looked vide them, but it’s nice to hear some- so he had to show us the thing that to him like “old lace.”) Bacon wanted one, now and then, who actually makes bleeds, the body. his work to convey human emotions, the effort. Some of his early viewers, pledged but not unambiguously. He said, “I to abstraction, saw him as a purely fig- would like my pictures to look as if a acon went on to paint many more urative painter and therefore old-fash- human being had passed between them, Btriptychs, including a lot of Cruci- fixions. Beginning in the nineteen-fif- ties, he also produced many paintings inspired by Velázquez’s famous “Por- trait of Pope Innocent X,” but with the Pontiff ’s commanding face often con- torted in a scream. In the sixties, Bacon concentrated on portraits. But almost all of these pictures partake, in some measure, of the same wrenching emo- tion as the “Three Studies.” It had been with Bacon for a long time. He came from a rough world, how- ever moneyed. Being beaten and pos- sibly raped by his father’s grooms as a boy is shocking enough, but casual violence seems to have been taken for granted in the family. Bacon’s father was given to terrible rages, and his grandmother was married to a man who, on the morning of a hunt, would catch cats, cut off their claws, and throw them to his hounds, to pique a taste for blood. When he was drunk, he would also kill cats by hanging them. Then, too, the family lived among Irish Cath- “Oh, good. They have outdoor seating.” olics who hated Anglo-Irish people like them. They always feared a knock on because he was too egocentric to ad- really know.’” Lacy frightened Bacon as the door from the I.R.A. Bacon’s mother dress the moral problems of the post- well. As Swan and Stevens tell it, Bacon refused to sit with her back to a window war world: “If Bacon’s paintings began would provoke Lacy until Lacy turned at night. to deal with any of the real tragedy of on him, beat him up, and then took him Stevens and Swan view the violence our time, they would shriek less, they by force. At one point, he threw Bacon of Bacon’s painting as a direct result of would be less jealous of their horror, out of a window, an experience that the his childhood: “Some volatile sexual and they would never hypnotize us, be- artist, relaxed by drink, somehow sur- compound—father, groom, animal, dis- cause we, with all conscience stirred, vived. When doing his makeup, Bacon cipline—gave Francis a physical jolt would be too much involved to afford made no effort to hide the bruises that that helped make him into the painter that luxury.” Lacy had left on his face. Francis Bacon.” That seems to me too Remarks like Berger’s were proba- There is a painting by Bacon, “Two direct, too sure, and too sexual. Still, bly a response to Bacon’s life as well Figures,” from 1953, soon after the cou- the world of Francis’s childhood was as to his art. He was not ple met, that shows two a dangerous one, and the authors are a discreet man, bless him, men in a desperate-looking probably right to take its influence on and his daily routine was embrace, one on top of the Bacon’s iconography seriously. As Bacon widely known. He woke up other. Although the work said, “Time doesn’t heal,” and his pre- at dawn and was at the easel drew on an Eadweard Muy- occupation with violence was unques- by about 6 A.M. If things bridge photograph of two tionably deep. Once, when he was sick, went well, or fairly well, he wrestlers, it is widely in- a neighbor checked in on him and went painted until midday. Then terpreted to be a portrait into his bedroom, ordinarily off limits. he put on his makeup (he of Bacon and Lacy in bed. On the wall opposite the door was a vast wore lipstick and pancake (Lucian Freud bought the mural of a crucified arm, she recalled: makeup and touched up his painting shortly after it was “Just a hint of torso and an enormous hair, including his carefully finished, hung it above his arm with nails in it.” positioned spit curl, with shoe polish), own bed for decades, and resolutely re- The lacerating intensity of the emo- and went out and had a big lunch at fused to part with it for later shows of tions in Bacon’s work can be felt in his one of the Soho bars that served him Bacon’s work.) It has been described as destruction of his paintings. By the time not just as drinking establishments but tender; no one seems to mention the he was nearing forty, Time reported that also, with their louche clientele—drunks, sharp teeth displayed by the man under- he had slashed apart some seven hun- slackers, hoodlums, gay people—as so- neath. For much of the nineteen-fifties, dred canvases. It was when a painting cial clubs. Then he was back at the bar, Bacon and Lacy tried to be together. came close to completion, he said, that where he drank pretty much till he Then they tried to be apart. Lacy’s al- the trouble started. Sometimes he was dropped. (When he was young and coholism got worse. Bacon began tak- elated by what he saw on his easel and short of funds, the proprietress of his ing amphetamines. Lacy, who had in- wanted to push it further and then ended favorite bar, the Colony Room, gave herited money from his father, moved up spoiling the piece. At other times, he him ten pounds a week and free drinks to Tangier. Bacon followed him, even would let the painting get as far as the to bring his friends in, which he did.) renting his own place there. Eventually, gallery; then he would call and ask for Sometimes, before resuming drinking, though, the two men gave up and stopped it back, and mess it up. His main han- he had sex. For that, he liked the after- seeing each other. dler at the gallery, a shrewd and kind noon best. In 1962, Bacon had a retrospective woman named Valerie Beston, became Who did he have sex with? In his at the Tate, the most important show adept at sensing when he was finished early years, there were relationships with of his life thus far, which would con- with a piece. No sooner had the two of older men who loved him for his charm firm him as one of England’s fore- them got off the phone than she would and his talent, and didn’t mind support- most painters—perhaps even the fore- appear at his front door in a gallery van ing him, but that phase ended eventu- most. The day it opened, Bacon sent and proceed to distract Bacon with tea ally. Around 1952, he met the person Peter Lacy a telegram about the show’s and gossip while the driver quietly took who was probably the love of his life, success. The telegram that came back the piece away. Peter Lacy. Lacy was a handsome and said that Lacy had died the day be- dashing man from a prosperous fam- fore. In Tangier, he had finally drunk any of Bacon’s early commenta- ily with Irish connections, like Bacon’s. more than a person can drink and stay Mtors were shocked not just by the He had been in the R.A.F., but only as alive. As Bacon later put it, his pan- gruesomeness of his work but also by a test pilot; he was a pianist, though creas had exploded. its seeming lack of moral purpose. He only in piano bars. Like Bacon, he was himself disavowed any such purpose. A a far-gone alcoholic, but further gone. he following year, it is said, Bacon number of writers felt that he was ac- And he was a mean drunk. He fright- Tone day heard a terrible crash in tually mocking their postwar gloom. ened people. Bacon said that, at gath- his studio. A burglar had fallen through The influential critic John Berger wrote erings, other guests would ask him, the skylight, and the painter, discov- that although Bacon was a remarkable “ ‘Who is that awful man you’re with?’ ering the young intruder, ordered him painter, he was not, finally, “important,” and of course I had to say, ‘Well, I don’t into the bedroom. The two men were

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 65 together for the next eight years. The with George. In response, George threw we see George naked, on the toilet, story became famous—it appears at Bacon’s furniture down the front stairs. leaning forward, almost to the floor. the start of the 1998 bio-pic “Love Is Later, he ripped up a number of Bacon’s On the right, we see him vomiting into the Devil”—though it was widely con- paintings and set fire to his studio. He the sink. And in the central panel, where tested by people close to Bacon, who planted drugs in the studio and called the Christ would go if this were a Cru- said, sorry, the two men just met in the police. The court case dragged on cifixion (which, in a way, it is), we get a bar, like everybody else. The new for months. just George’s face, bloated and blood- man, George Dyer, really was a burglar, In 1971, Bacon had a retrospective shot, presumably dead. In all the post- though, and, like Lacy, a sort of drop- at the Grand Palais, in Paris. Nothing mortem-George triptychs, Bacon uses out. Unlike Lacy, however, Dyer did not could have been more important for looming shadows. We seem to watch have much in common with Bacon. his reputation. The day before the open- George spilling over, leaking his life More than twenty years younger, he ing, Bacon came back from a lunch and onto the floor. But, in the central panel was an East Ender with a thick Cock- found George, who had accompanied of this last triptych, there is something ney accent, and he was not the only him to Paris, drunk and incoherent, in yet more horrible. A shadow comes to criminal in his family. According to a bed with a rent boy. He eventually went greet George that is like nothing we friend of Bacon’s, he wasn’t even pri- downstairs, to the room occupied by have seen before: huge, black, like an marily homosexual. He just knew how the gallery’s driver, and slept in the enormous bird. to be accommodating; he had learned spare bed there. In the morning, he Many people would nominate “Trip- that in prison. asked the driver to look in on George. tych, May-June 1973,” with its narra- In the beginning, Bacon loved just On the way upstairs, the driver ran into tion of George’s death, as Bacon’s most to look at George, with his wonder- Valerie Beston, Bacon’s heroic handler. formidable painting, because it is so fully muscled forearms and his com- They found George on the toilet, lean- bluntly what his work is said to be: hor- manding nose. If you saw that nose in ing forward, apparently dead. rific. But I would pick the series of can- a Bacon painting, you knew you were So, in a sort of appalling rhyme with vases—there are something like fifty looking at George. Indeed, it is said Lacy’s death, Bacon received similar of them—that he based on Velázquez’s that the artist’s turn to portraiture in news on the cusp of another great tri- “Portrait of Pope Innocent X.” In them, the nineteen-sixties was due, in large umph. If I read Stevens and Swan cor- the Holy Father is shown in full papal measure, to his having George to paint. rectly, Bacon was both stolid (he may regalia: cape, cap, lace-trimmed cas- (He did more than twenty portraits even have been relieved) and devastated. sock. (In some versions, you can even of the man.) Bacon also appreciated The hotel manager was summoned, and see the throne.) And then, in place of Dyer’s ability to sit in a chair in his un- the situation was explained to him. the calm, even crafty face that Velázquez derpants for hours on end and just pose, Would it be possible to defer George’s gave the seventeenth-century Pontiff, without fidgeting, or distracting Bacon death until the next morning? he was we see a screaming mouth, with a full with conversation. asked. Otherwise, his death would over- set of sharp, vicious teeth. This is Ba- That was, in part, because George shadow the opening. The manager, ev- con’s familiar hybrid of menace and had no conversation. He was innocent. idently the soul of discretion, agreed suffering, expanded now by a mixture It was something of a tradition, in Lon- and locked the room with dead George of shock and formality. You can see this don’s gay pickup world, that in the inside, still on the toilet. Bacon got mixture in the George Dyer triptychs, morning the younger man stole the through the festivities—the private view, too, but there it is more studied; Bacon older man’s watch, the heavier and more the official opening, the red carpet, the is working something out, getting expensive the better. Dyer, after he and honor guard—with aplomb. Then the George’s death out of his system, as he Bacon first slept together, instead left authorities came and took George’s body himself acknowledged. In the Popes, him the gold watch he had stolen from away, and the newspapers published the on the other hand, the terrible thing the man with whom he had spent the news. Bacon flew back to London, but seems to come from nowhere, both previous night. Such things touched he was never the same. The French au- controlled and spontaneous, inelucta- Bacon’s heart. He liked to spoil Dyer. topsy determined that George had died ble. You could be the Pope and not be He paid him a salary, sixty pounds a of a heart attack, but people who knew able to stop it. month, for posing and doing handy- him—including, eventually, Bacon— man work. He also gave him money assumed that he had died, accidentally hen Bacon was about forty, his to buy a lot of expensive Edwardian- or deliberately, of an overdose of alco- Wdoctor told him that if he had style clothes, which George was very hol and pills. He had made previous one more drink he would die. In fact, proud of. suicide attempts. he lived another forty years, drinking And then Bacon tired of him. If Ba- In the next two years, Bacon painted just as much as before, and therefore con was drunk every night, George was four triptychs that dealt with George’s was around long enough to have a drunk every day and every night, which death. The first three show George in “late period.” It is sometimes painful gradually made him impotent and prone various guises. The last—“Triptych, to watch. He still painted, but he had to wet his pants on people’s couches. May-June 1973”—is more confessional to have oxygen cannisters near him at Bacon began to wish he could unload and more sensational. Here we are all times in case he had an asthma at- him, a fact that did not fail to register shown the actual death. In the left panel, tack. His fame was assured. Honors

66 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 rained down on him, but now he often refused them. French intellectuals— BRIEFLY NOTED Michel Leiris, Gilles Deleuze—had written books about him and he was proud of this, but now he shooed book Light Perpetual, by Francis Spufford (Scribner). This rumi- writers away. He also stubbornly de- native novel revolves around a hypothetical: what if five chil- layed the production of a catalogue dren killed in the London Blitz had instead survived? Spuf- raisonné. Many of his old friends died. ford visits his characters at key moments in their lives, from Many others he avoided, including 1944 to 2009. One becomes a shady property developer who Lucian Freud. (In the words of a friend gets rich during the Thatcher years, while others suffer as of Freud’s, “Lucian took the view that Britain’s postwar safety net is dismantled. One marries a skin- Francis’s late paintings were fright- head; another, who almost becomes a rock star, struggles to fully bad. Bacon was saying the same reconcile herself to her life, musing, “Being somebody, lov- thing about Lucian. ‘Such a pity he ing anyone, it rules the rest out, and so it’s quieter than being doesn’t go on doing his little things.’”) young, and looking forward.” The novel’s ending verges on Old pleasures, too, were lost. He had moralistic but offers a moving view of how people confront a boyfriend, but the boyfriend also the gap between their expectations and their reality. had a boyfriend. Yet the spark that had always been The Five Wounds, by Kirstin Valdez Quade (Norton). This in him still flared up sporadically. He début novel opens with Amadeo, an unemployed alcoholic himself spoke of the “exhilarated de- in small-town New Mexico, preparing to play Christ in a spair” that underlay his paintings, ac- brutally realistic annual reënactment of the Crucifixion. curate words to describe the sheer Though he spends the following weeks nursing wounds vigor—you could even call it delight— from the nails, the mystical melodrama of the penitentes rit- with which he produced his grim vi- ual soon fades beneath more mundane concerns. As he strug- sions. The Pope might be screaming, gles to get a windshield-repair business off the ground, his but, oh, that purple and gold, and even mother hides a cancer diagnosis and his teen-age daughter the wit, or at least surprise, of the paint- tries valiantly to be a good mother to her newborn son. ing. You’re not the only one screaming Quade places richly textured characters in a world of small- about life; so is the Pope. bore preoccupations that illuminate large questions about In 1991, during a trip to Madrid, Ba- love, power, desire, and redemption. con decided that he had to see the col- lection of Velázquez paintings at the A Cure for Darkness, by Alex Riley (Scribner). “Like thick Prado, and to do so alone. He telephoned curly hair, mental illness runs in my family,” the author of Manuela Mena, a senior conservator at this wide-ranging history of depression treatments writes. the museum, and asked if he might come Interweaving memoir, case histories, and accounts of new on a day when the museum was closed. therapies, Riley anatomizes what is still a fairly young sci- This was hard to arrange—the guards ence, and a troubled one. He surveys treatments as diverse were on strike—but Mena worked it as cocaine, famously advocated by Freud, and electrocon- out, and told him to knock on a little- vulsive therapy, which has lately undergone a revival. The used side door, next to the Botanical book also delves into the state of care in developing coun- Gardens, at the appointed hour. She tries, where psychiatric training lags but community-driven later recalled, “We opened that door for therapy shows promise. As Riley, quoting the W.H.O., ob- him at midday, and in with the sun came serves, “When it comes to mental illness, we are all devel- Francis Bacon.” oping countries.” He was back in Madrid the follow- ing year. Eighty-two and dying, he nev- We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, by Kliph Nesteroff ertheless had a nice Spanish compan- (Simon & Schuster). This critical history of Native American ion, and, in the last photograph of him comedy traces its development through the past hundred and that Swan and Stevens offer us, we see fifty years. For many Native Americans at the start of this pe- him at his favorite bar, sitting there riod, the only legal way to escape the deprivations of reserva- with what looks like a quart-size Mar- tion life was touring in Wild West shows, which obliged them tini in front of him. He seems hearty; to reënact scenes of their tribes’ subjugation. The styles and he wasn’t. Within a few days, his friend the fortunes of the comedians who have emerged since then had to check him into a hospital. The vary greatly, but Nesteroff also unearths many commonalities, supervising nurse said that he was start- such as an awareness of the gulf between the desires of white ing to suffer from “slow suffocation.” audiences and Native ones, and the influence of tribal humor, Soon his breathing stopped, and then as embodied by figures such as “sacred clowns”—jester-like his heart—meat at last.  figures who “point out the backwardness of society.”

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 67 ning score, is that of Exodus. The darkness ON TELEVISION is an entryway to a subterranean railroad: a network of trains used to transport en- slaved people out of bondage. This met- ODYSSEY aphor made literal is the show’s framing conceit. The girl is Cora Randall (Thuso “The Underground Railroad,” on Amazon Prime. Mbedu, a revelation), who, along with the landscape, holds the soul of this his- BY DOREEN S T. FÉLIX torical fiction. She was born enslaved, on a Georgia plantation, and when we meet her she is being pressured by a confidant named Caesar (Aaron Pierre) to escape North. He tells Cora that he is “not sup- posed to be here.” Cora, who believes that her mother, Mabel (Sheila Atim), aban- doned her as a child, in pursuit of free- dom, scoffs ruefully. Jenkins lets the cam- era rest on their faces—a signature move, but here the shot is edged with some- thing earthy rather than beatific. Later in the episode, the plantation owner says, “A nigger and a man are two entirely different things.” Jenkins’s actors confront this paradox, which re- quires them to embody the idea of dis- embodiment. How do you play a per- son playing a body? What follows is a barrage of violence that, though spec- tacularly acted, makes for an arduous first hour. Particularly striking is Jen- kins’s reinvention of the master-slave rape scene. Caesar and a woman are forced to procreate as the plantation owner watches—the master exerts his dominion not through his sex but through his awful, panoramic gaze. It’s a ritualistic act of war, in addition to the motor of the propagation of slavery. It also encapsulates the problem of Amer- ican race cinema: violence by looking. n Barry Jenkins’s reimagining of Col- lum South what J. M. W. Turner did “The Underground Railroad” is a TV Ison Whitehead’s popular novel “The for the sea. series, no doubt, but the history that Jen- Underground Railroad,” it is as if the Amazon has curiously dropped all ten kins engages with, in addition to that of land speaks. In the light of high noon, episodes of this dense miniseries at once. the country, is that of representational cotton fields are menacingly fecund, In the first two minutes, we are given the art. He excavates the imprint of slavery owing to the work of the enslaved la- meat of Whitehead’s plot, which has been on older artistic traditions: painting, pho- borers who stand painfully erect among compressed into an Impressionistic mon- tography, novels, and, especially, cinema, the crop, like stalks themselves. At night, tage, priming the audience for an intense which since its inception has been en- a path leading somewhere—whether to experiment in durational storytelling. tangled with slavery and the dehuman- freedom or execution, we don’t know— There is one recurring slow-motion se- ization of the Black form. By the second pulses with death. We have known Jen- quence, of a young Black woman tum- episode of “The Underground Railroad,” kins, the director of “Moonlight,” as a bling down a ladder into darkness. She which has some difficulty nailing its eerie portraitist. Here, working again with is trailed by a flailing man, who, we later tone, Cora and Caesar have fled the plan- his longtime collaborator, the cinema- learn, is a slave-catcher—the obsessive tation, and we have had our first encoun- tographer James Laxton, he is a virtu- Ridgeway ( Joel Edgerton). The scene, ter with the surreal railroad and its con- osic landscape artist. With “The Un- which seems to reference the Old Tes- ductors. An alternate-reality South Car- derground Railroad,” a compositional tament story of Jacob’s ladder, puts us in olina provides a momentary reprieve for achievement—pictorial and psycholog- a Biblical mood, and Jenkins’s vision, Cora and Caesar as notional freedmen, ical—Jenkins has done for the antebel- helped along by Nicholas Britell’s stun- where they live under the aliases of Bessie

68 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY MATT WILLIAMS and Christian. In this episode, the show induce the healing that social institutions enters the space of criticism: Cora works have neglected.) Steve McQueen and “12 at a museum, where she and other women Years a Slave” may also come up. The as- perform plantation reënactments—a kind sertion of aesthetic choice and the use of of exhibitionist production that alludes dramatic filmmaking tend to provoke to Henry (Box) Brown’s infamous trav- suspicion from people invested in the ex- elling show, “Mirror of Slavery.” The os- istence, or in the extermination, of the tensibly liberal whites of South Caro- slave film. Educated audiences complain, lina, trapped in history that is not past, after the release of one of these projects, can process slavery only through the heavy that there is a truer reality of slavery to FEED TUMMIES. filter of entertainment. It is a wretched be exposed, one that is unmediated and Black boy, Homer (Chase Dillon, a ge- unvarnished—as if the mediation and FEED MINDS. nius child actor), Ridgeway’s assistant, the varnish are not themselves a reveal. who sees Cora for who she is, and there- A good film cannot claim to understand fore sees the “art” as fraudulent. slavery any better than a bad one, of which Fraudulence is the contemporary Black we have had many recently. (I am in- artist’s fear; authenticity, his constant bug- clined to believe that the mediocre pieces bear. Everyone wants to know the art- “Antebellum” and “Them” are not craven ist’s motive, and everyone wants to catch or amoral but, rather, intolerably inno- him being false. Because Jenkins’s source cent, grotesquely honest.) At times, Jen- is a fiction, he is relatively free to thread kins’s direction is stunned by the violence his personal taste through the effort. There of the subject matter. There is a moment, are differences, some slight and some sig- in the first episode, when the artist re- nificant, between the novel and the se- cedes and the camera blurs—a split sec- ries, but to enumerate them would be to ond in which a man being burned alive validate a false hierarchy of the source is seen not from the outside but from text and its adaptation. (I think Jenkins’s within the eye of the man himself, his treatment is superior, more adult.) “The vision singed by heat. Underground Railroad,” which is about The triumphs of “The Underground SHARE LUNCH not being seen as much as it is about Railroad” are inextricable from its flaws. being seen, engages with the chaos of the Jenkins’s series tries deeply to understand FIGHT HUNGER slavery epic by way of the rhythms of the character of Cora, who is always on- slow cinema. Hallucinations of memo- screen yet remains unknowable. We are ries interrupt the action. Ridgeway cap- most acquainted with her hunter, Ridge- TEXT "LUNCH" TO 20222 tures Cora from the secret cradle of an way, who in the fourth episode is given TO DONATE $15 abolitionist in North Carolina and leads a flashback treatment that is a masterly & HELP FEED THE 1 IN 3 KIDS her to judgment, along the Trail of Tears. depiction of neurotic white masculinity. FACING HUNGER IN NYC But she cannot submit to subjugation. There is a question that seems unrea- She runs to the river and attempts sui- sonable to ask, and yet I find myself ask- cide, which looks so much like baptism. ing it: What is freedom to Cora, who TO LEARN MORE & DONATE, VISIT Ridgeway pulls her out of the water. Jen- has not experienced it, and how will she CITYHARVEST.ORG/SHARELUNCH kins does not leave the scene, capturing, know when she has found it? The series from overhead, the hacking and groan- does not, and can not, envision the place GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY ing of these two characters, bonded by beyond Exodus. The finale, beautiful as all matter of contract. a fable but somewhat of an anticlimax, attempts an answer, one based in a kind enkins is the confident artist who wears of unsatisfying biological lore. Jhis influences on his sleeve. There are “The Underground Railroad” does the painters—Julius Bloch, with his gap- stage arguments that explore the effects ing lynching scenes, must have been on of caste, and of society’s other organiz- the director’s mind; Jasper, a runaway and ing fictions. Late in the series, it ap- a companion to Cora during her ordeal pears that Cora, brought by a chival- with Ridgeway, is a living, then dying, rous conductor called Royal (William Kerry James Marshall figure—and the Jackson Harper) to the free black vil- directors: Terrence Malick, Andrei Tar- lage of Valentine Farm, has finally made – MEDIA SPONSOR– kovsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ar- it. And yet the freedmen stare at her, thur Jafa. But the comparison to be an- she says, like “a maggot on meat.” Her ticipated is to “Roots.” (There is always presence, and her gaze, disintegrates the an expectation that slave narratives will picture they had created.  Angel is Black and Bae is white. Angel THE THEATRE barely speaks to their parents. Bae’s pro- fessor mother is their hero; Bae irks Angel by noting, again and again, that their OPTICAL ILLUSIONS mom is the “smartest person I know,” and calls her seemingly constantly. Echoes of trauma in “Zoetrope” and “The Forbidden City.” Angel and Bae speak in well-edu- cated millennialese, qualifying their sen- BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM tences an inch beyond useful meaning, eloquently talking past each other: a pair of flares blazing in the night, unanswered. In several interior monologues—marked, often, by bright strobes that offer a re- spite from the relative sensory privation of the set’s black-and-white motif—the lovers’ language takes a turn away from the day-to-day chatter. The soliloquies are abstract, poetic, and sodden with longing and fear—more songs than at- tempts at talk. After Bae leaves the apart- ment early in lockdown, Angel says:

Insular Insulated Inside Initiated Terrified Tired, tried And tried again Determined this won’t be my tomb Who is the phoenix when she is in the womb

There’s a corniness in moments like this, and in moments when the play reënacts traumas that are too familiar and too close to us in time to take symbolic flight: a comic dance involving grocery saniti- zation and uncertainty about mask hy- giene left me cringing, but not neces- sarily clearer about the inner lives of “ eflecting on it,” says a disembod- lives. In these history-swamped days, Angel and Bae. Ried voice at the opening of “Zoe- the art form, already tasked with dou- The real intrigue of “Zoetrope” lies trope”—a new play from the theatre com- ble duty, seems to be working quadru- in the specifics of its production. Angel pany Exquisite Corpse, written by Leah ple time, and showing the sweat. and Bae’s apartment—one room acting Barker, Emily Krause, and Elinor T Van- “Zoetrope” is about two lovers, Angel as their whole dysfunctional diorama derburg and directed by Porcia Lewis (Vanessa Lynah) and Bae ( Jules Fors- of a home—sits in a small trailer, in and Tess Howsam—“I severely fucked berg-Lary), both referred to in the script an empty lot near Fort Greene Park, in up living through history.” And, well, with the pronouns “they” and “them.” Brooklyn. A handful of audience mem- haven’t we all? The noise of the news (For half the productions, Starr Kirkland bers take their seats at windows around comes crashing into our homes, adding and Leanna Gardella play Angel and the trailer, throw a dark curtain over the odd, often unwanted undertone of Bae.) It’s the midst of the pandemic, and their heads, and look in. The set design symbolism to our most private domes- the couple are on lockdown in their self-consciously echoes the effect of a tic dramas. A love story becomes, also, cramped apartment, in which it some- natural-history museum; we watch our a story about virology. Interpersonal con- times seems impossible to stretch with- two heroes through glass, overhearing flicts take place against a backdrop of out bumping a wall or scraping a raw them—through a pair of flimsy head- protest, or uprising, or war. Theatre, like nerve. The relationship is loving—hence phones—in a way that feels almost ac- life, is always in transit between the in- the touching recurrence of the nickname cidental. The items in their apartment dividual and the society in which she Bae—but also riven with difference. are labelled in big, cartoonish letters. The setup produces a neat metaphor for In “Zoetrope,” lovers navigate their differences during the pandemic lockdown. the problems of private life in tumultu-

70 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY ANJA SLIBAR ous times—sometimes it’s hard to hear “play dumb” in order to tamp down his the dialogue over the honking mess be- family’s barely past traumas. His son, Nick, hind you, in the street. Jr., is a hyper-imaginative boy of sixteen who loves to write and dreams of being he actor, filmmaker, novelist, and an artist, but still, to his mortification, Tplaywright Bill Gunn, who died in wets the bed. The matriarch, Molly Hof- 1989, lived his artistic life in constant op- fenberg, is one of Gunn’s most incredible position to easy comprehension. In films and terrifying creations. She has willed like his shelved directorial début, “Stop!,” herself into the relative comfort and re- and his masterpiece, the psycho-thriller spectability of the Black middle class, yet vampire romance “Ganja & Hess” (1973), is still violently disappointed by both he swerved away from en-vogue depic- Nicks, and by the precarity of her position. tions of clichéd, predictably downbeat She openly pines for a man with more Black “realism” and leaned, instead, to- backbone than her husband and a kid ward describing a highly intellectual, hip who’s less screwed up than Junior. Despite Black bohemia. His characters were fore- her residence in a post-Great Migration runners of the Black creative class that atmosphere, familiar to theatregoers from would settle in cool urban outposts like the work of August Wilson, she seems Fort Greene in the nineteen-nineties, just cut out of two plays by Eugene O’Neill: before the rents got too high to accom- she’s a futile pipe-dreamer like the sad modate young artists looking for com- sacks in “The Iceman Cometh” and a hor- munity. Gunn’s best approximation of ror mom like Mary Tyrone from “Long this milieu probably came as an actor: in Day’s Journey Into Night.” When com- the indie film “Losing Ground” (1982), pany comes, she’s dead polite, but she’s by Kathleen Collins, he plays a tempes- got no patience for weakness, or for po- tuous painter named Victor, who, early etry, when they show up in her family. in the film, toasts himself sardonically as Too bad for her, then, that Gunn sets a “genuine Black success.” You can tell his characters singing, not working. The he knows how fragilely defined those excellent music by JJJJJerome Ellis and three words are. sound design by Frederick Kennedy give For the Hollywood of the seventies the proceedings a slowly encroaching and eighties, the Victors of the world dread; the soundscape is a perfect ac- were unrecognizable—and unsellable— companiment to Gunn’s lush language, types. In “Rhinestone Sharecropping,” which is always threatening to fracture, Gunn’s novel about his Hollywood ex- or to break into expressionistic song. perience, his alter ego, Sam Dodd, com- Nick, Jr., talks to photographs and to plains, “I wrote what I felt, which al- ghosts, muttering bits of King James: ways lacked the sign posts that lead the “Consider the lilies, how they grow. Con- average man to the ghetto. Critics wrote sider the lilies, how they grow.” When ‘Mr. Dodd lacks the quality of his peo- a spectral presence arrives, it stands on ple.’ ” Really, though, Gunn was simply the boy’s bed “in a carpet of gardenias.” more interested in language, and the In what almost seems like a joke about harrowing secrecy of poetry, than in tell- Black expression—its limits and its ex- ing a woeful story that he’d already heard. tremities—everyone keeps reciting pas- Gunn died at the age of fifty-nine, sages by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the a day before the première of his play great poet who straddled the nineteenth “The Forbidden City,” at the Public and twentieth centuries, tracing a line Theatre, which continues to be the ex- from the thwarted promises of Recon- ecutor of his theatrical estate. “The For- struction toward the uncertain snares bidden City” has been revived in a keen, and looming tragedies of the pre-civil- lyrical audio production by Lincoln Cen- rights era in which the Hoffenbergs live. ter Theatre, directed by Seret Scott, Even Molly, wearily succumbing to Gunn’s co-star in “Losing Ground.” verse at a low point, quotes, “The wan- “The Forbidden City” follows a mid- ing wealth that for a moment gleams, dle-class family in the summer of 1936, in then flies forever,” perhaps accidentally the days leading up to a stark dissolution. skipping past one of Dunbar’s loveliest The Hoffenbergs are, to put it lightly, a juxtapositions: “the jilting jade—/The weird bunch. Nick Hoffenberg, Sr., is a fame.” She rejoins the poet in a devastat- guileless working man, who has opted to ing sigh, “Dream, ah—dreams.”  teen months of nearly total deprivation. THE A RT WORLD It was like being given back a body to go with digital-wearied eyeballs. Even so-so works gladdened me just by being A TRIP TO THE FAIR real. Second, only about sixty galleries were represented, as opposed to Frieze’s Frieze returns to New York. usual coma-inducing tally of a couple of hundred. Finally, there was the rela- BY PETER SCHJELDAHL tive anonymity bestowed by face masks, which had the effect of reducing in- quite enjoyed Frieze New York, the artists and to preserve their own rank stances of unsought conversation. Fairs I recent edition of the annual (except in the art world’s marching order, deal- intensify the social rites that attend the last year) international art fair, housed ers can’t not laboriously and expensively showing and selling of art in New York. at the Shed—the arts complex in Hud- schlep their wares and staff around the My mask could hide my chagrin at fail- son Yards, on Manhattan’s far West Side— globe, from fair to fair. The events are ing to recognize people who did address rather than, as in past years, inside a co- schmoozefests for the über-rich and as- me. (“Good to see you” goes only so far.) lossal tent on Randall’s Island. This was sorted influencers, granted V.I.P. privi- Not that these are important disgraces, unusual for me, because I hate art fairs: leges. (Such an ugly term, unctuously given my temperamental distance from they strike me as upscale bazaars, al- elevating an élite to an elect.) But they a wholly commercial ecosystem. I cher- most immediately exhausting, that reek are popular with some upper-middle ish the art world for its steady provision of quiet desperation. They are a global hoi polloi as well. Tickets to the Shed of things to look at—and I respect deal- phenomenon of the last quarter cen- sold out well in advance, with general- ers, who wouldn’t be involved in art if tury, born partly out of the competition admission and preview tickets rang- they didn’t love it, and who have the that dealers face from auction houses, ing from fifty-five to two hundred and wisest heads in the game, because they which have recognized—and juiced— sixty-five dollars a pop. How much is can’t afford to be uninformed—but I the skyrocketing prices of works that exposure to a hodgepodge of recent art quail at considering the enterprise a club may be more or less fresh from studios. worth to you? of mutual interests, least of all in the Brick-and-mortar galleries can no lon- For me, three things made this late- rise and fall of pecuniary fortunes. The ger count on preëminence as the farm pandemic Frieze a tonic. First was the cage matches of Eros and Mammon system of the art industry. To retain top joy of seeing art in person after four- that are fairs leave me dyspeptic, even Y R E L L A G

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Y S E T R U O C “En même temps (At the same Time),” an installation by Annette Messager, at Marian Goodman’s booth.

72 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 as I avail myself of a generously sup- never happened—fake news.) The dom- art were in the offing, momentarily out plied V.I.P. pass because wouldn’t you? inant mode splits differences between of sight and not to be missed when it The chief distinction of Frieze New antic figuration and formal order. Sur- reveals itself. York is that it happened at all, unlike realism is back, with housebroken man- But taking the cake in terms of per- the other fairs that usually invade the ners. The present master is Dana Schutz, sonal aesthetic audacity was “Untitled” city this time of year. In terms of the art whose blazingly colored fantasies of (1990), a pale canvas, at Michael Wer- on display, it was mild to nearly sedate. enigmatic violence were on show at ner, by the late and, by many of us, still Dealers seemed reluctant to lead with David Zwirner’s booth. She makes sculp- lamented German artist Sigmar Polke, their best or most challenging stuff, per- ture, too, of rousingly bestial grotesque- who died in 2010, at the age of sixty-nine. haps keeping their powder dry for oc- ries. (Schutz naïvely got into public trou- He was a wizard of heterodox materi- casions attracting, as this one largely ble at the 2017 Whitney Biennial with als and an unpredictable humorist with didn’t, the European and Asian collec- a presumptuous painting based on the mystical nuances. He created this work tors who would usually walk the floor. mutilated Emmett Till in his casket. in the dark with slathered silver nitrate, (They were still able to fatten the con- She has since eschewed obvious topi- silver oxide, silver iodide, and silver bro- temporary trade through the fair’s on- cality.) Related younger painters (Schutz mide. Exposed to light, the strokes re- line viewing rooms.) Alert to the pres- is forty-four) included Ivy Haldeman, solved into a filmy gestural cadenza: ent era in racial politics, Frieze paid with Downs & Ross, who composes quietly ferocious, if such is imaginable, tribute to the Vision & Justice Project, images of bizarrely animate fashionable like superimposed eddies in a whipping a program initiated by the Harvard pro- clothes and occasional body parts, writh- windstorm. As often during Polke’s ca- fessor Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, in 2016. ing in space. Narrative? Abstract? Ei- reer, chance was his sidekick. To view Billboard-size polemical wall pieces by ther or both, in key with the present pre- this work is to share in his surprise when artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Mel mium on supercharged ambiguity. it became visible. The painting couldn’t Chin, and Hank Willis Thomas lined A bonus of the fair was a gorgeous have been more remote from the fair’s the fair’s halls, to uneven effect. The ges- mini-retrospective of the fey romanti- pageant of product lines—not that Polke ture felt defensive, as a virtuous fig leaf cist Karen Kilimnik—assembled by Gal- didn’t work in series, but he could be on the fair’s naked avarice. erie Eva Presenhuber and Sprüth Mag- counted on for exhilarating instances of At the booths, numerous Black art- ers—of small, loosely daubed pastiches turning the tables on himself. ists scored higher, given that so many of of vaguely seventeenth- or eighteenth- Either several familiar artists have them—such as the painters Rashid John- century pastoral scenes, rosy-cheeked improved lately or my former resistance son, at Hauser & Wirth, with bristling, women, and lovable animals, mostly to them has expired. So it is with the peculiarly nerve-racked abstraction, and horses. A world of her own, which some French multimedia specialist Annette Trenton Doyle Hancock, with a solo disdain but I adore. Since the nineteen- Messager, with two installations at Mar- show at James Cohan, of cartoonish eighties, when Kilimnik made many of ian Goodman: a large wall hung with characters, rendered mostly in white on the paintings, she has conveyed a qual- scrolls bearing fluent drawings that are black, that included a wry reference to ity ever rarer in contemporary art: the interspersed with small individual fig- the ever-controversial K.K.K. imagery expatiation of a personal drive. You feel ures of uncertain species, and a dark- in paintings by Philip Guston—are su- that she would be making the work if ened room containing a heap of taxi- perb. (Speaking of Guston, a K.K.K.- she were the only artist in existence, dermied or toy creatures (rabbit, duck, free gouache sketch by him of an open which, in her heart, she may well be. pigeon, kitten, raccoon, lizard, and more) book, at Hauser & Wirth, sparked con- Similarly take-me-home covetable, at and sculpted hands with raised fingers, sciousness of his immense, undying in- Karma, was a small still-life by Dike all embedded in a sort of primal crud. fluence on younger artists.) The quality Blair, an artist who is little renowned Tiny spotlights rotated within the pile, of the artists’ work was in synch with but is passionately esteemed by his fans, casting on the surrounding walls huge their dealers’ eagerness to peddle it. There including me. Blair has taken various shadows of things near the lights and is just no getting around the art world’s tacks since the seventies, most success- diminutive ones of those more distant. alchemy of value becoming price—which fully photo-realist paintings in gouache The flow of the scale shifts mesmer- I would simply prefer to happen off- or oil (from snapshots he takes) of un- ized. A poetry of some organic natural stage, like murder in Greek theatre. remarkable domestic and worldly ob- process was suggested—perhaps evolu- jects and bits of architecture. Flowers tion or, I don’t know, devolution, on fast ainting ruled this Frieze. The appe- feature often. So do fancy cocktails, as forward. The works’ theatrical richness Ptites that govern today’s market ex- at Frieze. Blair’s compositions are dead- provided an immersive time-out from plain the flourishing of the old medium, pan and his colors emphatic. A subtle Frieze’s teeming thises and thats. which avant-gardists have declared dead, air of ironic detachment pervades his Contemplation, art’s primary exer- off and on, for a hundred years. I had work, as if he were startled by his own cise of the human mind, is the last thing an uncanny sense of styles and reputa- temerity in offering pleasures so un- enabled by art-fair hurly-burly. But it tions picking up where they left off in prepossessing. But once you start look- could and did occur at points in Frieze March, 2020. (A visitor this year might ing at a picture by him it’s hard to stop. New York, an event marked less by cel- have had giddy moments of imagining You almost watch, rather than look, as ebration than by gasping relief, like a that the horrendous intervening epoch though some ultimate secret of life and swimmer saved from drowning. 

THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 73 “The Dry” marks a double return— THE CURRENT CINEMA not just for Aaron but for Eric Bana, who plays him in the present day. It’s been a while since Bana made a FEELING THE HEAT major film in his native Australia. We’ve grown accustomed to his face “The Dry” and “The Perfect Candidate.” in international hits like “Black Hawk Down” (2001), “Munich” (2005), “Star BY ANTHONY LANE Trek” (2009), and “Lone Survi- vor” (2013), and to wondering, given ow many crimes have been com- Scott-Mitchell), plus the teen-age Luke that he began as a standup comedian, Hmitted before “The Dry” begins? (Sam Corlett) and his best friend, Aaron how hard it is for him to keep that One barbarous act we know about for Falk ( Joe Klocek). Ellie’s death was face straight. “Troy” (2004) must have sure: a man named Luke Hadler (Mar- deemed to be accidental, but suspicion been especially challenging. Bana seems tin Dingle Wall) has been found dead, has always clung to it. Many locals be- more at ease in the latest film: “Can I with a shotgun beside him, outside lieve that Aaron, in particular, knew help you with something, mate?” is a the town of Kiewarra. (It’s a fictional more than he was prepared to tell. typical response to a menacing situa- place, but the movie, adapted from the In a bid to escape such rumors, Aaron tion. Yet his character is not a happy novel of the same name by Jane Harper, left town, and made a life elsewhere. fellow, and his expression remains tensed and inward-gazing. What makes Aaron absorbing to watch is that along with the anxiety goes a firm and un- swayable stride, and there are times, as he walks down Kiewarra’s main street, with its stores and bar, when the Hadleyville of “High Noon” (1952), patrolled by Gary Cooper, doesn’t feel too far away. The plot of “The Dry,” it has to be said, is not a model of elegance and plausibility. I sniffed out the villain, who barely merits the description, a fair way off, and the dénouement, though it involves the threat of fire- starting, is the dampest of squibs. Yet the film has serious staying power. This is due in part to the actors, not least Bettencourt, who lends such lu- In Robert Connolly’s film, Eric Bana is a cop who comes back to his home town. minosity to the ill-fated Ellie that we can easily see why the extinguishing and directed by Robert Connolly, A successful life, too; he became a big- of her life, long ago, continues to be was filmed in the Australian state of city cop. Now he is returning to at- mourned. What really drives the story, Victoria.) Back at Luke’s house are tend the Hadlers’ funeral, in Kiewarra, however, is the third, the largest, and the bodies of his wife and son, and it where, reluctantly but inevitably, he the least soluble crime that it exam- is presumed—for want of a better the- gets sucked into mysteries old and new. ines—not the demise of Luke Hadler, ory—that he killed them before tak- He is greeted with something close to that is, but the cracks in the ground ing his own life, though he left no awe by the young neighborhood po- on which he lies and, nearby, the corpse note. The only blessing is that his baby lice officer, Greg Raco (Keir O’Don- of a leafless tree. “Luke and I used to daughter was spared. If she were old nell), who is about half his size, and come fishing out here,” Aaron says. enough to give evidence, what would with a snarling scorn by some of the “Look at it now.” From scenes like she say? other men. The women, on the whole, these, and from the words that appear The second notable deed may not are more welcoming. Aaron rekin- onscreen near the beginning (“324 days have been a crime at all. In 1991, a high- dles his acquaintance with Gretchen since rain”), a question springs: Are school student, Ellie Deacon (BeBe (played as an adult by Genevieve we entering the zone of climate-change Bettencourt), died in a river near Kie- O’Reilly), who invites him over to her cinema, and, if so, what torrid forms warra, at the age of seventeen. In flash- place, whereupon he slightly spoils the will it take? backs to that time, we see Ellie swim- mood by insinuating that she might How works of art are brought forth ming and messing around with her be the murderer of Luke. So much for not by defined historical events, like a pals—a girl named Gretchen (Claude the kindling. war, but by the looming promise of

74 THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY peril can be hard to trace, all the more to 15 percent for rural males aged 30- car, Saudi women having been gra- so when that promise has yet to be ful- 49.” Which brings us full circle to Luke ciously allowed to drive since 2018. filled. It is a critical commonplace, for Hadler, dead in the dirt. And yet, in other ways, she is as con- instance, that film noir was shadowed Whether “The Dry” can carry such strained as the girl on the bike. To by fears of nuclear war, although few a burden of intent, psychological and renew a travel permit, for example, of the clues are as blindingly clear as meteorological, is up for debate. Some Maryam needs the consent of a male the radioactive box in “Kiss Me Deadly” viewers may regard the film as a doomy guardian. More or less by accident, and (1955). What about the burst of white thriller with ideas above its station. Yet in a nice comic irony, it is this quest light, say, seen through the window of even they, I suspect, will be left with for consent that leads her to sign up a child’s bedroom, in “The Big Heat” raw throats and a sense of trouble in as a candidate for a seat on the mu- (1953)? The flash is that of a car bomb, store. Listen to Aaron, tired and be- nicipal council. She decides to con- but, for a terrible second, do we imag- grimed by a long day’s policing, as he centrate on one issue: the building of ine a vaster glare? Likewise, in “The barks in despair at what emerges from a paved road to her clinic. Dry,” is Aaron reflecting only on Ellie, the showerhead: a russet spurt, then In truth, the new film lacks the whir- as he stares at the creek where they nothing. And, as he drives out to the ring fluency that brought such fresh- used to splash about, or is he asking farmsteads, look at the arid flatlands ness to “Wadjda.” The story is awk- himself how on earth it dwindled into that stretch to the horizon on either wardly split between Maryam’s crusade this bare and stony gulch? side. At one bewitching moment, three and the exploits of her father, Abdulaziz You could argue, of course, that the dust devils rise and dance—ghosts of (Khalid Abdulraheem), who, like Sir parching is nothing new. Mel Gibson, the past, perhaps, or heralds of the bar- Walter Elliot, in “Persuasion,” is a wid- in “Mad Max” (1980), didn’t exactly ren years to come. ower with three daughters. If memory motor through green meadows, and serves, though, Sir Walter never went “Wake in Fright” (1971)—the hero of n old man is hurt in a traffic ac- on tour with his band, whereas Ab- which, like Aaron, takes a room in a Acident. He is taken to the E.R., dulaziz, a virtuoso on the lutelike oud, secluded Australian town that’s weirdly where a doctor assesses his injuries. He is away for weeks, leaving what he calls difficult to leave—opens with a slow tells her not to look into his eyes. “Keep “this crazy campaign” to unfold. The panoramic shot of semi-desert, in ochre her away from me!” he cries. When she pleasure of the film rests not in the and burnt sienna. Most movies seem tells him that he will require surgery, plot, which is so placid as to be anti- like weak beer after “Wake in Fright,” the old man agrees, on one condition: dramatic, but in the minutiae; as ever, whose ferocity is unquenched after he should be anesthetized before she Al Mansour homes in on the everyday fifty years, but what’s changed is that touches him. workings of condescension and con- the desiccation to which “The Dry” Welcome to Saudi Arabia, and to formity. Notice the woman who, when bears witness may be here to stay. The “The Perfect Candidate,” the latest film Maryam asks for her vote, replies, “My title nods to the Big Dry, otherwise from Haifaa Al Mansour. She earned husband would kill me, but I’ll see what known as the Millennium Drought, acclaim as the director of “ Wadjda”(2013), he says,” and the TV host who an- which laid siege to Australia from in which a young Saudi girl seeks to nounces that, as a female candidate, roughly 1996 to 2010. In 2015, “Thirsty earn money for a bicycle—a machine Maryam will naturally want to focus Country,” a report issued by the Cli- for liberation—by reciting the Quran. on playgrounds and gardens. The look mate Council of Australia, predicted This time, we have a grownup hero- that she gives him is as friendly as frost. a rise in the intensity and the frequency ine in the shape of Maryam Al Saf- The eyes have it.  of heat waves and in the severity of fan (Mila Al Zahrani), the doctor to droughts, following which “the rela- whom the old man objects. She has NEWYORKER.COM tive risk of suicide can increase by up not only a good job but also her own Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, M AY 24, 2021 75 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 Jason Chatfield, must be received by Sunday, May 23rd. The finalists in the May 10th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 7th 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

“Apparently, the one you use says a lot about your personality.” Douglas Dean, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“Is the fire in Times Square or Columbus Circle?” “The classics can be so intimidating.” Dorothy Stegman, Muncie, Ind. Randall Beren, San Rafael, Calif.

“Since when did the pizza delivery guy get his own pole?” Andy McDonald, London, England Photograph / Jennifer Chase P P O O D D C C N L I E S A A T W E N

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S S O P N I S

S O T T P O D T E I S F Y

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W O D E C E A K S L T Y S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT. 12 13 14 15 16

THE 17 18 19 CROSSWORD 20 21 22

23 24 A moderately challenging puzzle. 25 26 27 28 BY WYNA LIU 29 30 31 32

ACROSS 33 34 35 36 37

1 One with a password 38 39 40 41 42 5 Tense type? 9 Longtime “Reading Rainbow” airer 43 44 45 46 12 City that’s home to the House of the Seven Gables 47 48 14 Earthen cooking pots 49 50 51 52 53 16 Electric ___ 17 “Father of video art” known for his work 54 55 56 with television monitors 19 Eponym of an Italian-restaurant 57 58 59 franchise and a pasta-sauce brand 20 Smirnoff competitor 60 61 62 21 Makes a mess on one’s bib, maybe 23 “Eh . . . pass” DOWN 36 Game that ends when you reach the top 25 Maneuver with skill 1 Sch. whose athletic teams are called the 39 Some after-dinner orders 27 2017 black-comedy bio-pic about an Midshipmen 41 “I mean to say . . .” Olympic figure skater 2 “The well-built Swede,” in an old slogan 44 Decide the merits of, as a motion 29 “Oh, this ___ thing?” 3 “Slippery” shade sources 46 30 Item slurped at some bars Mark an item as discounted, say 4 Sign up for again 48 32 Japanese lunch box What sports geeks geek out on 5 One whose feet really stink? 49 33 Socialist labor organizer who ran for Tempo 6 President five times The Matterhorn, for one 51 To be, to Baudelaire 7 35 Attacked Symbol in a URL 52 Team originally named the New Jersey 37 “Splendor in the Grass” director Kazan 8 Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall locale Americans 38 Had the nerve 9 It might be taken out for a date 53 “Aw, nuts” 40 Feature of many jeans 10 “Don’t neglect your elbows” and “De- 56 V.I.P. at a Silicon Valley startup puff your eyes with raw potatoes,” for 42 Cheeseburger spring rolls or mozzarella two Solution to the previous puzzle: sticks, for short 11 43 Tool for a seafood chef Mysterious cafeteria offering G L A S G O W P A C T 13 C H I S H O L M R I C E 45 Techniques Fox on Fox, in the nineties B L O C K A D E D E R R S 47 15 Sidesteps Mold in the freezer? Q U E U E P H A S E M I T 49 Customer-appreciation event, perhaps 18 Some essential workers U R A L T E E N G L I D E 50 Get the message out? 22 Fed. security A N T F I L L H A I L E D S L E E P W A L K E R 54 24 Occasion for a scone and clotted cream Knee stabilizer, for short L E A D S T O R I E S 55 One who’s neither in nor out 25 Attraction invented by sixteenth-century B O O T Y S H O R T S 57 Stick on a rack watchmakers to showcase their miniature M I N U T E E D I E N I T wares A N G L E A C T S H A S H 58 ___ voce 26 Chain with one’s name C D C N A C H O M E A L Y 59 Mattress brand with a classic Claymation P L O W R E I N F O R C E 28 “Now!” “Counting Sheep” ad campaign R E N O A L L E Y O O P 60 Suffix for world records 29 “___ are . . .” O S S O B A D S I G N 61 Cozy corner 31 Green-lighted Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at 62 Take ten 34 Tennis great with nine Grand Slam titles newyorker.com/crossword Now hear this. Narrated stories, along with podcasts, are now available in the New Yorker app. Download it at newyorker.com/app