PRICE $8.99 JULY 24, 2017

JULY 24, 2017

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN David Remnick on the Trumps’ family drama; M.T.A. malaise; how to be a goddess; a new way to study abroad; David Lowery. LETTER FROM COLORADO Peter Hessler 20 Follow the Leader A small-town movement echoes the President. SHOUTS & MURMURS Jack Handey 27 Don’t Blame Yourself ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY Nathan Heller 28 Mark as Read The slippery insights of e-mail. PERSONAL HISTORY Danielle Allen 32 American Inferno How a teen-ager becomes a crime statistic. PROFILES Kelefa Sanneh 42 Hat Trick ’s startling consistency. FICTION Cristina Henríquez 52 “Everything Is Far from Here” THE CRITICS BOOKS Hua Hsu 56 Revisiting Bob Marley. 58 Briefly Noted James Wood 62 Joshua Cohen’s “Moving Kings.” MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 66 A unique performance space in Colorado. THE THEATRE Hilton Als 68 “Pipeline.” THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 70 “War for the Planet of the Apes,” “Lady Macbeth.” POEMS Natalie Shapero 25 “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done” John Skoyles 48 “My Mother, Heidegger, and Derrida” COVER Barry Blitt “Grounded”

DRAWINGS Amy Hwang, P. C. Vey, Barbara Smaller, Edward Koren, Paul Karasik, Liana Finck, Benjamin Schwartz, Sam Gross, Edward Steed, Roz Chast, William Haefeli, Drew Dernavich, Robert Leighton, Alex Gregory SPOTS Jean Jullien CONTRIBUTORS

Kelefa Sanneh (“Hat Trick,” p. 42) has Danielle Allen (“American Inferno,” been a staff writer since 2008. p. 32) is a political theorist and the James Bryant Conant University Pro- Cristina Henríquez (Fiction, p. 52) is the fessor at Harvard. This piece is an ex- author of three books, including the cerpt from her most recent book, “Cuz: novels “The World in Half ” and “The The Life and Times of Michael A.,” Book of Unknown Americans.” which comes out in September.

Peter Hessler (“Follow the Leader,” Nathan Heller (“Mark as Read,” p. 28), p. 20) is a staff writer living in Ridgway, a staff writer, has contributed to the Colorado. He is currently working on magazine since 2011. a book about the five years he spent reporting from Egypt. Jack Handey (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 27) is the author of the forthcoming “Please John Skoyles (Poem, p. 48) lives in Truro, Stop the Deep Thoughts.” Massachusetts. His most recent books are “Suddenly It’s Evening: Selected Natalie Shapero (Poem, p. 25) teaches Poems” and “The Nut File.” at Tufts University. Her books include “No Object” and, most recently, “Hard Marisa Meltzer (The Talk of the Town, Child.” p. 17) is the author of “Girl Power” and a co-author of “How Sassy Changed Barry Blitt (Cover), a cartoonist and My Life.” She writes the “Me Time” illustrator, has contributed more than column for the Times. a hundred covers to the magazine since 1992. Hua Hsu (Books, p. 56), a contributing writer since 2015, is the author of “A James Wood (Books, p. 62) teaches at Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Fail- Harvard. “The Nearest Thing to Life” ure Across the Pacific.” is his latest book.

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DAILY SHOUTS FLASH FICTION A child’s commentary on her Amelia Gray’s “The Hostage” is mother’s “squishy and wobbly” body, the latest in our new series of very illustrated by Glynnis Fawkes. short stories.

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2 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 THE MAIL

PUTTING AFRICA ON THE GRID over the years visiting siblings who lived in Austin. I suspect that, were Austin Bill McKibben, in his piece on off-the- transplanted to the Bay Area, it would grid solar power in sub-Saharan Af- be considered similar to Sacramento. It rica, unfortunately lapses into a cliché is Austin’s juxtaposition with the rest of account of the region (“Power Brokers,” the state that makes it seem weird, and June 26th). Although McKibben quotes endears it to people all over Texas. Tex- Africans, he presents the story of Af- ans who gloat about new Austinites rica as the story of Westerners in Af- who fled San Francisco’s “out-of-control rica, and makes the task of rural elec- housing costs” gloss over a basic fact: trification seem to be a series of tech nical San Francisco is more expensive than problems for Americans to solve. The cities in Texas in part because more peo- Westerners in his article are presented ple want to live here than there is hous- as operating in an idealized environ- ing. The fact that property values are ment, one devoid of the gritty institu- rising faster in Austin than in other tional challenges to development in Texas cities indicates that the state is Africa, such as local politics, govern- becoming increasingly liberal, tolerant, ment accountability, and legal empow- and “weird.” erment. Alloysius Attah, a Ghanaian Peter Albert entrepreneur, notes that “there are a San Francisco, Calif. lot of Ivy Leaguers coming to Africa to say, ‘I can solve this problem.’ . . . Wright notes the grassroots opposition They’re doing good work, but little in- to the “bathroom bill,” but that’s not vestment goes to community leaders.” the only thing that Texans are organiz- Rather than examine the broader im- ing against. In April, I rode in a con- plications of this observation—includ- voy of buses from Dallas to Austin, ing the West’s attitude toward Africa— where I joined people from across the McKibben narrowly interprets the state to lobby against budget cuts to “whiff of colonialism” as an issue of Planned Parenthood. The Women’s money: aid versus private capital. Hav- March in Austin drew more than forty ing lived in Africa for nearly a decade thousand participants, and there were and worked for African social enter- similar rallies in cities throughout the prises, I know that McKibben, whose state. Fed-up citizens have flooded town work is indispensable to today’s envi- halls. In the wake of Donald Trump’s ronmental movement, has accurately first travel ban against people from seven described the African solar-startup Muslim-majority countries, Mike Raw- scene. But stories like this perpetuate lings, the mayor of Dallas, held a press the ugly narrative of the West solving conference to denounce the executive Africa’s problems. When will journal- order, and a large group of people pro- ists stop making Westerners the focus tested at the Dallas-Fort Worth air- of stories about Africa? port. Based on the level of unrest among Matthew Muspratt fair-minded Texans—Republicans and 1Berkeley, Calif. Democrats alike—the future of Texas could turn out to be very different from KEEP TEXAS WEIRD its present. Don’t give up on us yet. Marian Avalos Lawrence Wright’s article on Texas, Dallas, Texas which describes the state legislature mov- ing farther to the right as voter demo- • graphics move to the left, stirred up mem- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, ories of a state I’ve known and watched address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited evolve since the nineteen- eighties (“The for length and clarity, and may be published in Future Is Texas,” July 10th & 17th). I am any medium. We regret that owing to the volume from San Francisco, and have spent time of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 3 JULY 19 – 25, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The game-changing Austrian-Italian designer Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) was ambivalent about retro- spectives. “It’s like having a birthday party where too many relatives show up,” he once said. That family is about to expand. On July 21, the Met Breuer opens a six-decade survey of Sottsass’s impertinent genius, from the lipstick-red typewriter he conceived for Olivetti, in 1969, to his gonzo work with the -based Memphis design group, in the early eighties (including the “Carlton” room divider, pictured above).

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW B. MYERS the chance to hear his rendition of one of the most exquisite arias the composer ever wrote, “Ombra mai fu.” Nicole Paiement conducts, and Tazewell CLASSICAL MUSIC Thompson directs. (July 20 at 7:30.) • This season’s 1 schedule mixes classic Americana and stories that echo today’s headlines. Rodgers and Hammer- CONCERTS IN TOWN lectures, master classes, and, most tantalizing, ro- stein’s “Oklahoma!,” a complex but idyllic slice bust concert programs from a variety of interna- of frontier life, changed Broadway forever when tional virtuosos and up-and-comers. One of this it premièred, during the Second World War. The “Calder: Hypermobility” year’s more notable soloists is the veteran Russian young opera singers Jarrett Ott and Vanessa Be- If any artist deserves the tribute of live-action pianist Vladimir Feltsman, who performs works by cerra star as Curly and Laurey, respectively, in a performance, it is Alexander Calder, whose prin- Brahms (including the Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79) staging by Molly Smith, the artistic director of cipal works—mobiles—are constantly in motion. and Mussorgsky (the composer’s original Arena Stage, in Washington, D.C.; James Lowe The Whitney Museum is augmenting its current version of “Pictures at an Exhibition”) at the Kaye conducts. (July 21 at 7:30 and July 23 and July 25 at Calder show with a number of events; this week Playhouse. (July 23 at 4.) (Hunter College, Park Ave. 1:30.) • This summer’s flagship work is George features Christian Marclay, a creator of both sound at 68th St. ikif.org.) Gershwin’s beloved “Porgy and Bess,” a jazz-and- and art, who collaborates with the cellist Okkyung blues-inflected piece that depicts the lives of a fic- Lee in performances inspired by, and interacting Mostly Mozart: “The Singing Heart” tionalized African- American enclave bedevilled with, “Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere” (1932-33), A festival quietly and continually reinvigorated by drugs and poverty, in Charleston, South Caro- Calder’s first suspended mobile. (July 19-20 at 8 through fresh ideas and noteworthy artists gets lina. Gershwin, of course, had an extensive Broad- and July 21 at 1.) (99 Gansevoort St. whitney.org.) under way with a mix of symphonic compositions, way background, but the piece was conceived as sacred vocal pieces, and folk songs, a nod to both grand opera, and Glimmerglass’s artistic and gen- National Youth Orchestra of the United the music of Mozart’s day and the current season’s eral director, Francesca Zambello, and its conduc- States of America emphasis on lyrical works. Mostly Mozart’s music tor, John DeMain, have restored the work’s original Stern Auditorium resounds with youthful vibrancy director, Louis Langrée, conducts the festival or- recitatives and orchestrations. Musa Ngqungwana for three consecutive evenings, beginning with chestra, along with the pianist Kit Armstrong, the and Talise Trevigne take the title roles. (July 22 at the Carnegie Hall début of the ensemble NYO2, Young People’s Chorus of , the Con- 1:30.) • With its muted colors and sympathetic nar- which performs alongside members of the Phila- cert Chorale of New York, and a clutch of fine vocal rative, Donizetti’s “The Siege of Calais” dramatizes delphia Orchestra in classics by Copland and Stra- soloists in Mozart’s “Kyrie” (K. 90) and “Haffner” the struggle of the French port city during the Hun- vinsky, and in collaboration with Esperanza Spal- Symphony (K. 385), as well as Beethoven’s “Choral dred Years’ War, when it was under sustained at- ding, the celebrated young jazz bassist and singer. Fantasy,” Op. 80. (July 25 at 8 and July 26 at 7:30.) tack by Edward III. The spectre of the so-called On the next evening, Marin Alsop conducts the (David Geffen Hall. mostlymozart.org.) Ca lais Jungle—the migrant camps that were dis- full N.Y.O.-U.S.A. in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 1 mantled by the French government in 2016—lingers in D Major and works by John Adams and Gabri- over Zambello’s production, the work’s American ela Lena Frank. Finally, as an added attraction, OUT OF TOWN première. Joseph Colaneri conducts a cast that in- Ludovic Morlot will lead the newly assembled Na- cludes Aleks Romano, Leah Crocetto, Adrian Tim- tional Youth Orchestra of China in Zhou Long’s Tanglewood pau, and Chaz’men Williams-Ali. (July 22 at 8 and “The Rhyme of Taigu,” Tchaikovsky’s Piano Con- The preëminent Emerson String Quartet enjoys July 24 at 1:30.) (Cooperstown, N.Y. glimmerglass.org.) certo No. 1 (with Yuja Wang), and Dvořák’s “New a two-concert residency at the Boston Symphony World” Symphony. (July 20 at 7:30 and July 21-22 Orchestra’s musical duchy this week. On the first Marlboro Music at 8.) (212-247-7800.) evening, the group performs Shostakovich’s String Another summer of glorious music arrives at Marl- Quartet No. 14 in F-Sharp Major as part of “The boro, the festival where a conclave of the world’s Lincoln Center Festival Black Monk,” a unique theatrical event (with the leading classical virtuosos (and their exceptionally Morton Subotnick, an éminence grise of the actors David Strathairn and Jay O. Sanders) in- talented protégés) gather to intensely rehearse a electronic-music scene and the subject of a forth- spired by Chekhov’s short story of the same name, range of chamber-music masterpieces, and the oc- coming documentary, is featured in a concert that which Shostakovich, over many years, struggled casional novelty. Brett Dean is this year’s composer- showcases him as both a forefather of modern to transform into an opera. The second finds the in-residence, with the conductor Leon Fleisher as electronica and a creator still current and relevant foursome teaming up with several noted colleagues guest artist. Programs are announced one week in today. Alongside a live rendition of his ground- (such as the pianist Thomas Adès) in a program advance on the festival’s Web site. (July 22 at 8 and breaking work “Silver Apples of the Moon,” com- that surrounds Mark-Anthony Turnage’s quartet July 23 at 2:30.) (Marlboro, Vt. marlboromusic.org.) missioned in 1967 for release on Nonesuch Rec- “Shroud” with favorite works by Schubert (includ- ords, is a performance of a new piece, “Crowds ing the “Trout” Quintet). (July 19-20 at 8.) • The Caramoor and Power,” inspired by Elias Canetti’s disquiet- resplendent Boston Symphony Orchestra offers Bel Canto at Caramoor has provided New Yorkers ing 1960 study of authority and obedience. Joan a slate of keyboard-centered concerts this week- with destination-worthy concerts of Rossini, Bel- La Barbara, a maverick vocalist and composer end. On Friday night, Gustavo Gimeno leads the lini, and Donizetti for twenty years, and Rossini’s (and Subotnick’s wife), voices the central charac- ensemble in ardent works by Bernstein (the Sym- “Petite Messe Solennelle”—literally, “Little Sol- ter; the German artist Lillevan provides visuals. phony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety,” with the pi- emn Mass”—provides a fitting coda as the final (July 20-22 at 8:30.) • Maria Pomianowska, a Pol- anist Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and Tchaikovsky (the concert in the series’ final season; much like the ish singer, instrumentalist, and composer, makes Fourth Symphony). Thomas Adès takes the po- series itself, the work’s depth of feeling and confi- her U.S. début with the songful repertoire she has dium on Saturday night, directing music by him- dent style belie its ostensibly modest ambitions. fashioned for the Biłgoraj suka, a rustic Eastern Eu- self and by his great Britannic predecessor Benja- Rachelle Jonck conducts the program’s Bel Canto ropean fiddle she reconstructed based on a hand- min Britten (“Sinfonia da Requiem”) before joining Young Artists in the original version of the score, ful of archaic texts and images. Though grounded the soloist Emanuel Ax in Beethoven’s Piano Con- for two and harmonium. (July 23 at 4.) (Ka- in Polish folk styles, her music also shows influ- certo No. 5, “Emperor.” And on Sunday afternoon tonah, N.Y. caramoor.org.) ences absorbed during travels throughout North the B.S.O. gives the podium to Ken-David Masur, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, producing an who conducts pieces by Aaron Jay Kernis, Pro kofiev Maverick Concerts idiom that is cordially rootless and instantly ap- (the Third Piano Concerto, with Nikolai Lugan- In the last of three Sunday concerts celebrating pealing. The event opens “Nomadic Nights: Music sky), and Tchaikovsky (the buoyant Symphony No. the achievements of Aaron Jay Kernis, the Pulit- at the Crossroads,” a five-concert series devoted 2, “Little Russian”). (July 21-22 at 8 and July 23 at zer Prize-winning composer who has made a spe- to polyglot artists and hybrid sounds. (July 25 at 2:30.) (Lenox, Mass. bso.org.) cialty of the quartet form, the Maverick brings the 8.) (Kaplan Penthouse, Rose Building, Lincoln Cen- superb young Jasper String Quartet to its charm- ter. lincolncenterfestival.org.) Glimmerglass Festival ing woodland hall. Kernis’s epic String Quartet The long weekend at Glimmerglass, the leading No. 3, “River,” is a specialty of the Jaspers, who International Keyboard Institute and Festival summer opera company on the East Coast, begins perform it as the center of a concert that also fea- For nearly two decades, this festival, spearheaded with Handel’s “Xerxes”: John Holiday, an up-and- tures Haydn’s Quartet in G Major, Op. 76, No. 1, by the pianist Jerome Rose, has been a go-to event coming countertenor with an appealing, soprano- and Brahms’s Quartet No. 2 in A Minor. (July 23 at for piano aficionados, offering a combination of like timbre, sings the title role, giving audiences 4.) (Woodstock, N.Y. maverickconcerts.org.)

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 5 Tully Hall, July 19). And the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv and Ha’Bima National Theatre of Is- rael co-produce “To the End of the Land,” based THE THEATRE on David Grossman’s novel, which follows three 1 1 characters who meet during the Six-Day War (Ger- ald W. Lynch, July 24-27; in Hebrew). (212-721- OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS NOW PLAYING 6500. lincolncenterfestival.org.) Marvin’s Room A Midsummer Night’s Dream Hamlet In Scott McPherson’s 1990 play, revived by the The Public Theatre’s second Shakespeare in Sam Gold’s interpretation of the Bard’s classic Roundabout, Bessie (Lili Taylor) is told that she the Park offering of the summer features An- work about truth and illusion, madness and san- has leukemia. For most of her adult life, she has naleigh Ashford (Helena), Danny Burstein ity, fathers and sons (and one daughter) is per- protected herself against her own needs by taking (Bottom), Phylicia Rashad (Titania), and Kris- plexing—but to what end? As an intellectual ex- care of others. Bessie’s sister, Lee (Janeane Garo- tine Nielsen (Puck). (Delacorte, . ercise about “Hamlet”—with the luminous and falo), left home long ago to live her own life, but Enter at 81st St. at Central Park W. 212-967-7555. real Oscar Isaac in the title role—the produc- that wasn’t what she got. While Taylor gives the In previews.) tion is a jumble of various styles, including those play’s most interesting, poised performance, Garo- of Ivo van Hove and the Wooster Group’s Eliza- falo can’t seem to speak and do any stage business A Parallelogram beth LeCompte. What gets lost in it is what Gold at the same time. The director, Anne Kauffman, Michael Greif directs a dark comedy by Bruce may really think of the script, let alone of his ac- does the best she can, but what can you do with Norris (“Clybourne Park”), about a woman tors (including Keegan-Michael Key, as Horatio), a script whose most potent influence seems to be (Celia Keenan-Bolger) who can use a remote who play so much of the story as a bitter joke or TV—or, more precisely, all those Lifetime movies control to travel to any moment in her life. a prank. Gold treats Shakespeare’s tragedy as the that end with a healing circle and the quiet accep- (Second Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422. work of a young writer whom he delights in open- tance of “home”? (Reviewed in our issue of 7/10 & In previews.) ing up for a contemporary audience, but at the ex- 17/17.) (American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. pense of the language, and of our patience. (Pub- 212-719-1300.) The Suitcase Under the Bed lic, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) The Mint stages a quartet of short plays by 1984 the deaf Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, whose Lincoln Center Festival In a number of ways, Robert Icke and Duncan work was produced at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre The troubled Middle East is the locus of several Macmillan, who adapted George Orwell’s 1949 from 1930 to 1936. (Beckett, 410 W. 42nd St. 212- works at this year’s festival. The playwright Mo- novel (they also direct, and obviously have a pas- 239-6200. Previews begin July 21.) hammad Al Attar and the director Omar Abusaada, sion for the material), have made a successful film, both Syrian, stage “While I Was Waiting,” about a which indirectly emphasizes how constricting the Summer Shorts young man in Damascus who falls into a coma after stage can be. Airstrip One, formerly known as The yearly festival of short plays returns, with an attack (Gerald W. Lynch, July 19-22; in Arabic). Great Britain, is ruled by the Inner Party, a polit- playwrights including Neil LaBute, Graham The filmmaker Amos Gitai wrote “Yitzhak Rabin: ical regime in which having your own opinion is Moore, and Alan Zweibel. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th Chronicle of an Assassination,” a multi media piece considered a “thoughtcrime.” At the Ministry of St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin July 21.) about the death of the Israeli Prime Minister (Alice Truth, Winston (Tom Sturridge) works with Julia (Olivia Wilde), as Inner Party members walk by, including O’Brien (Reed Birney). Later, during a series of excruciating exchanges, O’Brien physi- cally tortures Winston. Icke and Macmillan inten- sify the horror by turning up the lights and amp- ing up the sound on the teeth-grindingly effective music. Ultimately, the torture comes off as imag- ined and theatricalized; it’s more about what Icke and Macmillan want us to see than what Winston might feel. (7/10 & 17/17) (Hudson, 139-141 W. 44th St. 855-801-5876.)

Pipeline Dominique Morisseau’s play, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, is about a teacher at an inner-city pub- lic school who sends her son to a private academy. (Reviewed in this issue.) (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.)

Seeing You Randy Weiner, who more or less started the immersive-theatre trend, as a producer of “Sleep No More,” attempts total theatre again, with a spectacle that incorporates dance, scripted and improvised dialogue, lights, music, and so on to describe the horrors of the Second World War and how death can affect the psychology of lovers and the idea of family. Unlike “Sleep No More,” “See- ing You” doesn’t get into your bones, because its gimmickry feels manufactured purely to freak you out. Actors enact narratives—cheating lovers fight, closeted gay soldiers meet and then part, a fam- ily eats dinner—that are clichéd versions of Sec- ond World War movies. Stories about queerness in this context—the show is staged in a former meatpacking warehouse across the street from a shopping emporium—feel designer-driven; noth- “While I Was Waiting,” at the Lincoln Center Festival July 19-22, tells the story of a young ing’s organic here, not even death. (7/10 & 17/17)

man in Damascus who falls into a coma after being attacked at a checkpoint. (450 W. 14th St. 866-811-4111.) SHIN DADU BY ILLUSTRATION

6 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 1 ROCK AND POP

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

Algiers “The Battle of Algiers,” the storied 1965 Gillo Pontecorvo movie that documented the Alge- rian fight for independence, gave the contem- porary gospel-punk group Algiers its name. The four-piece creates rapturous, politically charged music that examines gnarled and prevalent is- sues, including anticolonialism, fascism, dys- topia, and police brutality, while making it im- possible not to dance to the pulsating, soulful post-punk—some of which was written while the front man, Franklin Fisher, worked the coat check at a night club in the East Village. The group’s second release on Matador Records, “The Underside of Power,” is a dense, disarm- ing that both devastates and inspires, while sending forth a potent message to listen- ers: resist, in any way possible. (Baby’s All Right, 146 Broadway, Brooklyn. 718-599-5800. July 22.)

Burger Records Beach Bash In ten short years, California’s Burger Records has graduated from a homegrown boutique label Chino Amobi conjures metropolises across the globe in his cacophonous instrumentals. to a real and remarkable contributor to the his- tory of rock and roll. With more than eleven hundred D.I.Y. releases under its belt (most Past Customs ent opus “Music for Airports” (1978), of them dubbed directly to cassette tape), the Amobi’s transcontinental score has a label has become synonymous with starry-eyed An electronic producer’s mission to underground power pop and keyed-up garage. more explicit take on air travel: buzzy reroute ambient music. This weekend, Burger throws its second annual synths swell into prominence like a beach party on Coney Island, hosted by Randy The Nigerian-American producer takeoff, asymmetrical percussion Jones, most recognizable as the cowboy from the Village People. Arrive early to get a spot Chino Amobi grew up in Virginia, the mimics the metallic dance of landing up front for the Zeros (a seventies punk act), site of the first permanent British set- gear unfolding, and talk-box samples Nobunny (a garage rocker who performs in a tlement, and often speaks of the out- evoke the chorus of voices, automated homemade rabbit mask), and all-vinyl soul and R. & B. sets from the d.j. Jonathan Toubin, of the sider’s gaze with which he approached and analog, that echo through termi- celebrated New York Night Train party series. a state so steeped in history. The ex- nal halls. And don’t miss the budding bands that are the perience may explain the thirty-two- Amobi’s output is mostly distrib- meat of Burger’s roster, including Habibi, an all- female crew with sea-mist riffs, and Sunflower year-old’s awed fascination with the uted via his own independent label, Bean, Brooklyn rockers barely out of high school subject of race in his music. “I would NON Worldwide, which he co- who write songs beyond their years. (Coney Art go to school with kids that had the founded with his fellow-artists Nkisi, Walls, 3050 Stillwell Ave., Brooklyn. burgerbeach- bashnyc.com. July 22.) Confederate flag on their backpack,” based in London, and Angel-Ho, in Amobi recently told Jezebel, “but still Cape Town. Amobi’s latest album, ESG want to hang out with me because they “Paradiso,” released by NON and The South Bronx group ESG (short for Emer- ald, Sapphire, and Gold) formed in the early listened to hip-hop.” UNO NYC in May, conjures a de- eighties, at the dawn of hip-hop and New Wave. Amobi was producing and rapping crepit metropolis that runs on chaos— The Scroggins sisters, Renee, Valerie, Deborah, for fun by age twelve. After he en- shattered glass, gridlocked traffic, and Marie, were given musical instruments by their mother as a distraction from city tempta- rolled at Virginia Commonwealth scorched beaches—along with the tions, and the young women were soon craft- University, in 2006, he began releasing parallel histories of the NON found- ing catchy, sparse dance grooves like “You’re No patchwork cyberpunk instrumentals ers’ native cities and the populations Good” and “Moody.” But “U.F.O.” became their most famous cut, sampled in hundreds of songs, under the name Diamond Black that have travelled through them. by artists from the Beastie Boys to Nine Inch Hearted Boy. The project continued There is no shortage of edgy collec- Nails. Other résumé highlights include perfor- through his twenties, largely unno- tives in electronic music, but Amobi mances on the historic first night of Manches- ter’s Haçienda and on the final night of the Para- ticed, until he was drawn toward a and his flock have managed to repur- dise Garage, in N.Y.C., as well as recording with different sound altogether. In March pose the scene’s tropes to tell a story the Joy Division producer Martin Hannett. The of last year, Amobi released “Airport rarely discussed by its denizens. He legendary band convenes this week for its only home-town show of the year. (Good Room, 98 Music for Black Folk,” a short collec- headlines, along with the Brooklyn Meserole Ave., Brooklyn. goodroombk.com. July 20.) tion of ambient tracks named after singer Embaci, at Saint Vitus on July cities—“Malmo,” “,” “Rotter- 20, piloting a flight that fans won’t Jidenna In 2015, Jidenna Mobisson offered up the slick, dam.” Far from the sustained keys and want to sleep through. Grammy-nominated single “Classic Man.”

ILLUSTRATION BY RUNE FISKER RUNE BY ILLUSTRATION billowing loops of Brian Eno’s ambi- —Matthew Trammell The track—which included nods to both his

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 7 1NIGHT LIFE JAZZ AND STANDARDS sartorial preferences (“Your needs get met Laubrock, the trombonist Jacob Garchik, the by the street-elegant old-fashioned man”) bassist Chris Lightcap, the drummer Ches Smith, and his charisma (“I got charm like a lepre- Karrin Allyson and the pedal-steel guitarist Susan Alcorn— chaun”)—proved inescapable that summer. Although she can add polish to any number of speaks to the commitment of its leader. (Village Two years later, Jidenna has followed up with Great American Songbook standards—as evinced Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255- a full-length album, “The Chief,” which finds by her most recent album, “Many a New Day,” 4037. July 18-23.) him flexing his talents for production and which focusses on the work of Rodgers and Ham- clever rhymes over a mix of electronic and merstein—the singer Karrin Allyson has delved Noah Preminger and Rob Garcia: trap-informed beats. The album fights against deeply into all manner of material, from tributes The Chopin Project Jidenna’s near-fate as a flash in the pan, push- to John Coltrane to popular music from France The saxophonist Noah Preminger and the drum- ing to complicate his image and further his ca- and Brazil. Matching versatility with vocal flair, mer Rob Garcia are the kind of unblinkered con- reer. Fans of the rapper—known as Jenerals— she’s a staple worth attending to. (Birdland, 315 temporary musicians for whom the restrictions gather to celebrate his latest effort. (Gramercy W. 44th St. 212-581-3080. July 18-22.) of genre have little meaning. So an evening of Theatre, 127 E. 23rd St. venue.thegramercythe- interpretations of the music of Frédéric Cho- atre.com. July 25.) Marty Ehrlich pin, without a piano in sight, is just more grist If you were paying close attention to the work for the creative mill. The guitarist Nate Radley Kendrick Lamar of Ehrlich back in the mid-eighties, it was ob- and the bassist Kim Cass join in on the subver- Four and seven Grammy Awards in, vious that mastery was his destiny. Ehrlich’s sive fun. (Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia St. 212- Lamar remains one of music’s most arresting extraordinary command of saxophones, flutes, 989-9319. July 22.) voices, and not just because of his nasal de- and clarinets, as well as his compositional and livery. His gift for telling hyper-specific sto- band-leading skills and his ease with both con- “Universal Consciousness: Melodic ries in universal terms was evident as early as ventional and new jazz practices, has ripened at Meditations of Alice Coltrane” 2010, in songs like “Cut You Off,” about gos- a sure and steady pace. He leads a taut quartet The recent release of “The Ecstatic Music of Alice sips, naysayers, and family members more that includes the pianist James Weidman. (Smalls, Coltrane Turiyasangitananda”—an album of pre- concerned with “blah-zay-blah, he-say-she- 183 W. 10th St. 212-252-5091. July 22.) viously unheard music by the late keyboardist, say” chatter than with self-improvement. harpist, and singer, recorded at her Los Angeles Fans have enjoyed watching his progress in Mary Halvorson Octet ashram in the nineteen-eighties—was a cause for real time, mapping the vivid biographical de- The headlining appearance of the guitarist and celebration among the coterie of listeners who re- tails that he’s teased out across a triumvirate composer Mary Halvorson is further proof vered the spiritually laden work of this often un- of modern-classic rap records: “Good Kid, that new jazz has found a welcoming home at dervalued figure. The saxophonistRavi Coltrane m.A.A.d City,” “To Pimp a Butterfly,” and, the this most hallowed of venues. That each of the explores his mother’s music with an ensemble newest, “DAMN.” “Duckworth,” the climax of members of her octet is an exemplar of cutting- that includes Brandee Younger on harp and David his April release, might be his best yarn yet. edge jazz—the trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, Virelles on keyboards. (Jazz Gallery, 1160 Broad- An explosive headlining show at Coachella the saxophonists Jon Irabagon and Ingrid way, at 27th St., fifth fl. 646-494-3625. July 18-19.) has set the bar high for his latest tour, where he’ll be joined by the wild child Travis Scott and the beaming crooner D.R.A.M. (Barclays Center, 620 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn. barclayscen- ter.com. July 20 and July 23.)

Ride A RT Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, and Laurence 1 (Loz) Colbert met in 1988 at Banbury Tech- MOMA PS1 nical College, in Oxfordshire. The young men MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES found kindred spirits in one another, and in “Maureen Gallace: Clear Day” Steve Queralt, who later joined the shoegaze Sixty-eight calm, cool little oil —of outfit they’d started. They shared a love for Met Breuer landscapes, seascapes, barns and cottages, and forward- thinking rock music and also for pe- “The Body Politic: Video from the Met flowers—hang in big rooms on walls painted a culiar qualities in art, such as the “bleak, oddly Collection” warm white. It’s heaven. For thirty years, Gal- warm, existential simplicity that could be ‘no- Four hard-hitting video works—by David lace has wondered, with brush in hand, if semi- where,’” as Colbert told the Guardian several Hammons, Arthur Jafa, Steve McQueen, realism is still viable in wised-up art. Each pic- years ago. It’s no coincidence, then, that their and Mika Rottenberg—play in four separate ture is a new guess: maybe so, given the insistent most acclaimed album, which is hailed as one rooms. The artists’ formal approaches diverge, appeal of a breaking wave, a humble house, or a of the linchpins of the shoegazing movement, but they share a profound awareness of bod- shadow on snow. Gallace doesn’t so much see as is entitled “Nowhere.” The pivotal group dis- ies and of the camera’s power to disrupt ste- notice, suspending observation in states of un- banded in 1996, following the release of its reotypes about race, class, and . Rot- ending, mild surprise. Like the poetry of Eliz- fourth album, “Tarantula,” but got back to- tenberg’s “NoNoseKnows” deploys the artist’s abeth Bishop, her work generates power from gether several years ago, with the intention trademark politically razor-sharp absurdism, reticence. She serves us with practical, reme- of playing some festivals. The latest reunion intercutting footage of Chinese women labor- dial beauty. Once seen, this show won’t be for- finds the bandmates refreshed, ready to pick ing to harvest pearls with surreal scenes shot gotten. Through Sept. 10. up on ideas that have been germinating for in New York. McQueen’s “Five Easy Pieces” years. (Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost St., East Wil- is a seductive meditation on voyeurism, with liamsburg. July 20.) its slow-motion footage of unsuspecting sub- “Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions: South jects, from a tightrope walker to a man uri- Asian Art in the Diaspora” Hank Wood and the Hammerheads nating. Hammons’s only video work, “Phat This thoroughly enjoyable group show brings to- Emerging from the fertile punk scene found Free,” is a powerfully simple vignette in which gether work by nineteen artists of South Asian in Bushwick warehouse spaces, Hank Wood a disorientingly noisy darkness lifts to reveal origin, all now based, at least part time, in the and the Hammerheads have become the best a man kicking a metal bucket down the street, . Themes of identity and disloca- garage act working in New York today. They evoking the danger of walking while black tion crop up, notably in Jaret Vadera’s “Emperor play a high-octane strain of rock and roll that’s in America. Racist violence is more than a of No Country,” a sumptuous blue robe printed best described as ripping, advancing a thread spectre in Jafa’s timely marvel of rhythmic with a map whose place names have been re- of brawny, pissed-off fight music hybridized editing, “Love Is the Message, the Message dacted, and in Tenzin Tsetan Choklay’s mov- by groups like the Dwarves and Fear. The ef- Is Death,” in which archival civil-rights-era ing documentary film “Bringing Tibet Home,” fect is ideally experienced while pogo-dancing images, sports and entertainment clips, and which follows the artist Tenzing Rigdol as he around a room of diaphoretic night owls. (Pi- dash-cam and cell-phone footage shift seam- smuggles thirty-five thousand pounds of Tibetan oneer Works, 159 Pioneer St., Brooklyn. pioneer- lessly—and heartbreakingly—between mo- soil into the refugee community of Dharamsala, works.org. July 21.) ments of triumph and terror. Through Sept. 3. , for a three-day-long installation. But the

8 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 A RT

show’s politics never crowd out aesthetics. Other sions of Warhol’s silk-screened flowers and Jas- global refugee crisis. Gaba, who divides his time high points include a beautiful series of minimal per Johns’s “White Flag,” are on view. But rep- between Holland and his native Benin, made woodcuts with Urdu text by Zarina and a whip- lication was not Sturtevant’s only mode: two it from fabric printed with a candy-stripe pat- smart and languorous eight-foot-tall rotating video projections are installed to ex- tern he calls Citoyen du Monde (Citizen of the by Mequitta Ahuja, a self-portrait of the artist hilarating effect. On the ground floor, a Muy- World); the stripes are actually elongated ver- as her own muse. Through Aug. 6. bridge-inspired, slide-show-like sequence of sions of the flags of many nations. Elsewhere, 1 photographs, from 2000, documents the artist thirteen elaborately braided sculptures assume walking, accompanied by a propulsive techno the shapes of national landmarks in Washing- GALLERIES—UPTOWN soundtrack. The projection hurtles around cor- ton, D.C. (The White House is now red, black, ners, its size changing dramatically from wall to and gold.) In a related short video, Gaba leads a Betty Blayton wall, in keeping with the irreverent, quicksilver small parade through the dusty streets of Coto- This stunning show was curated by Souleo as part spirit of Sturtevant’s art. Through Sept. 9. (Brown, nou, Benin—the participants wear his objects of the inaugural Harlem triennial “Uptown,” a 439 W. 127th St. 212-627-5258.) like crowns, as if to lampoon U.S. imperialism. multi-venue affair organized by Columbia Uni- 1 Through July 28. (Bonakdar, 521 W. 21st St. 212- versity’s Wallach gallery. In an upstairs room, 414-4144.) Blayton’s small round canvases suggest portholes GALLERIES—CHELSEA onto a hazy pastel and earth-toned realm. Blay- “Cells” ton, who died last year, worked in this vein for Nathan Carter This ten-person show of works that flirt with decades: in the earliest painting here, “At One- With his invention of the Dramastics, a fictional functionality is as fun as a visit to Pee-wee’s ment” (1970), a periwinkle oval levitates above punk band, the Texas-born, Brooklyn-based art- Playhouse. The splendidly weird designs of the a gold river against a rich brown background. In ist introduces figuration to his abstract lexicon, Haas Brothers include several “Zoidberg lamps,” “Consciousness Traveling” (2012), a rectangular crossing the biomorphism of Miró and Calder silver-plated fixtures ringed with bulbous protu- desert sunset is framed by a slightly paler, other- with a confetti-colored cartoon realm. The band berances reminiscent of their namesake, a crusta- worldly terrain. Blayton was perhaps best known stars in Carter’s short film “The Dramastics Are ceanlike alien on the cult T.V. show “Futurama.” as a lifelong advocate for African- American art- Loud.” But the action, while undeniably charm- Jessica Jackson Hutchins’s low ceramic tables ists and art-world diversity—she was a founding ing, pales in comparison with the meticulous de- are simultaneously heavy, delicate, busy, mini- board member of the Studio Museum in Har- tail and handcrafted beauty of the paper-and- mal, and unstable. Jackie Brookner contributes lem. These serene, transporting abstractions re- wire figures and the dioramalike sets, which were wooden seating, coated with crusts of black earth veal the spiritual and introspective side of a life used to create the stop-motion animation. This and sporting red-velvet tongues. A ten-foot-wide devoted to social justice. Through July 20. (Dee, bright, appealing world, which might have been cotton embroidery by Cosima von Bonin, which 2037 Fifth Ave. 212-924-7545.) built by a team of sophisticated bowerbirds, is involves a cigarette smoker, a cartoonish critter, displayed in the gallery, where we see the young and disembodied white gloves, hangs on the wall Sturtevant women rehearsing, performing in dives, and like a quilt awaiting a wild night’s sleep. (Boesky, The brilliant American artist—who died in touring the world (with a noteworthy stop in 509 W. 24th St. 212-680-9889.) in 2014, at the age of eighty-nine, shortly Paris). Airy sculptures and colorful drawings— before the opening of her career retrospective Carter collectively titles these abstractions “The “Kink and Politics: The Ties That Bind” at MOMA—was a harbinger of appropriation Fascinators”—fill out the installation, but it’s the What unites the disparate works by ten artists in art. Starting in the nineteen-sixties, she made Dramastics who steal the show. Through July 29. this thought-provoking group show, curated by provocative, inexact copies of works by other (Kaplan, 121 W. 27th St. 212-645-7335.) the artist Wardell Milan, is a sense of diversion- artists, from Marcel Duchamp to Robert Gober, ary tactics. Two spare paintings by Lucas Michael, which she called “repetitions,” wryly drama- Meschac Gaba of purple and black oblongs surrounded by gray tizing the foibles of the self-referential, self- The tent that opens this transfixing show is de- swirls of graphite, look abstract, but in fact depict perpetuating avant-garde. Famous examples ceptively cheery: it may be stocked with paper a glory hole at a gay club in L.A. called Slammer. of Sturtevant’s copycat œuvre, including ver- and colored pencils, but it was inspired by the Johnathan Payne’s “Watermelon (Akrum Doing a Handstand)” is a four-and-a-half-foot-high photo- graph, enlarged until it’s a red-and-green blur, that has been hand-cut into a curtainlike pattern. At times, the diversions become politically pointed, notably in Melvin Harper’s video “3017,” which combines disturbing footage of recent police violence against black citizens and vintage sci-fi clips of alien invaders. Through July 28. (Nolan, 5271 W. 29th St. 212-925-6190.) GALLERIES—BROOKLYN

Miguel Calderón The heart of this moodily beautiful show, titled “Caída Libre (Free Fall),” is a video about a Mex- ico City bouncer named Camaleón and his pet falcon—a measured but chilling meditation on male aggression. As we watch Camaleón work- ing at a night club and taking the falcon hunt- ing, he speaks, in a voice-over, about being aban- doned by his father, about picking up women, and about the four men he’s murdered. What makes Calderón’s treatment so affecting is his balanced approach: we see his subject’s fear as well as his violence, while the genuine tender- ness Camaleón expresses for his beloved bird is offset by his glowering menace. Installed in front of the projection is an arrangement of found fal- con perches that may call to mind a readymade homage to Alberto Giacometti’s “The Palace at In 1978, Sandy Skoglund played with her food in a giddy series of still-life photographs (including 4 a.m.” (Luhring Augustine, 25 Knickerbocker Ave.,

COURTESY THE ARTIST/RYAN LEE GALLERY ARTIST/RYAN THE COURTESY “Cubed Carrots and Kernels of Corn,” above), on view at the Ryan Lee gallery through Aug. 11. Bushwick. 718-386-2746.)

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 9 MOVIES

In “Privilege,” the actress Gabriella Farrar’s speech to the camera and her Carmen Miranda costume challenge narrative and political assumptions.

Class Clowning gles for the rights of women, African- of injustice. Rainer unfolds these themes Americans, homosexuals, the aged, the with an incisively imaginative approach Yvonne Rainer’s playful movie artistry disabled, and the poor. It’s also aestheti- to Jenny’s recollections, which she analyzes reflects serious political intentions. cally intersectional in its fusion of cine- prismatically, with a gleefully diverse array Movies that make political points are matic styles. of cinematic devices—voice-overs, fanta- often contrasted—by critics and film- The character Yvonne, who is black sylike stagings on a half-finished movie makers alike—with those that display (Rainer is white), interviews a middle- set, interviews with fictional characters, aesthetic sophistication. But the clarity, aged white character named Jenny (Alice texts posted on the screen of an early- complexity, and audacity of the political Spivak), who reminisces about freewheel- generation Apple computer. Jenny inter- ideas that the choreographer and director ing times in the nineteen-sixties on the rupts a sex scene with a monologue to the Yvonne Rainer develops in her 1990 fea- Lower East Side. As Jenny tells that story, camera; Digna silently accompanies her, ture, “Privilege”—playing July 26 at Film Rainer depicts it in flashbacks. They show phantomlike, on a series of dates. Society of Lincoln Center, in a retrospec- Jenny’s friendship with a white lesbian Rainer reserves the highest flourishes tive of her films, July 21-27—are insepa- neighbor named Brenda (Blaire Baron) of style for scenes of anguished historical rable from her bold disruption of her and incidents involving a Puerto Rican and intimate complexity—a florid crane movie’s genre, tone, and through line. couple, Digna (Gabriella Farrar) and shot, on a movie set, of a performance of “Privilege” starts as an apparently Carlos (Rico Elias), in the building next writings by Eldridge Cleaver endorsing straightforward documentary, in which door—Carlos’s abuse of Digna and his rape as a political weapon, and fluid track- Rainer interviews middle-aged women attempted rape of Brenda, as well as the ing shots of Carlos and Brenda in a about their experience of menopause. But differing approaches to these events by dancelike pose. For Rainer, drama and Rainer soon gives herself an onscreen police and prosecutors. style aren’t innocent, and the very concept double, Yvonne Washington (played by Yvonne extracts from Jenny’s tale a of a story, and the way it’s told, is political. Novella Nelson), and turns “Privilege” into skein of hidden themes, such as the prev- Suggesting that political progress can’t a film-within-a-film made by her fictional alence of rape and domestic violence; rac- emerge from conservative storytelling, counterpart. Rainer’s movie is on the front ism in law, housing, and personal attitudes; “Privilege” reflects, in its stylistic diversity, lines of intersectionality (a term coined the sexualization of women’s personal the expanded consciousness on which in 1989 by the legal scholar Kimberlé identities; and the role of class and economic social change depends.

Crenshaw) in its connection of the strug- power in reinforcing these and other forms —Richard Brody FILMS ZEITGEIST COURTESY

10 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 1 MOVIES OPENING ancé (Jay Duplass) unromantic and seeks adven- chael Murphy), a Wall Street executive, leaves ture with a college ex (Finn Wittrock). Her sis- her for a younger woman. Mazursky applies a Dunkirk Christopher Nolan directed this historical ter, Ali (Abby Quinn), a high-school student, is light and graceful touch to matters of intimate drama, about the evacuation of hundreds of thou- dabbling in serious drugs. Tension arises between agony, which he probes in insightfully crafted sands of Allied troops from France to England in their parents, Pat (Edie Falco), a successful ex- dialogue scenes with Erica’s three best friends 1940. Starring Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Ken- ecutive, and Alan (John Turturro), a copywriter (Kelly Bishop, Patricia Quinn, and Linda Miller), neth Branagh, and Mark Rylance. Opening July 21. and frustrated playwright, and Alan tries to salve her daughter, Patti (Lisa Lucas), and her thera- (In wide release.) • Girls Trip A comedy, directed his ego with an affair with a theatre-workshop ac- pist (Penelope Russianoff). The action unfolds by Malcolm D. Lee, about the adventures of four tress (Amy Carlson). The director, Gillian Robes- with a documentary-style geographical specific- friends who travel to New Orleans for the Essence pierre, who co-wrote the script with Elisabeth ity, offering a catalogue of Manhattan locations. Festival. Starring Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Lati- Holm, keeps the action moving with rapid-fire di- Mazursky’s achievement is distinctively choreo- fah, Tiffany Haddish, and Regina Hall. Opening July alogue and a sprinkle of time-capsule references; graphic: for all the trenchant conversation, he 21. (In wide release.) • Landline Reviewed in Now the actors fling themselves with forced charm into sets the characters into mad motion, alone and to- Playing. Opening July 21. (In limited release.) • Vale- their narrowly defined roles, and Robes pierre gether—jogging, dancing, fighting, strolling, em- rian and the City of a Thousand Planets Reviewed juggles the story lines with a bland vigor that bracing—and even the static set pieces, in bars and in Now Playing. Opening July 21. (In wide release.) lacks any observational, analytical, or symbolic at dinner tables, have the sculptural authority of 1 dimension.—Richard Brody (In limited release.) frozen ballets. When the unmoored Erica finds a new lover—the artist Saul Kaplan (Alan Bates)— NOW PLAYING Okja her struggle for independence, after a life of com- The title is—to state the obvious—the name of a fortable subordination, resumes, and it’s as much Baby Driver giant pig. Mighty but cherubic, she is the exem- a matter of her physical space as her emotional In Edgar Wright’s propulsive new film, Ansel plar of a new breed, which has been developed one.—R.B. (Film Forum, July 24, and streaming.) Elgort plays Baby, a young getaway driver who to ease a chronic lack of food around the world. works for the implacable Doc (Kevin Spacey). Technically, she belongs to a corporation, whose Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets There are banks to be robbed and cops to be gamely smiling boss (Tilda Swinton) is dressed Luc Besson’s visually bloated, emotionally stunted eluded at top speed; Baby’s partners in crime in- in ice-cream tones of white and pink. From day 3-D science-fiction extravaganza is set mainly in clude Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Bats (Jamie Foxx). to day, however, Okja is raised in the Korean hills the twenty-sixth century, at a time when mind The setting is Atlanta, worlds away from the by a teen-age girl (Ahn Seo-hyun), in an Arca- control, teleportation, and virtual reality are in- peaceable English village that Wright patrolled dian harmony of human and beast; their scenes tegral aspects of daily life, and when exotic in- in “Hot Fuzz” (2007), and although the chases are together are not just the calmest but also the telligent species intermingle with humans. Two energetically staged, you don’t get much sense of most convincing in the film. The director, Bong intrepid young officers of a country-size interga- the city, and the diner where Baby falls for Deb- Joon-ho, is famed for his mingling of moods and lactic space station, Major Valerian (Dane De- ora (Lily James) could scarcely be mistaken for a for the suavity of his action sequences, but on Haan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne), real place. Elgort has plenty to do, including some this occasion the mixture proves almost too rich. are sent on a dangerous mission to recover their dancelike moves, but he radiates less cool than the With the story shifting first to Seoul and then to commander, Arün (Clive Owen), who has been movie requires; Spacey alone seems attuned to the New York, the tone of it sways between menace, kidnapped by the gentle and persecuted survi- knowing tone of the whole endeavor, with its mul- high farce, and uneasy satire, with performances vors of an interplanetary attack. The survivors tiple thefts from heist flicks of the past. The film to match—Paul Dano, for instance, as a creepy can’t live without high-energy pearls excreted by is best approached as a near-musical, with almost and soft-spoken animal-rights activist, and Jake pocket- size armadillo-like creatures called “con- every action, in or out of cars, being hustled along Gyllenhaal as a television presenter with a drink- verters,” but Arün has commandeered the last con- by the kick of a song. Most of the tracks resound ing problem (not his finest hour). In Korean and verter, and the survivors want it back. Along the within Baby’s head; he is seldom parted from his English.—A.L. (7/10 & 17/17) (In limited release way, there are grandiose outer-space battles, a side iPod, and the movie begs to be screened on the and on Netflix.) trip to a space brothel (Ethan Hawke plays the wall of your nearest Apple store.—Anthony Lane pimp), a leaden romance, and a handful of whim- (Reviewed in our issue of 7/3/17.) (In wide release.) Spider-Man: Homecoming sical creations, none better than a brief shape- Stepping into the spandex is Tom Holland (as shifting routine by Rihanna, whose voice steals A Ghost Story he did briefly in “Captain America: Civil War”), the film. The overwhelming quantity of effects of- David Lowery’s film tells the tale of M (Rooney whose eager demeanor reminds us that super- fers little style or surprise; the movie is a joyless, Mara) and her beloved, C (Casey Affleck). Sadly, heroics can—and should—be less of a world- effortful slog.—R.B. (In wide release.) their love is not long for this world (he is killed in redeeming vocation and more of a youthful spree. a car crash, only a few minutes into the film), yet Holland’s Peter Parker, compared with previous World on a Wire it seems to run forever in the next, for the spirit incarnations, is a coltish schoolboy, liable to gal- Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s three-and-a-half- of C soon returns, dressed in a white sheet, to the lop into errors that he didn’t see coming. He has hour, two-part, made-for-TV science-fiction house that they happily shared. He stands, unseen, an easily wowed best friend (Jacob Batalon) and thriller, from 1973—which he directed at the age and observes her as she goes about her life; even a crush on a clever girl (Laura Harrier), who is of twenty-seven—is an astonishing display of pre- when she moves out, he lingers there, watching taller than him by a head. He also has the requi- cocious virtuosity. It’s set in and around an ultra- other inhabitants come and go, and stretches of site power suit, thanks to the patronage of Tony sophisticated cybernetic institute, where vast history roll by. We are also shown another spec- Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), but he needs to earn resources are devoted to a project called Simula- tre, who is doing much the same thing in the his stripes before he can join the noble regiment of cron—a virtual replica of a city, with ten thousand house next door; the deceased must be waiting Avengers. There’s a rough and pragmatic edge to humanoid “identity units”—which corporate plot- and watching all over the place. What are they the villain, played by Michael Keaton, who forges ters seek to use for their own interests. The drama hoping for? The film is not afraid to test our pa- weapons from high-tech alien scrap and sells them is launched by the death of the project’s master- tience, or to play with supernatural logic, and on the black market. In short, by the standards mind and the discovery by his associate and suc- you are left with much to puzzle over, but there of Marvel, Jon Watts’s movie steers refreshingly cessor, Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), that much are passages of quiet grace, and even a mournful clear of bombast, and the one disappointment is of the world as he knows it seems to have been hint of comedy. Affleck does more with a sheet that Peter’s Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), the cool- corrupted and falsified by simulations. Fassbinder and a couple of eyeholes than you would think est presence in the story, doesn’t get to hang out unfolds the labyrinthine identity games in a set- possible, and the sight of the dead giving up the with Iron Man. Tomei and Downey, Jr., made ting of deceptive appearances. With high-style, ghost, at last, is unforgettable.—A.L. (7/10 & sweet music in “Only You,” back in 1994. Why high-gloss décor and ubiquitous video monitors, 17/17) (In wide release.) not try again?—A.L. (In wide release.) captured in gyrating tracking shots and jolting zooms, he evokes unstable distortions of images Landline An Unmarried Woman within images. He also evokes the self-consuming This heartfelt but mild comedic melodrama, Paul Mazursky wrote and directed this instant- realm of the cinema itself, by way of borrowings set in 1995, relies on the era’s pre-cell-phone, classic drama, from 1978, starring the luminous from sleek melodramas, cheesy B movies, and pre-search-engine habits to spotlight the secrets and lyrical Jill Clayburgh as Erica Benton, an ed- Godard’s “Alphaville,” whose star, Eddie Constan- and lies that wrench families apart. Dana (Jenny ucated and cultured Upper East Side mom and tine, makes a surprising, sardonic appearance. In Slate), a twentysomething journalist, finds her fi- art-gallery assistant, whose husband, Martin (Mi- German.—R.B. (MOMA, July 23, and streaming.)

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 11 20 and July 22 evening) are fantastic in “Diamonds.” The elegant and musical Dorothée Gilbert will début in “Emeralds” on July 21. And the cool, stylish Teresa DANCE Reichlen, of City Ballet, presides over “Rubies” on July 20 and at the July 22 matinée. (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-721-6500. July 20-23.) Ballet Festival quires trust, and human solidarity is the message 1 The festival, conceived in 2013, features works by underlying “Il N’est Pas Encore Minuit” (“It’s Not up-and-coming ballet choreographers performed by Yet Midnight”), which evolves from a brawl into OUT OF TOWN young companies. First up is Emery LeCrone (July marvels of mutual effort. Casual and carefree in 18-20), who has a grounded, legato style, in which tone and attire, the no-frills production stitches Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival dancers twist and interconnect in space, almost as some of its stunts together with the Lindy Hop, Compagnie Marie Chouinard (making its Pillow if they were moving through liquid. The young and the whole show is choreographed and danced début at the Ted Shawn) has a French-Canadian choreographer Claudia Schreier (July 21-22) has with the smooth buoyancy of swing. (Rose The- sensibility that often looks pretentious and daft to created a solo for the former New York City Ballet atre, 60th St. at Broadway. 212-721-6500. July 19-22.) viewers on this side of the border. In “Henri Mi- star Wendy Whelan and a duet in which Whelan chaux: Mouvements,” the dancers mimic sinuous ink partners with Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Da’Von Lincoln Center Festival / “Jewels” drawings when they’re not thrashing and screaming Doane, backed by a chorus. Jeffrey Cirio (July 23- The three-part, evening-length ballet “Jewels,” by pseudo-surrealistically; in “24 Preludes by Chopin,” 24), a principal dancer with American Ballet The- George Balanchine, was conceived in 1967 as a block- tight scenes of alienation and aggression pass in pos- atre, brings his ensemble, Cirio Collective, to per- buster for New York City Ballet’s new home in Lin- sibly ironic relation to the music’s conventional as- form a medley of works in a more contemporary coln Center. The festival celebrates the work’s fif- sociations. • Trained in the classical Indian forms vein, with pieces by Cirio, Paulo Arrais (of Boston tieth anniversary with three of the world’s greatest of kathak and bharata natyam but open to contem- Ballet), and Gregory Dolbashian, who has an acro- companies: the Paris Opera Ballet, City Ballet, and porary influences, Aakash Odedra is an exceptional batic, street-dance-infused style. All evenings in- the Bolshoi. Each section is devoted to a gemstone dancer: fast, flexible, rapturous in motion. Of the clude live music. (Joyce Theatre, 175 Eighth Ave., at and set to the music of a different composer. The four solos that make up “Rising” (at the Doris Duke), 19th St. 212-242-0800. July 18-24. Through July 29.) French dancers will perform the quiet “Emeralds,” it isn’t the three high-tech, high-concept selections by set to music by Gabriel Fauré. The Americans and top-shelf European choreographers (Akram Khan, Lincoln Center Festival / Compagnie XY the Russians will take turns in the jazzy “Rubies” (set Russell Maliphant, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui) that This French circus collective specializes in group to Stravinsky) and the majestic “Diamonds” (set to best display Odedra’s gifts; it’s the simple, more tra- acrobatics: stacking bodies into towers, launching Tchaikovsky). Both City Ballet’s Sara Mearns (July ditional one he made for himself. (Becket, Mass. 413- off one another en masse. It’s an enterprise that re- 21 and July 23) and the Bolshoi’s Olga Smirnova (July 243-0745. July 19-23. Through Aug. 27.)

spacesuits, and model rockets, the auction offers a polyester pouch—resembling a toiletry bag—which was used for transporting little fragments of the ABOVE & BEYOND moon back to Earth after the first lunar landing. (The bag, which was carried by Neil Armstrong on his extraterrestrial walk, still contains traces of moon dust.) Also included in the sale are a report (in English), signed by Yuri Gagarin, of what he observed during his first circumnavigation of the Earth (aboard the Vostok), and the flight plan for the dramatic Apollo 13 voyage, aborted after an oxy- gen tank exploded on board (“Houston, we’ve had a problem1 here”). (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212-606-7000.) READINGS AND TALKS

OZY Fest that could be added to the two-day schedule. (Man- 92nd Street Y OZY, a digital daily news magazine, was launched in hattan Bridge Archway Plaza, 155 Water St., Brooklyn, Kevin Bacon stars in Amazon’s new original series “I September, 2013, by Carlos Watson, a former MSNBC July 21. Governors Island, July 22. comeoutandplay.org.) Love Dick” and in “Story of a Girl,” the directorial contributor. He aims for the outlet’s marquee live début of his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, which premières on event, OZY Fest, to be “the new South by Southwest.” The Grace Jamaican Jerk Festival Lifetime this month. Sedgwick also stars in an upcom- For its second year, the festival hosts an array of musi- Jerk chicken is one of Jamaica’s most beloved culi- ing ABC pilot, “Ten Days in the Valley,” a drama about a cians, writers, entrepreneurs, and athletes, with head- nary exports. A careful blend of ginger, thyme, and television producer and a missing child. The two discuss lining performances by Jason Derulo, Talib Kweli, and peppers, coupled with meticulous charcoal grilling, their careers and observations on a changing industry Zara Larsson; talks and panels featuring Samantha makes for a one-of-a-kind flavor that can be enjoyed with Amy Wilkinson, of Entertainment Weekly. (Butten- Bee, Issa Rae, , Ta-Nehisi Coates, year-round, but it’s best experienced in the sum- wieser Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. 92y.org. July 19 at 7:30.) Katie Couric, and Van Jones; and food from the chef mer. Each July, the city’s largest Caribbean food and author Eddie Huang. (Rumsey Playfield, Cen- festival draws more than twenty thousand patrons McNally Jackson tral Park, mid-Park at 69th St. 800-745-3000. July 22.) to Queens to celebrate authentic jerk chicken and For all the emotional attachment we have to the music the culture that surrounds it, as chefs compete for formats we knew and loved in our youth, the technolo- Come Out & Play the festival’s Dutch Pot Trophy. Attendees can take gies are almost always shaped by cold, hard commerce. Street games shouldn’t need organizers, beyond the in performances from the reggae and soca stars Bar- The LP was introduced in 1948, and labels encour- loudest participant choosing who’s it and what nearby rington Levy, Morgan Heritage, Alison Hinds, and aged their acts to embrace the new format, because surfaces count as base. But the world of adults rarely Konshens. (Roy Wilkins Park, at Merrick and Bais- it could earn more profit per unit than the 45. The operates so loosely, so the founders of this annual ley Blvds., Queens. jerkfestivalny.com. July 23 at noon.) record collector was born. John Corbett became one festival have taken it upon themselves to add a bit of 1 such enthusiast: as a columnist for DownBeat mag- structure to outdoor play. This week, the festival turns azine, he espoused rare LPs not available on other Dumbo streets into an alfresco arcade, then heads to AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES formats, and now he has written “Vinyl Freak,” a hy- Governors Island for a field day, with competitions brid of memoir and criticism that discusses his life- and team activities, as well as a family-friendly game At Sotheby’s, the summer doldrums lift for a day long love of the medium, the collector culture, and series based on the idea of time travel. Volunteers with a sale of objects related to space exploration the LP’s steady resurgence over the past decade. (52

can submit their own concepts for large-scale games (July 20). Along with a selection of photographs, Prince St. mcnallyjackson.com. July 24 at 7.) AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

12 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 F§D & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO rolled out its version of duck , a à la presse BA R TA B L’Antagoniste Tour d’Argent signature, and a succulent poulet en vessie—whole chicken cooked in 238 Malcolm X Blvd., Brooklyn pig’s bladder, served with black truffles and (917-966-5300) foie gras. But it’s not all self-serious stodge; When construction began on L’Antago- the duck à l’orange gains capricious tart- niste, in 2014, the only restaurants in ness with kumquat and lime; hake is served Bedford-Stuyvesant liable to draw Man- with cumin and chermoula; and Burgundy Highlands hattanites east of Marcy Avenue were snails are baked in puff pastry, like a pot 150 W. 10th St. (212-229-2670) Peaches HotHouse, the New York king of pie, with tomato and wasabi butter. Then Near the door of Highlands, opposite the bar, there Nashville hot chicken, and Saraghina, an un- there’s the pornographic toile in the bath- are mirrored shelves up to the ceiling full of lit missable Neapolitan pizza spot. When the room, which puts female pleasure first. candles and bottles of whiskey. They cast, on hands French restaurant débuted, the next spring, The owner, Amadeus Broger-Hetzner, and faces, a tremulous amber glow, and this flat- tering warmth seems ready to forgive the sins of the Daily News seemed to distill de Blasio’s of NoHo’s recently closed Le Philosophe, tipsy patrons. Highlands calls itself a “contempo- “tale of two cities” campaign pitch into and the chef, Anthony Bacle, who trained rary Scottish gastropub,” a claim buttressed by an one headline: “Bedford- Stuyvesant bistro under Alain Ducasse, live around the cor- abundance of tartan—in lampshades, in the wait- resses’ minidresses, in chair coverings—and by a opens selling $1,900 wine bottle, costing ner, and may turn L’Antagoniste into a painting of a beady-eyed Scots guard hanging in more than most residents’ rent.” That’s one neighborhood joint yet. This spring, they the rest room. The Scottish influence is most re- definition of destination restaurant. opened their “carnotzet” (cellar fondue splendent, however, in the abundance of whiskeys, which an obliging bartender will nimbly clamber But gentrification’s got hungry maws, room) for an animated community-garden up the shelves to fetch, before serving cocktails and Bordeaux sells in de Blasio’s Brooklyn. meeting. One recent summery evening, a like the peaty Blackberry Tartan (whiskey, black- Fortunately, L’Antagoniste’s phenomenal nonprofit founder with a libertine streak berry compote, walnut bitters) and the Krankie (rosemary-infused bourbon, tamarind purée). One wine list starts at $19.50, for a Sauvignon headed for the late-night prix fixe with night, a person of Scottish descent judged the Blanc from the same region, zippy and friends. The pours were generous, and an haggis favorably—it was accompanied by the dry. The restaurant has, over the past two extra dessert was proffered—the sublime traditional neeps and tatties, a fluffy, buttery rutabaga- and-potato mash. The Scotch egg was years, unstarched its French cuffs, through Vacherin, a meringue concoction with perfectly runny, and even an incongruous hummus the introduction of a happy hour, a more vanilla ice cream and raspberry sorbet. The plate was satisfying. A business-casual crowd filled affordable brunch (try the Rusty Parmen- do-gooder told of a secret sado masochism the West Village redoubt, and the music played at a pleasant soft throb. “I need to find another lover,” tier in the sanctuary of a back garden), parlor nearby, and then of a new boyfriend, a man in a lavender shirt sighed; ice clattered in a and a welcoming young waitstaff. a French neighbor. “I’ll have to take him shaker as another cocktail was poured with luxu- The food itself remains traditional: here,” she said, beneath the photomural of riant slowness. The Catholic Guilt left a taste of anise on the tongue. For the less whiskey-inclined, classic French fare, heavy and without fear antagonists throughout history: Serge the Wobbly Piper (mezcal, cardamom syrup) and of pungency. The steak tartare features con- Gainsbourg, Catherine Millet, Alain Ba- the Royal Mile (vodka, a grapefruity rhubarb fidently, startlingly thick chunks of meat. diou, Astérix. “It’s fucking delicious. He’ll pureé) offered their own path to contentment. As the evening deepened, the eyes of the deer heads The cheese board includes head cheese feel right at home.” (Dishes $9-$29.) on the walls glinted in the tawny light, but without

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCES F. DENNY FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW DENNY FOR FRANCES F. BY PHOTOGRAPH from a suckling pig. Lately the kitchen has —Emily Greenhouse malice.—Talia Lavin

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 13

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT events now seem almost ordinary—and particular, he decried the awful injustice THINGS FALL APART harbingers of far worse. It is quite pos- visited upon him and his son Donald, Jr., sible, the environmental writer Fen Mon- who had, in a series of e-mails last June, n the September 11, 1989, issue of The taigne wrote recently, in the Times, that, giddily advertised his willingness to meet INew Yorker, a twenty-eight-year-old should the much larger West Antarctic with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin- writer named Bill McKibben published Ice Sheet thaw and slip into the ocean, connected lawyer, to receive kompromat in- a lengthy article titled “The End of Na- sea levels across the globe could rise as tended to undermine the reputation and ture.” The previous year had been espe- much as seventeen feet. This would have the campaign of . He did not cially hot—the country suffered one of devastating implications for hundreds of mention another participant in the meet- the worst droughts since the Dust Bowl, millions of people, disrupting food chains, ing: Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-born Yellowstone was ablaze for weeks—and swamping coastal cities, spawning ill- lobbyist, who admitted to the A.P. that he some Americans, including McKibben, nesses, sparking mass migrations, and had served in the Soviet Army, but denied had taken note of the ominous testimony undermining national economies in ways reports that he was ever a trained spy. that James Hansen, a nasa climatolo- that are impossible to anticipate fully. The President argued that his son, “a gist, gave before a Senate committee, Around the time that this event was high-quality person,” had been “open, warning that, owing to greenhouse gases, taking place, Donald Trump, who has transparent, and innocent.” This was a the planet was heating up inexorably. lately detached the United States from statement as true as many, if not most, McKibben responded with a deeply re- the Paris climate accord and gone about of the President’s statements. It was false. searched jeremiad, in which he set out neutering the Environmental Protection Donald, Jr., had concealed the meeting to popularize the alarming and still largely Agency, was prowling the West Wing of until he could do so no longer. Social- unfamiliar facts about climate change the White House, raging Lear-like not media wags delighted in reviving the and to sharpen awareness of what they about the fate of the Earth, or about the Trump-as-Corleone family meme and implied for the future of the planet and fate of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, compared Donald, Jr., to Fredo, the most humankind: who was dying in captivity, but about the hapless of the Corleone progeny. This Changes in our world which can affect us can fate of the Trump family enterprise. In was unfair to Fredo. On Twitter, Don- happen in our lifetime—not just changes like ald, Jr., had spoken in support of cock- wars but bigger and more sweeping events. With- eyed conspiracy theories and once posted out recognizing it, we have already stepped over a photograph of a bowl of Skittles, writ- the threshold of such a change. I believe that we ing, “If I had a bowl of skittles and I are at the end of nature. By this I do not mean the end of the world. told you just three would kill you, would The rain will still fall, and the sun will still shine. you take a handful? That’s our Syrian When I say “nature,” I mean a certain set of refugee problem. . . . Let’s end the po- human ideas about the world and our place in it. litically correct agenda that doesn’t put But the death of these ideas begins with concrete America first.” changes in the reality around us, changes that scientists can measure. More and more frequently Still, the President, loyal to nothing these changes will clash with our perceptions, and no one but his family, argued that until our sense of nature as eternal and separate “a lot of people” would have taken that is finally washed away and we see all too clearly meeting. Leaders of the U.S. intelligence what we have done. community did not whistle their agree- Last week, a hunk of Antarctica the ment. They were quick to say that such size of Delaware, weighing a trillion met- a meeting was, at best, phenomenally ric tons, hived off from the Larsen C ice stupid and, at worst, showed a willing-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS shelf and into the warming seas. Such ness to collude with Moscow to tilt the

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 15 election. Michael Morell, a former the Republicans collectively say ‘enough’?” is found, the Trump family member who acting director of the C.I.A., told the Good question. Mike Pence, Paul stands to lose the most is the son-in-law Cipher Brief, a Web site that covers Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, busi- and consigliere, Jared Kushner, who ac- national-security issues, that Trump, Jr.,’s ness leaders such as Stephen Schwarzman companied Donald, Jr., to the meeting e-mails are “huge” and indicate that the and Carl Icahn, and a raft of White with Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin. President’s inner circle knew as early as House advisers, including the bulk of the Kushner seems to see himself and his last June that “the Russians were work- National Security Council, cannot fail wife, Ivanka, as lonely voices of probity ing on behalf of Trump.” In the same ar- to see the chaos, the incompetence, and and moderation in an otherwise un- ticle, James Clapper, the former director the potential illegality in their midst, and hinged West Wing. Why they would of National Intelligence, said that the yet they go on supporting, excusing, and believe this when their conflicts of in- e-mails were probably “only one anec- deflecting attention from the President’s terest are on an epic scale is a mystery. dote in a much larger story,” adding, “I behavior in order to protect their own But such is their self-regard. It is said by can’t believe that this one exchange rep- ambitions and fortunes. They realize that those close to Kushner that, if he fears resents all there is, either involving the Trump’s base is still the core of the G.O.P. anything, it is to repeat the experience President’s son or others associated with electorate, and they dare not antagonize of his father, Charles, who, in 2005, the campaign.” Intelligence officials spec- it. The Republicans, the self-proclaimed pleaded guilty to charges of making il- ulated that the tradecraft employed in party of family values, remain squarely legal campaign contributions and hiring setting up such a meeting was possibly behind a family and a Presidency whose a prostitute to entrap his brother-in-law, a way to gauge how receptive the Trump most salient features are amorality, greed, and spent fourteen months in an Ala- campaign was to even deeper forms of demagoguery, deception, vulgarity, race- bama penitentiary. coöperation. In any case, the proper thing baiting, misogyny, and, potentially—only Meanwhile, as the Trump family con- to have done would have been to call the time and further investigation will tell—a sumes the nation’s attention with its co- F.B.I. Now the country is headed toward murky relationship with a hostile for- lossal self-absorption and ethical delin- a “constitutional crisis,” Clapper said, and eign government. quencies, the temperature keeps rising. the question has to be asked: “When will In the near term, if any wrongdoing —David Remnick

OPTICS cabs, and roving pods of zombies and Between each word and the next was a THE SEVENTH CIRCLE CHUDs. If you squint, you might just hands-clapping emoji. As it happens, make out Snake Plissken. Ramos is a spokesperson for Mayor Bill Mainly what happens in there these de Blasio, and the claps seemed to be a days is trains get stuck. The thing to fear, sarcastic dig at the Mayor’s regular hot- it seems, is ancient equipment and mis- potato opponent, Governor Cuomo, who, allocated funds. An important distinc- as the state’s chief executive, is notion- tion: subway trains use different tunnels ally the overlord of the M.T.A. “ live in absolute fear of what hap- from the ones Lhota was talking about. Nonetheless, citizens, among them I pens in those tunnels,” Joseph Lhota The summer of hell, strictly speaking, the transit blogger Benjamin Kabak, said last week, at a press conference at applies to Penn Station and all who must quickly took Ramos to task for de Bla- Penn Station. Lhota is the new chair- pass through it—patrons of Amtrak, sio’s reticence on transportation matters man of the Metropolitan Transportation New Jersey Transit, and the Long Island and his indifference to the concerned Authority, the beleaguered state agency Rail Road. But it’s hard not to extend public’s favored mitigations, such as bus that runs the New York City subway sys- the Governor’s felicitous phrase to the tem. The occasion for the remark was whole regional transportation mess, not the beginning of the “summer of hell,” least the crumbling, overcrowded sub- an appellation coined by Andrew Cuomo, way system in the five boroughs and the the governor of New York, to prepare political game of hot potato that has commuters for rough times ahead. (Gone, doomed it to accelerating decay. Getting evidently, are the halcyon days of empty into and out of Manhattan has never assurances.) With three derailings since seemed more fraught. March, Amtrak has been forced to un- Last Wednesday morning, a woman dertake repairs to the tunnels into and named Jessica Ramos began tweeting out of Penn Station, which will severely from the 7 train, inbound from Queens. cut capacity at a time when the system It had been stalled under the East River is already bursting at the seams. for more than thirty minutes, before re- So what does happen in those tun- turning to Queens and stranding the pas- nels? Hard to tell—it’s dark in there, and sengers there for almost an hour. “Sum- this car’s windows are scratched and mer of hell for outer boros!” she wrote. smudged. One imagines torrents of storm “There are people sobbing because they water and sewage, rats the size of pedi- think they are going to lose their job.” Andrew Cuomo and Snake Plissken

16 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 lanes, bike lanes, and congestion pricing. tunnel, which, during Hurricane Sandy, and one boy, Kai, three, who wore a Bat- Kabak: “Her boss has abandoned his re- in 2012, was inundated with millions of man costume. “This week everything is sponsibility to help.” (He was more civil gallons of salt water. As Christie was Batman,” his mother, Brooke Magnaghi, than the Post, which, after de Blasio flew bickering with Mike from Montclair, a fine-jewelry consultant, said with a to Germany to address the G-20 pro- an iceberg seven times the size of New note of weariness. She’d also enrolled testers, featured him on its front page York City was calving from Antarctica her daughter, Nova, five. “I grew up in with the headline “Deutsch Bag.”) into the sea. Absolute fear. Vermont and had this supermagical, bo- The inattention crosses state lines. 1—Nick Paumgarten hemian, progressive childhood in the New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie— woods, and I’m trying to create some of who killed an earlier iteration of a much BAREFOOT DEPT. that for my children in the city.” needed rail tunnel between New Jersey FIERCE At ten-thirty, McQuilkan rang a tiny and New York (a different version is now bell and gathered the children on a blan- expected in 2026, at a cost of $11.1 bil- ket. They began their weekly affirma- lion, according to what Kabak calls the tions. “I am powerful,” she said. “I am “random number generator”)—has ap- powerful,” the children yelled back. Next: peared to be taking the summer off. After “I am valuable,” “I am intelligent,” “I am getting caught lounging on a public beach creative,” “I am brave,” and, finally, “I trust that had been closed to his constituents ast week, Beyoncé released the first my Earth sisters, and they believe in me.” because of a government shutdown he’d Lphotograph of her month-old twins The day’s lesson was about mother ordered, he went on the sports-talk sta- on Instagram. She poses with them against goddesses. McQuilkan passed around tion WFAN, wearing a Dallas Cowboys a floral backdrop, her hair flowing, one images of Gaia, from Greek mythology; cap, as a guest host. A caller, Mike from knee slightly bent, like Botticelli’s Venus the Hindu goddess Durga; and the Montclair, referred to the Governor’s “fat rising from the sea. It complemented a Yoruba goddess Yemoja. “The mother ass”; Mike, Christie retorted, was a Com- look she took up at the Grammys, when animal is the most fierce and protective,” munist and a bum. she performed pregnant, channelling she explained, and added, “Women are “You have bad optics, and you’re a African, Hindu, and Roman deities. fierce!” She roared at Kai, who giggled. bully,” Mike said. Goddesses seem to be in season. In “Why did Durga have so many arms?” “Oh, bad optics,” Christie replied. “I’d China, fans of Ivanka Trump refer to Gianna, five, asked. like to come and look at your optics every her as the goddess Yi Wan Ka, citing “Each one symbolizes something,” day, buddy.” her perceived power and poise. The TV McQuilkan said, pointing out weapons More optics: the Times revealed that show “American Gods” features several in Durga’s hands, such as a thunderbolt money from the Port Authority, which divine female beings, including the Eve- and a flame. “Look, she has a spear, too.” is chaired by a Christie appointee, had ning Star, the Morning Star, and a god- “Why does she have a spear?” Rae, been earmarked for that vetoed tunnel, dess of media. six, wanted to know. “Is she Britney but instead was used to subsidize ferry “And there’s the Wonder Woman Spears?” McQuilkan smiled but didn’t trips for commuters to New York from movie,” Lucie McQuilkan said. A former answer. (Later, she expressed reservations the Jersey shore, to the tune of more than fashion designer from New Zealand, Mc- about deifying Spears: “I don’t know what forty-six dollars per passenger per ride. Quilkan hosts Mischievous Goddess par- Britney’s been up to since she shaved her (The fare was just twelve bucks.) Good ties, where young girls can “play beyond head, which was perhaps not her most money overboard. this realm.” She also offers weekly classes goddess moment.”) Cuomo, at least, had recently declared in goddess awareness at ABC Carpet & Sarah, four, pointed to Durga’s feet. a state of emergency and pledged a billion Home, in Manhattan, and Greene Mo- “She doesn’t have any shoes on,” she said, dollars for subway repairs. But optics soon ments Studio, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. and then screamed, “I don’t have any caught him up, too, when the public learned The goal is to give girls role models. “I shoes on!,” before running around in cir- that the M.T.A. had funnelled almost five want them to come across a goddess later cles. (Everyone in the room was bare- million dollars to three upstate ski areas on and say, ‘Oh, I learned about her when foot.) Rae’s sister, Sydney, four, joined to offset losses incurred during a recent I was a little girl,’ ” she said. her. Class had descended into chaos, but warm winter. “They’re stealing from one McQuilkan took inspiration from the that was O.K. with McQuilkan. “I don’t bankrupt place to prop up another bank- idea that “brave, strong women are so encourage it, but girls are always told to rupt place,” a former gubernatorial aide often called bossy and bitchy, but god- be quiet,” she said. “You want them to told the News. (A reader tweeted, “They desses are powerful and fierce but really be free to be a little wild.” needed money bc no one was skiing bc feminine in their power.” In the after- She called the children back onto warm weather bc climate change bc driv- math of the 2016 election, business has the blanket to make beaded bracelets ing bc poorly funded mass transit.”) been booming. “Women were heartbro- for their mothers. “What’s your favor- On the horizon, fresh circles of hell: ken for their girls,” she said. ite thing about your mum?” McQuil- next spring, the L train, that essential On a recent Sunday, her Clinton Hill kan asked her pupils. Lea, a blond seven- link between Brooklyn and Manhattan, class drew eight students, ages three to year-old, said, “I like my mom because will shut down for fifteen months while six. There were seven girls, mostly in she’s nice.” Everyone nodded. repairs are carried out on the Canarsie dresses (hot-pink tulle, navy-blue floral), Rae picked up a white bead. “If it was

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 17 squished, it would look like a piece of the eighteen thousand Americans who with diplomas. In ten days, they had not gum,” she said. study abroad in France each year prefer only hit the Louvre, tasted macarons, and Kai was reminded of a display of flip-flops and iPhones, but, as in Onas- picnicked by the Seine but also inspected feminine power. “My mom said I can’t sis’s day, they are still mostly white, well a helium balloon that measures the city’s have a candy bar,” he said. McQuilkan off, and enrolled at a four-year college. air quality, met the founders of a biomass considered her response. “Well, she’s pro- The French government is hoping to startup, toured a water-treatment plant, tecting your teeth,” she said, finally. change that, by providing “students tra- and activated a fountain show at Ver- “That’s nice.” ditionally underrepresented in study- sailles, using a subterranean network of At the end of the session, it was time abroad programs with an affordable op- seventeenth-century pipes. “We went to to make a wish on a purple amethyst portunity to attend an educative program a supermarket, and they were all, like, crystal. “Everyone close your eyes,” Mc- in France.” While President Emmanuel ‘Cheese!’ ” Futschik said. “So we went to Quilkan said, offering the crystal to each Macron tries to recruit American scien- a real fromagerie.” child in turn. Afterward, she led them in tists and engineers—“It’s your nation,” he “Elena Bolotova, Tunxis Community one more chant of “I am powerful” and told them, just before Donald Trump de- College,” an official from the ministry opened the door to their waiting parents. cided to withdraw from the Paris climate read, calling each graduate to the front Gianna was the first one out of class. agreement—the country’s educators are of the room. “She has no idea what is going on now homing in on American community- “Ben Morrow, University of Mount in politics, but, when she does, this class college students. Olive.” will help her deal with it,” her mother, This month, the French Embassy, in “Daniela Markovic, Lone Star College.” Courtney Lee, a doctor, said. “I don’t partnership with the country’s top fifty The students were majoring in envi- think she’s latched on to the goddess part engineering schools, launched a program ronmental science or engineering. The yet, but she likes the magic. All kids need called Community College Abroad in French had paid half of the two-thousand- to believe in something that’s out there France. It is the brainchild of a young euro cost of the program for each of them, to help them.” attaché named Léa Futschik, who de- and funding from grants and from their 1—Marisa Meltzer duced, after reading endless debates about colleges largely made up the rest. Earlier the cost of college in the Chronicle of in the day, each group member had given PARIS POSTCARD Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, a presentation on something he or she had OFF THE BOOKS that there were plenty of people out there learned during the trip. besides Seven Sisters débutantes upon “Mine was on heat reclamation from whose lives a citron pressé might make a a service system in the Butte aux Cailles permanent impact. “A whole semester neighborhood,” Matt Stromberg, from away isn’t possible when you have a two- Norwalk Community College, in Con- year program,” Futschik recalled. “So we necticut, said. “Sorry, my pronunciation’s said, ‘Let’s do a summer school!’ ” terrible.” acqueline Kennedy Onassis once She was eating canapés in an upper- “The thing different I noticed is that Jremembered her fellow-participants floor reception room at the Ministry for you sit down and eat for two hours,” Cole in the Smith College Junior Year Abroad Europe and Foreign Affairs, on the Quai Fowler, from Davidson Community Col- in Paris as “slight expatriates . . . swaddled d’Orsay, in Paris. Around her, the seven- lege, in North Carolina, added. Along in sweaters and woolen stockings, doing teen participants of the program’s inau- with five other students, it was his first homework in graph-paper cahiers.” Today, gural “boot camp” waited to be presented time out of the United States. “At the Versailles castle, they’ve got pipes down there that were from the sixteen-fifties. There aren’t too many buildings in the U.S. from that time, and, if there are, they’re a shack.” “The best thing ever is the Line 1 train!” Ayesha Khatun, from LaGuardia Community College, in Queens, said. “It’s totally driver-free.” Prasala Tuladhar, also from LaGuar- dia, moved to New York from Nepal three years ago. “When I got to Paris, I was so happy,” she said. “I was excited to see the gold and the windows and the doors. I had the feeling of Nepal again, because I saw the preservation of history.” As part of the program, students who graduate from their community colleges with hon- ors will be offered admission to a French institution, where they can earn a four- “I told Casey he’d get to show off 2008, I had a dream about her, randomly,” year diplôme d’ingénieur. “I’m looking for- the movements of his body, but it turned he said. “All I remember is that it was in ward to doing my master’s, and may apply out that it felt wrong to recognize a parking garage and that it was very here,” Tuladhar said. human traits under the sheet,” Low- fond.” After he found her on Facebook, Diana Calderón, another LaGuardia ery recalled over dinner at Champs they began e-mailing, then writing let- student, is forty-three and worked for Diner, a vegan restaurant in Williams- ters, then exchanging meaningful CDs. many years as a weekend branch super- burg. Except for his bluejeans, every- They married in 2010, in a vegan cere- visor at a bank. “My company went to thing about the thirty-six-year-old di- mony. Puzzling over the dream, he said, plant trees in the Rockaways after Hur- rector was gray, from his MacBook to “I guess I wanted to get our relationship ricane Sandy, and that’s what sparked his denim jacket to his shirt to his bag. out of this temporary holding area.” the whole thing of going back to school,” The monochrome effect, set off by Lowery grew up in a farmhouse in she said. “I was going places in my job, Lowery’s large, shaved head, made him Irving that he was convinced was haunted. but, seeing everyone coming together to seem like an amiable Bond villain. work for the environment, I said, You He ordered the Tatertachos—“This know, this is what I want to do for the place has a lot of comfort food to con- rest of my life.” She’d loved the confer- vince non-vegans not to be scared off ”— ence on the nonpotable-water network which arrived slathered in salsa, guaca- and the riverside wine-and-cheese spread. mole, and a form of animal-sparing cheese. “In mass transit, doing that little door Then he went on, “Also, the sheet kept thing, where you have to pull the han- getting caught in a doorway or gathering dle up, that was, like, wow,” she said. “My in a way that gave Casey ‘droopy face,’ or favorite thing was that we were not in ‘elephant face.’ We’d kept the shoot se- buses—we were riding the trains. That cret in case it didn’t work out, and my gives you the best idea of how life really guts were churning and I got a big patch is in Paris.” She added, “I expected ba- of white hair in my beard and I wanted sically what I saw, but, to me, what was to pull the plug. Finally, I just had the amazing was that I was living it.” costume director lie on the floor and hold 1—Lauren Collins the sheet so it draped properly while Casey stood still in the corner of a room.” David Lowery THE PICTURES Realizing that it could be anyone GLOAMING under there—the art director stepped in One night, he saw a small, sad boy in for Affleck during reshoots—Lowery the hall. And, beginning at the age of himself played the floral-sheeted ghost sixteen, he often woke with a sense that who lives next door, the so-called someone was in the room, or that he was “grandma ghost.” Communicating in being suffocated, or that helicopter blades halting subtitles, she tells C she’s wait- were whirling toward him. Years later, ing for her family. Insofar as we can read after he read that these were standard bedsheet with eyeholes makes a C’s eyeholes, we sense that he knows manifestations of hypnagogic sleep dis- A lovely, if lazy, costume for Hallow- they’re not coming back. order, the symptoms began to abate. een—and a lousy costume for a film. For his main course, Lowery ordered Raised Catholic, Lowery stopped be- Last summer, two days after the direc- the Benedict, with tofu in lieu of eggs. lieving in God or an afterlife by the time tor David Lowery finished the Disney A goth in high school, he now identifies he was twenty. “But up through ‘Pete’s film “Pete’s Dragon,” he secretly began as a vegan—as do Affleck and Mara. “It’s Dragon’ I was still telling people that I shooting “A Ghost Story.” In the newly like we’ve all read the same books,” he wanted to make movies for posterity,” released film, made for around a hun- said, explaining the collective shorthand. he said. “A Ghost Story,” which spans dred and fifty thousand dollars, the de- “And it makes catering lunches easier.” centuries, suggests that even posterity is voted couple C and M (Casey Affleck C and M’s poignantly unfinished busi- just a temporary holding area. “I finally and Rooney Mara) are sparring over ness was based on an argument Lowery realized that not only will I not be around their prospective move out of a ranch had with his wife, Augustine Frizzell, after I’m gone, but that eventually no house in Irving, Texas, when C dies in about where she should live while he was one will be around to care.” Why make a car accident. He returns in a white working on “Pete’s Dragon.” He thought movies, then? “I think there is a value in sheet to haunt the house. C’s ghostly she should in their house in Dallas; leaving the world a little better off, and powers are faint—he can smash the odd she wanted to join him in Los Angeles. movies can do that in a minor way,” he glass—and mostly he just trails M long- “It was a very polarizing argument, and said, slowly. “All I know is that I forget, ingly or studies her as she, for instance, it came to an impasse,” he said. “So now about two-thirds of the way through eats an entire chocolate pie (in a single we’re planning to alternate between Dal- watching this movie, that I made it. It four-minute take), then vomits it up. las and L.A. Bicoastal!” moves me and makes me happy, and I’ve So the movie hinges on the expressive He and Frizzell dated briefly when never had that before.” powers of that sheet. he was twenty, then fell out of touch. “In —Tad Friend

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 19 had rejected her parents’ racism. She LETTER FROM COLORADO worked as a nurse, eventually special- izing in geriatric care, and during the nineteen-eighties she participated in FOLLOW THE LEADER pro-choice demonstrations. Last au- tumn, she was energized by the Presi- How residents of a rural area started copying the President. dential election. In Grand Junction, the largest city in western Colorado, Kulp BY PETER HESSLER campaigned with a group of citizens who became active shortly after the re- lease of the “Access Hollywood” record- ing, in which Trump was caught on tape bragging about assaulting women. One of the campaigners was a work- ing mother named Lisa Gaizutis. Her eleven-year-old son had friends whose parents had declared that they would move to Canada if the election went the wrong way, so he did everything possi- ble to free up his mother’s afternoons. “He said he’d take care of himself as long as I was campaigning,” Gaizutis remem- bered, after the election. “He’d text me and say, ‘You can stay late, I’m done with my homework.’ ” The majority of these activists were women, but their backgrounds were var- ied. Laureen Gutierrez’s ancestors had come from Spain via Mexico; Marjorie Haun was a special-education teacher who had left her job because of a vocal disability. Matt Patterson was a high- school dropout who, through a series of unlikely events, had acquired a classics degree from Columbia University. All of the activists had arrived in the same place, as fervent supporters of Donald Trump, In a small Colorado city, Trump’s tone has a deeper influence than his policies. and on the day of the Inauguration they met in Grand Junction to celebrate. hen Karen Kulp was a child, she Colorado, and they had packed gas Wbelieved that the United States masks, ammunition, canned food, and n January 20th, nearly two hun- of America as she knew it was going other supplies. As the day went on, Kulp Odred people attended the Mesa to end on June 6, 1966. Her parents were said, she began to think that the inva- County Republican Women’s Deplora- from the South, and they had migrated sion wasn’t going to happen. “And then Ball. They watched a live feed of the to Colorado, where Kulp’s father was I thought, I’m going to have to go to Presidential Inaugural Ball, and they involved in mining operations and var- school tomorrow.” took photographs of one another next ious entrepreneurial activities. In terms In time, Kulp began to question her to cardboard cutouts of Donald Trump of ideology, her parents had started with parents’ ideas. Her father became a pi- and Ronald Reagan, which had been ar- the John Birch Society, and then they oneer in far-right radio, re-broadcasting ranged on the mezzanine of the Avalon became more radical, until they thought the shows of Tom Valentine, who often Theatre. The theatre has an elegant Ro- that an invasion was likely to take place promoted conspiracy theories and was manesque Revival façade, and it was on 6/6/66, because it resembled the accused of anti-Semitism. The Kulp built in the twenties, during one of the number of the Beast. “We thought we family sometimes attended Aryan Na- periodic resource-extraction booms that were going to have a world war, there tions training camps. “It was for whites have shaped the city and its psyche. would be Communists coming, we’d only,” Kulp said. “It would teach you that Grand Junction, with its surrounding have to kill somebody for a loaf of whites were the supreme race, all of that area, has a population of some hundred bread,” Kulp said recently. shit.” She pointed to her heart: “It just and fifty thousand, and it sits in a wide, She was thirteen when doomsday didn’t fit in with this right here.” windswept valley. There are dry mountains

came. The family was living in Del Norte, By the time Kulp was twenty, she and mesas on all sides, and the landscape NICOOLAY/GETTY MAP:

20 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY ALVARO DOMINGUEZ gives the town a self-contained feel. director for the Presidential campaign. leadership, with members winning three Even its history revolves around events He lasted for four days. This was shortly positions, including the chair. Others that were suffered alone. Residents after the “Access Hollywood” tape was looked farther afield. “If Trump won often refer to their own “Black Sun- leaked, and Patterson’s first act as field Wisconsin, he could have won Colo- day,” a date that’s meaningless any- director was to propose that the Party rado,” Patterson told me. “The issues where else: May 2, 1982, when Exxon hold a Women for Trump rally. But the were here—immigration and energy.” decided to abandon an enormous oil- county chairman refused. “His exact He believed that without the infighting shale project, with devastating effects words were, ‘That’s picking a fight we of the last campaign they could do bet- on Grand Junction’s economy. can’t win,’ ” Patterson told me. He quit ter. In 2018, there will be an election to The region is a Republican strong- the campaign and organized the rally replace John Hickenlooper, the Demo- hold in a state that is starkly divided. on his own. In his estimation, most Re- cratic Colorado governor, who will va- Clinton won the Colorado popular vote publicans would find Trump’s comments cate his seat because of term limits. At by a modest margin, but Trump took repugnant, but they would be even more the DeploraBall, Patterson told me that nearly twice as many counties. The differ- resentful of the coastal media that was the Republicans can win the governor- ence came from Denver and Boulder, pushing the story. ship and then, two years later, deliver two populous and liberal enclaves on The Women for Trump rally was a Colorado to Trump. He said, “We’re the Front Range, the eastern side of local turning point. More than a hun- going to start on the Western Slope and the Rockies—the Colorado equivalents dred people showed up, and it galva- do a sweep east and color it red.” of New York and California. “Donald nized a group of activists. Like other Trump lost those two counties by two grassroots supporters across the coun- ike many parts of America that hundred and seventy-three thousand try, they named themselves after Hillary Lstrongly supported Trump, Grand votes, and he won the rest of the state Clinton’s comment that half of Trump’s Junction is a rural place with problems by a hundred and forty thousand votes,” adherents were racists, sexists, and oth- that have traditionally been associated Steve House, the former chair of the ers who belonged in a “basket of deplor- with urban areas. In the past three years, state Republican Party, told me. “That ables.” The Deplorables’ approach to the felony filings have increased by nearly means that most of Colorado, in my election was fiercely unapologetic. Karen sixty-five per cent, and there are more mind, is a conservative state.” Kulp told me that Trump wasn’t racist; than twice as many open homicide cases It also means that Colorado’s econ- he was simply calling for immigrants to as there were a decade ago. There’s an omy and culture change dramatically be held accountable to the law. She said epidemic of drug addiction and also of from the Front Range to the Western she would never support a hateful can- suicide: residents of Mesa County kill Slope, on the other side of the Conti- didate, because her childhood contact themselves at a rate that’s nearly two nental Divide. Between 2010 and 2015, with extremist groups had made her sen- and a half times that of the nation. Some the Front Range experienced ninety-six sitive to such issues. of this is tied to economic problems, but per cent of Colorado’s population growth, For Kulp, who is in her mid-sixties there’s also an issue of perception. The and the state’s unemployment rate is and describes her income as limited, the decrease in gas drilling weighs heavily only 2.3 per cent. But Grand Junction campaign was empowering. Like many on the minds of locals, although few lost eleven per cent of its workforce be- in Grand Junction, she believed that people seem to realize that the energy tween 2009 and 2014, in part because Trump would kick-start the local en- industry now represents less than three the local energy industry collapsed in ergy industry by reducing regulations. per cent of local employment. They’ve the wake of the worldwide drop in gas She told me that she had never shaken been slow to embrace other sectors, such prices. Average annual family earnings the sense that the country is under threat. as health care and education, which seem are around ten thousand dollars less than “I think America is lost to us,” she said. to have more potential for future growth. the state figure. “Because of the way I was raised, that is During the campaign, Trump’s de- Most Grand Junction Republicans baggage that I will have for the rest of scriptions of inner-city crime and hope- initially supported Ted Cruz, and, in Au- my life.” The Deplorables funded their lessness often seemed cartoonish to urban gust, 2016, after Trump won the nomi- own activities, and they pooled money residents, but not to rural voters—in nation, a young first vice-chair of the in order to buy Trump shirts, hats, and Mesa County, Trump won nearly sixty- county Party named Michael Lentz re- buttons from Amazon, because the offi- five per cent of the vote. Pueblo, another signed. Lentz decided that advocating cial campaign provided almost nothing. large rural Colorado county, has a steel for Trump would contradict his Chris- “I made about a dozen Amazon orders,” industry that’s been on the wane since tian faith; he was particularly bothered Kulp said, at the DeploraBall. “Every the nineteen-eighties. Its county seat by Trump’s attacks on immigrants and shirt you see here tonight, I bought.” now has the state’s highest homicide on the press. “I spent a month trying to At the Avalon, the crowd fell silent rate, and last election the county switched come to grips with it, but I couldn’t,” while a woman prayed: “Thank you for from blue to red. Far from Denver and Lentz told me. giving us a President who will, with your Boulder, there are many places where an In October, Matt Patterson, who grew help, restore this nation to her former atmosphere of decline has lasted for two up in Grand Junction but now lives in glory, the way you created her.” Less than or more generations, leaving a profound Washington, D.C., returned to his home two weeks later, the Deplorables effec- impact on the outlook of young people. town to serve as the Party’s regional field tively took over the county Republican Matt Patterson told me that as a boy he

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 21 ery, but that nobody decided to eradi- cate it until individuals in the West took up the cause. The class booed him. In Patterson’s opinion, most people at Co- lumbia believed that only liberal views were legitimate, whereas his experiences in Grand Junction, and his textbook les- sons from magic, indicated otherwise. (“States of mind are no different than feats of manual dexterity. Both can be learned through patience and diligence.”) “Look, I’m a high-school dropout who went to an Ivy League school,” Patterson said. “I’ve seen both sides. The people at Columbia are not smarter.” He continued, “I went to Co- lumbia at the height of the Iraq War. There were really legitimate arguments against going into Iraq. But I found that the really good arguments against going were made by William F. Buck- ley, Bob Novak, and Pat Buchanan. What I saw on the left was all slogans and group thought and clichés.” Patterson graduated with honors and “Don’t worry, we only went out once. I never saw a reinvigorated sense of political convic- him naked—not until now, of course.” tion. For the past seven years, he’s worked for conservative nonprofit organizations, most recently in anti-union activism. In •• 2013, the United Auto Workers tried to unionize a Volkswagen plant in Chatta- had always hoped to escape his home candidate would recognize the wisdom nooga, where Patterson demonstrated a town. In 1985, when he was twelve, al- of sleight of hand. (“A good friend once knack for billboards and catchphrases. most fifteen per cent of the homes in told me that the only difference between On one sign, he paired a photograph of Grand Junction were vacant, because of a salesman and a con-man is that a sales- a hollowed-out Packard plant with the the effects of Black Sunday. man has confidence in his product.”) words “Detroit: Brought to You by the Patterson’s dream was to become a In 1997, Patterson was riding in a car UAW.” Another billboard said “United magician. His parents were middle that was hit by a drunk driver, and the Auto Workers,” with the word “Auto” class—his father sold lumber; his mother bones of his left arm were shattered into crossed out and replaced by “Obama,” worked in insurance—and they were several dozen pieces. After six surgeries, written in red. upset when he dropped out of school at he suffered permanent nerve damage, In Patterson’s opinion, such issues are the beginning of tenth grade. He moved decreased arm mobility, and no future cultural and emotional as much as eco- to South Florida, where he established as a closeup magician. Having acquired nomic. He believes that unions once himself as a specialist in closeup magic. his G.E.D., he enrolled in classes at the served a critical function in American He worked in restaurants, performing University of Miami. The quality of Pat- industry, but that the leadership, like that sleight-of-hand tricks for diners, and terson’s writing impressed an instructor, of the Democratic Party, has drifted too eventually he expanded into private par- who persuaded him to apply to Colum- far from its base. Union heads back lib- ties, trade shows, and cruise ships. By bia. The year that Patterson turned thirty, eral candidates such as Obama and Clin- his early twenties, he was earning more he became an Ivy League freshman. He ton while dues-paying members tend to than forty thousand dollars a year. majored in classics. Every night, he trans- hold very different views. Patterson also Years later, he described the experi- lated four hundred lines of ancient Greek thinks that free trade, which he once ence as a “brutal education,” and he and Latin. In class, he often argued with embraced as a conservative, has dam- self-published a business manual for as- professors and students. aged American industries, and he now piring magicians. Some advice is tech- “The default view seemed to be that supports some more protectionist mea- nical: for magic, silver Liberty half-dol- Western civilization is inherently bad,” sures. His message resonated in Chat- lars are better than Kennedys; in low he told me. In one history seminar, when tanooga, where, in 2014, workers deliv- light, use cards that are red instead of students discussed the evils of the West- ered a stinging defeat to the U.A.W. blue. The manual was written long be- ern slave trade, Patterson pointed out Since then, Patterson has continued his fore Patterson entered politics, but any that many cultures had practiced slav- advocacy in communities across the

22 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 country, under the auspices of Ameri- the Washington swamp. But every time own. The point wasn’t necessarily to get cans for Tax Reform, which was founded Trump pointed at the media, the crowd things done; it was to retaliate against by the conservative advocate Grover turned, and by the end people were the media and other enemies. This had Norquist. “So now I bust unions for Gro- screaming and cursing at us. One man always seemed fundamental to Trump’s ver Norquist with a classics degree and tried to climb over the barrier, and se- appeal, but people had been less likely as a former magician,” he told me. curity guards had to drag him away. to express it so starkly before he en- As a magician, Patterson went by the Such behavior is out of character for tered office. “For those of us who be- name Magnus, taken from Albertus Mag- residents of rural Colorado, where po- lieve that the media has been corrupt nus, the thirteenth-century saint and sup- liteness and public decency are highly for a lot of years, it’s a way of poking posed alchemist. Patterson is of slightly valued. Erin McIntyre, a Grand Junc- at the jellyfish,” Karen Kulp told me less than average height, with features tion native who works for the Daily Sen- in late April. “Just to make them mad.” that are nondescript in a way that allows tinel, the local paper, stood in the crowd, him to shift easily from one appearance where the people around her screamed n Grand Junction, people wanted to another. At the DeploraBall he wore at the journalists: “Lock them up!” “Hang ITrump to accomplish certain things a fedora, a pin-striped suit jacket, and them all!” “Electric chair!” Afterward, with the pragmatism of a businessman, eyeglasses with stylish John Varvatos McIntyre posted a description of the but they also wanted him to make them frames. But at other times he dresses with event on Facebook. “I thought I knew feel a certain way. The assumption has the flair of a goth: black T-shirt, leather Mesa County,” she wrote. “That’s not always been that, while emotional ap- bracelet studded with skulls, silver ring what I saw yesterday. And it scared me.” peal might have mattered during the decorated with a flying bat. Sometimes Before Trump took office, people I campaign, the practical impact of a he paints his fingernails black. These ac- met in Grand Junction emphasized prag- Trump Presidency would prove more cessories vanish when it’s time to inter- matic reasons for supporting him. The important. Liberals claimed that Trump act with factory workers, voters, or Re- economy was in trouble, and Trump was would fail because his policies would publicans in Middle America. a businessman who knew how to make hurt the people who had voted for him. In July, 2016, Patterson bet a friend rational, profit-oriented decisions. Sup- But the lack of legislative accomplish- two hundred dollars that Trump would porters almost always complained about ment seems only to make supporters win the Presidency. His conservative some aspect of his character, but they take more satisfaction in Trump’s be- Washington friends didn’t take Trump also believed that these flaws were likely havior. And thus far the President’s tone, seriously, but Patterson believed that the to help him succeed in Washington. “I’m rather than his policies, has had the great- candidate’s ability to connect with vot- not voting for him to be my pastor,” est impact on Grand Junction. This was ers was uncanny. (“Remember that you Kathy Rehberg, a local real-estate agent, evident even before the election, with will be performing for people of vary- said. “I’m voting for him to be President. the behavior of supporters at the candi- ing degrees of education, in varying de- If I have rats in my basement, I’m going date’s rally, the conflicts within the local grees of sobriety, and your routines must to try to find the best rat killer out there. Republican Party, and an increased dis- be easily understood by all of them.”) I don’t care if he’s ugly or trust of anything having to if he’s sociable. All I care do with government. Sheila ast October, three weeks before the about is if he kills rats.” Reiner, a Republican who Lelection, Donald Trump visited After the turbulent first serves as the county clerk, Grand Junction for a rally in an airport two months of the Admin- said that during the cam- hangar. Along with other members of istration, I met again with paign she had dealt with the press, I was escorted into a pen near Kathy Rehberg and her many allegations of fraud the back, where a metal fence separated husband, Ron. They were following Trump’s claims us from the crowd. At that time, some satisfied with Trump’s per- that the election could be prominent polls showed Clinton lead- formance, and their com- rigged. “People came in and ing by more than ten percentage points, plaints about his behavior said, ‘I want to see where and Trump often claimed that the elec- were mild. “I think some of it is funny, you’re tearing up the ballots!’ ” Reiner tion might be rigged. During the rally how he doesn’t let people push him told me. Reiner and her staff gave at he said, “There’s a voter fraud also with around,” Ron Rehberg said. Over time, least twenty impromptu tours of their the media, because they so poison the such remarks became more common. office, in an attempt to convince voters minds of the people by writing false sto- “I hate to say it, but I wake up in the that the Republican county clerk wasn’t ries.” He pointed in our direction, de- morning looking forward to what else trying to throw the election to Clinton. scribing us as “criminals,” among other is coming,” Ray Scott, a Republican The Daily Sentinel publishes edi- things: “They’re lying, they’re cheating, state senator who had campaigned for torials from both the right and the they’re stealing! They’re doing every- Trump, told me in June. One lawyer left, and it didn’t endorse a Presiden- thing, these people right back here!” said bluntly, “I get a kick in the ass out tial candidate. But supporters picked The attacks came every few minutes, of him.” The calculus seemed to have up on Trump’s obsession with crowd and they served as a kind of tether to the shifted: Trump’s negative qualities, size, repeatedly accusing the Sentinel of speech. The material could have drifted which once had been described as a underestimating attendance at rallies. off into abstraction—e-mails, Benghazi, means to an end, now had value of their The paper ran a story about vandalism

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 23 of political signs, with examples given entrepreneur named Tyler Riehl started that the Sentinel was slanted. In his opin- from both campaigns, but readers were a campaign against the Sentinel. He wrote ion, a small-town newspaper plays a outraged that the photograph featured on Facebook, “If I’ve learned one thing different role from that of a big publi- only a torn Clinton banner. The Senti- from Donald Trump’s election it’s that cation, and he mentioned a recent inci- nel immediately ran a second article with we can ignore the political pundits tell- dent in which two high-school students a photograph of a vandalized Trump ing us we must play nice with the press— had killed themselves within a twenty- sign. When Erin McIntyre described even when they’re crooked and dishon- four-hour period. Before the Sentinel re- the Grand Junction rally on Facebook, est.” Riehl announced a five-hundred- ported anything, Seaton, the publisher, online attacks by Trump supporters were dollar reward for anybody exposing “local had organized a meeting with school so vicious that she feared for her safety. media malfeasance,” and he fashioned a officials, mental-health experts, a suicide After three days, she deleted the post. hundred newspaper delivery boxes dec- task force, and the father of a boy who In February, a bill that was intended orated with a “Ghostbusters”-style icon had killed himself. The experts warned to give journalists better access to gov- that read, “FAKE NEWS.” Riehl distrib- about copycat suicides, so the newspa- ernment records was introduced in a uted the boxes at a rally called Toast for per kept the deaths off the front page. Colorado senate committee, which was Trump, which was dutifully covered by I met with Seaton at the Sentinel’s chaired by Ray Scott, a Republican. The the Sentinel, along with a fact-checked downtown office, where a confer- process was delayed for unknown rea- head count (a hundred and twenty). ence-room wall is decorated with two sons, and the Sentinel published an edi- In Grand Junction, I learned to sus- framed front pages that reported the torial with a mild prompt: “We call on pend any customary assumptions re- news from historically tragic dates: Sep- our own Sen. Scott to announce a new garding political identity. I encountered tember 11, 2001, and May 2, 1982. The committee hearing date and move this countless strong working women, some building has a three-level Goss printing bill forward.” Scott responded with a of whom believed in abortion rights, press that is capable of turning out a series of Trump-style tweets. “We have who had voted for Trump. Cultural cues hundred and fifty thousand issues per our own fake news in Grand Junction,” could be misleading: I interviewed one hour, because it was purchased in the he wrote. “The very liberal GJ Sentinel gentle, hippieish Trump voter who wore early eighties, when people once again is attempting to apply pressure for me his gray hair in a ponytail. An experi- thought the oil-shale industry was about to move a bill.” ence like leaving a small town for an Ivy to take off. The current circulation is Jay Seaton, the Sentinel’s publisher, League college, which might lead some around twenty-five thousand. Seaton is threatened to sue Scott for defamation. people to embrace more liberal ideas, from a Kansas-based family that owns In an editorial, he wrote, “When a state could inspire in others a deeper conser- eight newspapers around the Midwest; senator accused The Sentinel of being vatism. And so I wasn’t entirely surprised in 2009, they acquired the Sentinel. “I fake news, he was deliberately attempt- to learn that Tyler Riehl, like me, was a come from a long line of Republicans,” ing to delegitimize a credible news source former Peace Corps volunteer. he told me. “My great-uncle served in in order to avoid being held accountable He had served in Slovakia. “Every Eisenhower’s Cabinet as Interior Sec- by it.” The Huffington Post and other time you get to look at how some- retary.” But he admitted that he finds it national outlets mentioned the spat. body else lives, it gives you perspec- increasingly difficult to reconcile him- When I met with Scott, he seemed tive that’s useful,” Riehl told me. In 2000, self to today’s conservative movement. pleased by the attention. A he was sent to a village in “The Party is too accommodating of burly, friendly man who eastern Slovakia, where he elements that I would consider fringe, works as a contractor, he told advocated for bicyclists’ bordering on hate groups,” he said. me, “I was kind of Trump- rights. Riehl told me that Seaton formerly worked as a corpo- ish before Trump was cool.” living in a post-Commu- rate lawyer, and he believed that he had “We used to just take it nist society strengthened a valid case of defamation against Ray on the chin if somebody his appreciation for free- Scott. But he had decided not to pro- said something about us,” dom, truth, and the virtues ceed with a lawsuit. He worried that he said. “The fake-news of small government. Now Trump uses the term “fake news” so often thing became the popular he was applying that ideal- that its interpretation might change thing to say, because of ism to his current campaign. by the time a case reached judgment. Trump.” He believed that Trump has “I do unequivocally state that the Sen- “Maybe those words have lost their ob- performed a service by popularizing tinel is full of fake news,” he said. jective meaning,” Seaton said. the term. “I’ve seen journalists like your- Some residents found these attacks During the election season, it’s com- self doing a better job,” Scott told me. deeply misguided. “I think there’s a lot mon for some people to cancel their sub- He’s considering a run for governor, in of emotion involved, and people are scriptions, but last year the Sentinel lost part because of Trump’s example. “Peo- bringing opinions from the national de- more of them than usual. That’s one of ple are looking for something differ- bate into the local arena,” Bill Vrettos, a the ironies of the age: the New York ent,” he said. “They’re looking for some- consultant with the Alternative Board, Times and , which body who means what they say.” which advises businesses, told me. He Trump often attacks by name, have In late February, shortly after the ex- described his politics as “radically mid- gained subscribers and public standing, change between Scott and Seaton, an dle-of-the-road,” and he didn’t believe while a small institution like the Sentinel

24 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 last time such a proposal came to a vote, in 2011, it was rejected. THEY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE Voters have also not approved an in- crease in the sales tax since 1989. The So sorry about the war—we just kind of next ballot will propose a rise of about a wanted to learn how to swear third of one per cent, in order to fund in another language, and everyone knows local law enforcement and public-safety services. Even as crime has risen, re- the top method is simply to open sources have dropped; the county cur- fire and listen to what people yell. rently has 1.15 deputies per thousand residents, in comparison with a state And now here’s God again with His hand average of 2.28. Police departments are so understaffed that many areas aren’t crank, lowering the sky to make more room patrolled. “They just bounce from ser- for Himself. And now here’s the high-rise vice call to service call,” Daniel Rubin- stein, the Republican district attorney, we build to brace back, this series of holes told me. Approximately fourteen per cent for bathing and mending and parboiling of the population is Hispanic, although that figure would be higher if it included roots and undecorated fucking in the style undocumented immigrants. When I asked Rubinstein about people who don’t of the times: one person half-braying, have legal status, he said, “That’s never the other admonishing KEEP IT been a significant proportion of our crime DOWN—I DON’T WANT THE WAR TO HEAR. problem.” Trump supporters also seemed to understand this. I never heard any- —Natalie Shapero body blame Hispanics for local crime, or make racist remarks about them; it was much more common to encounter has been damaged within its commu- care bill, Trump embarked on a Twitter Islamophobia, although the nearest nity. Seaton didn’t know how to handle spree, labelling various organizations fake mosque is about four hours away. the fake-news accusations, although he news and claiming that Mika Brzezinski, In a climate of intense distrust of had considered inviting Tyler Riehl to the MSNBC host, had recently had a government, it will be particularly diffi- shadow a reporter for a day. He had also facelift that left her bleeding in public. cult to persuade voters to approve new thought about doubling the reward for Excuses are naturally built into this toxic funding. Some residents told me that local media malfeasance. That five hun- cycle. Supporters can always say that they want further cuts in education— dred dollars still hasn’t been claimed. Trump was never given a chance, and even in the high desert they were deter- that the media, the Russia investigation, mined to drain the swamp. But there n the past eight months, I have never and other conspiracies have worked are long-term costs to this mentality. Iheard anybody express regret for vot- against him. In such a climate, it’s diffi- One bright spot in the economy has ing for Donald Trump. If anything, in- cult to prove incompetence: true prag- been the growth of Colorado Mesa Uni- vestigations into the Trump campaign’s matism would be quick and dirty, but versity, the largest institution of higher connections with Russia have made sup- emotional cycles can be sustained for education on the Western Slope, but it’s porters only more faithful. “I’m loving much longer. I find it easy to imagine hard to become a true college town when it—I hope they keep going down the Rus- myself at a rally in 2020, standing in a public schools are so badly underfunded. rabbit hole,” Matt Patterson told me, pen while people scream at me. In June, at an economic conference in June. He believes that Democrats are Smaller places may also be particu- at the university, I met Erik Valk, the banking on an impeachment instead of larly vulnerable to the President’s neg- founder of Principelle, a Dutch com- doing the hard work of trying to connect ative tone, which makes it harder to find pany that manufactures medical devices. with voters. “They didn’t even get rid of practical solutions to local problems. In Valk was thinking about opening a pro- their leadership after the election,” he said. Grand Junction, the average age of a duction center in Grand Junction, be- But Trump’s connection with sup- school building is forty-four years, and cause he loved the natural setting, but porters also involves a great risk. Many the district is ranked a hundred and he was concerned that the culture might Presidential acts that feel satisfying—the seventy-first out of a hundred and sev- be too inward-looking. “I’m trying to unfiltered insults, the attacks on institu- enty-eight in the state, in terms of fund- discover if there is a trend in this direc- tions—also make it difficult to achieve ing per student. Property taxes, which tion—whether they want to open to anything practical and positive. And the fund the schools, are among the lowest the world,” Valk said. “I spoke with the resulting legislative failures typically in- of Colorado cities. In November, two sheriff this morning and he has a funding spire more emotion. In late June, after measures that would increase school problem, and he has a crime problem.” the Senate delayed a vote on the health- funding will be on the ballot, but the One person told me half in jest that

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 25 the best way to get voters to approve new meier said. Private funds filled the gap Not long ago, I might have fixated funding would be to blame everything on until last year, when it was included in on certain details of Brauchler’s speech. a lack of support by Denver élites: a tax the state budget. Brammeier told me He complained about the overregula- increase in the guise of rugged self-reli- that she wants to improve the commu- tion of fossil fuels, and how the own- ance. “It’s about creating an us-versus- nity for her daughter: “She was on my ers of electric Tesla cars don’t pay state them victim narrative,” he said. He was back when she was three months old, gasoline taxes. But why split hairs? He being cynical, but he was also acknowl- and I was canvassing for Obama.” Who didn’t threaten to throw other candi- edging the power of perspective and feel- could stand before this woman and deny dates into prison, and he didn’t ask ing. This seems to be the weakness of the the power of her experience? But that people to vote for him while simulta- Democratic Party, which often gives peo- was true on both sides; there were many neously telling them that the election ple the impression that they are being in- hard-earned faiths in Grand Junction. might be rigged. His facts were real formed of their logical best interests. On facts. He had worked in public service. the other side, people feel ignored or in- n early March, I talked with Gover- He used the sentence “I’m not a rich sulted—this was why they responded so Inor Hickenlooper, who had just met guy.” He spoke well, and among his strongly to Clinton’s use of the term “de- with Trump in Washington, along with listeners he drew out one of the best plorables.” “What she said was, ‘If you other governors. “He was different from qualities of Coloradans—not anger or don’t vote for me, you’re morally unwor- anything I had seen on TV,” Hickenlooper fear or self-victimhood but a certain thy to talk to, to take seriously,’ ” Patter- said, mentioning that Trump seemed in- quirkiness that is at once direct and son told me. tent on solving problems. But, since then, slightly off kilter. Afterward, a woman In Grand Junction, it was often dis- Hickenlooper has become sharply criti- in her sixties approached Brauchler. piriting to see such enthusiasm for a cal of the Administration. Last week, he “I kinda like you,” she said. figure who could become the ultimate announced that Colorado will join the “I’m a Libra,” he replied. political boom-and-bust. There was ide- U.S. Climate Alliance, and he told me “You remind me of my ex-husband.” alism, too, and so many pro-Trump opin- that he will be “aggressive” in resisting In his speech, Brauchler expressed ions were the fruit of powerful and Trump policies that contradict Colorado’s support for the President, but he sepa- legitimate life experiences. “We just as- interests, especially with regard to the en- rated himself from Trump’s tone. When sume that if someone voted for Trump vironment. “Our goal is not just to meet I asked him about the Administration, that they’re racist and uneducated,” Je- Paris, but to go beyond Paris,” he said. he said, “I just would like there to be riel Brammeier, the twenty-six-year-old In 2014, Hickenlooper was reëlected some deëmphasis on the stylistic stuff chair of the local Democratic Party, told with only forty-nine per cent of the vote, and more focus on the substantive stuff.” me. “We can’t think about it like that.” and next year’s election for his replace- He mentioned health-care reform and People have reasons for the things that ment will likely be close. In the middle the Republican majorities in the House they believe, and the intensity of their of June, George Brauchler, one of the and the Senate. “If we fail to deliver on experiences can’t be ; more conservative candidates in the Re- those things, there are going to be con- it’s not simply a matter of having Fox publican primary, came to Grand Junc- sequences,” he said. News on in the background. But per- tion and spoke to local members of the His comments made me wonder haps this is a way to distinguish be- Party. Around sixty people attended, in- whether another bad few months will tween the President and his support- cluding some Deplorables. Brauchler is lead to more open separation by Repub- ers. Almost everybody I met in Grand a district attorney in the Denver sub- lican candidates. This would be the hard- Junction seemed more complex, more urbs, where he prosecuted James Holmes, est thing for supporters to accept—that interesting, and more decent than the the perpetrator of the mass shooting, in the emotional appeal of Donald Trump man who inspires them. 2012, in a movie theatre in Aurora. means far less to professional politicians. During my conversation with Bram- After Brauchler gave a short speech, During my last meeting with Matt Pat- meier, I asked why she had entered the first question came from a heavyset terson, I asked whether Trump’s behav- politics. man wearing a baseball cap: “What do ior might limit his effectiveness even “I got pregnant when I was sixteen,” you think about Sharia?” while appealing to his base. “I see your she said. Grand Junction has a high Brauchler kept it short—“Not a point,” Patterson said, but he still be- teen-pregnancy rate, and Brammeier fan”—and moved on. “You’re from a lib- lieved that Trump would accomplish had been one of eight girls, out of about eral area,” another man said. “How are great things. “If Trump turns out to be two hundred in her twelfth-grade year, you going to handle that kind of media a failure, I’ll take responsibility for that,” who had babies. The town has no attack? Because you are going to be del- he said. “For my share.” Planned Parenthood clinic or designated uged with that liberal mentality from We were at a coffee shop, and Pat- abortion provider, and in 2015, for rea- Boulder and Denver.” terson wore his goth look: silver jewelry, sons both fiscal and ideological, the Brauchler said, “I’ve developed great painted nails. “I’ve never been this emo- Republican- controlled state senate voted relationships with the local media, and tionally invested in a political leader in down a bill that would have provided in part that happens through transpar- my life,” he said. “The more they hate funding for an effective state-wide con- ency and accountability. These are peo- him, the more I want him to succeed. traception program. “Our state senator ple who largely just want to report on Because what they hate about him is Ray Scott voted to defund it,” Bram- stories and tell the truth as best they can.” what they hate about me.” 

26 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 hostess, but at least you made a pass SHOUTS & MURMURS at her. Had that baby actually been in dan- ger, and had that been a real eagle in- stead of a stuffed animal, they’d be calling you a hero now. Your business failed, but not be- cause of you. You were at the beach most of the time. People got mad at you for shoot- ing Bigfoot, but you just thought it was a man in a big, hairy costume. No, you didn’t achieve your dream of becoming an astronaut. But isn’t lying in a hammock drinking beer all day sort of like floating through space? Your teeth were fine until that den- tist said you had a bunch of cavities. What it looked like to you, and to most people, was not a sand castle but a launching ramp for your dirt bike. It’s natural to blame yourself, as natural as an old lady tripping and tumbling down a flight of stairs. Did your yelling, “Hurry up, Grandma! Hurry up or we’re going to leave you!” have anything to do with it? Of course not. Grandma can barely hear. You can’t be all things to all peo- ple. You can’t be the person who tells other people your problems and the one who listens to their problems. Resist self-blame. Don’t automat- ically think you’re guilty of something just because someone points you out in a courtroom. Learn to laugh, like you laughed at the judge when he tripped coming into the courtroom. Self-blame is everywhere. If the sun suddenly stopped shining, the sci- DON’T BLAME YOURSELF entists who’d fired a fusion-disrupter missile at it would probably blame BY JACK HANDEY themselves. When a dam bursts, is it really because of “bad design” or “poor he first rule of any expedition is not to have a big tumbler of Scotch. maintenance”? Maybe the dam’s time Tthat if someone falls behind, you Pants fall down. That’s a fact of life, was just “up.” leave him. As Cub Scout leader, you whether it’s in the privacy of your own Mankind needs to stop blaming it- knew that. home or in front of people at a bus self. Yes, we’ve made some bad things, A shotgun can go off accidentally, stop. It’s not your fault. If you need to like the atom bomb. But we also made and hit a cuckoo clock, and get re- blame something, blame gravity. the atomizer, which you can use to loaded accidentally, and hit the clock What is it about fake Congressio- spray perfume on your neck. again. nal Medals of Honor that makes peo- Oddly enough, the best way to In the dark, a container labelled ple so mad? You never claimed to have cleanse yourself of blame is to em- “Smallpox” looks like “Snuff Box,” and won one in combat; you were just brace it. Drive to the top of a snow- who wouldn’t want some of that flavor- making and selling them. Until you packed peak and yell, at the top of ful snuff? You tried to close it, but it got shut down. And you had to lay your lungs, “It’s all my fault!” Yell that had weird safety latches. off your two employees. Whose fault over and over, to the village below. Seventeen years and four months is that? And, to celebrate, throw a few sticks

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI was long enough for your friend No, you didn’t bring a gift for the of dynamite into a big snowdrift. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 27 duct grow vague. By some accounts, it ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY was a popular obsession with Hillary Clinton’s inbox which cost her the elec- tion. By others, it was WikiLeaks’ re- MARK AS READ lease of messages from the Democratic National Committee. E-mails from the What do we learn when our private e-mail becomes public? Vice-President’s former account showed up in March (divulging the Second BY NATHAN HELLER Lady’s private contact information), and, in May, hackers delivered a cache from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign inboxes in the apparent hope of sway- ing voters. (The press held back, and the people of France, who appear to prefer their epistolary scandals served blue, shrugged.) E-mail made the news again last week, when the Times re- ported that a message from 2016 offered Donald Trump, Jr., opposition infor- mation from Russia. Then Trump fils released his e-mail thread online. Given that e-mail leaks can imperil governments, it seems odd that corre- spondents spend so little time reviewing basic work before they press send. Writ- ing, along with fire-making and the in- vention of the wheel, is widely held to be a milestone of human progress. This view will seem naïve to anybody who has read much human writing. In its feral form, prose is unhinged, mystifying, and repetitive. Writers feel moved to “get things down on paper,” usually incoher- ently, and even in guarded moods say alarming stuff because they don’t know where to put their commas. (“Time to The Enron corpus provided a data dump of workplace communication styles. eat children!”) The true wellspring of civilization isn’t writing; it is editing. measure of industrial progress is the your brain. Sure thing, you type back to E-mail, produced in haste, rarely receives A speed with which inventions grow a needy stranger who seems unable to the requisite attention. That is bad for insufferable. The elevator, once a marvel punctuate. Sounds good. Actually, it sounds us but good for posterity—and for stu- of efficiency, has become a social purga- like death. Once upon a time, you knew dents of the literary gestures we impru- tory from which most of us cannot es- that you could log off e-mail and, like dently put in pixels. When inboxes are cape too quickly. The builders of the first Cinderella before midnight, gain a few gathered, cracked open, and studied, they commercial airplane couldn’t have fore- hours of deliverance from the day’s dig- become a searchable, sortable atlas for seen the crushed knees and the splat- ital scut work. Now your inbox nags you the contours of our social minds. tered salad dressings that their machine on your smartphone, and the only prince would visit on the world. “Hitherto it is who might help is Nigerian, with a need ot long after the Enron Corpora- questionable if all the mechanical inven- to stow his fortune somewhere safe. Ntion imploded amid revelations of tions yet made have lightened the day’s Add to this the knowledge that your accounting fraud, in 2001, the Federal toil of any human being,” John Stuart e-mail self is probably your worst. “Ex- Energy Regulatory Commission seized Mill wrote in the “Principles of Politi- posure of my emails would reveal not the e-mail folders of a hundred and fifty- cal Economy” (1848), and the precept only deep fears and worries, but also one mostly high-ranking employees, the holds for recent innovations, too. Think my shallow personality,” the writer Delia better to discover the discoverable. Be- of e-mail. Or, rather, try not to think of Ephron fretted in a comic essay, after fore long, the commission made a star- e-mail, since, chances are, while you floss, Sony, where she’d done business, had tling announcement: it would release steep tea, make love, or read these sen- its accounts hacked. That was in 2014, this body of e-mail online, to substan- tences, new messages are proliferating in and the stakes of inbox security have tiate its findings. “The release of the in- your inbox, colonizing your time and risen since, even as standards of con- formation now will enable the public to

28 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLAS ORTEGA understand better the evidentiary record pus to develop a “compliance bot” that By then, using computers to assess on which the Commission’s decisions could identify sensitive elements in text large bodies of written text had turned in those proceedings are grounded,” it and alert writers if a message might get to profane projects. Computational lin- explained. “The Commission may re- them in trouble. guistics, the study of computer-replicable lease the information if the public’s right These endeavors served a basic pur- rules and patterns in real-world lan- to disclosure outweighs the individu- pose: protecting users from their foolish- guage, began in earnest in the nineteen- al’s right to privacy.” ness. Other studies focussed on Enron fifties, originally in the service of Cold War The Enron archive came to comprise itself. Noting that “a small number of intelligence: the United States wanted to hundreds of thousands of messages, and users have sent a large number of mes- use computers to mass- translate Russian remains one of the country’s largest sages”—a fact that will shock no one texts into English. (The U.S.S.R., of private e-mail corpora turned public. Its who gets e-mail at work—one research course, wanted the opposite.) By the late lasting value is less as an account of En- team mapped epistolary ties on a Gower sixties, the endeavor had reached liter- ron’s daywork than as a social and lin- layout (a connect-the-dots plot) to un- ary commerce. Houghton Mifflin used guistic data pool, a record of the way we derstand who was in contact with whom. the so-called Brown corpus, a body of write online when we’re not preening They found a tight nest of connections five hundred varied texts from 1961, to for the public eye. Like a hot-dog bun around Enron’s president, vice-president, produce the first edition of the Ameri- beset by seagulls, the archive has been and C.E.O. Angled off to either side can Heritage Dictionary of the English pulled apart and pecked up; it has been were ears with more remote networks of Language, in 1969: one of the earliest digested by computers and referred traders, managers, and lawyers. The plot reference guides that included descrip- to by more than three thousand aca- looks like a donkey head. tive information about the way words demic papers. This makes it, in the an- It also looks more or less like what were actually deployed in print. Research nals of scholarship, something strange: you’d expect. The corpus rapidly high- on so-called corpus linguistics revealed a canonic research text that no one has lights the difference between rich data some puzzling properties of usage. In actually read. and useful information. An M.I.T. stu- the thirties, the linguist George Kings- Mostly, that’s because it is too long, dent working on a compliance bot noted ley Zipf had posited that a word’s fre- and too boring, for complete human con- that it seemed nearly impossible to iden- quency is inversely proportional to its sumption. When the e-mails were re- tify evidence of financial misconduct rank in the frequency table—the third leased, in 2003, the dump was more jum- using basic search strings. He had more most common word would show up bled than even computers could handle, success tracking down pornography— one-third as often as the most common so a researcher at M.I.T. purchased the of which there was, oddly, a lot—with word, and on—and the Brown corpus and bundle and, with help, began to put it in words like “sex.” Also, it was easy to find others have appeared to bear this out. a processable order. Folder structures racial slurs. Zipfian projections are inexact, especially were reinstated. Redundancies, auto- far down the table, but the curve seems mated messages from Listservs, delivery- omputers can do little with a text to hold broadly. It is unclear why. failure notices, and other pieces of mod- Cthat humans could not, but they A field known as digital humanities ern detritus were trimmed away. make some laborious work go faster. In has emerged around text-crunching The resulting corpus, down to a few 1949, an Italian Jesuit priest named Ro- analysis in its modern form. A key ad- hundred thousand e-mails, helped to berto Busa presented a pitch to Thomas J. vocate of the method, Willard McCarty, mark a shift in research premise from Watson, of I.B.M. Busa was trained in touted computers’ virtues as “modelling the cult of authorship (these texts are philosophy, and had just published his machines”: they can test and discard interesting because a notable mind made thesis on St. Thomas Aquinas, the Cath- working theories without years of ex- them) to the cult of the commons (these olic theologian with a famously unman- ploratory work. Textual mapping is a texts are interesting because of what, to- ageable œuvre. (Work on a multivolume popular function; a recent project, in gether, they show). The things they show critical edition of Aquinas’s philosophy, Denmark, used artificial intelligence to frequently serve the cause of automa- commissioned by the Vatican, began in comb through thirty thousand witchy tion. One of the first projects to employ 1879 and is nowhere near done.) Busa folktales and geographically plot their the Enron corpus was a self-described had begun to wonder whether Watson’s elements. (It revealed, among other “extensive benchmark study of e-mail computing machines could aid his work. things, that witchcraft allegations in foldering.” It used seven large accounts Watson backed him, and, for the next Protestant Denmark tended to arise in to help determine whether people or- thirty years, Busa encoded sixty-five the vicinity of Catholic monasteries.) ganized their e-mail in ways that might thousand pages of Thomist text so that And, because computers are great at be replicable by machine intelligence. it could be word-searched, cross-refer- searching, they have been a boon for (“Email foldering is a rich and interest- enced, and what we now call hyper- stylistics: the study of the words, phrases, ing task,” the study’s lead author, Ron linked. The Index Thomisticus was the or images that recur across a work. Such Bekkerman, noted, in what may be the first corpus to be primed for digital schol- analysis, in its eccentric span, includes paper’s most surprising conclusion.) The arship, no less impressive because it Robots Reading Vogue, a project at Yale’s answer was not yet: people are too id- started on punch cards and ended up Digital Humanities Lab which, draw- iosyncratic in the ways they organize online. “Digitus Dei est hic!” Busa punned ing on archived correspondence, gins up their stuff. Another team used the cor- in 2004. The finger of God is here. memos in the scattered style of Diana

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 29 Vreeland. “Also small stones, small like to strike a slouchy pose before big is how fresh my flint was, how the light- straps. It would be interesting, and Diane workplace audiences, the better to seem est brush with a larger world could scat- de Mere, etc., . . . The marvelous sum- the cool kid in a class of dweebs. ter sparks, smoke up my eyes, burn mer look,” some computer- generated through hundreds of words. My e-mails, Vreelandisms read. Although the proj- n the way that years have springtimes, horrifyingly, would run longer still. ect is amusing, coming up with non- Imost epistolary careers have a swell. The Enron corpus seems unburdened sense is the one thing with which hu- Maybe yours came in July, at camp, when by such correspondence. “Where are you mans need no help. 4 p.m. felt like a lonely hour. Maybe it right now? i am in london,” Greg Whal- Still, these behavior-patterning ap- started in the season that arrives after a ley, the company’s president after Jeff Skill- proaches produce insights when applied failure or a death, or in the crisp eve- ing’s departure, wrote a colleague inquir- to the Enron corpus. A pair of research- ning that closes a lucky day. Mine ar- ing about a meeting. “Congratulations! ers at Queen’s University, in Canada, rived when I was a college exchange Keep up the good work,” Teb Lokey, a had some success applying “deception student in France: four classes, few manager for regulatory affairs, tells an theory”: the idea is that disingenuous friends, and a shared apartment across employee. (That is the whole message.) e-mailers tend to minimize first-person from a fire station where, most morn- An analyst found about half of the e-mails pronouns, use more negative-emotion ings, pompiers paraded out onto the side- to be one sentence long, and those that and action words, and write with “an ex- walk to unroll, and then reroll, their run on aren’t always more substantive. cessive blandness.” Their search turned hoses. I would go to a creaking amphi- When the Enron corpus first became up a number of misconduct-related theatre to watch a lecture by a preen- available, some people described its e-mails, although further analysis was ing giant of French literary theory. I catalogue of tics and corporatese as still required as a final filter. would continue to a small room where “cliché”—less embarrassing to Enron, Other projects got more specific. A a scholar with a prim, babylike mouth possibly, than to the species. (Who 2011 study from the University of Wash- read verbatim from an outline, which among us has not stood atop millennia ington crawled through the e-mails to the students dutifully copied onto pris- of human language and, after a moment see how tonal formality tracked onto the tine quadrille paper using fountain pens. of reflection, signed an e-mail “Best”?) nature of a message, rank difference, so- At lunchtime, I’d sit in the park with a To the extent that “cliché” is another cial familiarity, and the number of recip- €2.80 sandwich and write letters across word for recurring cultural pattern, these ients. Most results were unsurprising: the tops, bottoms, and backs of greet- platitudes are exactly what computer people e-mailed more formally when ing cards, descanting on random but—I analysis embraces. dealing with business, across a gap in believed—revealing details. The French In 2014, an enterprising business- rank, with people they scarcely knew, and magazines photographed intellectuals English teacher named Evan Frendo had to a bigger audience. Oddly, though, in odalisque poses, I’d report. The sta- the idea of using the corpus to locate e-mails grew more informal as the list tions on the Clignancourt- Orléans line phrases helpful to the foreign business- of addressees expanded beyond ten. The smelled like baking yams. When I think person working with Americans. After researchers hypothesized that people back on this period, what strikes me most what must have been punishing study, he discovered a fixation on “ball” meta- phors. “I thought I’d get the ball rolling,” one Enroner wrote. “Sounds like you guys had a ball at dinner,” another said. “I played hard ball and told them that I had to have more time,” a correspondent reported. “Someone REALLY dropped the ball here!” an employee chides. “From June 1, we will be totally on the ball,” reads an e-mail that you don’t believe. “I will pretty much leave it in your ball park about Friday night,” somebody writes (a message that Frendo correctly annotates “???”). All told, the corpus contained six hundred and two instances of ball speech, apparently covering every scenario in modern American business. It is not clear that this compendium eases the task of the Danish banker on a morning flight to Dallas. But perhaps it tells him where to focus his study. Naomi Lancaster, a graduate student at Ball State University (!), established “It’s not nepotism if I’m the best son for the job.” that Enroners didn’t generally open with “Dear,” as most etiquette guides suggest, help is supposed to flow from machine romantically at loose ends, e-mails his and favored “Hey,” “Hi,” or “Hello,” lead- to human, we can end up gazing into a Hotmail account a link to workouts on ing Lancaster to believe that the etiquette mirror, not a clarifying lens. Like the work fitnessheaven.com. An employee on the proxy for e-mail wasn’t written letters but of the midcentury structuralist anthro- legal team sends his personal AOL ac- speech. Only six per cent of the e-mails pologists, corpus analysis purports to pat- count a joke he may have found worth she examined had any greeting at all; tern-seek dispassionately. The endeavor, mastering. (“Moses, Jesus and an old man most began in medias res. The employ- though, requires focussing on certain are golfing,” it begins.) “Do you know ees most likely to use a friendly greeting patterns over others, and imbuing them what’s included in Enron’s Code of Eth- were women not in positions of author- with a relational logic based on what’s ics?” an e-mail advertising an in-house ity, followed by men in subservient posi- already known. We learn as much about informational event prompts. “Do you tions. Powerful men were the most likely our social selves in the act of interpret- know what policies affect corporate con- just to open an e-mail window and start ing the Enron corpus as we do in the duct? Ask Sharon Butcher, Assistant typing. In some cases, an e-mail would e-mails themselves. Behind the meaning General Counsel of Corporate Legal, all simply be addressed “Guys.” of the commons, there’s an author still. your questions about our corporate pol- The challenge of beginnings is not icies today.” The message was sent on particular to e-mail—nor are its gender n the iconoclastic 1980 book “Is There June 5, 2001. Ten weeks later, Jeffrey Skill- condescensions new. “Strange as it may Ia Text in This Class?” Stanley Fish at- ing resigned as president and C.E.O. seem, we continue to receive letters from tacked the field of stylistics, and the ten- A programmed search could find this people interested in the problem— dency to equate the work of the human- e-mail, but it wouldn’t be able to locate broached by us last June—of the correct ities researcher with the work of the the irony. For this, we need the same salutation to use in a letter to a girls’ scientist. The equivalence was false, Fish human instrument—faulty, romantic, school,” E. B. White and Elizabeth Hawes thought, because the inquiries had differ- and duplicitous—that brought Enron to wrote in the Notes and Comment de- ent goals. Scientists were trying to zero that self-defeating point. partment of this magazine, in 1931: in on something fixed and unknown: the The tendency to weave stories where First there is a communication from Thomas O. laws of nature and their potential appli- evidence is missing is the human brain’s Mabbott, Ph.D., assistant professor at Hunter cations. Humanists were working with sustaining feature, precipitating heroic College, who says that the head of his depart- something variable and contingent: the action, senseless love, and mindless hate. ment writes, “Dear Colleagues.” . . . An etiquette way a text produced meaning for a given Broadening the data pool has no chance writer in the World-Telegram, propounding the group of readers. You could turn up pat- of dissolving these delusions, because same problem, by a funny coincidence, advises the use of the French “Mesdames,” followed, the terns in any long piece of writing with- people generally deal with huge volumes writer goes on, “by the customary dash.” A man out showing that such patterns were ger- of information in the same way that they in writes that the Governor of the Vir- mane to how the work communicated. deal with small ones: by sifting and dis- gin Islands once wrote a letter to Goucher Col- The most revealing question about a carding, then connecting dots to make lege beginning: “To the director of one group of piece of text was the obvious one: How a picture out of what remains. They latch virgins from another,” which we neither believe mean nor think funny. does it ? onto results that bear out narrative and This is the question least scrutinized hopeful theory. They seek a private order A letter, like the social speech for which in the Enron corpus, perhaps because in the chaos of the world. it substitutes, is frayed by awkwardness at reading two hundred thousand e-mails, When the Enron scandal broke, last either end. We spend half of our lives let alone finding a unified, intended nar- decade, e-mail was the most wanton kind struggling to start conversations and the rative in them, seems a hopeless project. of media. It is no longer so—people now other half struggling to exit them. In the But it is not until you descend from have indecent texts at home, manic Slack middle is the thing itself, and here, it turns thirty-seven thousand feet that life starts threads in the workplace, and, for just out, we are slightly better than machines. coming into focus once again. about every venue, crankish, boastful What is sometimes called “sentiment” or Personalities turn out to matter; Facebook, filled with babies and bad “tone” analysis presents a challenge for stories, too. Small, sometimes moving news. As the scandals of the past few computers, which can stumble over sim- dramas unwind in the folders of sent years show, however, indecorum hasn’t ple words. Consider “pretty”: it can inten- mail. In May, 2001, a trader who is given left our inboxes, and the lives behind the sify some descriptions (“The hot dog was to enthusiastic, exclamation-laden e-mails @ symbol may still have something to pretty amazing, but the bun was pretty tells a friend that it’s already getting hot hide. For many of us, that seems all right. dry”), dial back others (“That Zumba class in Houston, which is a pain, because he’s The urgent project at the moment isn’t was pretty good, I guess”), convey beauty begun jogging again, to lose 8.5 pounds. adding more information to the cultural (“What a pretty wooden trellis!”), or add He has just been through a breakup. A file; it is understanding how meaning is irony (“What a pretty kettle of fish”). vice-president is having a custody battle produced, how stories wrought from nar- The limits of corpus analysis, in other in September, 2001, and sends a legal row data samples seed and grow in the words, are human; in the gap between aide a frenzied, unedited, and wrench- public imagination. Such work will tell data and knowledge, we fall back on our ing plea: “How can she be aloud to keep us more about contemporary communi- social understandings of the world. This me from my son?” Some of the most in- cation than another e-mail archive. As recourse can help computers with com- teresting messages were never meant for a sign of twenty-first-century progress, plex use cases, such as “pretty.” But when anyone else’s eyes. That same jogger, still it can’t come too soon. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 31 PERSONAL HISTORY AMERICAN INFERNO

A crime committed at fifteen derailed my cousin’s life. Why couldn’t I save him?

BY DANIELLE ALLEN

We, who are in prison, had to answer for half his face, a bright flash of white against developed the best alternatives we could. our sins and our lives were taken from us. Our his dark skin. He had a little bob in his We made task lists, and moved through bodies became the property of the state of Cal- step, the same natural spring he’d had as them efficiently. We met the parole ifornia. We are reduced to numbers and stripped of our identity. To the state of California I am a child. His late adolescence and early officer, opened a bank account, and went not Michael Alexander Allen but I am K-10033. adulthood had been spent in captivity, yet to the library, where Michael got a card When they want to know anything about me he bounded toward us like a fawn. and started learning how to use a com- they do not type my last name in the computer The homecoming party was in the puter. (Google hadn’t existed when he but it is my number that is inputted. My num- driveway of my aunt’s house, next to the went to prison.) At the D.M.V., he took ber is my name. . . . Dante was not in hell due to a fatal sin but somewhere in his life he strayed postage stamp of a lawn. Uncles and a test and got his driver’s license. onto the path of error, away from his true self. friends, cousins and second cousins, and Then, under the scorching sun of the I, K-10033, strayed away from my true self: cousins who knows how many times re- deadliest California heat wave in nearly Michael Alexander Allen. moved pulled folding chairs up to fold- sixty years, we returned each day to the ing tables, which were covered with paper cool library and scoured Web sites for jobs. hat sets the course of a life? tablecloths and laden with fried chicken We focussed on large chains, which would Three years before my be- and sweet tea. The merriment contin- have room for advancement, and sent out W loved cousin’s murder—be- ued all afternoon, and seemed to attract a lot of applications. Most of the time, fore the weeping, before the raging, be- some attention from the neighbors. More Michael never got a reply. Then he caught fore the heated self-recriminations and than once, a glamorous-looking woman a break: Sears invited him to a job inter- icy reckonings—I awoke with the most drove past, slowly, in a low-slung two- view. One morning in late July, he donned glorious sense of anticipation I’ve ever door gold Mercedes sports car. Michael a new pair of khaki trousers and a button- felt. It was June 29, 2006, the day that feasted and played Football Manager down shirt, and we headed to Hollywood, Michael was going to be freed. Outside with the nephews and nieces who had to Santa Monica and Western. It was the my vacation condo in Hollywood, I been born while he was in prison. perfect opportunity—but also, to me, a climbed into the old white BMW I’d After the party, we had little time to fraught one. A man who had been im- bought from my mother and headed to waste. That summer, I was telecommut- prisoned for more than a decade would my aunt’s small stucco home, in South ing to my job as the dean of the hu- have to make the case that he ought to Central. On the corner, a fortified drug manities at the University of Chicago. be hired. We had practiced bits and pieces house stood like a sentry, but her pale Michael, for his part, was intent on mak- of his story, but never the whole thing. In cottage seemed serene, aglow in the morn- ing something of himself. He had spent fact, I never heard Michael recount his ing sun. Poverty never looks quite as bad some time as a firefighter when he was own tale from start to finish. in the City of Angels as it does elsewhere. at Norco, and he was ready to rebuild I wonder now whether this was be- Aunt Karen, my father’s youngest his life. Making that happen, managing cause the full version would have led sister, then drove a crew of us to collect his reëntry in the months to come, was me to ask questions that Michael did Michael from the California Rehabili- my job. Not mine alone, but mine con- not want to answer. He had so much to tation Center-Norco, which lies on a sistently, day after day, as the cousin on give—stories, reflection, engagement— dusty stretch of Riverside County. Mi- duty, the one with resources, the one that somehow none of us ever noticed chael, the youngest of her three kids, who had been to college and who had just how much he was withholding. He was born when I was eight years old. I become a professional. could love everybody on the terms on had grown up with him. The baby of a The plans we had were not the plans which they needed to be loved, give ev- sprawling family, he was also my baby, we had hoped to have. Michael should erybody what they needed to receive; a child of magnetizing energy and good have been paroled to a fire camp or to and so, in the end, none of us really humor. We had lost him eleven years a fire station in Riverside County, where knew him. I’ve come to realize that he earlier, when he was arrested, at fifteen, we had family who were ready to take didn’t quite know himself, either. for an attempted carjacking. Now we’d him in. He could have lived there and get him back. It felt like a resurrection. gone to school and kept on beating back he trouble began in preadolescence. At the parking lot for Tower 8, a white wildfires. But the rule was that you had THis mother got married to a man van drove up to deposit the prisoners being to be paroled to the county where your who had kept from her the fact that he released. Michael stepped out, saw us, and offense was committed—crime-ridden had a criminal record, and who soon smiled. His broad, toothy grin took up Los Angeles County, in his case. So we became abusive. Karen took her children

32 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY SHARON RENEE HARTLEY COURTESY PHOTOGRAPH: As a felon behind bars, Michael Allen became a statistic, tagged with a number. Outside, he struggled to make a life of his own.

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE MCQUADE THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 33 to Mississippi and then to southern house was a second home, screened with Now, with my brother and me away Georgia. There, a few months shy of laurel bushes, framed by pink-blossomed at college, my parents helped Karen find twelve, Michael stole a jar of coins, crêpe myrtles, and shaded by a spread- an apartment a few blocks away. Mi- amounting to something under ten dol- ing loquat tree in front. chael took piano lessons from a stern, lars, from a white family across the street. William and Karen—children of a diminutive woman who had been my He was starting to want things, impa- Florida fisherman who became a char- own teacher and who taught us how to tiently, and he was also naïve, a Califor- ismatic Baptist preacher—were close, sit up straight, “like the Queen of En- nia kid transplanted to the Deep South. but their courses in life were not. My gland.” Michael earned money garden- Only out of naïveté could he have thought father, with the encouragement of a ing for her, but resented the hectoring to steal from a white family in southern grade-school teacher, was academically lessons about life that she delivered as Georgia. ambitious, and he turned into a pipe- he weeded. Rather than telling Karen and ask- smoking, NPR-listening professor, He was becoming something of a ing for the money back, the family a political scientist who chaired the rule breaker in Claremont. He and his pressed charges. It was Michael’s first U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He new friend Adam were caught stealing encounter with the law, and he went to spent much of his days amid heaps of chocolate-chip cookies from the school court with his mother. Karen had by paper in a book-filled study, orchestral cafeteria, and sometimes had to be sep- then filed for divorce and bought plane harmonies from the radio perfumed arated after making noise in class. Mi- tickets to California. The judge told by the tweedy, comforting smell of pipe chael was also caught shoplifting at a her the charges would be dropped so tobacco. Karen’s story was different; she nearby mall. Luckily, the store owner long as they got on the plane and never worked for a time as a certified nurs- delivered Michael to my father, not to came back. ing assistant, but bringing up three the police. But Michael’s pattern of petty In the fall of 1991, Michael and his young kids while working full time theft worried his mother, and my fa- family moved to Claremont, where my was a struggle. Her ex-husband wasn’t ther; the weeding job was meant to deal father, William, taught, and where my the first abusive man she had been with his need for money. mother, Susan, worked as a college li- involved with, and plans for further- Then, in early 1993, a fire swept brarian. For my cousins, my parents’ ing her education were often derailed. through the family’s apartment com- plex, and they moved again, to the L.A. neighborhood of Inglewood. Although the area was scarred from the ravages of the previous year’s riots, the move meant that Karen could be closer to her new job, at an organization called Home- less Health Care Los Angeles. It also meant that Michael started a new school year in yet another district. We know something about his expe- riences as a student, because the State of California surveyed its youth during the 1993-94 school year. Forty per cent of ninth graders reported being in a phys- ical fight; nearly sixty per cent reported seeing someone at school with a weapon. Gangs filled in for family; almost one in five ninth graders reported belonging to one at some point. Michael, then just shy of fourteen, seems to have flirted with the Queen Street Bloods, who were active on the west side of Inglewood; later, he started hanging with a friend from the Crips, a rival gang. Michael was testing out a new world. But in that summer of 1993 he would also return to his old one, riding a bus back to Claremont to hang out with Adam. During one of those visits, Adam’s parents were looking after the next-door neighbor’s house, and the two boys let themselves in and took “Everything is dandy—and our intestinal biomes are joyous.” a radio and some other items. The neighbor reported a burglary, and when drugs. In the eighties, as the state sought at fifteen, he needed a work permit, Karen realized who was responsible she to break the global drug-supply chain and nobody in his mother’s social net- hauled Michael to the police station. by rounding up low-level peddlers and work could help. He again began to The boys returned everything. They deterring them with outsized penalties, roam the streets, and stayed out past were given a two-year juvenile proba- the wholesalers established their own his curfew. In math class, his grades tion, which entailed a curfew but no system of deterrence for gang members plunged from straight A’s to an F. Karen court date. who served as retailers. If you didn’t do had conferences with Michael and his The narrative so far is familiar. A kid what you were supposed to do, you were teachers, who told him that he was from a troubled home, trapped in pov- shot. Maybe in the knee first. If you smarter than this. He countered, “I don’t erty, without a stable world of adults riled the gang system again, you or want to be smarter than this.” On those coördinating care for him, starts pilfer- someone you loved might warm summer days, he spent ing, mostly out of an impatience to have be killed. The drug busi- as much time as he could things. In Michael’s first fourteen years, ness, dependent on a well- out-of-doors. Sometimes he his story includes not a single incidence established witness-suppres- would stand in front of the of violence, aside from the usual wres- sion program, operates a far house of a kid he’d come to tling matches with siblings. It could have more powerful system of de- know. Karen spotted him had any number of possible endings. But terrence, with far swifter once, lean and muscled, events unfold along a single track. As punishment, than any law- standing shirtless in khaki we make decisions, and decisions are ful state could ever devise. trousers—gangbanging gear. made for us, we shed the lives that might In these years, the Los An- Although he was only four have been. In Michael’s fifteenth year, geles County Sheriff ’s De- blocks away from her apart- his life accelerated, like a cylinder in one partment created its first gang database. ment, it felt like a different neighborhood. of those pneumatic tubes, whisking off In 1988, after a much publicized drive-by Karen’s last day with her boy was your deposit at a drive-through bank. shooting of a bystander, near U.C.L.A., Friday, September 15th. Michael didn’t To understand how that acceleration the Los Angeles Police Department used have school. He went to work with could happen, though, another story the database to round up no fewer than his mother and hung out in her office. is needed. fourteen hundred African-American Then she took him to the Los Ange- youths and detain them in the parking les Public Library, where she planned • lot of the L.A. Coliseum. More than to meet him when she got off work, Like Dante I am forced to descend lower eighteen thousand people were jailed in to take him shopping. But Michael into hell to achieve a full awakening. I am forced six months. Between 1982 and 1995, the was gone when she returned. The next into depression, scarred by obscenities, war after war, but each war that I survive I am a African-American prison population in time she saw him, he was in handcuffs. step closer to a full awakening of self. My hell California grew from 12,470 to 42,296; is no longer demonstrating what I am capable the Latino prison population soared from here were you when you were of doing in order to survive. It has become what 9,006 to 46,080. Los Angeles was a city Wfifteen? When I close my eyes, I can tolerate and withstand in order to live. ready to explode when the four police I can still see a bedroom with a brass officers who had been caught on video bed topped with a blue-and-white onsider the visible surface of Los beating Rodney King were acquitted. striped Laura Ashley comforter. There CAngeles. Underpasses, bridges, al- When Michael stole the jar of coins were matching valences on my windows, leyways, delivery trucks, service entrances, in Georgia, and the judge dropped the and I had a wooden rolltop desk, with a corner stores, mailboxes, water towers, charges, you might say that Michael drawer that locked and held my secrets, exhaust vents, and the streets—in the met the “forgiving world.” The same including dirty letters that I couldn’t at nineties, at least, all were covered with happened when he shoplifted, and when the time translate from a German boy graffiti. Few can read that graffiti. I he stole the radio in Claremont, in 1993. with whom I’d had a minor romance at couldn’t then, and have only now begun But, back in the City of Angels, Mi- summer music camp. to learn how to decipher it. But it’s a lan- chael met the unforgiving world. Nearly I grew up in a college town where guage that represents a world. It records half the black men in Los Angeles everyone knew my parents. They had deaths and transactions, benefactions between the ages of twenty-one and made a critical decision, early in the lives and trespasses, favors done and owed, twenty-four were officially identified as of their two children, not to move until vendettas pursued. Laws and punish- gang members, and this simple fact of we had graduated from high school. I ments. If you can’t read that graffiti, you classification, accurate or not, affected was a faculty brat, an insecure and often have no conception of the parallel uni- that community profoundly. The angels lonely child; the only time I ever got verse, all around you, that is fundamen- had turned their backs. grounded was when my mother caught tally at war with the legally recognized The summer before Michael’s junior me sneaking a ride to French class with state. It’s a regime with its own rules year, in 1995, he began looking for a a friend. I was younger than most of my and penalties—in effect, a parastate. job. His cousin Marc—my younger classmates at Claremont High School, Michael grew up there. brother—had worked in a grocery store and, although my friends all had their Behind that parastate’s economy and as a bag boy throughout high school, driver’s licenses by the start of our ju- criminal-justice system lies the war on and Michael wanted a similar gig. But, nior year and I didn’t, I wasn’t allowed

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 35 to ride in their cars. Eight years later, in same block, and that he had robbed to life, or a plea deal. If Michael pursued L.A., my fifteen-year-old cousin, who someone a week earlier, about ten blocks a jury trial, convictions on at least three also didn’t yet have a driver’s license, was away. The police had no reports for two of his four charges would trigger the law. arrested, for the first time, for an at- of the four robberies he confessed to; in Worse, this was happening at the high tempted carjacking. the two that had been reported, Michael point of L.A.’s panic about carjackings. It was September 17, 1995, a cool and had taken twenty dollars from one vic- In Los Angeles County alone, the num- foggy Sunday morning. Larry Smith, a tim and two dollars from another. In ber of carjackings had nearly doubled lanky forty-four-year-old, was buffing other words, on his way to the hospital, between 1991 and 1992, from 3,600 to the dashboard of his blue Cadillac and upon admission, with no adults pres- 6,297. In 1993, the state legislature had Coupe de Ville in the alley behind his ent other than the officers, a wounded unanimously passed a bill that made car- apartment, on Rosecrans Avenue. The fifteen-year-old talked a blue streak. jacking an offense for which sixteen- street was lined with drab stucco apart- By the time Karen got to Michael’s year-olds could be tried as adults. Two ment buildings, whose uncovered stair- bedside, he had wrapped up his confes- years later, the bar was lowered to four- cases led down to carports below. Mi- sion. The only thing he didn’t mention teen. A Los Angeles Times article titled chael appeared holding a chrome was Devonn’s involvement. Did Devonn “Wave of Fear,” which ran the year be- Lorcin .380, a cheap pistol prone to mal- suggest the crime, or provide the gun? fore Michael’s arrest, quoted then Sen- function. An older friend, Devonn, a We have no way of knowing. I don’t be- ator Joseph Biden saying, “Name me a member of the Rollin 60s Crips, was lieve that Michael was prepared, that person in L.A. who has a fender-bender apparently on lookout, but not visible morning, to be violent; he had a gun, and doesn’t fear an imminent carjacking. to Smith as he worked in his car. (Both but refrained from using it. Still, I was Yes, it’s still remote, but you’re in the sta- names have been changed.) Michael far away, a graduate student in England. tistical pool now. It’s like AIDS. Every- approached Smith, told him not to move, Along the banks of the River Cam, I one’s in the pool now.” and demanded his watch. Smith handed shared poems with friends and debated California’s legislators had given up it over. crime and punishment in ancient Ath- on the idea of rehabilitation in prison, Then Michael asked for his wallet. ens. I had gravitated toward the subject even for juveniles. This is a point that When he found that it was empty, he upon being struck by how a sophisti- critics of the penal system make all the tossed it back into the car. Then, as the cated, democratic society had made next time. Here is what they don’t say: leg- police report recounted, Michael “tapped to no use of imprisonment. When the islators had also given up on retribu- Smith’s left knee with the gun and said news of Michael’s arrest came, it was tion. Anger drives retribution. When he was going to take the car.” According stupefying. My brain raced in endless the punishment fits the crime, retribu- to Smith, Michael kept the gun pointed loops. How could it be? How could it be? tion is achieved, and anger is sated; it at the ground. Smith lunged for the I now have a sense of an answer. But softens. This is what makes it anger, not weapon. They wrestled. Michael punched there were harder questions ahead. hatred, a distinction recognized by phi- him. Smith gained control of the gun losophers all the way back to antiquity. and shot Michael through the neck. • Retribution limits how much punish- As Michael lay bleeding on the I’m trapped in a hell with whom society ment you can impose. ground, Smith hollered to his wife to decrees to be the worst of living and better off The legislators who voted to try call 911. When the police arrived, they dead. Robbers, rapists, child molesters, car- as adults sixteen-year-olds, and then jackers, murderers, and dope fiends who would collected evidence and looked for wit- spend their mother’s monthly rent for a quick fourteen-year-olds, were not interested nesses, although no one had anything fix. And here I am, amongst them. As much in retribution. They had become deter- to say. Meanwhile, paramedics took Mi- as the mere thought disgusts me, I am one of rence theorists. They were designing sen- chael to a hospital, where he was treated them. Just another number, not deserving of tences not for people but for a thing: the for a “through and through” bullet wound a second chance. aggregate level of crime. They wanted to that had narrowly missed his spine. reduce that level, regardless of what con- A police officer accompanying Mi- efore his arrest, Michael did not stituted justice for any individual involved. chael in the ambulance reported that, Bhave a criminal record. That day, he The target of Michael’s sentence was not “during transport, Allen made a spon- gained one with a vengeance. For the a bright fifteen-year-old boy with a mild taneous statement that he was robbing watch and the wallet, Michael was proclivity for theft but the thousands of a man when he got shot.” At the hos- charged with robbery; for the car, at- carjackings that occurred in Los Ange- pital, Michael was read his Miranda tempted carjacking. Both charges were les. Deterrence dehumanizes. It directs at rights and additional juvenile admon- “enhanced” because of the gun. He was the individual the full hatred that society ishments in the presence of a second also charged with the two earlier rob- understandably has for an aggregate phe- officer. According to the police report, beries. Four felonies, two from one in- nomenon. But no individual should bear he waived his rights and said again that cident, and all in one week. that kind of responsibility. he had tried to rob the man, using a gun Eighteen months earlier, in March, On February 5, 1996, four and a half that he claimed he had found about two 1994, California’s Three Strikes and You’re months after Michael’s last night at home, and a half weeks earlier. He also con- Out law, the nation’s first, had gone into he sat in court, in an orange jumpsuit fessed that he had robbed three people effect. Once you were convicted of your and handcuffs, as the judge told him to during the previous two days on the third felony, it meant twenty-five years choose whether to stand trial and face a

36 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 possible conviction of twenty-five years our son would be but one among many added. First long-term separation from to life or to plead guilty and take a re- millions soon lost in its vise. family. First racial melee. First time in duced sentence. The judge didn’t say how When we read that the point of the solitary, formally known as “administra- much the sentence would be reduced, Three Strikes law is to lock up repeat tive segregation.” First time sodomized. but he did say, “Please take the plea.” offenders, we do not think of the fifteen- Between his arrest and his sentenc- Michael could not choose. Now six- year-old who has just been arrested for ing, Michael was mainly in Central, the teen, he asked his mother to decide. the first time. An underground nuclear juvenile prison, where only parents and Karen went outside the courtroom and test is conducted, and the land above legal guardians could visit. When Mi- prayed. “God told me,” she says, “that craters only much later. This, I think, chael and I reconnected properly, in he would only get seven the late nineties, he was years, versus risking a trial making his way through of twenty-five years to Chino—a notoriously life. I made the decision.” tough prison—before So Michael pleaded landing in Norco. Its full guilty. A few months later, name was the California he learned that his “ear- Rehabilitation Center- liest possible release date” Norco, but little rehabili- was June 29, 2006. Ac- tation was on offer. There cording to Karen, the only was the obligatory library, time Michael cried in but no classes past the court was when he got G.E.D. level. In the nine- sentenced. ties, college and univer- When you’re sixteen, sity classes were scrapped the farthest back you can because of budget cuts, remember is about thir- and the state and federal teen years, to the age of governments ceased pro- three. Michael’s sentence viding prisoners access to was almost equivalent, Pell Grants for correspon- in psychological terms, dence courses. Higher ed- to the whole of his life. ucation, once seen as an It stretched past what antidote to recidivism, was for him the limit of had come to be seen as a knowable time. The mind privilege that inmates cannot fasten onto this hadn’t earned. sort of temporality; we After I started teach- are unable to give it con- ing at the University of crete meaning in rela- Chicago, in 1998, Mi- tion to our own lives. The chael and I began talking imagination wanders into regularly on the phone. white space. For Michael, Danielle Allen was the relative best equipped to guide Michael’s reëntry. Once he was at Norco, it was, he later wrote, “a I began to visit him, mountain of time” to climb. It would be describes the effect of the Three Strikes too, every other week in the summer a steep one. The moment he turned sev- law and the slow, constant escalation of and during the Christmas holidays. enteen, he was transferred to adult prison. penal severity. An explosion occurred Michael would call at least once a “How could it have happened?” is underground. The people standing on week, sometimes more, except when the the question everyone asks. Where were the surface conducted their lives as usual. prison was on lockdown owing to out- the lawyers? What did your family do? They figured out what was really going breaks of violence. Then weeks might I think back to the stolen radio. Mi- on only after the earth had collapsed pass without a word. I was a good phone chael came from a family who believed beneath them. partner, because I could afford the as- that if you did something wrong you tronomical collect-call charges. Every admitted it, you fixed it, and you suffered he years between the ages of fifteen call began with a reminder, a robotic the consequences. Michael was guilty Tand twenty-six are punctuated by voice saying, “This is the California of the attempted carjacking; he was familiar milestones: high school, driver’s Department of Corrections. Will you going to have to suffer the consequences. license, college, first love, first job, first accept the charges?” And then, every Our family trusted in the fairness of the serious relationship, perhaps marriage, fifteen seconds, as if we could forget, criminal-justice system. At each turn, possibly a child. For those who pass ad- there was another interruption: “This we learned too late that this system was olescence in prison, some of these rites call has originated from a California no longer what we thought it was, that disappear; the ones that occur take on a state prison.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW TAMMARO FOR THE NEW YORKER THE NEW FOR TAMMARO MATTHEW BY PHOTOGRAPH its grip was mercilessly tightening, that distorted shape. And extra milestones get Michael, who had already completed

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 37 his G.E.D., desperately wanted to go he repeated the class. This time he knew Karen would be upset and he to college, and I understood his desire churned out one essay after another, feared she would judge him, as he to learn. I believed in education; I be- with readings that were full of insight trusted I would not. lieved in Michael. So I researched how and personal connection to ancient Like freedom, desire was dizzying to Michael might be able to get a college texts. He was finding his voice. “I don’t Michael. A month later, he mailed me degree. On November 8, 2001, Michael take kindly to seeing myself in Hell a piece of writing unlike anything he sent me his application to Indiana Uni- but Dante’s writing makes it impos- had ever sent me. “The world has change versity’s Program in General Studies, sible to just read without visualiza- and brothas far from the same,” he and I mailed it with a check nine days tion,” he wrote in one essay. “It is the rapped, and continued: later. He would aim for a bachelor’s life I live in Prison which to me is Am I losing my mind degree. The day he was admitted was Hell. . . . I think of Dante’s use of ice No; I think I found it as exhilarating as the day I received my as nothing but a mere deception. Ice Realizing greatness in one’s self is very fat envelope from Princeton, thirteen within itself is enticing to the burn- astounding years earlier. ing soul. Ice can get so cold that it and truth be told, I recognize a King There was a catch, however. No hard- burns flesh. And it’s parallel to any sin cause when I look in the mirror all I see is me And us, so please trust, we can’t be touch cover books were allowed into the prison. committed on earth.” standing together forever is a necessary must. Michael could enroll only in classes for Along the way, Michael fell in love. which the textbooks had soft covers. I I remember his words on the phone: Soon afterward, he sent me Bree’s made a round of phone calls. The re- “I’ve met someone, Danielle. She’s annual prison shot. She was posed as maining choices for introductory classes beautiful.” And I remember my sense a woman, lying on the floor like a were Intro to Ethics and Intro to Writ- of confusion. Met someone? How? sports pinup, made up and in color- ing and Study of Literature. Michael Where? I was thinking of the fe- ful clothing. Why did he love her? He chose the second, Lit 141. I paid the fees male guards whom I’d got to know loved her because she was the most and ordered the books. in the course of my visits. But in a beautiful woman he had ever seen. He New Year’s came and so did the fumbling way we came to understand loved her because, of all the men in Bible, the Odyssey, the Inferno, “The each other. Michael had fallen in love prison, she had chosen him—and that Canterbury Tales,” and “Persian Let- with a fellow-inmate who had im- was a gift of surpassing value. But it ters.” But there was no shortage of plants or hormone-induced breasts, was also a gift that came to blind him. distractions, and Michael had trouble and who dressed and lived as Bree. When he was finally released from completing the assignments. At one (I’ve changed the name.) She was, prison, I failed to grasp that he was point, suspected of participating in a he said, unquestionably the most not yet free. “racial melee,” he was transferred to beautiful woman in the prison. He Chino and placed in solitary, until an hadn’t told his mother, and he made pstairs, in the Sears personnel de- investigation absolved him. A year later, me promise not to say anything. He Upartment, everything was beige and brightly lit. I settled into a metal chair and waited while Michael had his interview, in an office down the hall. I did a lot of waiting that summer, but I never questioned why I was there. My brother and I had long ago formed a tight circle with Aunt Karen’s three kids—Nicholas, Roslyn, and Michael, each born about two years apart—and, as the oldest, I was always the one in charge. As I waited, I typically spent my time thinking about my task lists, about what had to be done next. Forty- five minutes into this particular wait, the door opened and I learned that the managers had offered Michael a job as an inventory clerk. It felt as if time had begun. I could imagine a future, even a happy end- ing. There was still school and hous- ing to be arranged, but we were steadily assembling the pieces of a possible life, as if doing a jigsaw puzzle. The “Mommy and Daddy still love you, but we’re going to goal was for Michael to work full time try living thirteen inches apart for a while.” and to enroll in one of California’s famed community colleges. No one comfortable there. And it was walking and the ten miles from there to Los in his immediate family had a degree, distance from the school. Angeles Valley College, and then the but I was in my element—pretty much Michael said he wanted it; we all twenty-two miles home—through the my deepest expertise was in going to shook hands in the gaze of the late- worst of Los Angeles traffic. It was school. afternoon sun. I was moved by the trust madness, but there was nothing I could Los Angeles Valley College, in Val- and the generosity of these two women, do. It was well into August. School ley Glen, was the obvious place, a de- and I still am. Driving back to South would start soon. I would have incom- cent school with good general- education Central, my mood was all melody. I ing students to welcome, new faculty courses and—our goal—a fire-tech- imagined Michael felt the same. Little to orient, budgets to plan. I bought nology program. The subway’s Red Line more than a month out and here he was, him more khakis and button-down had stops at Santa Monica and Ver- with a driver’s license, a bank account, shirts, spent as much time with him as mont, about a mile from the Sears, and a library card, and a job. He was en- I could. A few weeks later, I headed in North Hollywood, not too far from rolled in college, with a clean, safe, com- back to Chicago. campus. We battled our way through fortable place to live. This was a starter • the thicket of federal financial-aid set for a life, enabling him to defy the The root of sin is lust and the desire to sat- forms, visited the tutoring center, and pattern of parolees. isfy that lust. . . . Lust only creates wanting and hungrily collected flyers posting apart- I dropped him off in South Central wanting creates greed and greed burns Flesh. It is lust that causes us to believe we have to ments for rent. and headed back to Hollywood, expect- have something at all cost. This is my suffer- We needed a place cheap enough ing to sleep soundly for the first time ing, this is my hell. 24 hours all night. There is to manage on Michael’s wages. To- in a while. But that night Michael called. no day. My soul in its entirety is in darkness. gether, we searched the listings, drove He wasn’t sure he should take the apart- by addresses, and made calls and ap- ment. I felt a stone drop to the bottom he jigsaw puzzle soon fell apart, pointments. We landed on a promis- of a well. Tand college was the first piece to ing place on Ethel Avenue, in Valley Why not? I asked. go. The commute was just too much; I Glen, a few blocks north of the col- He couldn’t explain, he said. He just doubt Michael made it through even lege. The advertisement was for a stu- didn’t feel quite right about it. two weeks of classes. The job, mean- dio apartment in a converted garage I told him to sleep on it, and when while, lasted until November, when I behind a modest home. Once again, we talked in the morning he told me got a nearly hysterical call. Michael said Michael practiced telling his story, and he wanted the apartment after all. Re- he couldn’t do it. He was drowning. He we scheduled a visit. lieved, I headed off to collect a cashier’s wasn’t going to make it. When I left The home was impeccable, a white check for the security deposit, and Mi- L.A., I had promised him that if he ever bungalow circled by a white iron fence. chael headed off under yet another needed me I would be there. After the Alongside the fence stood some small cloudless sky to his job at Sears. At call, I went straight to the airport, and shrubs, neatly tended, and rosebushes midday, he called me again: Had I taken arrived in L.A. just in time to take him spraying white flowers. I went up to the check over yet? He said that he to dinner. the house by myself. Two women met had changed his mind again. Michael was teary and despondent. me at the door, a mother, perhaps in “Michael, what on earth are you After work, he said, some of his Latino her sixties, and her daughter. Dressed talking about?” co-workers had called him a nigger. in linen trousers and a black T-shirt, He told me that he wasn’t sure He fought them in the parking lot, I introduced myself. I was a profes- what it would be like if his associates and walked away from the job. Never sor, I told them, and I was helping my came by. told his bosses or co-workers that he cousin, who had recently been released The word surprised me, but I didn’t was quitting—just didn’t return. So from prison. He had just enrolled at ask him what he meant by “associates.” now he was back to square one. Worse Los Angeles Valley College and been The purpose of the word, somehow, was than that, really, since he’d proved him- hired at Sears. I would be paying his to insist on his privacy, and it brought self unreliable to an employer. He was deposit and guaranteeing his rent. me up short. I paused, didn’t ask ques- mostly spending his time at home, He’d been sentenced as a young per- tions. I told him to think about it some playing video games with his neph- son and this was his second chance. more. Disagreement was rare for us. ews. He no longer saw a future for Were they willing to meet him and He called me a few hours later. He himself. hear him out? said he would take the apartment and I mainly tried to listen; I didn’t have They agreed, and I sat outside while asked me to pick him up after work. much to offer. I could promise to get Michael spoke to his prospective land- Then, just before I did so, he called again. him into an apartment, if he could get lords. He could charm anyone with that “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “I don’t another job. But I was no longer in a bouncing gait and electric grin. Finally, want the apartment.” position to stay and help him find one. the three emerged, in good spirits, and My memory of the conversation is I had too many obligations in Chicago. the women took us around to the back hazy, but it’s likely we exchanged some November was tenure-review time, with to see the studio. It was clean and peace- sharp words. His plan, it emerged, was mounds of papers to read and unend- ful, and equipped with a hot plate and to live with his mother and to ride the ing cycles of meetings that the dean, in an electric heater. I could imagine being bus the nine miles from there to Sears particular, was not supposed to miss. My

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 39 professional reputation was at stake. Mi- with Bree, whose possessiveness was that the Lord would liberate Michael chael would have to make the next push violent. According to Karen, Bree cut from his misery. for himself. Michael three times between Decem- By December, Michael’s world had When I visited L.A. just before the ber and May, and each time Michael fully contracted. While living at Bree’s winter break, it seemed as if Michael tried to pass the injuries off as the re- house, he became known on the street had made that push. He had found an sult of someone attempting to rob as Big Mike. That winter, he revealed apartment, he told me, and was ready him. He had also begun to suspect to his sister a gun, hidden in a towel, to put down a deposit. Could I come Bree of cheating. Late one night, he in Bree’s Mercedes. By the spring, he and see it? The place was on the fourth sneaked under her window, in the was running drugs, including at least floor of a vintage Craftsman-style build- hope—he told me later—that catch- one trip to Texas. Later, the detectives ing overlooking the 101 freeway. It was ing her in the act would give him an investigating his murder found PCP big and spacious, with gleaming wood easy out from the relationship. That in his room. floors. As I wound through the rooms, night, he got into a fight with a lover In June, 2009, I got married, in New Michael began telling me about how of Bree’s, and the police were called. Jersey, where I had recently accepted he and Bree wanted to move in. Michael went straight to prison for a an appointment at a distinguished re- I had no idea he was still seeing parole violation, and remained there search institute. Michael came to the Bree, let alone making plans to move for around a year. wedding—his first airplane flight since in together. My face must have con- It was a catastrophic defeat. Despite his release. He was handsome in a beige veyed surprise, though I tried not to the fact that we wrote each other let- jacket and crimson shirt, with match- react too strongly. (Learning how to ters, I somehow obliterated from my ing crimson alligator-skin shoes. But suppress visible emotion is an occu- memory all traces of Michael’s second there was so much I couldn’t see: I pational demand of being a dean.) I stint in prison. When he got out again, couldn’t make out the demons chasing told him that I wanted to know what just months before the 2008 stock- Michael as he greeted the other guests the job situation was. Had he lined up market crash, he returned to what we at the door to the chapel. a new gig? What did Bree do—did hoped would be the comfort of his she have a job? Our voices echoed in mother’s house. Just a short time later, ive weeks after that champagne- the empty apartment. Michael leaned though, he began living with Bree. Ffilled wedding day, my father called against a windowsill, the sky and the In the months before Michael’s pa- me from with the news: Mi- freeway shining behind him. role violation, Karen and Bree had chael had been discovered in a car in There was something shamefaced waged a battle rooted in a strong mu- South Los Angeles, dead from multi- in him as he answered. No, he didn’t tual dislike. Now Bree sought a for- ple gunshots. I was in England, and I have a job. Bree was into hair styling, mal treaty. She called Karen to say remember my father’s voice, the care- but, no, she didn’t have one, either. that Michael would be living with ful, clipped speech of a retired professor, What, exactly, were they thinking? Mi- her, and that she didn’t want any crackling as if through the first trans- chael didn’t have much of an answer. conflict. This was hard for Karen. She atlantic cables. Heading to the airport, Plainly, the plan involved taking ad- knew that her son’s relationship was I knew that the police were looking vantage of me to some degree. for a woman, and that Bree had disap- In that moment, I encountered a peared. Two weeks later, she was charged different Michael from the one I knew. with his murder. I saw something calculating, something She had, evidently, shot Michael in I’d never seen before. I didn’t ask to talk her kitchen. There had been one wit- to Bree, whom I’d come to realize was ness, a middle-school-age boy. He the woman in the gold Mercedes crawl- hadn’t seen anything, but he had heard ing past our homecoming party. All voices and gunshots. With the help I was able to say was that I couldn’t of relatives, Bree cleaned Michael up possibly pay the deposit—plus some nicely. She then bundled him in a blan- number of months’ rent, plus co-sign a violent. As Karen understood it, Bree ket, put him in his little hatchback, lease—when neither of them had a job. had been in prison for attempting to and drove him to the street corner Michael’s face tensed. He said he kill a boyfriend, and the only time she where he was found. Three accesso- understood. had seen Michael get physical with ries—all members of Bree’s family— This was the day I understood that anyone was when he fought Bree on were also charged. Eventually, Bree the idea that I could stand my baby her pin-neat front lawn. Bree had been pleaded no contest to voluntary man- cousin up on his own two feet was a going down the street, breaking car slaughter, and was sentenced to twenty- fantasy; it had always had too much of windows and throwing things at Kar- two years in prison. Having by now un- me in it. From this point on, Michael en’s house. Michael had gone outside dergone gender-reassignment surgery, ceased confiding in me. Our phone con- to warn her away. The two came to she was sent to a women’s prison. versations never burrowed below the blows. Through a window, Karen saw Michael and Bree had first met and surface. I no longer knew how to help. Michael knock Bree out. That night, become lovers when they were both in- Michael spent more and more time Karen added to her prayers the hope mates at Norco, which she had entered

40 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 at the age of twenty-five. Bree was a little more than two years older than Michael. She was just his height and just his weight, a transgender woman still early in the process of transition- ing. As far as the public record reveals, she’d been convicted for assault with a firearm. I thought back to Michael’s home- coming in 2006, to Bree cruising by in her chariot, coming for to carry Michael home. We all had thought the relation- ship ended when Bree left prison a year ahead of Michael, and we believed that Michael’s home was with us. What Mi- chael himself thought or wanted that homecoming day, I will never know. He hadn’t invited Bree to the picnic. Yet she came and would stay. When Michael contemplated rent- “All right, boys, we’ve had our fun.” ing that tidy little studio apartment on Ethel Avenue, with its white fence and pearly roses, it was voluptuous Bree in •• her tight clothes and gold Mercedes whom he was visualizing having to in- The service was followed by a brief cousin has been learning when and how troduce to those kindly landladies. How lunch back at Karen’s house, and then Big Mike replaced Michael. would it have gone if he had taken this it was onward to a second service, at the After the service, we went back to “associate” home with him? When he church that Michael belonged to. The Aunt Karen’s house to celebrate what spent those twenty-four hours dithering street had turned out for this service, we called Michael’s homegoing, his pas- over whether to rent the apartment, I bringing its jive step. The place was filled sage to the promised land. Next to that see now that his real choice was whether with people we didn’t recognize. The postage stamp of a lawn, we gathered to repudiate the first and only love of his detectives were here, too, working. They around folding chairs pulled up to fold- life. He chose Bree, and it would prove hadn’t yet solved the murder of the man ing tables, laden with fried chicken and to be his life’s defining decision. they knew as Big Mike, and were watch- sweet tea, to commemorate the baby of ing to see who showed up. The pastor the family. We had lost him at fifteen • had nothing to say about Michael; in- to jail; we regained him eleven years later. There are those who await to fulfill their des- stead, he spent the eulogy giving him- At twenty-nine, he was lost to us again, tiny. I see in them a sincere and apologetic heart self credit for the worldly success of this gone for good. My cousin’s idea of hell for their ill misdeeds. They are the one who will change the world positively or positively change or that parishioner, before descending was to be reduced to a number; now he someone’s world. Hell cannot hold the latter of into an anti-Semitic rant about money- became a statistic, joined to the nearly the two opposites but in time will only spit them lenders and lawyers. two hundred thousand black Americans back out into society to do what is right. The hell Where was Michael in all of these who have died violently in the years since that I live in cannot hold Dante. Hell can test remarks? He wasn’t there. Not in those his arrest on Rosecrans Avenue. and try one’s self but it cannot hold Dante and it will not hold me. In the Inferno, the dead are words, or, in fact, in his casket. We’d had In my heart’s locket, five gangly trapped forever. Surely, the biggest and most im- a viewing a few days earlier. I’d been brown-skinned kids, cousins, will be portant difference in the Inferno and my hell taken aback, seeing him, his still face so forever at play beneath a pair of crêpe- called prison, is that I have a way out. sombre in repose, with a slightly gray- myrtle trees bathed in June sunshine. ish tinge. In the satin-lined casket, he Michael and I loved to climb trees. An ethlehem Temple, Karen’s parish, was dressed in the very suit he’d worn arm here, a leg there, juts out from the Bmounted a funeral service like those to my wedding, a month earlier. I was trees’ floral sundress, a delicate skein from my childhood, when I visited my struck by his solidity. I had never no- of pink and purple blooms. When we grandfather the Baptist preacher. There ticed how much he had bulked up. In found unbloomed buds on the dichon- were soul-busting songs and unpainted, the casket, there was no smile. The light dra lawn, we would gently press at their teetotalling women; women in hats, was gone, and with it, I suppose, the nubs until the skins slit and fragile, crin- with fans, on the verge of fainting. Karen lightness. Later, much later, writing this, kled blossoms emerged whole. Mean- had to be held, and the preacher lifted I’ve had to face the fact that on that day while, inside the house, through the the roof off. We wept enough to make I was looking at Big Mike, not at little living- room picture window, the adults, our own riverside. Oh, we’ll wait till Michael. The hardest part of my effort beloved, pass their time in glancing, Jesus comes / Down by the riverside. to understand what happened to my distracted talk. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 41 PROFILES HAT TRICK

How George Strait became the most reliable star in music.

BY KELEFA SANNEH

eorge Strait has discovered On a Friday night earlier this year, the third chorus. One key to Strait’s that when he isn’t wearing a at T-Mobile Arena, a few paces from success is that he is stubborn but not G cowboy hat people often don’t the Las Vegas Strip, nearly twenty thou- too stubborn. He adores the rough- realize that he is George Strait. In San sand fans came together to hear Strait hewn music and iconography of his na- Antonio, where he lives, he can usu- make his way through more than thirty tive Texas, but he has never been too ally visit restaurants unmolested, so of his biggest hits—a fraction of the cool to sing sweeter, softer songs about long as he doesn’t smile too widely— total. “We have a lot of songs to play suburban love gone right. He is a tra- he is famous for his smile, which is for you tonight, a whole lot,” he said, ditionalist, but not a revivalist: instead bright and crooked. One time, in Key and then he didn’t say much more. Strait of evoking a bygone past, he prefers to West, where he records, he was sitting prefers to give his audience as few dis- evoke a familiar, unchanging present. outside the studio, naked from the neck tractions as possible: he likes to play on The quintessential George Strait song up, when a woman accosted him. She a stage in the center of the arena floor, involves a man who feels something said, “My husband says that George with four microphones arranged like strongly but can express it only wink- Strait is in there, cutting a record, and compass points; every two songs, he ingly. “If you leave me, I won’t miss you,” I told him that can’t be true. Why would moves, counterclockwise, to the next he declares, at the start of “Ocean Front he cut a record in this little place?” microphone, so that people in each Property,” followed by a chorus made Strait’s response was not, strictly quadrant of the crowd can feel as if he up of declarations that are, likewise, lies. speaking, a lie. “Honey,” he said, “I was were singing just to them. Because he “I’ve got some oceanfront property in just in there, and I didn’t see him.” was playing in the round, there was no Arizona / From my front porch, you can He is, by some measures, the most backdrop, and nothing in the way of see the sea,” he sings. “If you buy that, popular country-music singer of all time pyrotechnics, with the important ex- I’ll throw the Golden Gate in, free.” and, by any measure, the most consis- ception of that smile. His onstage outfit, A George Strait concert is a mas- tent. Since 1981, when he made his début, which has barely changed in forty years, ter class in the art of restraint. “He just he has placed eighty-six singles on Bill- includes, along with the cowboy hat stands there,” an executive once mar- board ’s Top 10 country chart, and more and cowboy boots, a button-down shirt velled, “and people go fucking crazy.” than half of them have gone to No. 1. and bluejeans, ironed stiff enough to Strait leans away from the high notes, Everywhere that there is a country radio form an exoskeleton. A promotional sways gently with the up-tempo songs, station, there are generations of listen- contract obliges him to wear Wrangler and says just enough to remind fans ers who regard Strait’s music as part of jeans, and decades of ranching and rop- that they are not, in fact, listening to the landscape; they are intimately con- ing inclines him to wear them stacked— his records; all night, he strums an nected to these songs, even if they can’t that is, long and bunched up, so that acoustic guitar that no one can hear, quite say that they are intimately con- he could, if necessary, mount a horse maybe not even him. nected to the man who sings them. without fear of exposing any extra boot. In Las Vegas, he waited until near When Strait first emerged, he was ac- Strait doesn’t believe in disappoint- the end of his set for “Amarillo by claimed as “the honky-tonk Frank Sina- ing paying customers, so he endeavors Morning.” His crowds are generation- tra,” a designation that fits him even to play every song that anyone wants ally diverse, and some of the older fans better now than it did then. Like Sina- to hear. Casual listeners may know him had begun to sink into their seats by tra, Strait is chiefly an interpreter, not a best for “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” a then. But just about everyone stood , and he is committed to the slightly drunken-sounding novelty song up at the sound of the fiddle overture old-fashioned idea that an entertainer’s that long ago transcended its novelty that introduces the opening stanza, job is to entertain, and not necessarily status, elevated by countless bleary- one of the most memorable in coun- to bare his soul. He isn’t so much a great eyed sing-alongs: “Texas is the place I’d try music: character as a great narrator, telling a dearly love to be / But all my ex’s live in variety of stories instead of returning end- Texas / And that’s why I hang my hat Amarillo by morning Up from San Antone lessly to his own. “I don’t think there’s any- in Tennessee.” In this arena, though, Everything that I got thing autobiographical about my mate- people were just as excited for “Check Is just what I’ve got on rial, unless it’s subconsciously,” Strait Yes or No,” a good-natured radio pe- once said. “I just look for a song I like, rennial about a love affair that begins The song—the stoic lament of a trav- and when I hear it I know it right away.” in the third grade and lasts well past elling rodeo pro—was originally recorded,

42 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 Strait has always been a singles artist; he built his career for maximum longevity, amassing one hit after another.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MAXINE HELFMAN THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 43 AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dal- las Cowboys, in front of more than a hundred thousand people. He didn’t quit recording, though, and in 2015 he announced a series of weekend concerts in Las Vegas. Louis Messina, Strait’s promoter, likes to point out that this is not a traditional Vegas res- idency: a washed-up star imprisoned in a casino theatre, entertaining a few hundred fans and gamblers, night after night. Strait is an arena headliner, not a lounge act, and every night the pre- show playlist pays subtle tribute to his staying power. Concertgoers hear a se- lection of recent country hits: “Take a Back Road,” by Rodney Atkins; “Girl in a Country Song,” by Maddie & Tae; “Rewind,” by Rascal Flatts; “Might Get Lucky,” by Darius Rucker. What they have in common is that all of them mention Strait. Rucker sings, “Dance around the kitchen to a George Strait song”— hoping, like the others, to borrow some of Strait’s unimpeach- “First, do no harm. After that, go nuts.” able country credibility. When Strait goes to Las Vegas, he flies from Texas in the plane he owns, and •• stays at the Mansion, a semiprivate hotel hidden next to the MGM Grand. in 1973, by Terry Stafford, a former rock- ments with the unembarrassed candor But his bus comes, too, and remains and-roll singer. Chris LeDoux, a real- of an athlete recalling his career statis- parked behind the arena, allowing him life rodeo champion who also built a tics. “Amarillo by Morning” peaked at to enjoy, in small doses, the life of a do-it-yourself career as a country act, No. 4. Strait’s longtime manager, Erv touring musician. It was Saturday af- cut a version a few years later, which Woolsey, noticed that some otherwise ternoon in Las Vegas, and Strait was found its way to Strait, who made the reliable radio stations declined to put incognito on his bus, wearing a light- song his own. Stafford sang it with a Strait’s version into heavy rotation; he blue baseball cap and lightweight Nike crooner’s quaver, and LeDoux intoned suspects that, especially in the South- running shoes. In the early decades the lyrics wistfully, accompanied by a west, the modest success of the earlier of his career, he spent his downtime harmonica. By comparison, Strait’s ver- recordings had made the song too fa- on horseback, turning himself into a sion, the only one that most people will miliar. “It was kind of wore out in cer- decent competitor in the sport of ever hear, is masterfully plain. He oc- tain places,” Woolsey says. But it res- team roping. He is still fit and trim, casionally approaches a syllable from onated, and it has endured. Last year, but these days he prefers fishing and above, using a mournful grace note, but a twenty- year-old contestant on “Mon- golfing, and he enhances his year- he has an easy, conversational way of golia’s Got Talent” became a viral video round tan with frequent trips to the putting a melody across, as if he were star because of his uncannily Strait- Bahamas and Mexico. In person, he singing to keep from talking. like rendition of “Amarillo by Morn- is warm but watchful, and surpris- Strait released “Amarillo by Morn- ing.” And in Las Vegas “Amarillo by ingly shy; he seems like a man who ing” in 1983, and it helped establish him Morning” worked as well as it ever did. does not crave attention, even though as one of the decade’s first new coun- When it was over, Strait looked out at he has spent most of his life court- try stars. The song was so popular that the crowd and gestured toward the roof ing it. he sometimes had to play it twice in a with both hands—jokingly asking for “We had some rough edges last set, back when he was playing as many more applause, as if he needed it. night, and I’ve already talked to my as four sets a night in Texas roadhouses. guys,” Strait said. Some members of “It was probably our most requested trait recently turned sixty-five, and his band have been playing with him song,” he says, “but it wasn’t a No. 1 rec- She is officially semiretired. In 2012, since the nineteen-seventies, and they ord.” Like virtually all successful coun- he announced that he was quitting know him as an easygoing but exact- try singers, Strait pays attention to the the touring life, and, after a two-year ing leader who wants his songs to charts, and he can discuss his place- sendoff tour, he played a final show at sound just the way fans remember

44 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 them. “A lot of times, maybe I’m the there and sing. “This is our eighth at Southwest Texas State University, only one that notices,” Strait said. “But show in this building,” he said. “Sold in San Marcos, where he studied ag- sometimes not.” out every one of ’em.” ricultural education, and where, one He has always been a singles art- day, he came upon a bulletin-board ist, and even people who have worked eorge Strait grew up in Pearsall, notice from a group in search of a closely with him sometimes strug- GTexas, near the interstate that runs singer. He auditioned with “Fraulein,” gle to name a favorite album—they south through Laredo to the Mexican a country classic from the fifties, and like all his songs, especially the hits. border. His parents split when he was was hired as the lead singer of the Without quite planning it, he built young, and Strait was brought up by group, which was called the Ace in the his career for maximum longevity, his father, a math teacher who also be- Hole Band. One of the members was amassing one hit after another, never came the proprietor of the family’s cat- a pedal-steel player named Mike Daily, allowing himself a year off or a rad- tle ranch, down the road in Big Wells. who has performed with Strait ever ical musical departure. In the late Strait developed a lifelong obsession since. Daily’s grandfather was Pappy nineteen- eighties and early nineties, with ranching, although he also had Daily, a legendary country impresario he helped inspire a wave of cowboy- other interests: after high school, he who discovered George Jones, and his hat-wearing country singers who were married his girlfriend, Norma, spent a father ran an independent label, which known as “hat acts,” including Alan few semesters in college, and then issued three sin- Jackson and Garth Brooks. Strait be- joined the Army, which assigned him gles in the late nineteen-seventies— came a beloved elder statesman with- to the 25th Infantry Division, stationed Strait’s first recordings. Daily remem- out giving up the role he values more: at Schofield Barracks, in Hawaii. The bers that Strait wasn’t planning on hitmaker. And then, around the be- soldiers had to be ready to ship out to staying local forever. “I’m here to try ginning of this decade, something Vietnam at a few hours’ notice, but the to make it,” Strait told the musicians, happened that was both inevitable call never came, and in his downtime— and Daily knew that making it would and shocking: Strait’s songs stopped for no good reason that he has ever probably entail going to Nashville, making their way up the country chart. been able to articulate—Strait bought where talent scouts typically signed “Radio’s not playing me anymore,” he a battered guitar and some old song- singers, not bands. said. “Which is a hard pill to swal- books and taught himself to play and In the late seventies, some of the low, after all these years.” His last sing. When the division put together most successful country singers were album, “Cold Beer Conversation,” was a country band, Strait was chosen to gentle balladeers like Kenny Rogers released in 2015, and it was the first lead it, and by the time he returned to and Barbara Mandrell, and the ex- major release of his career that did Texas, in 1975, he had resolved to pur- ecutives who initially heard Strait’s not spawn a Top 10 hit. “I hung on sue a career in music. demos thought he would likely remain for dear life, for a lot of years,” Strait It wasn’t an absurd idea: Texas was a local favorite. His prospects may said, chuckling softly. full of small bars where unpretentious have improved with the release, in There is, of course, life beyond the country bands could bash out a living. 1980, of “Urban Cowboy,” in which Billboard charts. Willie Nelson and Just to be safe, though, Strait enrolled John Travolta and Debra Winger do Dolly Parton, for instance, remain two of the most revered and beloved stars in the country-music galaxy, even though they stopped making hits in the nineteen-eighties. But Strait has always resisted becoming a legacy act— indeed, his legacy is inseparable from his miraculous ability to stay current, reigning as the defining voice of coun- try music throughout the eighties, the nineties, and the aughts. He is, by all accounts, intensely (if quietly) com- petitive: he wants to win, and radio spins and chart positions are an ob- jective way of keeping score. On that Saturday night in Las Vegas, with those undetectable rough edges smoothed away, Strait and his band cruised through an even longer set, and he permitted himself to take some satisfaction in the fact that, once more, tens of thou- sands of fans had driven or flown into the desert just to watch him stand “We’re in for the night.” battle with a mechanical bull in a to his style (“SOME REAL STRAIT- female fans by endorsing their fandom. honky-tonk called Gilley’s. (The film FORWARD COUNTRY”; “PLAYING IT “I had to relate to those women,” she was not, despite its plot, a comedy.) STRAIT”; “ SERVED says. “I had to show them that I could “Urban Cowboy” glamorized rowdy STRAIT UP”). After a string of hits, feel what they felt.” Texas bars and all the creatures that Strait parted with his original producer, Strait didn’t brag about his heart- called them home, and it created a Blake Mevis, telling one reporter that throb status. (“I don’t know what it is, new demand for singing cowboys like Mevis “was looking for more mass but I hope it doesn’t stop,” he told one Strait. He got a record deal the next appeal, middle-of-the-road stuff,” reporter.) He did, however, find canny year, and had success with his début while he wanted to record “basic coun- ways to capitalize on it. One of his single, “Unwound,” a brisk drink- try music.” most popular songs is “The Fireman,” ing song built on a long-winded Many of Strait’s early records were the sly chronicle of a ladies’ man who complaint: “That woman that I had produced by Jimmy Bowen, who was serves as a kind of first responder in wrapped around my finger just come smart enough not to interfere too much. local bars, “making my rounds all over unwound.” He recorded it with ses- “I once told George Strait he might town, puttin’ out old flames.” And, in sion musicians but continued to use try to liven up his stage act just a touch,” 1992, he starred in a feature film, “Pure the Ace in the Hole Band when he Bowen has recalled. (Strait says that Country,” playing a moodier, more was on tour, as he almost always was. he does not remember the conversa- reckless version of himself: a country Strait was happy to go around the tion.) “He did: he waved his cowboy singer named Dusty, who grows dis- country promoting “Unwound,” but hat a few times during the show. But illusioned with the music business and Woolsey, his manager, remembers re- George could get away with just stand- its compromises. Strait was reluctant buffing the record executives who ing there looking and sounding ter- to make a movie, but he was persuaded wanted Strait to dress up, taking off rific.” Strait’s popularity was driven by by the producer Jerry Weintraub, and his cowboy hat and trading his stacked his status as a sex symbol. Women del- by Colonel Tom Parker, the former jeans for slacks. “You don’t understand,” uged the stage with flowers, so many manager of Elvis Presley, who was a Woolsey told them. “Where he’s from, that disposal became a serious prob- friend of Weintraub’s. After a concert that is dressing up.” lem. At first, the bus would stop by a in Las Vegas, Parker told Strait how From the beginning, Strait was mar- dumpster on the way out of town; later, important Hollywood had been to keted—and celebrated—as an avatar the crew devised a system for donat- Presley. “Elvis hated making those of “real” country, at a time of anxiety ing them to local hospitals. Reba movies,” he said—but they transformed about country’s identity. The genre was McEntire, who was also conquering him from a pop star to an icon. Strait getting popular and, not coincidentally, country music at the time, once re- read a script and agreed to make the going pop, growing a bit more glam- called a show that she played with Strait film, with some caveats. In the part orous and a lot harder to define. In in Oklahoma. “The girls was gettin’ where Dusty, having absconded from 1981, the year Strait emerged, Mandrell after him so bad,” she said, “that the his own tour, takes refuge at a ranch, topped the chart with “I Was Coun- club had to stack bales of hay in front Strait wanted to do his own roping. try When Country Wasn’t Cool,” a of the stage.” (She added her own hon- And although the script had him fall- charming ode to country authenticity est appraisal: “He’s a sexy little rascal.”) ing in love with a humble woman from (flannel shirts, the Grand Ole Opry, When Strait toured in the mid-eight- his home town, he thought that a pro- “puttin’ peanuts in my Coke”) that ies, he brought along, as his opening posed kissing scene was unnecessary seemed both defiant and defensive— act, Kathy Mattea, who was then a ris- (and potentially embarrassing), so he its piano-driven arrangement was prac- ing star. Onstage, she made a habit of and his co-star, Isabel Glasser, made tically soft rock. Strait, whose music calling Strait “the Mark Harmon of do with meaningful looks. was sometimes described as “hard country music,” by way of acknowledg- “Pure Country” was released in 1992, country,” espoused a more uncompro- ing his appeal. “He was handsome, and and attracted middling reviews— mising aesthetic. News accounts in- he was low-key, and he was charming,” “Fans of the star will enjoy it more than variably mentioned that he was “a real, Mattea says now. For her, the Mark dispassionate observers,” Roger Ebert live cowboy,” and headline writers rarely Harmon line was an act of professional said—and worse than middling returns, resisted the urge to connect his name self-defense, a way of winning over his earning only fifteen million dollars at the box office. But the movie, which and His Texas Playboys. Wills was a country is built into the relationship, borrowed its plot from an old Presley fiddler, and in the nineteen-thirties and dating back at least as far as 1944, when vehicle, had an easygoing charm that forties his group pioneered a style known Wills came to town to play the Opry encouraged repeat viewing. (Strait wears as Western swing. This was dance and was nearly thrown out. The orga- a white hat, and on two separate occa- music, fusing the lively rhythms of jazz nizers were accustomed to string bands, sions he vanquishes a bad guy wearing to the lonesome sound of Western and Wills insisted on performing with a black hat.) “Pure Country” became ballads, and Wills liked to call his group a drummer. one of the biggest home-video hits of “the most versatile band in America.” In an odd way, the rise of rock and the nineteen-nineties, and it has been (Among his big hits was “San Anto- roll strengthened country music’s sense a cable-television staple ever since. Near nio Rose,” which was later recorded by of identity—after Presley, young peo- the end of the film, Dusty rejects sin- Bing Crosby and Patsy Cline.) Wills ple who chose to be country fans were ful pyrotechnics, and recommits him- had begun his career as a blackface also choosing to resist the hegemony self to the path of musical righteous- minstrel, and most of his musical he- of rock and pop. Strait was born in ness. “I’m going to play the guitar roes were black jazz musicians, although 1952, and by the time he got to high and sing,” he tells his manager. “No his band was all white. His biographer, school he and his friends were listen- more smoke, no volcano blasts, and no Charles R. Townsend, reported that ing to the Beatles and other rock-and- more light shows.” In other words, Wills once, on a bender in Tulsa, asked roll bands. Although the old country Dusty finally sees the wisdom of con- a black trumpeter to join the group. songs were part of the local environ- ducting himself like George Strait. “When Bob sobered up,” Townsend ment, Strait didn’t start paying close The film’s soundtrack inverted this pro- wrote, “he decided Oklahoma was not attention until after college, when he cess. “Heartland,” the movie’s energetic, ready for an integrated band.” encountered some albums by a bril- rock-influenced opening song, marked By the time Wills died, in 1975, he liant and mercurial singer-songwriter a modest departure for Strait. “It’s about was esteemed as a founding father of from California: Merle Haggard, a as rocked up and popped up as you can country music, even though he never country “outlaw” who was also obsessed get and still pass it along to the coun- thought of himself as “country,” in style with the genre’s history. In 1970, the try market,” he said at the time. At first, or in sensibility. The term, as it is now same year as his anti-antiwar hit “The he hesitated to record it, until he real- used, is an abbreviation of “country and Fightin’ Side of Me,” Haggard released ized that he could sing it in character, Western,” a category generally associ- “A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle as Dusty. The song went to No. 1, and ated with rural white communities and Player in the World (or, My Salute to the soundtrack sold more than six mil- meant to corral a wide range of styles Bob Wills),” which helped Strait dis- lion copies—it is the best-selling album that flourished from Appalachia to the cover the Texas classics that became of Strait’s career. Southwest. These styles were jammed the foundation of his first live sets. together by a transformative technol- Strait, like many of his peers and most eorge Strait might be “pure coun- ogy: radio, and the “barn dance” vari- of his successors, is in some sense a Gtry,” but country music has always ety shows that flourished on the air- convert to the genre: he is country by been a mixed-up genre. As it happens, waves. The most influential of these birth, but also by choice. Hawaii, where Strait learned to sing, was the Grand Ole Opry, a Nashville The early Ace in the Hole Band is one of the genre’s many wellsprings: show that began to be broadcast na- recordings featured some songs writ- it was there, in the late nineteenth cen- tionwide in 1939; it was so popular that ten by Strait, including a wonderfully tury, that a guitarist named Joseph it altered America’s musical economy, mopey lament, “I Just Can’t Go on Kekuku figured out that he could bend pulling in enough musicians and en- Dying Like This.” But after Strait got pitches by laying the guitar on his lap trepreneurs to make Nashville the un- his record deal he decided that he had and sliding a steel bar along the strings. questioned home of country music. neither the time nor the inclination In the early twentieth century, main- (Nowadays, hardly anyone stops to to compose. “I was finding what I land musicians adopted the steel gui- wonder why a city not known for ranch- thought were better songs than what tar, including Leon McAuliffe, a Texas ing is synonymous with cowboy hats.) I was writing,” he says now. “May- virtuoso who played with one of the But a certain amount of tension be- be I was intimidated, a little bit.” As region’s most popular acts: Bob Wills tween Nashville country and Texas Strait grew more successful, he became especially popular among Nashville , who like nothing better than a reliable hitmaker who always MY MOTHER, HEIDEGGER, AND DERRIDA needs material. When Strait came to town to record, songwriters would lie Educated at a school in Queens in wait outside the studio, carrying whose slim roster of celebrated alums demo tapes with the most stereotypi- cally George Strait songs they had: boasts Don Rickles number one, songs about cowboys, songs about Texas, my mother knew little about art, songs about the Alamo. What Strait really wanted, though, was memorable but she took me to a show and interesting melodies. His string of where she withdrew into private air hits is in large part a result of his abil- ity to identify a great tune. He would on seeing “The Potato Eaters” review hundreds of demos himself, and “Three Pairs of Shoes” often deciding within thirty seconds whether a song sounded like some- because the shoes resembled my grandmother’s thing he might want to cut. Occasion- high-topped boots my mother knelt before ally, he asked to alter a word or two; in “All My Ex’s,” a reference to the Bra- and laced up every morning zos River became a reference to the after applying salve Frio River, which flows closer to his home town. Often, though, Strait to those diabetes-ulcerated shins. learned each song quickly and sang And the potatoes recalled the fires it much the same way it sounded on the demo. The songwriter whom Strait relied on most was , who co- wrote his début single, “Unwound,” and it was distinctly unrustic, a piano bal- never explained why he chose to re- whose songs have appeared on nearly lad about a man on an airplane, day- cord “Baby Blue”—in the liner notes every one of his albums since then. The dreaming about the woman he left be- to his 1995 boxed set, he said only that two met a few years after Strait cut hind on a Los Angeles beach. And it was a “pretty song,” and that Aaron “Unwound.” (The song was originally “The Chair,” also co-written by Dil- Barker, who wrote it, cut such a good pitched to Johnny Paycheck, who ex- lon, became one of Strait’s signature demo that Strait was hard-pressed to celled at both singing and raising hell. hits and a staple of his live sets, despite improve on it. Over the years, Strait’s “He was in jail, so they gave it to me,” having nothing that could be consid- temporary solution evolved into a per- Strait recalls.) Dillon had grown up in ered a chorus. (It is a wry, lilting ac- manent way of working, and of living: Tennessee, in love with country music count of a man chatting up a woman he stayed productive, and he stayed but also with singer-songwriters like in a bar.) Strait realized that, because mum. Friends describe him as kind but James Taylor and Carole King, who in- his identity was so firmly fixed in fans’ quiet, and not easy to get to know. Mes- spired him to experiment with unusual minds, he could permit himself some sina, Strait’s promoter, has been work- chords and structures. Dillon was once latitude. “People looked at me as a tra- ing closely with him since the nineties; a recording artist, too, but he eventu- ditional country singer,” he says. “So their relationship is close, but not overly ally decided that, since Strait was hav- those songs were thought of as ‘Well, familiar. “I tried never to cross the line,” ing so much success with his songs, those are traditional, because George Messina says. “We don’t talk about per- he might as well become a full-time did it.’” sonal things.” Tony Brown produced songwriter. Where Strait is polite and nineteen of Strait’s albums, beginning self-effacing, Dillon is a big, ornery n 1986, Strait’s daughter, Jenifer, was with “Pure Country,” and he deserves personality: when Strait asked Dillon Ikilled in a car accident. She was thir- as much credit as anyone for Strait’s to put out his cigarette during their teen, and although Strait resolved to longevity. But in 2014, when Strait de- first meeting, he responded by exhal- keep working, he couldn’t bear to grieve cided that he was ready to work with ing a mouthful of smoke. “I didn’t give in public. “I just kind of shut down,” someone else, Brown received the news a shit, and I didn’t care who knew it,” he says. “I just didn’t feel like talking not from Strait but from Erv Woolsey, he says. Their partnership has provided about it, so I quit doing interviews.” In his manager. Strait’s music with a welcome dose of 1988, he released an aching lament called Successful country singers typically subversion, helping to keep him from “Baby Blue”: “Like a breath of spring, move to Nashville, but Strait never becoming predictable. Dillon co-wrote she came and left, and I still don’t know did. He lives outside San Antonio, and “Marina Del Rey,” an early hit that up- why / So here’s to you, and whoever although he used to visit Nashville ended listeners’ expectations of Strait: holds my baby blue tonight.” Strait to record, he found that the climate

48 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 on horseback, taking a ceremonial lap around the arena as fans hung over the she and her brothers built railings, angling for selfies. A cowboy against the curb: preacher asked for protection: “We pray that no harm, in any form or fashion, charred skin, raw at the center, comes near the horses, the steer, or the and called “mickeys” in honor of the Irish. cowboys.” (In fact, many of the steer were destined to become steak, just not My mother pointed out how the poor quite yet.) Strait watched with his fam- have only potatoes for dinner, their faces ily, from a box next to the announcer’s booth, descending when the action so rough they looked unearthed themselves. was finished to present the prizes— And the shoes, ravaged by labor. Unlike Heidegger, more than a hundred thousand dol- lars apiece for the two winners, along who said of “Three Pairs of Shoes,” with new trucks and trailers. All week- “From the dark opening of the worn insides end long, the loudspeakers played noth- ing but George Strait songs, and it is the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth,” a testament to his legacy that some at- and utterly unlike Derrida, whose note on that painting tendees might not have noticed. His music is so synonymous with the genre questioned what “constitutes a pair of shoes and how that a selection of his hits might sim- the elements of such combine different forms of reality,” ply sound, to the casual listener, like a classic- country playlist. my mother said they show how hard some people work. When Strait first emerged, he was sometimes grouped with other old- —John Skoyles fashioned country singers, such as John Anderson and Ricky Skaggs, but he soon became the singular example for exacerbated his allergies, which is why sider anew the sport’s punishing ratio a generation to follow: the “hat acts,” he now records in Key West, at a stu- of reward to risk. they were called, and not always fondly. dio that belongs to his friend Jimmy This year’s roping event, the thirty- The most consequential of the hat acts Buffett. In Texas, Strait keeps a low fifth, was held at the San Antonio was the one whom the term fit least profile; he has adopted the life style Rose Palace, a dirt-floor arena on the well: Garth Brooks, who idolized Strait, of a contented, golf-obsessed busi- northern edge of the city, largely un- also managed to succeed by refusing nessman without ceasing to represent, touched by time or technology. (It is to follow Strait’s example. Where Strait for many fans, a connection to an older, down the road from Tapatio Springs, was stoic, Brooks was eager and emo- more rugged way of living. He emerges a golf resort that Strait and a partner tive, straining for high notes, quaver- once a year for the George Strait Team recently bought and renovated.) A cou- ing or snarling, amplifying his Okla- Roping Classic, which he created in ple of announcers called the action, homa accent or diminishing it, doing 1982 and has presided over ever since. their voices both amplified and dis- whatever it took to make fans love Team roping is one of the seven events torted by an antiquated public-address him. In the nineteen-nineties, Brooks included in a rodeo competition, and, system. In the venders’ area, next to the changed the genre, roaming stages with like many sports, it is based on a use- arena, stands sold T-shirts, cowboy a wireless microphone, singing about ful skill honed well past the point of boots, jewelry, cattle feed; near the en- ending racism and domestic violence; usefulness. A steer—a castrated male— trance, some kids were learning to heel he also feuded with executives, retired is released from a pen and pursued by by tossing loops at a dummy on wheels. for much of the aughts, and briefly tried two riders on horseback: one, called More than five hundred teams com- to reinvent himself as a brooding rocker the header, throws a loop of rope peted over two days, creating an agree- named Chris Gaines. Strait, by con- around the steer’s horns, and the other, ably repetitive spectacle. A top roping trast, instinctively avoided controversy; the heeler, ropes the steer’s hind legs, team can finish its work in less than in fact, he avoided anything that was immobilizing the animal. Strait was five seconds, after which the steer is likely to interrupt the smooth func- a pretty good roper, and he used to released to trot back to the pen, and tioning of his hit-making machine. He compete in his own tournament, al- the next team gets ready. No less than is friendly with both Bush Presidents, though he never won. He sometimes Nashville, perhaps, the sport rewards but he has never made a public polit- worked in partnership with his son, perfectionism and patience: everyone ical statement, and he has gone out of George, Jr., known as Bubba, who is trying to solve the same problem, his way not to criticize his fellow-sing- roped full time for several years, until over and over again. ers, or the industry more generally. a wayward loop nearly severed his On Saturday morning, champion- For a long time, the ups and downs of index finger, prompting him to con- ship day, Strait made his grand arrival Brooks and other country innovators

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 49 only underscored Strait’s position as artists. The label is now part of Uni- chart operated according to an unwrit- the genre’s most dependable act. A wide versal Music Group Nashville, whose ten code: record labels pestered and range of singers, from Martina Mc- chairman is Mike Dungan, a wry and fêted program directors, and program Bride to Taylor Swift, first faced big garrulous music veteran from Cincin- directors helped arrange an orderly suc- crowds by serving as Strait’s opening nati. Dungan became chairman in 2012, cession of No. 1 hits, with a new song act. When he moved up from arenas to and one of his first trips was to San claiming the spot just about every week. stadiums, in the late nineties, he booked Antonio, to meet with Strait and his In the past decade, though, the coun- enough opening acts to create daylong wife, along with Woolsey. “Let’s deal try chart has decelerated, as hits make mini-festivals, boosting the careers of with reality,” Dungan told Strait. “There slow progress through a big but diffuse Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Brooks & are some key radio guys that are ready musical marketplace. In 1981, when Dunn. For the shows earlier this year, to be done with you. It has nothing to Strait made his début, there were forty- in Las Vegas, his opening act was Kacey do with you as an artist—it has to do eight different No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Musgraves, who is twenty- eight; when with the fact that they played you in country chart. Last year, there were she was growing up, in East Texas, Strait the eighties, they played you in the nine. Billboard’s main country chart in- was already a well- established star. After nineties, the two-thousands, and here cludes data from online streaming ser- her own set, she reappeared with Strait we are in 2012, and nothing else in cul- vices, which means that crossover hits to perform a duet on a song called “Run,” ture has held on that long.” Dungan do especially well. (Country charts tra- dancing a bit and adding some new har- remembers that Strait seemed both ditionally reflected the tastes of the monies while he stood still, singing it alarmed and fascinated. “I don’t think country audience in particular; online, just like the rec ord. “He’s the steady anyone had ever said those words to everyone who listens to a country song train,” she said, after the show. “And I him before,” he said. counts equally.) According to the Bill- can flit all around him.” Musgraves is a What Dungan proposed was not board chart, “Give It All We Got To- mischievous singer and songwriter, acquiescence but insurgence. He and night” was only a No. 7 hit, despite all known for tweaking old country tradi- his executives put together a campaign the special pleading. But, according tions. (“It’s high time to slow my roll, called Sixty for Sixty, in which they to the promotional materials, the Sixty let the grass just grow,” she sings, with recruited fans and fellow-performers for Sixty effort was a success: the song a knowing smile.) Even so, she was en- to urge radio programmers to play topped a different, more radio-oriented joying the challenge of trying to win Strait’s latest single, a warm love song chart just after Strait’s sixtieth birth- over a George Strait crowd, not to men- called “Give It All We Got Tonight.” day. For his current Las Vegas concerts, tion the challenge of trying to get to The idea was to get Strait his sixtieth Strait is playing these sixty songs over know Strait himself. “I’ve gotten to hang No. 1 hit before his sixtieth birthday, two nights, which required some extra out with him a little,” she said. “We and, if Strait was too proud to beg, rehearsals: many of these hits had long mainly just talk about horses.” many of his fans were not. Some of ago fallen out of his set lists, even the genre’s biggest names recorded tes- though they were once among the most trait flew to Nashville recently— timonials: Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker, popular country songs in America. Snot to sing but to promote one of Eric Church, Little Big Town. The “Some of those songs, I forget about,” his newest projects, Código 1530, a “sip- campaign came around the same time Strait says. “They just kind of go away pin’ tequila,” as he calls it, that as Strait’s announcement after so long.” he grew to love during golf that he was retiring from Some people think that Strait’s trou- trips to Mexico, and which full-time touring, which gave ble on the radio is simply a function he is helping to launch in the effort a valedictory aura. of age. Perhaps his legacy bought him America. (One of his part- No one said that this would an extra decade or so: Toby Keith and ners is Ron Snyder, the exec- be Strait’s last No. 1 single, but Garth Brooks, who are fifty-five, as utive behind Crocs.) There his music had been growing well as Alan Jackson, who is fifty-eight, was a tasting in RCA Studio more wistful over the years. have also largely disappeared from A, the same building in which (In 2008, he went to No. 7 country-radio playlists, with the ex- Strait recorded his first album, with “Troubadour,” a late- ception of so-called country-icons sta- and, despite having spent career statement of purpose: tions, which make a point of play- decades avoiding publicity “I was a young troubadour ing the old stuff. (Earlier this year, events like this one, he seemed cheer- when I rode in on a song / And I’ll be when a radio station in Corpus Christi ful. “I’ve never been one to like to talk an old troubadour when I’m gone.”) adopted the icons format, it announced about myself a lot,” he said, nursing an With Sixty for Sixty, the implication itself by broadcasting nothing but añejo-tequila cocktail. By comparison, was hard to miss: a man who once George Strait for an entire weekend.) talking about his favorite drink wasn’t topped the charts effortlessly now re- Strait’s decision to stop touring was so bad. quired one last collective push to get probably a factor, too: radio stations Ever since 1981, Strait has been re- to No. 1. love playing songs by singers who are cording for the same label, MCA Nash- Whether he made it is a matter of coming to town. ville, outlasting virtually all the execu- some debate. In the old days, when Among radio executives, conven- tives, to say nothing of his fellow- Strait emerged, the Billboard country tional wisdom holds that old listeners

50 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 have more patience for young singers than young listeners have for old sing- ers. Tony Brown, the producer, thinks that Strait has hit a generational wall. “He could cut ‘Amarillo by Morning’ today, for the first time, and they wouldn’t play it,” Brown says. “It’s not because of his voice or the song. It’s because they want to play a younger demographic.” But it’s true, too, that the genre has evolved in a way that makes Strait seem like an outlier. Hat acts have given way to what Brown calls “cap acts”: younger, more frolic- some singers like Sam Hunt, whose latest single, “Body Like a Back Road,” has been Billboard’s country No. 1 for most of 2017. Many of these songs hint at hip-hop, through thumping beats or added syncopation in the vocal line—the next phase, perhaps, of the country- rhythm revolution begun by Bob Wills, in 1944. As radio stations have lost interest in Strait, Strait is trying to figure out how he feels about them. He has started writing again, often with his son, Bubba, who quit roping so that he could set- tle down and join the other family busi- ness. Last year, Strait released an un- usually acerbic song called “Kicked Outta Country,” which he co-wrote. The song pays tribute to George Jones, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Wil- lie Nelson, and Johnny Cash, singers whose legends endured even when their radio careers did not: “They lived what they wrote, and they wrote what they sang / And getting kicked outta coun- •• try didn’t hurt a thing.” (During con- certs, Strait sings it with a smile, as if people who can name only a few of Goin’, Gone,” a breezy account of how to reassure fans that the whole thing his songs. (If a rodeo played nothing to lose a weekend, which failed to con- is just a misunderstanding.) but Johnny Cash for a whole week- quer the airwaves. “This next song was Strait’s country heroes were, vir- end, people would definitely notice— actually released on the radio,” he said. tually without exception, outlandish and possibly object.) Strait, by con- “I never heard it.” It was a complaint, characters, going all the way back to trast, is beloved both in theory and in delivered in good humor. But, for any- Bob Wills, who once reconciled with practice. His brilliant, steady career one skeptical about the abiding power one of his many wives in the middle was surely enabled by his disciplined and relevance of radio, this moment of a court hearing during which they disinclination to live out his music, provided proof. Most of the people in were supposed to be discussing an an- and by his methodical approach to the arena showed no signs of know- nulment. “Kicked Outta Country” is finding and recording great material. ing the words; radio hadn’t played in part a chronicle of the kind of bad The result is a relative paucity of mem- it, so they hadn’t memorized it. No behavior that captures fans’ imagina- orable stories, and an absolute surfeit matter: there were more than a dozen tions. “Cash stomped out the foot- of memorable songs—more, surely, hits left for Strait to sing before he lights,” Strait sings, evoking the fa- than would exist if Strait had been less departed the stage, only and inevita- mous moment, in 1965, when Cash single-minded. bly to be brought back for an encore. threw a tantrum on the Grand Ole When Strait performed in Las “Thank you very much,” he said, Opry stage. Nowadays, just about ev- Vegas, earlier this year, he made a point when he returned. “I think we got a eryone venerates Johnny Cash, even of including a recent single, “Goin’, few more in us.” 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 51 FICTION NOOR

52 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY JON LOWENSTEIN n the first day, there’s a sense “He’s coming,” a young mother sit- ting at the desk. “Gabriel Rivas? Did of relief. There are other feel- ting in the corner assures her. She has he get here yet?” O ings, too, but relief is among a child on her lap. “The same thing hap- The woman consults her computer. them. She has arrived, at least. After pened to me. The kids just take longer. “Sorry,” she says. “No one by that name.” three weeks. After a broken sandal strap, They don’t walk as fast. Mine got here She stares at the woman, unsure of sunburn on her cheeks, mud in her a whole week after I did. Everyone what to say. ears, bugs in her hair, blisters around makes it eventually.” “Did you check the family area?” her ankles, bruises on her hips, boiled She wants to believe that’s true. the woman asks. eggs, bottled water, sour berries, pickup • • trucks and train cars and footsteps The first night, she lies in a bed and They get one hour to eat. Hash browns through the dirt, sunrises and sunsets, listens to the noises of the women in and syrup for breakfast. Chicken broth nagging doubt and crackling hope— the room with her. Dozens of them. and French fries for lunch. Turkey cut- she has arrived. They’re stacked neatly in bunk beds, lets and potato dumplings for dinner. • like bodies in a morgue, and she stares So many potatoes. It’s a world made They tell her to sleep, but that can’t at the bowing mattress above her, the of potatoes. There is water to drink, be right. First she has to find her son, straining metal coils, worried that they but it tastes like chlorine, and it makes who is supposed to be here, too. They will not hold. She considers the pos- her nauseous. were separated along the way, over- sibility that the gray-haired woman They take showers in the trailers. night, a few days ago. The man who who clambered up there earlier and The guards control when the water was leading them here divided the who is snoring there now might fall turns on and when it turns off. Soap group. Twelve people drew too much through and crush her to death. She bubbles skim across the floor. attention, he claimed. He had sec- begins to laugh. What if? After ev- In the bathroom, which is in a sep- tioned off the women, silencing any erything? What if that’s how it ends? arate trailer, she wads up toilet paper protest with the back of his hand, The sound of her laughter blooms and stuffs it into her underwear. A swift to the jaw. “Do you want to get in the dark. From across the room, woman next to her notices. there or not?” They did. “Trust me,” a voice asks, “What the fuck is so “Talk to Esme,” she says. “She’ll hook he said. funny?” you up.” He sent a friend to escort them. • She finds Esme in the dayroom, When she glanced back, she felt a They let her store: her clothes, her watching TV. Esme offers to sell her a shove between her shoulder blades. broken leather sandals, a plastic comb, tampon for a dollar, money she doesn’t “It’s only for a few miles,” he hissed an elastic hair band. They let her keep: have. in her ear. “Walk.” the silver wedding ring she still wears Esme is unsympathetic. She purses By morning, the men were gone, even though her husband died four her lips. “At least you got your period,” the children gone. The friend, a man years ago. They take: her pocketknife she says. “Many of us don’t, you know, with sunglasses and a chipped front (no weapons), a sleeve of Maria cook- after what they do. We get pregnant tooth, said, “I am here to take care of ies (no food), a tin of Vaseline (no instead.” you.” What he meant was that they reason). • were there to take care of him. Four • She marks the days on her arm. A small women. Which they did. Which they In the morning, there’s a count. In the dot on the inside of her wrist becomes were made to do. evening, there will be another. The a trail, then a winding chain. • guards yank the beige sheet off her • “Where is my son?” she asks a guard bed, balloon it dramatically in the air. Periodically, new people arrive, escorted who speaks Spanish. He shrugs in reply. “Forty-eighteen, clear!” They move by border-patrol agents. A few every “¿Mi hijo?” she asks anyone who will down the line. week. She watches them with their tat- listen and many who won’t. “He’s five It’s a warehouse, this place: cement tered backpacks, the children with years old. He has black hair, parted on floors, fluorescent tube lights in the stuffed animals in their arms. When one side, and a freckle, right here, under ceiling, flyers taped to the painted the weather turns cold, people are his eye. He was wearing a Spider-Man cinder- block walls—ads for phone ser- wrapped in foil blankets as they trudge shirt.” People just shake their heads. vices, for immigration attorneys, for up the walk. “There’s a family unit,” one woman psychologists. She takes it all in. “Did you see a little boy?” she asks says, pointing down the hall. “They have After the inspection, she returns to every new arrival. “A boy who looks cribs,” she adds, as if that’s something. the processing desk, near the front of like me?” In the family unit, which is one large the facility. Through the windows she The people glance at her with weary, room, she searches every crib. She gazes can see a chain-link fence topped with red-rimmed eyes. Some of them shake down at infants and eight-year-olds a confection of barbed wire and, just their heads. One after the other, none curled against the bars. She scans the beyond it, an open field speckled with of them him. faces of the children watching “Dora wildflowers and long grass and a few • the Explorer” on a television set mounted broad trees. What if she’s forgotten what he looks to the wall. “My son?” she asks the woman sit- like? What if she’s gone crazy? What

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 53 if he’s here, lying in one of those cribs, what happens after this. “Eso depende” “And men—” and she sees him every single day with- is his answer to both. Then: “Tell me “They were boys.” out realizing he’s her son? What if it’s everything. They’ll need to determine “Even more so. We have an expres- been too long? What if memory fails? if you qualify for asylum, if you have sion here: Boys will be boys.” What if everything fails, and getting credible fear.” And though she doesn’t She feels a rising anger. through life is simply learning to cope want to relive it, she tells him about “If we go back,” she says evenly, “they with the failure? No, she scolds her- the day, a few months ago now, that will do it again.” self. Don’t think like that. Don’t let the boys—boys whose mothers she “We?” he asks. “Is there someone yourself give way. knew from the neighborhood—pushed else?” • her off a moving bus and dragged her “My son,” she starts, but her voice A woman named Alicia arrives from across a busy intersection, how she kept breaks. She clenches her fists. She digs El Salvador with her six-year-old scrabbling her legs under her to try her nails into her palms, determined daughter in tow. They sleep in the bed to stand, and how they kicked her to not to cry. together. They shower together. The keep her down. How nobody helped • girl won’t leave her mother’s side. her, how nobody stopped them be- At night, lying in her bunk atop the “She’s nervous,” Alicia says, as if cause nobody knows how to stop boys beige sheet, she imagines running back there’s a need to explain. “It was a ter- like that. How they made her kneel in the way she came, retracing her steps rible trip.” the alley behind the fruit store while through the dirt and the weeds until “Yes.” they held a gun to her head and all she finds him standing in the over- “We’re going to find her father in took turns, how they put the gun in growth somewhere, hungry and cold. Minnesota.” her mouth and made her suck that, She wants to gather him up, to hold “But this is Texas.” too, and how when they were finished him close, to smell the apricot-sweet- “Is it far?” they said, “You’re in the family now, ness of his skin, to feel the fuzz of his And how, she wonders, does she an- bitch,” and laughed. ear against her cheek, to say I’m sorry swer a question like that. Is it far? Ev- “Why do you think they targeted I’m sorry I’m sorry—for what? Had erything is far from here, even if it’s you?” the lawyer asks. she wanted too much? Safety for her- only across the street. “I was alone.” self and for him? Was that too much? • “You’re not married?” It hadn’t seemed like it at the time, She meets with a lawyer, a man in a “Not anymore.” but if she hadn’t wanted it they never stained tan sports coat. She asks him “And you’re pretty.” would have left, and if they had never how long she’ll be here. She asks him She narrows her eyes. left she never would have lost him. She wouldn’t have lost everything. • Often now, she wants to scream. Some- times she does, and then the guards come to restrain her. They hold her arms behind her back. They drag her down the hall and put her in a room, a colorless box with spiders in the cor- ners, until she calms down. But that’s going in the wrong direction. The scream is for help, not for hindrance. Why don’t they understand? The woman in the box next to hers is there because she threw up. To throw up is to disobey orders. You disobey, you get the box. The guards think: The smaller the box, the more we can control them. But everyone else knows: The smaller the box, the more out of control peo- ple become. • One day, when the air is damp and the sky is mottled and gray, there’s a pro- test. People outside hold signs that say “ILLEGAL IS A CRIME” and “SEND THEM BACK WITH BIRTH CONTROL.” Peo- ple hold American flags over their shoul- “The tomatoes came from our neighbor’s garden. Please don’t tell him.” ders like capes. Superhero Americans. She imagines them at home in their living rooms, a bowl of dog food by the door, a cup of cold tea that has steeped too long on the counter. She imagines them laying the poster board on the floor, uncapping markers, draw- ing the letters, coloring them in. • Esme lost her baby. She left that part out. “She had a miscarriage a few weeks after she got here,” a woman named Marta tells her. “Gracias a Dios that she didn’t have to carry it to term. Her body released its own pain.” Marta stops and shakes her head. “They don’t take care of nobody in here, see. They don’t care who we are. It’s easier to “They still had so much TV ahead of them.” fuck somebody than to give a fuck, you know?” •• • One morning, a woman in a pale-pink T-shirt approaches her in the cafete- “Ten?” is it shouting? Why is everyone shout- ria while she’s getting a tray. She forces herself to swallow. “No,” ing? A woman’s voice saying, “Don’t “I heard you were looking for your she says weakly. “My son is younger.” touch my boy! Mateo!” And why does son,” she says quietly. “Oh, is he?” she feel hands on her now, prying her She looks at the woman—she can’t She nods. away, tugging her back as she reaches help it—with delirious hope. “Sorry,” the woman says. “I thought for him—isn’t it him? isn’t it? but it “I might know something,” the maybe it was him.” looked so much like him!—hands that woman says. • carry her down the hall, hands that “Like what?” Her heart pounds. She She loses track of the dots. She loses shove her into a room, hands that turn can hear the echo of it deep in her ears, track of herself. the key in the lock. even amid the clatter and scrape of sil- • She crumples to the floor and blinks verware, the grumble of voices around Alicia and her daughter are released. in the dark. From inside the box, she them. Marta is sent back. She doesn’t see Esme screams. “Your ring,” the woman says. again. • For a moment, she’s confused, but And yet. Every day she waits for him And then one day there are leaves on then she understands. “Tell me,” she by the front door. She sits on the floor, the trees, and wild-magnolia blossoms says. knitting her fingers in her lap. on the branches, bobbing gently in The woman nods at the ring. And then— the breeze. She will stay in this place, “Tell me first.” “Gabriel!” she tells herself, until he comes. A smile spreads like an oil slick She scrambles to her feet. Mixed Through the window in the dayroom, across the woman’s face, but she doesn’t up in a tangle of people, there he is. she watches the white petals tremble, speak. His dark, combed hair, the freckle and, in a gust, a single blossom is torn She keeps her eyes on the woman, beneath his eye. God in Heaven! It’s off a branch. The petals blow apart, her round face and her widow’s peak, him! She lunges forward and wrests swirling, and drift to the ground. as she touches the ring on her finger. him from the crowd. She falls to her She closes her eyes. Where has she It’s looser now than when she arrived. knees and pulls him into her arms. gone and what has she become? The She twists it gently and slides it off. She’s so flooded with shock and grat- blisters have healed, the bruises have She closes her hand around it. When itude that she can hardly breathe. Her faded, the evidence has vanished—ev- she gives it to the woman, she feels nose in his hair, the smell of him al- erything dissolves like sugar in water. part of herself go numb. most unbearably sweet. Her hands It’s easy to let that happen, so much “Tell me,” she says again. cupping his shoulders, those same easier to give in, to be who they want The woman fits the ring over the slight shoulders, as small and break- you to be: a thing that flares apart in tip of her thumb. “I heard about a boy able as eggs. “Gabriel,” she whispers the tumult, a thing that surrenders to they found on the side of the road,” again and again. She can feel him the wind.  she says. “They took him to a hospi- shuddering. “It’s O.K.,” she tells him tal in Laredo.” through tears. NEWYORKER.COM “How old?” Around her there is cheering. Or Cristina Henríquez on missing names.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 55 THE CRITICS

BOOKS STIR IT UP

The battle over Bob Marley.

BY HUA HSU

hen Bob Marley died, on May 11, long afternoons of soccer, rapidly broke board decks, headphones, speakers, W1981, at the age of thirty-six, he down. Marley was a Rastafarian, sub- turntables, bags, watches, pipes, light- did not leave behind a will. He had scribing to a millenarian, Afrocentric in- ers, ashtrays, key chains, backpacks, known that the end was near. Seven terpretation of Scripture that took hold scented candles, room mist, soap, hand months earlier, he had collapsed while in Jamaica in the nineteen-thirties. By cream, lip balm, body wash, coffee, jogging in Central Park. Melanoma, conventional Western standards, the dietary-supplement drinks, and can- which was first diagnosed in 1977 but Rastafarian movement can seem both nabis (whole flower, as well as oil) left largely untreated, had spread through- uncompromising (it espouses fairly con- that bear some official relationship out his body. According to Danny Sims, servative views on gender and requires with the Marley estate. There are also Marley’s manager at the time, a doctor a strict, all-natural diet) and appealingly lava lamps, iPhone cases, mouse pads, at Sloan Kettering said that the singer lax (it has a communal ethos, which and fragrances that do not. In 2016, had “more cancer in him than I’ve seen often involves liberal ritual use of mar- Forbes calculated that Marley’s estate with a live human being.” As Sims re- ijuana). For Marley, dealing with his es- brought in twenty-one million dol- called, the doctor estimated that Mar- tate probably signified a surrender to the lars, making him the year’s sixth- ley had just a few months to live, and forces of Babylon, the metaphorical site highest-earning “dead celebrity,” and that “he might as well go back out on of oppression and Western materialism unauthorized sales of Marley music the road and die there.” that Rastas hope to escape. When he and merchandise have been estimated Marley played his final show on Sep- died, in Miami, his final words to his to generate more than half a billion tember 23, 1980, in Pittsburgh. During son Stephen were “Money can’t buy life.” dollars a year, though the estate dis- the sound check, he sang Queen’s “An- “This will business is a big insult,” Mar- putes this. other One Bites the Dust” over and over. ley’s mother, Cedella Booker, told a Wash- Inevitably, the contention over the He asked a close friend to stay near the ington Post reporter in 1991, as his estate estate mirrors the larger struggle over stage and watch him, in case anything navigated its latest set of legal challenges. the legacy—over the meanings of Mar- happened. The remaining months of his “God never limit nobody! Jah never make ley. The accounting of merchandise and life were an extended farewell, as he no will!” Neville Garrick, a close friend money might feel like a distortion of sought treatment, first in Miami and who designed many of Marley’s album Marley’s legacy, of his capacity to take then in New York. Cindy Breakspeare, covers, mused in the 2012 documentary the lives of those who suffered and Marley’s main companion in the mid- “Marley” that it may have been the sing- struggled and turn them into poetry. seventies, remembered his famed dread- er’s final test, one in which “everybody re- But the range of Marley parapherna- locks becoming too heavy for his weak- veal who they really were, you get me? lia also illustrates the nature of his ap- ened frame. One night, she and a group Who really did love him, who fighting peal. He became a way of seeing the of women in Marley’s orbit, including over the money.” It would have been out world. Although he adhered to an or- his wife, Rita (to whom he had remained of character for Marley to neatly divvy dered, religious belief system for most married, despite it being years since they up his property. “Bob left it open.” of his life, praising Jah, the Rastafar- were faithful to one another), gathered ian name for God, whenever he could, to light candles, read passages from the o one metric captures the scale he came to embody an alternative to Bible, and cut his dreadlocks off. Nof Bob Marley’s legend except, orthodoxy. His lyrics lent themselves Drafting a will was probably the last perhaps, the impressive range of items to a kind of universalist reading of ex- thing on Marley’s mind as his body, adorned with his likeness. There are odus and liberation. He was one of the which he had carefully maintained with T-shirts, hats, posters, tapestries, skate- first pop stars who could be converted

Marley became a symbol of peace and unity; some of his less accommodating bandmates thought justice mattered more. PRESS IMAGES BURNETT/CONTACT DAVID JOHN; OPPOSITE: ST. TODD ABOVE:

56 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 57 into a life style. Bob left that open, too. In “So Much Things to Say: The BRIEFLY NOTED Oral History of Bob Marley” (Nor- ton), the reggae historian and collec- Stranger in a Strange Land, by George Prochnik (Other). Ger- tor Roger Steffens estimates that at shom Scholem, the renowned historian and theologian, was least five hundred books have been instrumental in the formation of twentieth-century Zionism written about Marley. There are books and played a crucial role in revitalizing Jewish mysticism. He interpreting his lyrics and collecting was also a fractious man of “unrepentant multiplicity,” and his favorite Bible passages, parsing once fancied himself the Messiah. Entwining memoir with bi- his relationship to the Rastafarian re- ography, Prochnik skillfully chronicles Scholem’s intellectual ligion and his status as a “postcolonial and personal life, including his passionate friendship with Wal- idol,” reconstructing his childhood in ter Benjamin; his 1923 emigration from Berlin to Jerusalem; Jamaica and investigating the theory and his ambivalent attitude toward the evolution of Zionism, that his death was the result of a C.I.A. which eventually, he believed, “triumphed itself to death.” Proch- assassination effort. His mother and nik’s account of his own sojourn in Jerusalem illuminates the his wife have written memoirs about ongoing struggle to reconcile Zionist ideals with political re- living with him, as have touring mu- alities and to envision possibilities for breaking “the spell of sicians who were only briefly proxi- hopelessness” in a divided land. mate to his genius. He has inspired countless works of fiction and poetry, I Was Told to Come Alone, by Souad Mekhennet (Henry Holt). and his later years provided the basic This profoundly pessimistic memoir about fifteen years of re- outline for parts of Marlon James’s porting on global jihad and the war on terror brims with prize-winning 2014 novel, “A Brief hair-raising, saddening, and often absurd stories. But it is most History of Seven Killings.” Steffens’s notable for Mekhennet’s interest in the vexing issue of author- “So Much Things to Say” isn’t even ship, and the presumption required to tell someone else’s story. the first book about Marley to bor- Born in Germany, of Moroccan-Turkish descent, Mekhennet row its title from the 1977 song; Don grew up obsessed with the Holocaust and terrified that it could Taylor, one of his former managers, recur, with European Muslims as the victims. Fluent in Ara- published a book with the same title, bic, she forged connections with reclusive militant sources, but in 1995. she detected, among colleagues, mistrust of her loyalties. Hurt Steffens was introduced to reggae and insulted, she identifies with the “alienation and rejection in 1973, after buying a Bob Marley that so many Muslims in Europe were feeling.” album. In 1976, he made the first of many trips to Kingston, Jamaica, in My Life with Bob, by Pamela Paul (Henry Holt). At seventeen, search of records and lore, and two Paul, now the editor of the Times Book Review, began listing years later he co-founded “Reggae every book she read in a diary that she nicknamed the “Book Beat,” a long-running radio show on of Books”—Bob, for short. (The first entry was Kafka’s “The Santa Monica’s KCRW. Being an early Trial.”) Bob becomes a memory keeper, not so much of the adopter paid off. Six weeks after the books—Paul confesses to having trouble remembering details show’s première, Island Records offered of plot and character—as of the personal associations they hold him a chance to go on the road with for her, such as the place where she read them or the people Marley for the “Survival” tour. In 1981, she was with at the time. Paul approaches books with tender- Steffens co-founded a reggae-and- ness, desire, insecurity, and, always, ambition. When she meets world-music magazine, The Beat, the sententiously erudite man who will become her first hus- which was published for nearly thirty band, she thinks, “Marrying him would be like uploading an years; in 1984, he was invited to con- entirely new database to my brain.” vene the first Grammy committee for reggae music. Steffens has made a ca- Too Much and Not the Mood, by Durga Chew-Bose (Farrar, reer out of being a completist, amass- Straus & Giroux). The animating force of this début essay col- ing one of the most impressive col- lection, which takes its title from a line in a 1931 diary entry by lections of reggae ephemera on the Virginia Woolf, is the “sheer, ensorcelled panic of feeling moved.” planet, overseeing a comprehensive With prose that revisits and revises itself, Chew-Bose considers collection of Marley’s early work (the daughterhood and female friendship; intimacy and solitude; the eleven- disk “The Complete Bob Mar- tug of ancestry and the experience of being a first-generation ley & the Wailers 1967-1972”), and Canadian. Sharp visual details—shadows moving across the walls co-writing the exhaustive 2005 “Bob of a room, Sharon Stone’s shoulders, the distribution of votive Marley and the Wailers: The Defini- candles in a restaurant—give structure to essays that seek to evoke tive Discography.” “the baggy fit of feelings before they’ve found their purpose.” At this point, books about Marley

58 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 tend to be self-conscious about the risks of further mythologizing him, even if they end up doing so anyway. Steffens tries to avoid this by framing “So Much Things to Say” as four hun- dred pages of “raw material,” drawing from interviews he conducted over three decades with more than seventy of Mar- ley’s bandmates, family members, lov- ers, and confidantes, some of whom have rarely spoken on the record. Oc- casionally, excerpts from interviews and articles from other authors are reprinted, too. What emerges isn’t a different Mar- ley so much as one who feels a bit more human, given to moments of diffidence and whim, whose every decision doesn’t feel freighted with potentially world- historical significance. Marley was born on February 6, 1945, to Norval and Cedella Marley. “Quick! Toss me the stalest one you’ve got!” Cedella was eighteen at the time, a na- tive of Nine Mile, a rural village with •• no electricity or running water. Little is known about Norval, an older white man who had come to Cedella’s vil- steady were slowing down. Reggae was sought out Chris Blackwell, the owner lage to oversee the subdivision of its the new craze. of Island Records. Blackwell, who was lands for veterans’ housing. He was, The Wailers continued to record and raised in Jamaica, had started his label according to a member of the white tour in the early nineteen- seventies. A as a way of exporting the popular music Marley family, “seriously unstable,” brief but fruitful collaboration with the he had grown up with. He gave the rarely seeing Cedella and Bob before eccentric producer Lee (Scratch) Perry band money to return to Jamaica and he died, of a heart attack, in 1955, at produced two outstanding albums, to record its next album. A slow- the age of seventy. “Soul Rebels” (1970) and “Soul Revo- burning masterpiece full of spiritual Because of Bob’s mixed blood, he lution” (1971). Beyond a novelty hit or lyricism and expansive grooves, “Catch was often teased as “the little yellow two, cracking the international market a Fire” (1973) marked a turning point boy” or “the German boy.” He was de- remained a distant dream for reggae for the reggae album—as did the de- scribed as shy, resourceful, and clever. artists. The distinctive rhythms had cision to appeal to rock fans by adding In 1957, Marley and his mother moved crept into American pop music in other guitar solos and to the al- to Kingston, settling in a dense, ram- forms, though. The influential Amer- bum’s final mix. shackle neighborhood referred to as ican funk drummer Bernard (Pretty) Trench Town. Marley fell in with a Purdie credits studio sessions he played here are a few reasons that oral crowd that dreamed of making music. with the Wailers for the “reggae feel” Thistory has become the preferred He formed a group with Neville (Bunny he brought to early-seventies Aretha format for revisiting the recent past. Wailer) Livingston, Peter Tosh, Bev- Franklin classics—“Rock Steady” and It’s designed to provide open-ended, erley Kelso, and Junior Braithwaite. They “Daydreaming”—and the American immersive filibusters, balancing pro- eventually called themselves the Wail- singer Johnny Nash introduced a jection with hazy memory, marquee ers, and their sound fused American- pop-reggae sensibility in the late six- voices with obscure bystanders, a char- style soul harmonies with the island’s ties and early seventies, with hits like ismatic superstar with the accountant jumpy ska rhythms. Under the guid- “Hold Me Tight” and “I Can See who kept the operation afloat. At a ance of Joe Higgs, a singer and pro- Clearly Now.” time when quick takes abound, the ducer, the Wailers were a local sensa- Nash had gone to Jamaica in search labor-intensive nature of the form, as tion by the mid-sixties. But island of new sounds and collaborators, and well as the seeming lack of a writerly stardom brought little financial secu- he soon came to recognize it as a hot- voice or perspective, gives the impres- rity. After moving briefly to Wilming- bed of talent. He took Marley and the sion of relating everyone’s side. It’s the ton, Delaware, where his mother had Wailers under his wing, bringing them perfect approach in the age of the data relocated, Marley returned to the Wail- on as an opening act during an En- dump, a way of making room for read- ers in 1969, just in time for a revolu- glish tour in late 1970. But Nash left ers to sift through materials, discover tion in Jamaican music: the jolting, them stranded there. Unhappy with their own resonances, and, in the case horn-inflected styles of ska and rock- the direction of their careers, they of “So Much Things to Say,” decide

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 59 which shady, finger-pointing label boss anticipates the singer’s eventual break- ley’s desire for a broader, more stable or business manager to trust. through, Steffens’s contribution is his platform that allowed him to accept Steffens generally resists hagiogra- nerdish monomania. Timothy White’s concessions that others rejected. The phy. Kelso, one of Marley’s lifelong “Catch a Fire,” published in 1983, re- original Wailers broke up, in 1974, be- confidantes, suggested that he was oc- mains the gateway biography for the cause Livingston balked at Blackwell’s casionally “rough” toward Rita, and that Marley-curious in part because it reads suggestion that they begin playing un- she nearly divorced him. Joe Higgs, like a novel, full of high-stakes stand- derground “freak clubs.” In Living- the Wailers’ early mentor, contends that offs and tense dialogue. In “So Much ston’s mind, their music was “for chil- Marley’s mother—one of his biggest Things to Say,” Steffens fixes on more dren now,” not for gays or people who advocates after his death—was largely mundane details: the date and the lo- tinkered with synthetic drugs. Though absent during his formative years as an cation of recording sessions, the exact Livingston was ousted from the band, artist, and wanted him to become a occupation of Marley’s estranged fa- he was at peace with his stance: “I felt welder. Steffens also reprints Arch- ther (a “ferro-cement engineer,” not a good because I wasn’t going to wallow bishop Abuna Yesehaq’s oft-repeated naval officer, as is often reported), the in no shit.” but never verified claim to have bap- jug of mysterious juice that Marley Tosh left, too, fed up with Black- tized Marley at the end of his life, toured with late in life. Steffens is well’s relentless “fuckery.” (Tosh also which would have been a betrayal of largely here to direct traffic. But his au- accused Marley of siding with Black- his Rastafarian faith. thority derives from exhausting every well because he was half white.) In In one particularly engrossing sec- possibility. Two people, for example, 1974, Marley reëmerged with a new tion, Steffens confronts Carl Colby, a offer equally vivid memories of Mar- album, “Natty Dread,” credited to his documentary filmmaker who had sur- ley writing “I Shot the Sheriff.” A for- newly reconfigured band, Bob Marley prisingly unfettered access to Marley mer lover claims that the song is an and the Wailers. In the eyes of many, in the mid-seventies. Colby, whose fa- allegory about birth control; one of Blackwell had finally succeeded in ther was the C.I.A. director William Marley’s white friends describes it as breaking apart the band’s core; it was Colby, is at the center of a few far- a private joke they had “about him easier to promote Marley than Liv- fetched Marley-related conspiracy the- hanging out with this white guy, me.” ingston, with his unrelenting faith, or ories. Some people believe that Carl The book’s drama accumulates Tosh, a provocateur fond of referring Colby dispatched the gunmen who around the question of what set Mar- to the owner of Island Records as Chris opened fire on Marley’s home in 1976, ley apart from his bandmates Living- “Whitewell” or “Whiteworst.” As Mar- shortly before he was scheduled to play ston and Tosh, who many in “So Much ley’s solo career took off, Higgs, who a peace concert organized by the Ja- Things to Say” thought were at least briefly joined his touring band, came maican prime minister, Michael Man- as talented. Colin Leslie, Marley’s busi- to see him as a bit of a “user.” Lee Jaffe, ley, who was seen as an enemy of Amer- ness manager, suggests that one ad- known as “the white Wailer” because ican interests. There are those who think vantage Marley had was that “he had he was one of the few white people Colby gave Marley a “poisoned boot” spent time in America, in Delaware, in the group’s inner sanctum, recalls that supposedly caused his cancer. Colby and he was exposed to industry and that his friendship with Marley nearly denies the allegations. the corporate world.” He returned with ended when Marley refused to stand In contrast to other popular Mar- a sense of “how things should be or- up to his label, which changed the ley books, in which every detail merely dered in business.” Perhaps it was Mar- spelling of his album title from “Knotty Dread” to “Natty Dread” against his wishes.

here’s an argument that the Wail- Ters’ true visionary was Peter Tosh, not Bob Marley. Where Marley be- came a symbol of peace and unity for a troubled nation, Tosh remained com- bative and politically militant. After the gunmen shot up his home, Mar- ley moved to England in a kind of self-imposed exile. He returned to Ja- maica two years later, to headline the One Love concert, which was an at- tempt to bring the country together while a bloody political war raged in the streets. In the middle of the song “Jammin’,” Marley invited the rival party leaders Michael Manley and Edward “I’m sorry—I can barely hear you with this goddam ocean behind me.” Seaga onstage, and the three of them held their hands up together. It was a Part of this failure had been by de- lutionary sound, as well as brash new powerful image. But for Tosh, who had sign. In the seventies, Blackwell mar- stars like Yellowman, made Marley’s been onstage hours earlier and blasted keted Marley to white, college-edu- roots-reggae style seem antiquated. In both parties, what Jamaicans needed cated rock fans and maturing hippies, Colin Grant’s “Natural Mystics,” an was not peace but justice. “Peace is who were drawn to reggae as earthy excellent 2011 book about the Wailers, death,” he later explained. “Your pass- and authentic. But in return for per- there’s a scene in which Livingston port to heaven. Most people don’t know forming with the Commodores, Frankie finds himself on a concert bill along- that.” Unity was false hope. Crocker, arguably the most powerful side Shabba Ranks and Ninjaman, In the mid-seventies, Marley found black-radio d.j. and programmer of the roughneck antiheroes who were known audiences far beyond the “sufferers” of late seventies, promised that for their violent, sexually Trench Town. One of his friends con- his station would play Mar- charged lyrics. It’s a world tends that the singer drifted “a little to ley’s new single, “Could You that the Wailers, outlaws in the right of the Jamaican political spec- Be Loved,” every hour on their own day, enabled, but trum as he came closer and closer to the hour for three months. not the one they created. the white and brown Jamaican elite.” And Marley, who was sand- He’s sad and frustrated as Don Taylor, his former manager, says wiched on the bill between the crowd wearies of his that Blackwell turned Marley into “a Kurtis Blow and the Com- slow-burning roots music. beggar of the jet set.” Still, Marley was modores, was confident that One of the reasons Mar- entering spaces unimaginable to pre- his live show would evis- ley’s life requires the com- vious generations of Jamaicans who, cerate everyone else’s. He plication Steffens’s book like him, had come from nothing. He was right. As Alvin (Seeco) Patterson, attempts is that the singer became a lived down the road from the Prime the Wailers’ drummer, recalls, “I re- model for how artistic legacy has Minister. He had brought Rastafari, member when Bob finish, everybody turned into an industry of its own. He long seen as an outlaw cult, into the walked out.” has become a myth capacious enough mainstream. And he gave freely to those When Marley fell ill a few days later, to absorb every new revelation. What in need. Judy Mowatt, a member of he was about to sign a monumental happened with Marley is what often the I-Three, Marley’s backing vocal- new record deal with a ten-million- happens nowadays to charismatic art- ists, explains that he had come to view dollar advance. That didn’t happen. His ists who die young: core beliefs are himself as the reincarnation of the Bib- most famous album was to be “Leg- trimmed and edited for accessibility, lical Joseph, who had provided corn to end,” a 1984 hits collection released by and a new, simplified consensus forms. the children of Israel during the fam- Island Records, which has become one A belief system is reduced to a single, ine. “We see the work that Bob come of the best-selling albums of all time. strident pose; rebelliousness becomes back to do now, that he has regathered His role in turning reggae into a world- an untamed essence that travels every- his people, and he’s feeding the peo- wide phenomenon is one of the rea- where, imbuing things, like lighters ple with a more spiritual corn in this sons the category of “world music” was or headphones, with mystical vibes. time.” invented, in 1987, to help stars break Even as the music business shrivels, Yet Marley was troubled by the out from beyond America and Europe, an artist’s legacy—especially one that demographics of his growing number many of whom inevitably get described is defiant and uplifting—will con- of disciples. In September, 1980, he ar- as the Bob Marley of their homeland. tinue to be a reliable, ever-renewable rived in New York. He was touring “Up- And yet much of Marley and the Wail- asset. At least it’s Marley’s family that rising,” his most religious album yet. ers’ story remains untold. Livingston benefits. He was scheduled to open for the Com- has never allowed Steffens to turn eigh- Steffens closes his book with a chap- modores at Madison Square Garden—a teen hundred pages of interview tran- ter of friends and collaborators shar- strange booking, given that Marley him- scripts into a book. Tosh began com- ing their favorite Marley tunes. It’s a self was world famous. He had already mitting his life story to audiotape way of creating a “spiritual foundation,” played more than thirty dates in Eu- before he was murdered in 1987; the in the words of the Wailers’ guitarist rope, including a concert at Milan’s San so-called Red X tapes provided the Junior Marvin, that will last for eter- Siro stadium that drew a hundred and basis for a documentary on Tosh but nity. At the same time, it enables us to twenty thousand people—more than have otherwise never been released. imagine Marley’s career as an arc ex- the Pope had drawn a week earlier. The The struggle over the meanings of tending through the eighties, the nine- Commodores, meanwhile, were on the Marley remains unresolved, and no ties, and beyond. We believe that he downside of a career highlighted by the doubt unresolvable. wouldn’t have had to change with the featherweight soul hits “Easy” and times—that he would have resisted “Three Times a Lady.” But they still n 1984, just three years after Mar- whatever was to come, or seen an al- drew the predominantly African-Amer- Iley’s death, the Jamaican producer ternative to it. This is the most intox- ican audience that Marley craved. His King Jammy and singer Wayne Smith icating part of the Marley myth: the failure to dent the black-radio market released “Under Mi Sleng Teng,” a dream that someone had the answers; in America had been one of the linger- groundbreaking dancehall single built if only he had survived long enough to ing frustrations of his career. on a digital rhythm track. This revo- save us all. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 61 once. He can be witty, slangy, lyrical, BOOKS ironic, vivid; he possesses leaping pow- ers of metaphor and analogy. Most writers develop certain talents at the HANDLE WITH CARE expense of others, but Cohen relishes verbs as much as adjectives, metaphor- Joshua Cohen’s latest novel brings Israeli conflicts to New York. making as much as epigram-minting. Style is a patent priority: his fiction BY JAMES WOOD displays the stretch marks of its orig- inality. In his new novel, “Moving Kings” (Random House), there are won- derfully strange verbs. In a cab: “The driver rancored away in Arabic, to him- self or just a specter.” At a party: “A girl brisked over.” There are interest- ing new adjectives (or nouns turned into adjectives): “A hypermarket, a phar- macy, a dun huttish structure topped with a blinking red neon star.” And precise metaphorical descriptions, like this one of traffic in Queens: “He turned onto Northern Boulevard heading south. The cars seeped like spread tar and hardened into traffic.” Or the heat in Mexico: “The sun was sowing him a migraine.” But even when Cohen is not putting out his flags the prose is alert, tense with vitality. Here David King, newly arrived in Israel, prepares to meet his cousins: “The next morn- ing, the second day—the day that God divided the sky from the waters below and so created the conditions for jet- lag—David’s cousins were waiting in the lobby.” Cohen is, in fact, a crystalline nov- elist with a journalistic openness to the world; his stylish sentences are loaded with the refuse of the real, with the facts, social data, and informational s a form, the novel can never de- rhythm. In this regard, Iris Murdoch surplus of postmodernity. In this will Acide quite how stylish it should once divided the twentieth-century to supreme combination, he resembles be. Is it a mirror or a music, a camera novel into the journalistic and the crys- Thomas Pynchon (with Joyce the or a painting? Is it best designed for talline, and Woolf, the modernist aes- blessed progenitor), or David Foster the long haul or for fine circular flights? thete who also loved Dickens and Scott Wallace. Cohen’s previous novel, the Is it where we make a fetish of the per- and Tolstoy, couldn’t quite decide massive and massively ambitious “Book fect sentence, or a more relaxed reli- whether she liked her novels hospita- of Numbers” (2015), marched, in seven- gion of the appropriate form? Nabokov bly journalistic or stylishly crystalline. league boots, over vast terrain: com- liked to dismiss writers who failed Like many of us, she wanted different parative theology, postmodern philos- the Nabokovian sentence test, such as pleasures from different novelists. ophy, questions of contemporary gen - Camus, Mann, and Stendhal (who in- Joshua Cohen is an extraordinary der, the monstrous complacencies of deed likened the novel to a mirror). prose stylist, surely one of the most the Internet age. As in Wallace’s work, But the novelist ideally writes in para- prodigious at work in American fic- there is a recognizable tension between graphs and chapters, not in sentences, tion today. (And he is only thirty-six.) the priority of style and the boisterous as Woolf reminded her readers. Nov- At his best, he resembles Saul Bellow: claims of the world, a tension as old as elistic form, the accretion of many sen- his sentences are all-season journeyers, realism itself. tences, must find its own deeper, slower able to do everything everywhere at There are moments in Cohen’s work when his worldly omnivorousness (the At thirty-six, Cohen is one of the most prodigious stylists in American fiction. desire to cover everything) and his

62 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY stylistic talents (the desire to cover ev- dry Arabians—bigger, coarser, burdened proves nicely uninterested in the com- erything in the most brilliant style) by work and apprehensions of work: bustion. Wary of conventional payoffs, seem to be running a race with each “He moved among the servers who made or even of conventional rises and falls, other. “Book of Numbers” was some- $8.75 an hour and so who made about he likes to swerve away from a story or times hard to read, not because it was 14 cents, 14.5833 cents, he did the figures a character he has spent many pages es- incomprehensible or too demanding in his head, for each minute it took them tablishing, in search of a fresh center of but because its textures were overwhelm- to carve him primerib or fix him a scotch interest. The intermittency can be frus- ing, and because it struggled to find a or direct him and his menthols to a trating. As a novelist, he’s jittery, mobile, form that could contain and focus those smoking area.” always on the prowl for new material, textures. Cohen’s natural inclination is David King is recognizable enough, not so much easily distracted as easily toward a loquacious, storytelling lar- if not to the partygoers on Long Is- consumed, quickly recentered. Once he gesse, but each of his sentences is also land: much less successful at life than has set up Yoav’s arrival and David’s soft a micro-adventure in abundance. Here, at business; cocky, self-reliant, thinly patriarchal anticipation, he largely moves in his new novel, he sketches some of cultured, wounded, comically poor in his focus away from David’s American the guys who work for David King’s diet and karma. He has survived a heart scene and fills in, at some length, Yoav’s company, King’s Moving. Each brief attack, a pulverizing divorce from Bon- experiences as an Israeli soldier during portrait is a stuffed pantechnicon: nie, his Christian-convert wife—“Bon- the 2014 Gaza War. nie, the Fordham Road Albanian Or- Gyorgi had worked as a mover until he’d thodox who’d dipped in the mikveh he maleness of the world remains, touched a female minor who’d clerked at a gyp- sum sheather in Paterson, served most of a le- and stepped out dripping for him”— Tbut the novel’s energy inevitably nient sentence, and was now confined behind and an affair with Ruth, his office man- changes: instead of Queens and Amer- a storage cage to be more findable by his pa- ager. He has witnessed and waited out ican Jewishness, we get an inspired and role officer. . . . Ronaldo Rodriguez, AKA Ron- his daughter Tammy’s drug addiction troubling account of Yoav’s Army unit. riguez, AKA Godriguez, AKA Burrito Ron, and recovery, her graduation from We are introduced to the young men earned the last of his nicknames pioneering the technique of taking a customer’s odd loose N.Y.U. rewarded by the paternal gift who fought alongside Yoav, in partic- possessions and rolling them up in a rug for of a brownstone in Crown Heights. ular his friend Uri Dugri, who saved efficiency of transport. He was a squat wide- Until now, David’s Jewishness has his life. (Uri eventually joins Yoav in assed low center of gravity surmounted by a been atavistically reflexive. He has vis- New York, and the two work for King’s slick pubic moustache. Malcom C, alias Tal- ited Israel from time to time, but hasn’t Moving.) Cohen writes dispassionately, cum X, powdered his pits to stay dry and his hands to improve his grip. He was bullet bald given the country much concentrated from within the collective voice of the and jacked, with two additional adductor mus- thought, tending to liken its fate to his soldiers, about hardships received and cles found in only .006% of the population. business prospects: if the core concern imposed. A tone of defensive cynicism, is strong, you don’t sweat the smaller of macho boredom, brings alive the “Moving Kings” also struggles with stuff, which you can’t do much to in- costs, on both sides of the conflict, of form, but this may represent a conscious fluence anyway. That changes in the the routinized violence: effort on the author’s part at self-con- spring of 2015, after David’s heart at- Every once in a while there’d be a midnight traception. It is relatively brief (two hun- tack. His cousin Dina e-mails to ask if run through a village just to light it up. Search- dred and forty pages), accessible, and he might host (and employ) her son, ing for someone. Or for no one. Finding some- more or less conventionally structured; Yoav, who is finishing his national ser- one else. Or no one. Going into a house, to it is highly intelligent but not a novel vice in the Israeli Army. David responds surprise the house behind it, to surprise the of ideas, and though its prose does plenty from his convalescence in a way that neighbors nextdoor. Taking the doors off and going room to room. Herding a family into of swaggering, the swagger belongs to seems forgivably sentimental, if also the kitchen and then heading upstairs to ran- the characters—which is to say, most novelistically convenient. To have Is- sack the closets and unscrew all the beds nut of the novel is written in close third- raeli family in America, thinks David, by bolt. Slashing up the divan in the den and person or free indirect style, the gram- is to have Israel in America: “If he’d then sitting down on the framed remains to mar of everyday contemporary realism. stay in touch with Israel, if he’d main- cruise the news on Al Jazeera. . . . Babysitting a son or brother bound to the divan with plasti- It’s the right style for this novel’s world, tain with Israel, certain responsibilities cuffs draining him white and a drenched towel which is burly with particularities and would devolve on the living after his over his face keeping him cool, until the inter- vibrant with voice. The atmosphere at demise. He was almost sure of it, he al- rogators came. . . . A woman keening in the times resembles a Jewish “Sopranos,” most said it aloud: who among the liv- kitchen to the pitch of boiling water, you shut minus the violence—men, family, ing was going to shovel the dirt in his her up with the butt of your gun. You butted a jug and it sharded apart into archaeology money making, muscle. David King, the grave or say a kaddish? His daughter?” even before it hit the floor. son of a Jewish immigrant and Holo- A certain kind of Jewish novel would caust survivor, reared in Queens, owns proceed to burn this familiar fuel: a fa- Yoav and his squad mates are brash, a successful moving company with stor- ther finds a substitute son, a religiously entitled, sardonic. They are also afraid, age facilities in all five boroughs. We indolent American Jew renovates his an- and tentative about the validity of the first encounter him at a fancy fund- cient inheritance, the tough guy from very rights they enforce. Assigned to a raiser in the Hamptons, where he stands Queens, getting older and sicker, soft- border checkpoint, Yoav has the un- out like a sweating cart horse among ens up a bit. Cohen prepares the fire but easy feeling that he has himself become

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 63 the border, “dug into the sand along Wakefield, Bronx, NY, Christmas 2012.” African-American enslavement, to echo roads rived by rebar and garbled with You understand why the author, in a the political and liturgical work that its barbedwire.” The soldiers strive to seem novel already brimming with Biblical inversion, “Let My People Go,” has long more permanent than they are, always echoes (King David and the like), might performed in black music and litera- mocked by the drifting sands of the seize on this proffered unsubtlety. But ture. And how novelistically useful that desert, by its burned eternity: “If you it holds out confusion, not clarity. Avery has also become a Muslim, and convinced yourself, then you convinced Evicted Americans are like the ancient has a second name and alter ego, Imamu the people crossing, and if you con- Israelites? Or maybe like modern Pal- Nabi! The title page of this section runs, vinced the people crossing, then you estinians? And the mortgage brokers “Avery Luter, Imamu Nabi (Another convinced the wastes. That you were are like Pharaoh? Historically, politi- Occupation).” as rooted as the olive trees.” cally, the differences between the ob- I’m still unpersuaded by Cohen’s Cohen convincingly inhabits the life ligations of the Israel Defense Forces thematic ambitions, by this stabbing at of this Army unit, and in some respects and those of an American moving com- similitudes. (Whose occupation, by the novel never quite recovers from the pany (however unpleasant the contract) whom? Is Avery Luter somehow closer heat of his engagement. Some of that seem more acute than the similarities. in anguish and dispossession to the Pal- failure to recover is probably deliber- “Back under the Occupation, there had estinians, because, like them, he is Mus- ate. One premise of “Moving Kings” been shooting and here in America lim?) But an odd thing happens, in this is that when Yoav and Uri start work- there was no shooting, or none aimed consistently surprising novel. The tale ing as movers for David King they bring at them,” Cohen writes. Under the oc- of Avery Luter’s life pulls the book to- with them not only a bit of Israel cupation, he continues, channelling ward yet another narrative center. By but a bit of the Israeli conflict. They Yoav’s voice, they were able to smash this moment in the book, David King can move (themselves; other people’s things up, or call in a convoy of planes: has faded in interest and presence, and things), but they can’t move on. En- now Yoav and Uri also fall away from Otherwise, the work they were doing wasn’t acting this post-traumatic return, too different. They were still going into a house our attention, as we enter the desper- Cohen’s novel surely needs to find it- and checking the rooms by the floor. Checking ately straitened world of Avery Luter. self repeatedly pulled back to power- for people, checking for possessions. Clearing Cohen inhabits Luter’s existence as vi- ful remembered descriptions of the the people before clearing the possessions. The tally as he inhabited the Israeli Army men’s experiences in Israel. possessions would stay with them, the people unit: it’s a beautiful portrait, utterly en- were allowed to go wherever, provided it was always on the other side of the propertyline. grossing, full of passionate sympathy. second premise of the book seems “Moving Kings” is a strange, superbly A frailer. Cohen wants to suggest The labor might be similar, but the unsuccessful novel. There’s not a page parallels between what Yoav and his job certainly isn’t. The reader feels this without some vital charge—a flash of crew did as soldiers in Israel and Pal- frailty inscribed into the very form of metaphor, an idiomatic originality, a estine and what Yoav and his crew do the novel. The urgency of the descrip- bastard neologism born of nothing. You as movers for David King. The com- tions of Israeli combat repeatedly calls could say that it is patchworked with bat has shifted from the desert to the out to the weaker urgency of the de- successes: David King in the Hamp- streets. In New York, Yoav and Uri scriptions of American “combat”— tons, Yoav and Uri in the Israeli Army, are nicknamed the Raelis by their overshadowing them with their higher the King’s Moving crew at work in New co-workers, as if they were an élite squad stakes, and repeatedly summoning the York, Avery Luter flailing in his moth- within the squad. Cohen articulates a novelist back to Israel and away from er’s house. Yet these stories are more connection that probably did not need more mundane New York. convincing than the connections, the- to be announced, and which barely sur- Again, as if divining such objections, matic and formal, offered to bind them. vives serious scrutiny: “A group of guys Cohen increases the bid. A long section, Cohen never finds that deep novelistic go out hard, swarming the houses of about two-thirds into the novel, opens form, that tensile coherence, which strangers, taking the furniture apart, the story of Avery Luter, an African- Woolf idealized. This is a book of taking the furniture away, breaking shit American and a Vietnam vet who has brilliant sentences, brilliant paragraphs, by accident, and not by accident . . . fallen on hard times. Sacked from his brilliant chapters. Here things flare who would’ve guessed that the army job as a Port Authority toll collector, he singly, a succession of lighted matches, had been training him for moving?” stopped paying his bills, and is essen- and do not cast a more general illumi- Perhaps because moving office fur- tially camping out in the big house he nation. But Cohen opened his previ- niture is clearly not much like smash- inherited from his mother. He is served ous novel with a challenge: “There’s ing up a Palestinian house, Cohen ups with an eviction notice; in a harrowing nothing worse than description: hotel the ante. Yoav and his crew get switched scene, Yoav and the crew are sent to room prose. No, characterization is from ordinary moving duties to the much move his belongings. Avery’s suffering, worse. No, dialogue is.” So if his most grimmer business of eviction. A new and above all his race, would seem finally accessible novel yet, rich in all three de- section opens with a found epigraph— to enable and validate the connections spised elements, frustrates conventional “LET MY PEOPLE STAY”—and offers that the novel is keen to make: “Let My satisfactions, is it because he has failed the information that this is taken from People Stay” can be freshly re-inserted to find the right form or because he is a sign “on a house facing foreclosure, into the rich and terrible history of trying to found a new one? 

64 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017

a proper door. “Go on, make some MUSICAL EVENTS noise,” Odland told me. When my eyes had adjusted to the gloom—a few por- tals in the roof provide shafts of light TANK MUSIC during the day—I picked up a rubber- coated hammer and banged a pipe. The In Colorado, a uniquely resonant performance space. sound rang on and on: the reverbera- tion in the space lasts up to forty sec- BY ALEX ROSS onds. But it’s not a cathedral-style res- onance, which dissipates in space as it travels. Instead, sound seems to hang in the air, at once diffused and enriched. The combination of a parabolic floor, a high concave roof, and cylindrical walls elicits a dense mass of overtones from even a footfall or a cough. I softly hummed a note and heard pure har- monics spiralling around me, as if I had multiplied into several people who could sing. A few minutes later, actual singers, in the form of the nine-person vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, arrived. They had come to the Tank to make a recording and give a concert. They specialize in contemporary music, and gained notice when one of their mem- bers, the composer Caroline Shaw, won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for her piece “Par- tita for 8 Voices,” which she wrote for Roomful. The ensemble exploits a wide range of sounds, from ethereal harmo- nies to guttural cries and yelps. That evening, the singers laid down tracks and rehearsed for the concert, which would take place the following night. The Tank, in Rangely, has become a haven for the local music community. They knew in advance that the Tank would favor slower-moving, more static n 1976, the composer and sound art- distinctly uneasy. The guys instructed repertory. Quick chord shifts can cre- Iist Bruce Odland participated in an him to turn on his equipment, and then ate momentary chaos; to compensate, arts festival sponsored by the Colorado commenced throwing rocks at the tank Roomful’s director, Brad Wells, slowed Chautauqua, which presented shows and banging it with two-by-fours. the tempo. across the state. Odland’s contribution Odland found himself engulfed in the During a break, I went outside and was to create a sonic collage portray- most extraordinary noise he had ever found Odland looking nervously at the ing each place he visited. The last stop heard: an endlessly booming, ringing sky. “The weather was supposed to be was a town called Rangely, in north- roar. It was as if he were in the belfry clear,” he said. “But this red blob just western Colorado, on the high desert of an industrial cathedral. popped up on the radar.” As lightning that extends into Utah. Odland was The Tank, as everyone calls it, still flashed and the wind picked up, he outside one day, making recordings of looms over Rangely in rusty majesty, and several colleagues ran around, mov- ambient sounds, when a pickup truck looking a bit like Devils Tower. Late ing audio equipment to safety. I went pulled up beside him. Two burly oil one afternoon in June, Odland wel- back in, and the door clanged shut with workers were inside. One asked, “Are comed me there. He’s a wavy-haired a Mahlerian crash. Roomful of Teeth you the sound guy?” Odland nodded. sixty-five-year-old, with the sunny began to sing “my heart comes undone,” “Get in,” the worker said. Odland hes- manner of an undefeated hippie ide- by the Baltimore-based composer itated, then complied. They drove to a alist. In recent years, he and others have Judah Adashi—a rapt meditation that sixty-five-foot-tall water tank, on a hill- renovated the Tank, turning it into a draws elements from Björk’s song “Un- side on the outskirts of town. Odland performance venue and a recording ravel.” A moment later, the storm broke. was told to crawl into it, through a studio; it’s now called the Tank Cen- Gusts buffeting the exterior created an drainage hole. He obeyed, now feeling ter for Sonic Arts, and is outfitted with apocalyptic bass rumble; lashes of rain

66 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY VINCENT MAHƒ sounded like a hundred snare drums. “This is the anti-Marfa,” he told me, At the concert, Roomful of Teeth The voices bobbed on the welter of noise, referring to the art-world mecca in was joined by several guests: the com- sometimes disappearing into it and Texas, which has been gentrified be- poser, playwright, and actor Rinde Eck- sometimes riding above. As Adashi’s yond recognition. In Rangely, locals ert, who is celebrated for his 2000 Off music subsided, the storm subsided in have embraced the scheme. Urie Truck- Broadway show “And God Created turn. In my experience, music has never ing built an access road into the site. Great Whales”; the composer, singer, seemed closer to nature. The W. C. Striegel pipeline company and violist Jessica Meyer; and the com- supplied raw materials that can be poser Michael Harrison, who employs angely is dominated by the oil busi- converted into percussion instruments. just intonation—a tuning system that Rness: Chevron operates a major Giovanni’s Italian Grill created a spe- follows the contours of the natural har- crude-oil field in the vicinity. The Tank cial Tank pizza. Rangely is a conser- monic series, and is therefore perfectly has stood in town for decades, although vative town—Trump voters greatly suited to the Tank. Eckert began with no one is quite sure where it came from. outnumber Clinton voters—but it has a kind of inaugural ritual, chanting On its side are the words “Rio Grande,” welcomed the incursion of avant- while tapping a metal bowl with his which signify the Denver and Rio gardists bearing didgeridoos, and some fingers. Meyer’s fierce-edged playing Grande Western Railroad, but that line of the most dedicated sonic tinkerers activated the Tank’s awe-inspiring prop- never reached Rangely. The best guess are locals. A military veteran finds peace erties. Harrison’s glacially beautiful 2015 is that the Tank once stood in a rail- playing violin in the Tank. piece “Just Constellations” made the road town somewhere to the south, pro- “People feel a genuine awe,” Odland deepest connection to the place: as lu- viding water for steam locomotives. In told me. “They may ascribe it to the minous chords accumulated, it was diffi- the nineteen-sixties, an electric-power Tank, but I ascribe it to the awaken- cult to tell which pitches were coming association purchased the structure and ing of the ears in a predominantly vi- from live singers and which were com- moved it to Rangely, planning to use it sual age. Our ears get so abused on a ing out of the walls. to store water to fight fires. Once it ar- daily basis. Our modern society makes Afterward, performers and listen- rived, however, concerns arose that the a bad offer to them. We don’t use the ers mingled, consuming Giovanni’s piz- hillside underneath it might collapse hearing sense the way we evolved to, zas and trading impressions. “This is under the weight of so much water. So as hunter-gatherers interacting with exactly the sound we have always been it stood unused, its ownership passing nature. In there, you feel the sound on going for,” Wells told me. “It’s like a from one person to another. Eventu- the skin, you feel it in your gut. What natural microphone in there.” Jesse ally, a friend of Odland’s bought it, for people are in awe of is their own abil- Lewis, a brilliant young producer who ten dollars. Musicians ventured inside ity to hear properly.” was manning the studio, was delighted. to play and record; teen-agers used it “We have more than enough for an as a spooky party pad. he next day was the summer sol- album,” he said. “I might even be able Odland was born in Milwaukee in Tstice. The weather stayed clear for to extract something from the storm 1952, and studied composition and con- that evening’s Roomful of Teeth con- last night—I’ve never heard anything ducting at Northwestern University. cert, the Tank’s most ambitious event remotely like that.” By the mid-seventies, he had detoured to date. The maximum occupancy is Estelí Gomez, a soprano in Room- into experimental techniques, electron- forty-nine, but the gift of a set of speak- ful of Teeth, found herself button- ics, and non-Western instruments. His ers from Meyer Sound, the wonder- holed by two young Rangely critics: first public installation, “Sun Song,” working Bay Area company, allowed Caleb Wiley, who is ten, and Zane incorporating sounds recorded at the for a vivid exterior broadcast. Tables Wiley, who is seven. Elizabeth Robin- Tank, was broadcast from the clock were set up outside, with candles and son Wiley, the boys’ mother, edits a tower of a Denver high school in 1977. refreshments. Inside, listeners sat in magazine called Home on the Rangely. Since the eighties, he has been based chairs against the wall. The crowd was Caleb said, “I’ve done sounds inside in New York, and has worked with the a mix of Rangelyites and out-of-town the Tank, but mostly simple sounds. Wooster Group, Laurie Anderson, and Tank supporters; one couple had driven I’ve never heard these, um, eerie, com- Peter Sellars, among others. In 2013, he from Austin, Texas. bined, terrestrial noises.” Zane chimed formed a group called Friends of the I talked to Samantha Wade, who in: “The first two songs were O.K. for Tank to preserve the structure, which grew up down the hill. She taught her- me, then it got super-scary.” Gomez was in danger of being demolished. self to sing in the space, and because asked, “But scary can be fun, right?” More than a hundred thousand dol- overtones are so pronounced there she The boys nodded cautiously. lars was raised through Kickstarter cam- became more accustomed to the pure Caleb went on to speculate that the paigns. A team of volunteers worked intervals of the natural harmonic series Tank had become a portal for the music to convert the space and bring it up to than to the equal-tempered Western of aliens: “This is their own type of code; Odland learned welding in the system. She now holds the title of Tank eerie music that we haven’t discovered process. assistant. “It’s deeply touching to see all yet. So you’re, like, daring yourself to What Odland didn’t want was to this happen,” Wade told me. “Somehow, stay in this alien world.” Gomez hugged create an artsy enclave that had no con- I always knew it would, but to see it him. One road to the musical future nection to the community around it. physically manifest is pretty incredible.” now runs through Rangely. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 67 of the Arts, where she studied with THE THEATRE Liz Diamond, an unforgettable direc- torial force; in each one, I’ve seen and learned things that I want to remem- THE DIRECTORÕS CUT ber, thanks in large part to Blain-Cruz’s ability to make highly verbal material A staging of Dominique Morisseau’s “Pipeline.” visual. (She won an Obie for her direc- tion of last year’s revival of Suzan-Lori BY HILTON ALS Parks’s dense work “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead.”) In her current production, “Pipeline,” by Dominique Morisseau (at the Mitzi E. Newhouse), Blain- Cruz pursues another of her fortes, which is to draw us into the play- wright’s world and make us under- stand how a character is fallible and thus worthy of our respect. Nya (Karen Pittman) is a teacher at an economically disadvantaged urban high school. We see the stu- dents in videos that are projected, be- tween scenes, onto the stark white wall of the teachers’ lounge. The im- ages, shot in black-and-white and played at a slow speed, give us a sense of chaos in progress: no matter how glacial its pace, no one can keep it from happening—not Nya, or her friend Laurie (Tasha Lawrence), a white teacher who sometimes gets into it physically with the kids, or Dun ( Jaime Lincoln Smith), a security guard who has feelings for Nya and lots of smarts, but no real power. The thirty-nine-year-old Moris- seau, who has had five full-length Karen Pittman as a mother looking for a better life for her son (Namir Smallwood). works produced in New York so far, writes orthodox plays, with a begin- e all know that theatre is an and Young Jean Lee. But their scope ning, a middle, and an end, during Wephemeral art. Looking back and their style have not, unfortunately, the course of which her protagonists— on a given production, we dance been matched by their directorial con- often women—undergo a transfor- around in and then sort out what the temporaries, partly because of finan- mation or a catharsis, usually as a re- critic Arlene Croce called “afterim- cial limitations. Theatre directors com- sult of some political upheaval or ages,” fragments that are either tied ing up today are rarely given the change. Indeed, the idea that the po- together by the director’s style—by time and the money to develop their litical is personal, whether we like it the nuances in the way that he or she voices and, in order to have some- or not, informs some of Morisseau’s set the scenes and had the actors move thing approaching a career, they often best scripts, including “Detroit ’67” and speak, by the surprises that he or turn to TV. There are exceptions, (2013); her black female characters are she managed to draw out of the though—theatre artists, inspired by powerful, but powerless when it comes script—or made dull and forgettable legendary directors ranging from José to how they’re treated by black men, by a lack thereof. In the past decade Quintero to JoAnne Akalaitis, Rich- who intentionally or unintentionally or so, American theatre has been re- ard Foreman, and Elizabeth Le- try to silence or destroy them. How thought by a number of serious, orig- Compte, who fight to establish and could it be otherwise, given the shit that inal, and deeply ambitious playwrights, maintain their vision. most black people have to deal with including Annie Baker, Thomas Brad- I have seen five shows directed by in this often racist society? How can shaw, Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs- the thirty-three-year-old Lileana Blain- they survive the hatred, let alone love Jenkins, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Ruhl, Cruz, a graduate of the Yale School one another? These are questions that

68 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK LEGER Morisseau asks over and over again. us in on what we cannot see—she ex- Nya’s son, Omari (Namir Small- plodes. She knows that she doesn’t wood), attends a boarding school up- have the privilege of doing so in pub- state, where he is romantically in- lic, unless she wants to be carted off volved with another “underprivileged” as an insane black woman, just an - student, Jasmine (Heather Velazquez). other statistic. Nya is a woman who Nya wants Omari to find a better path feels while trying not to feel. She is than the one that his father, Xavier unable to imagine her son as separate (Morocco Omari), followed; she wants from herself: he is forever a part of her him to love his mother—and other body. In one scene, on her hands and women of color—more honestly and knees she begs Omari to help her un- fully. Xavier is an upwardly mobile derstand something; it’s a dance of guy who left his family for reasons death that moves to the rhythm of life. that are mostly unexplained, but, as The scene is overwritten, but Moris- staged by Blain-Cruz, he is still a mon- seau isn’t afraid of melodrama; she umental figure in Nya’s life. Tall and knows that highly theatrical emotions broad-shouldered, when he visits Nya can actually be true, on or off the stage. at work he looms over her as she stands Blain-Cruz cleverly runs interfer- downstage center; she seems dimin- ence by stylizing Pittman’s pleading ished in his presence. (This is one of gestures and her collapse. If Pittman the subtle shifts in perception that are played the scene flat—as if the lan- Blain-Cruz’s strength.) In one scene, guage weren’t happening to her—you’d Blain-Cruz has father and son sitting miss the point of Morisseau’s script. side by side. The two men share space, On the other hand, if she played it as but are uneasy in an intimacy that written, the show would degenerate Omari may long for and Xavier can- into bathos. Blain-Cruz has Pittman not offer: they have no example of behave as if the world were closing in male closeness to draw on. on her, because it is: she wants to throw herself into the grave that is being mari’s parents sent him to a pri- dug for her son, and while this may Ovate school in order to give him look, partly, ridiculous, it’s real to the a better chance in a world that couldn’t director and she endeavors to make care less if he prospers or fails. Now it real to us. he may have blown his future, by shov- The challenge of staging truths ing a white teacher who was conde- that are dramatic is what Blain-Cruz scending to him. Morisseau’s interest struggles with throughout “Pipeline.” in the black family isn’t theoretical or Morisseau is an energetic storyteller; distanced. She wants us to understand the telling of a tale transports her. But and perhaps experience Nya’s pain as her scripts can sound like those water Omari slips through the net of her bowls that produce musical tones— love. No matter how carefully she has full but thin. She wants the narrative tried to maneuver her son through to be carried along by the propulsive life’s treacheries, disaster can’t be drive of her monologues, by the deep avoided: Omari is a black man. What need and injury of her female char- must it be like to anticipate your child’s acters. But, by accentuating only their slow annihilation, the construction hurt, she pushes them toward stereo- of his tomb, brick by brick, even as type—you know, black women feel he lives? more, so they must emote more. In As played by Pittman—an actress “Pipeline,” Pittman has had to put of real wit, who was sensational in aside what she does best, which is Ayad Akhtar’s “Disgraced,” in 2012— maintaining a rueful distance from Nya can’t afford to be a drama queen. the proceedings. Blain-Cruz tries to But the drama is there. Because she compensate for that by finessing the has to repress so much at work and at comedic bits, but she can’t quite over- home in order to keep herself and her come the curse of a flawed script, little family together, it’s inevitable by a talented writer who is too taken that when she expresses an emotion with the cliché of the black mother in private—she talks directly to the as a symbol of oppression and then audience from time to time, clueing redemption. ♦

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 69 for abandoned humans, urge Caesar to THE CURRENT CINEMA lead his loyal apes to a promised land, away from strife, but he spurns that perfectly sensible suggestion for the ANIMAL SPIRITS sake of revenge. And why? Because his family has come to grief at the hands “War for the Planet of the Apes” and “Lady Macbeth.” of Homo sapiens—specifically, a nutty colonel (Woody Harrelson) with a God BY ANTHONY LANE complex. (He was forced, he claims, “to sacrifice my only son so that humanity hree years after the passing of Right away, in other words, this be- would be saved.”) As the final credits TCharlton Heston, a franchise was comes an Andy Serkis film. It is directed rolled, I waited for the words “Mr. Har- reborn. First, we had “Rise of the Planet by Matt Reeves, as was its predecessor, relson’s rank, war paint, and megalo- of the Apes” (2011). Then came “Dawn but what has summoned audiences to mania courtesy of Marlon Brando,” but of the Planet of the Apes” (2014). these movies, above all, is Serkis’s com- in vain. Chronologically speaking, we should puterized presence in the part of Cae- The main problem with “War for now be enjoying “Breakfast on the Planet sar. And Serkis is present—not visible the Planet of the Apes” is that, although of the Apes,” with the low-calorie fruit- but intensely apprehensible, in every it rouses and overwhelms, it ain’t much and-berries option very much to the twitch, snarl, and downcast gaze of his fun. Not content with taking itself ex- fore. Instead of which, along comes “War animal avatar. To maintain that Caesar tremely seriously, it asks that we accord it the same respect, and this presents a diplomatic challenge for those of us who believe that there is something intrin- sically funny about an orangutan riding a horse. Still, there is much to relish. The script, by Reeves and Mark Bom- back, comes up with a pair of finely matched conceits: first, that people might get sick and lose their gifts of speech and higher reasoning; and, second, con- versely, that a chimp raised in a zoo (Steve Zahn) might only talk, forget- ting how to howl or to hoot. As for the special effects, by now they are so ac- complished that they no longer feel like effects at all; we accept, as quite normal, the notion that apes can weep, self- analyze, and, when imprisoned, hatch In Matt Reeves’s extension of the franchise, the apes seem more human than ever. an elaborate escape plan. Such is the digital sovereignty, indeed, that they for the Planet of the Apes,” the harsh- is merely played by Serkis, or voiced by sometimes appear all too human, and est installment so far. Whether the poor him, does paltry justice to his skills, and, one wonders how much further they creatures will ever make it to dusk and in truth, we need a new vocabulary to can evolve. In the next film, presumably, bedtime is open to debate. cope with such innovation. I would say they will be forming subcommittees on The hero, as before, is Caesar, whom that, through his mastery of motion road safety, going to church in hats, and we have known since he was a chimplet. capture, the character is released. trying to stop their kids from watching He is a pacific soul, and the irony that Not that he has far to roam, in moral monkey porn after dark. “You look tired,” has tolled through the trilogy is that, terms. The Caesar of the first film was Caesar is told, as if he’s just had a crappy though averse to conflict, he keeps being a household pet who wound up as a day at the office. What happened to wrenched into it, either by more trucu- commander of simian troops, on the messing about in trees? lent apes or by the dumbness of man. Golden Gate Bridge, whereas the new We are reminded of that reluctance at movie dumps him directly into battle he setting of “Lady Macbeth” is the outset of the new movie, which finds and scarcely lets up; by the end, he is Tnot Scotland, sunk in medieval him in a forest, marshalling troops against chucking grenades and setting off mist, but northern England, in 1865. an onslaught of hostile humans. Having fireballs, like any old hunk of muscle Nor does the heroine bear the name taken a few prisoners, he lets them go, in an action flick. His comrades, in- Macbeth. She is called Katherine (Flor- saying, “I did not start this war”—speak- cluding Maurice (Karin Konoval), the ence Pugh), and, though she is a lady, ing not with a petulant snap but in the orangutan so tender of heart that he with servants at her command, she slow and measured tones of grim regret. should really be running an orphanage spends the movie fighting to unlace

70 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER the ties of social custom, and to hold a life cannot be hushed up for long, and animal passion so much as the efforts the ideal of the ladylike up to scorn. rumors reach the ears of her husband, that are made to trap it. Katherine is When we first meet her, she has re- who is away on business. “So, you have often photographed head on, her face cently married Alexander (Paul Hil- become a whore in my absence,” he says dominating the middle of the frame, ton), who, on their wedding night, tells on his return. as if she were about to be interrogated. her to strip, climbs into bed, and turns It’s no accident that the film un- Only when her husband and his father his back on her. They inhabit a grand folds in 1865. That was when its source, leave the house do we switch to a hand- house, sparsely furnished but crammed Nikolai Leskov’s “Lady Macbeth of held shot of her, walking down a pas- with echoes and creaks. Life, for Kath- the Mtsensk District,” was published. sageway and out into the open, toward erine, is wadded together from bore- There was a vogue for the transplant- the moorlands that are her proper hab- dom, frustration, and insult. You can ing of Shakespearean tragic motifs into itat. If anything, the movie is mapped feel her ticking like a bomb. Russian soil, exemplified by Turgenev’s out with such controlling care that it Much of the time, she is left in the “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District” occasionally feels airless and unpeo- company of her maid Anna (Naomi (1849) and “A Lear of the Steppes” pled, leaving us with practical objec- Ackie) and her father-in-law, the un- (1870), although Leskov’s novella-length tions: Why do we so rarely see the rest bearable Boris (Christopher Fairbank). tale claws deeper than Turgenev, be- of the staff? Would they not notice a He is the kind of brute who makes yond his lyricism and ennui, and en- body being hauled away, on horseback, Katherine sit silently at table while the ters an elemental wildness that seems in the still of the night? menfolk converse, and Anna, whom he touched by the witchery of Shake- Luckily, we have Florence Pugh to wrongly accuses of stealing, crawl on speare’s original. It’s worth pointing balance things out. She has the spon- her hands and knees. In case we are out what Oldroyd does not take from taneity that the tale demands, and the not sufficiently repelled, the film’s di- Leskov: the novella concludes with a punch of her performance lies in its rector, William Oldroyd, allows clots forced march and an act of mad re- sheer nerve; even though her charac- of food to cling to Boris’s lips while he venge in a swollen river, whereas the ter has our sympathy from the start, eats. It seems only fitting that, when movie stops short of all that, sticking she keeps asking for more, tugging at he chokes on his breakfast one day, close to home. For a more comprehen- us like a querulous child until our pa- Katherine should make no move to sive tribute to Leskov, listen to the opera tience cracks. Her love for Sebastian—a help. She needs him to suffer. that Shostakovich forged from the story, lusty dolt, and little else—is out of all One of the workmen on the estate in 1934, earning him the dangerous dis- proportion, and when she tells him, is Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), whose jobs pleasure of the Stalin regime. “I’d rather stop you breathing than have include walking the dogs and smolder- Oldroyd is a theatre director by trade, you doubt how I feel,” we sense the ing in the direction of his mistress. (Some and “Lady Macbeth,” remarkably, is his clutch of something cold and mad in of the dialogue, which is the least sub- first full-length feature. It is a lean and her, and we flinch. As she eliminates tle aspect of the film, combines his var- forbidding affair—more Jacobean than the obstacles to her desire, one by one, ious interests: “Bitch’ll get restless if she’s Victorian, perhaps, in its ominous tread, the center of the fable’s monstrous grav- tied up too long.”) Katherine responds and in its certainty that blood must ity begins to shift. We like to think to his advances with alacrity. Down- spill. Few movies this year will be more that, in a tyrannizing world, the best stairs, she may go through the motions likely to molest your sleep. We get a and the bravest thing is to beat the des- of good conduct, but upstairs is another number of deaths, none of them nat- pots down. The worst thing, though, matter; we cut straight from the cou- ural, and one, a smothering, is all the is that you become a tyrant yourself.  ple’s rutting, with Katherine gripping ghastlier for being imposed with such the bedstead, to a stream of tea being determined calm. What draws the cam- NEWYORKER.COM poured into a porcelain cup. So divided era, and governs its movements, is not Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 24, 2017 71 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 David Borchart, must be received by Sunday, July 23rd. The finalists in the July 3rd contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the August 7th & 14th 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

“We sue at dawn.” Jeff Sawyer, Franconia, N.H.

“Hostile takeovers ain’t what they used to be.” “I was just transferred to the fraternity ward.” Stephen Everhart, Tyrone, Pa. Trevor Baine, Washington, D.C.

“The streets will run red with tape.” Michael Sapko, Rockville, Md.