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AVAILABLEAVAILABLE ININ HARDCOVERHARDCOVER ANDAND ASAS ANAN AUDIOBOOKAUDIOBOOK | PRINCIPLES.COM/NEWYORKERPRINCIPLES.COM/NEWYORKER | The real story, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 in real time. 4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Evan Osnos on politics at the Winter Olympics; a doping whistle-blower; perfectly imperfect models; France’s gender-equality minister; guerrilla florist. ANNALS OF WAR Jenna Krajeski 20 Escaping ISIS

How Yazidis helped the U.S. help their people. ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY SHOUTS & MURMURS TRUMP,TRUMP, PUTIN,PUTIN, ANDAND TTHEHE Zack Bornstein 27 A Typical Day NEWNEW COLDCOLD WARWAR What lay behind Russia’s interference in the LIFE AND LETTERS 2016 election—and what lies ahead? Thomas Meaney 28 By Evan Osnos, David Remnick, Joshua Yaffa Doktor Zeitgeist MARCH 6, 2017 ISSUE Can philosophy explain populist rage? LETTER FROM MOSCOW Jeffrey Toobin 34 The Miss Universe Connection Trump pageants and the Mueller investigation. PROFILES Ian Parker 42 Stairmaster Thomas Heatherwick’s relentless rise. FICTION William Trevor 54 “Mrs. Crasthorpe” THE CRITICS SUBSCRIBE THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 60 “Black Panther,” “Early Man.” A CRITIC AT LARGE Louis Menand 63 A neglected counter-insurgency pioneer. BOOKS 69 Briefly Noted Joyce Carol Oates 70 A. J. Finn’s “The Woman in the Window.” Stay current with our award- MUSICAL EVENTS winning writing on politics and Alex Ross 72 Keeping the French Baroque contemporary. international aff airs, culture POP MUSIC and entertainment, business Carrie Battan 74 Dashboard Confessional and Justin Timberlake. and technology. Plus a nearly THE THEATRE unlimited supply of cartoons. Hilton Als 76 “Hangmen.” ON TELEVISION newyorker.com/go/today Emily Nussbaum 78 “Here and Now,” “This Is Us,” “The Fosters.” POEMS D. Nurkse 39 “Mozart’s Final Hour” Jane Hirshfield 57 “Wild Turkey”

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THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 1 PROMOTION

CONTRIBUTORS CONFERENCES PRESENTS

Ian Parker (“Stairmaster,” p. 42) contrib- Jenna Krajeski (“Escaping ISIS,” p. 20) uted his first piece to the magazine in has contributed to Harper’s, The Na- 1994 and became a staff writer in 2000. tion, and Virginia Quarterly Review, and was a 2016 Knight-Wallace Fel- Joyce Carol Oates (Books, p. 70), the low at the University of Michigan. 2017 recipient of the International Fes- tival of Literature and Art with Humor William Trevor (Fiction, p. 54), who died Award, most recently published the in 2016, published dozens of novels and APRIL NEW 12th YORK story collection “Beautiful Days.” short-story collections. In 2008, he won the Irish Book Awards’ Bob Hughes Evan Osnos (Comment, p. 15) is the au- Lifetime Achievement Award. thor of “Age of Ambition,” which won the National Book Award for nonfic- Mary Hawthorne (The Talk of the Town, tion in 2014. p. 18) is a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff. Carrie Battan (The Talk of the Town, p. 17; Pop Music, p. 74) is a contribut- Thomas Meaney (“Doktor Zeitgeist,” ing writer for newyorker.com and a p. 28) is a Dr. Richard M. Hunt Fellow Women regular contributor to the magazine. at the American Council on Germany.

Entrepreneurs Tell Jeffrey Toobin (“The Miss Universe Con- Jane Hirshfield (Poem, p. 57) has been a nection,” p. 34) is the author of, most chancellor of the Academy of American Their Stories recently, “American Heiress: The Wild Poets. Her latest books are “The Beauty: Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Poems” and “Ten Windows: How Great Trial of Patty Hearst.” Poems Transform the World.”

Emily Nussbaum (On Television, p. 78), Louis Menand (A Critic at Large, p. 63), Why they did it the magazine’s television critic, won a staff writer since 2001, was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. the 2016 National Humanities Medal. How they did it.

What they learned. NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

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2 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 THE MAIL

ALL JAMMED UP THE TRUTH ABOUT ASSAULT

Joshua Rothman’s article on paper jams Jia Tolentino ends her article on Colum- resurrected my memories of three decades bia University’s attempt to decrease in- of altercations with printers in computer stances of sexual assault on campus with shops all over Baltimore (“Jambusters,” a hypothetical scenario described as a February 12th & 19th). I was a business- drunken “blur” (“Safer Spaces,” Febru- forms designer and salesman in the era ary 12th & 19th). I have worked with of continuous, pin-fed paper forms. (Re- sexual-assault survivors on campuses for member paper with holes down each two decades. What I have seen, time and side?) My day would often begin trying time again, are male perpetrators who to coax interleaved and fanfolded sets of premeditate their crimes, choosing vic- crimped-and-perforated carbon through tims based on who they think is least an I.B.M. 1403 printer at twelve hundred likely to report them. This reality is miss- Luis de Lucena, Arte de Ajedres, first edition of the earliest surviving manual of chess, Salamanca, circa 1496-97. lines a minute, which is like trying to ing from the persistent argument that if Estimate $10,000 to $15,000. shove a quilt through a mail slot very students drink less and have comfort- quickly. If that worked, it was on to the able seating aside from their beds then Early Printed, Medical, decollator, a Coupe de Ville-length ma- their fumbling behaviors will change. Scientific & Travel Books MARCH 8 chine that transformed the sets into a Tolentino acknowledges that “there will neat stack of forms and multiple rolls of always be people, mostly men, who ex- Tobias Abeloff • [email protected] carbon paper. Next was the burster, a vi- perience a power differential as license Preview: March 3, 12-5; March 5 to 7, 10-6 cious paper-eating device that ripped the to do what they want,” but it bears re- 104 East 25th St, NY, NY 10010 • 212 254 4710 SWANNGALLERIES.COM forms into individual sheets (or to shreds) peating that sexual assault is not primar- with the speed and the racket of a tommy ily about sex but, rather, about the power gun. My proudest invention was an un- inherent in gendered violence. patented static-elimination device, a yard- Roseanne Giannini Quinn long piece of aluminum Christmas tin- 1Cupertino, Calif. sel tied to a length of fourteen-gauge lamp wire that I wrapped around something AIR-TRAFFIC CONTROL grounded. It stretched across the back of journey into the the printer, so that the paper passed over In Ian Frazier’s account of how drone ancient world — it. When manufacturers started making racing could take screen-lovers “back into expert-led | small groups tinsel out of plastic, I haunted Goodwills the actual world,” he says that he is an special access - in search of old packs of the metal stuff. “admirer of reality,” and gives the last Thanks for the reminder of years spent word to a young superstar drone pilot Exclusive access to the sites where history was made extracting mangled payroll checks from who is “seeing things no one has ever printers with a straightened coat hanger. seen” (“Airborne,” February 5th). What Ronald W. Pilling about the rest of us, who also admire re- pompeii Bishopville, Md. ality, and yet would prefer to experience albania it without drones buzzing above our Erwin Ruiz, the youthful leader of Xe- heads? I’m fine with drone racing pro- sicily rox’s paper-jam team, was onto some- viding screen-viewable thrills on pre- spain & portugal thing when he invoked Bernoulli’s prin- designed racecourses in dedicated stadi- ciple of fluid dynamics: “Fast-moving air ums. But, outside those arenas, unregulated & many more exerts less air pressure than slow-moving drone use will defile the public airspace. air.” However, as I learned in flight school, Eric Keeling over 120 tours with it is not the bottom of the wing that is New Paltz, N.Y. leading archaeologists- curved, as Rothman says, but the top of from as little as $970 the wing, over which the air moves fast- • toll-free: 1-833-616-3172 est. The bottom side is flat, so that slower- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, [email protected] moving air creates lift. Sailboats use the address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to andantetravels.com [email protected]. Letters may be edited same effect when they tack into the wind. for length and clarity, and may be published in We can arrange your international air - Jim Stoffer any medium. We regret that owing to the volume contact us for more details Astoria, Ore. of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 3 FEBRUARY 21 – 27, 2018 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Tyler, the Creator, a rapper-songwriter, clothing designer, and director, who plays Madison Square Garden on Feb. 23-24, has grown from a foulmouthed seedling into something more refined. In 2011, he emerged as the central member of Odd Future, a rap collective whose charged music videos and edgy interviews reshaped artist image-making for a new decade. His latest album, “Flower Boy,” traces a mind in transition and a body in constant motion, with confessional stories and baroque production that draw from the best of aughts-era outsider pop.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DURIMEL compositions marked by complex vocal har- monies, lush orchestration, and daring key modulations that rivalled (and in some ways NIGHT LIFE surpassed) the sounds on “Sgt. Pepper’s.” Ini- tially, “Odessey and Oracle” bombed, and the 1 Zombies followed through on their breakup. she recorded for the label Orchid Tapes in Two years later, they scored an unlikely hit ROCK AND POP the vocoder-harmony style of Imogen Heap’s with the album’s closer, “Time of the Sea- “Hide and Seek.” It’s a fitting description of son,” which reached No. 3 on the American Musicians and night-club proprietors lead the sensation that her music conjures: being charts. The Zombies began touring again in complicated lives; it’s advisable to check outside of time, and yet somehow fully im- 2004; they play three nights at City Win- in advance to confirm engagements. mersed in it. Her 2013 album, “Olive Juice,” ery. (155 Varick St. 212-608-0555. Feb. 27-28 was entrancing, unfurling with bewitching and March 1.) ALA.NI harmonies and curious percussive patterns. 1 If you’ve sat out the past five decades or so of At Silent Barn, she joins the dark pop group popular music, and believe that the singing Corey Flood as they celebrate their EP re- JAZZ AND STANDARDS tradition began and ended with the theatrical lease, along with Anna Altman and Privacy stylings of Julie Andrews and Judy Garland, Issues. (603 Bushwick Ave., Brooklyn. silent- Peter Bernstein a breath of fresh air is hiding in plain sight. barn.org. Feb. 25.) There are plenty of jazz guitarists currently ALA.NI is a singer in the purest sense, a mas- pushing the envelope of the art form, but ter of grand cabaret standards who has moved Show Me the Body sometimes expertly performed mainstream on from her past as a background singer for Julian Cashwan Pratt, the lead singer of this picking is the only thing that will do the acts as disparate as Blur, Mary J. Blige, and Queens hardcore outfit, steps on photogra- trick, and Bernstein is the man for the job. Andrea Bocelli. Born in London to Grenadian phers—but only the ones who come between A smooth-toned bebopper with an outsized parents, she studied at the distinguished Syl- the band and the fans. At Show Me the Body’s technique (one that the position demands), via Young Theatre School, and broke out with ripping gigs, they reserve the pit for kids with- Bernstein leads a quartet that includes the pi- a showstopping set on the BBC live-music out cameras, with Pratt giving deadpan direc- anist Sullivan Fortner, the bassist Doug Weiss, series “Later . . . with Jools Holland.” Last tions to the crowd between shrieks. He and his and the drummer Leon Parker. (Village Van- year, ALA.NI released an album of stripped- bandmates put an original spin on the hard- guard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255- down ballads called “You & I,” recorded en- core sound (banjos and rap verses haven’t al- 4037. Feb. 20-25.) tirely with a vintage nineteen-thirties-era RCA ways had a place in the genre) and share a ribbon microphone. Now based in Paris, the refreshing dedication to the punk tenets of Dave Douglas: Dizzy Atmosphere singer has performed in the U.S. only a hand- inclusivity and bullheaded productivity. “I’m The brilliant trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie would ful of times; her upcoming appearance at Le in the city and I’m ready to fight / K-9, ready have turned a hundred in 2017, but it’s never Poisson Rouge is a rare treat for her budding to bite,” Pratt snarls, staring down a police too late to honor one of the principal archi- Stateside audience. (158 Bleecker St. 212-505- dog, in “K-9,” the band’s latest video. Show tects of modern jazz. Douglas, long a spear- 3474. Feb. 27.) Me the Body opens for Lightning Bolt this head of new jazz, reminds us of his own roots as week. (Elsewhere, 599 Johnson Ave., Brooklyn. a trumpeter here, supported by such forward- Phoebe Bridgers elsewherebk.com. Feb. 21.) thinking stalwarts as the guitarist Bill Frisell, This Los Angeles singer-songwriter released the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, and the her début album, “Stranger in the Alps,” last DJ Taye pianist Gerald Clayton. A reverent take on year. Raised in Pasadena, she studied vocal jazz DJ Taye’s 2017 single “Burnin Ya Boa” exem- beloved classics is not to be expected. (Appel and played bass for punk bands while nursing plifies the Chicago footwork subgenre of elec- Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th her solo repertoire. Her album title may spawn tronic music, mainly through its percussion. St. 212-721-6500. Feb. 23-24.) images of a place cold and remote, but Bridg- Metronomic throbs of bass and handclaps ers delivers stories about people both near and race forward at high speed like gag noise- Carmen Lundy far with a warm conversational tone that re- makers tossed at toes, designed for feet to Considerable critical buzz in the late eight- calls influences like Mark Kozelek and Conor quick-step around them. Taye and his col- ies just wasn’t enough to catapult Lundy into Oberst. She has the detailed writing style of laborator DJ Manny handle snatches of piano the major leagues of jazz vocalists, but perse- the late Lemmy Kilmister, casting street lights and saxophone from a recorded sample, tap- verance and fierce talent have kept her in the under starlight and burning trash on the beach ping out an entirely new melody that bends game. Drawing from her well-received 2017 in the same song. She performs with Soccer and sways across three minutes. Taye is one release, “Code Noir,” this socially informed Mommy for two nights at Music Hall of Wil- of the youngest members of Chicago’s Tek- singer is joined by the fusion legend Patrice liamsburg. (66 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 718-486- life crew, founded by the late local icon DJ Rushen on piano. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th 5400. Feb. 22-23.) Rashad. The twenty-four-year-old d.j. and St. 212-576-2232. Feb. 22-25.) producer showcases his city’s frantic dance Carla dal Forno sound at the first installment of a residency Jaleel Shaw and Steve Wilson This Australian singer and multi-instrumen- curated by the vinyl archivist and producer There will be plenty of mutual respect—and talist got her start in her native Melbourne, Quantic. Stay on the dance floor until last maybe some spilled blood—as two rangy alto playing with lo-fi bands while pursuing a de- call and you’ll be able to skip the gym this saxophonists, Shaw and Wilson, mix it up. A gree in fine arts. In 2014, dal Forno began week. (Good Room, 98 Meserole Ave., Brook- leathery rhythm section, including the pianist to record her own melancholy, atmospheric lyn. goodroombk.com. Feb. 22.) Bruce Barth and the bassist Dezron Douglas, will electro-pop. Her 2016 début solo album, “You be on hand to stimulate the action. (Jazz Stan- Know What It’s Like,” was a sleeper hit; she The Zombies dard, 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. Feb. 20-21.) returned last year with four more songs on an In the spring of 1967, these British Invasion EP called “The Garden.” The music is dark rockers walked into Abbey Road Studios, Tierney Sutton and gloomy; recently, in an inspired bit of where the Beatles had just finished record- A stylish and canny singer determined to promotion, dal Forno created a playlist for ing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” usher the pop and rock auteurs of past de- her own funeral, including songs by Brian and started tracking their own masterpiece, cades into the jazz-vocal repertoire, Sutton Eno, Anna Domino, and the Fates. (Good “Odessey and Oracle.” The Zombies had a has delved into the Joni Mitchell songbook, Room, 98 Meserole Ave., Brooklyn. goodroom- No. 1 U.S. hit (“She’s Not There”) just three and on her 2016 album, “The Sting Variations,” bk.com. Feb. 26.) years earlier, but, after failing to replicate that she put her own spin on the work of Gordon success with subsequent releases, they began Sumner. “Roxanne” didn’t make the cut, but Emily Reo plotting their split. Before bowing out, the such soundtrack-of-a-generation fodder as The Orlando-born artist and synthesizer spe- group wanted to make one last record, and, “Message in a Bottle” and “Fields of Gold” cialist Reo declares “Time cast a spell on freed from commercial expectations and out- were given new life. (Birdland, 315 W. 44th St. me” in her twinkling song “Spell,” which side producers, they created twelve brilliant 212-581-3080. Feb. 20-24.)

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 5 tience, steady hands, and a subtle touch, qualities found in abundance on his transfixing 2017 record- ing of “La Présence, les Silences,” a major forty- CLASSICAL MUSIC one-minute work by the Swiss composer Jürg Frey. That piece will anchor Boon’s Brooklyn recital, 1 which also includes première performances of Dances from “West Side Story,” and Copland’s works by Tom Johnson, Dean Rosenthal, and Mi- OPERA magisterial Third Symphony. Feb. 22 at 7:30 and chael Vincent Waller. Feb. 23 at 8:30. (Spectrum, 70 Feb. 23-24 at 8. (David Geffen Hall. 212-875-5656.) Flushing Ave., Brooklyn. spectrumnyc.com.) Metropolitan Opera With its mythological take on Christian themes, Paul Jacobs at St. Paul’s Chapel New York Polyphony Richard Wagner’s magisterial final opera, “Parsi- The commanding young organist, on the Juilliard Performances of early-music repertoire can some- fal,” can have a liturgical air, but the conductor Yan- faculty, comes to the chapel of Trinity Church Wall times sound anemic, but the four men in this nick Nézet-Séguin suffuses the work with youth- Street to play the new Organ Concerto by a distin- Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble sing with ful vigor, giving it a warm, affirming glow. His guished colleague, Christopher Rouse, known for warmth and richness. The tenor Andrew Fuchs approach creates meaningful tension juxtaposed his burly but deeply expressive scores. It’s part of and the bass-baritone Jonathan Woody join the with François Girard’s bleak, postapocalyptic pro- a week of concerts inaugurating the chapel’s new quartet in a program, presented by Miller The- duction, in which the anguished Amfortas—sung, Noack three-manual pipe organ; works by Julian atre, that includes works by Tallis (the exquisite in an astonishing performance, by Peter Mattei— Wachner and Poulenc (the Organ Concerto) are Lamentations I and II and the powerful “Suscipe is styled as the Fisher King of medieval legend, also on the program, with Wachner conducting quaeso”), as well as works by Byrd and by An- whose failing health renders the landscape dry, the excellent orchestral forces of NOVUS NY. Feb. drew Smith, a contemporary composer of sacred cracked, and desolate. As the young hero Parsifal, 22 at 1. (Broadway at Fulton St. No tickets required.) music. Feb. 24 at 8. (Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 the tenor Klaus Florian Vogt sings with a voice as W. 46th St. 212-854-7799.) clear as a cornet, bright and unencumbered, to re- Ekmeles deem Amfortas and the long-suffering knights of Jeffrey Gavett’s intrepid (and highly skilled) cham- Ensemble Dal Niente the Holy Grail. René Pape, Evgeny Nikitin, and Ev- ber choir brings the subtle, wild, and carefully On “Assemblage,” a CD issued on New World elyn Herlitzius complete the topnotch cast. (John modulated sounds of microtonal music (in new Records last year, this Chicago-based new-music Keenan replaces Nézet-Séguin in the first perfor- and recent works by Marc Sabat, Erin Gee, Re- group poured its exuberant vitality and expressive- mance.) Feb. 23 and Feb. 27 at 6. • Also playing: Met becca Saunders, and Cat Lamb) to what should ness into chamber works by the celebrated com- audiences never have to wait long for Franco Zef- be an evocative venue in Hamilton Heights—the poser, trombonist, and Columbia University pro- firelli’s crowd-pleasing production of“La Bohème” crypt of the Church of the Intercession, which in fessor George Lewis. The ensemble now brings to reappear on the company’s schedule. The lat- recent years has become one of uptown’s most dis- the same program to life at the Metropolitan Mu- est revival has an excellent cast headed by Sonya tinctive concert spaces. Feb. 22 at 7:30. (Broadway at seum, with Lewis on hand for a post-concert dis- Yoncheva (late of the Met’s new “Tosca”), Mi- 155th St. ekmeles.com. Tickets at the door.) cussion. (Lewis will also chat with the scholar Rob- chael Fabiano, Susanna Phillips, and Lucas Mea- ert O’Meally about the current exhibition “Birds of cham; Marco Armiliato, the Met’s trusted Italian Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra a Feather: Joseph Cornell’s Homage to Juan Gris,” hand, is on the podium. Feb. 21 at 7:30 and Feb. 24 The conductor Gustavo Dudamel, renowned for his on the morning of the concert.) Feb. 25 at 2. (Fifth at 12:30. • An early high point of Peter Gelb’s ten- exciting style, gets a chance to plumb the depths of Ave. at 82nd St. 212-570-3949.) ure, Anthony Minghella’s vividly cinematic stag- German music by leading one of that repertory’s most ing of “Madama Butterfly” still feels clean, fresh, august interpreters in a trio of concerts—without con- Danish String Quartet and vital more than a decade later. The revival stars certo soloists—at Carnegie Hall. The first program is The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Ermonela Jaho, Roberto Aronica, Maria Zifchak, all Brahms (including the Symphony No. 1 in C Mi- proudly presents this outstanding group, which has and Roberto Frontali; Armiliato. Feb. 22 and Feb. nor), the second delivers showstoppers by Mahler made a true niche for itself with its unvarnished 26 at 7:30. • Rossini’s deft and propulsive musical (the Adagio from the Symphony No. 10) and Berlioz but elegant sound and its astute programming of style is so closely identified with his comedies that (the “Symphonie Fantastique”), and the third offers a modern, classic, and folk-derived music. Works his serious operas don’t get taken all that seriously. very unexpected work by Charles Ives (the rambunc- by Haydn and Brahms, along with the “Hunt” Occasionally, however, the Met dusts one of them tious Second Symphony) along with a Tchaikovsky Quartets of Mozart (1784) and Jörg Widmann off as a vehicle for a remarkable talent, and in this staple (the Symphony No. 4 in F Minor). Feb. 23-24 (2003), are featured. Feb. 25 at 5. (Alice Tully Hall. season’s revival of “Semiramide” that singer is the at 8 and Feb. 25 at 2. (212-247-7800.) 212-875-5788.) soprano Angela Meade. Taking the titular role of the warrior queen, she leads a first-rate bel-canto Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra Mitsuko Uchida cast that includes Elizabeth DeShong, Javier Ca- Once in a while, a fine American orchestra of re- The pianist, an artist of luminosity and unforced marena, Ildar Abdrazakov, and Ryan Speedo Green; gional rank makes an appearance at Carnegie Hall, power, takes to her favorite New York haunt— Maurizio Benini. Feb. 24 at 8. (Metropolitan Opera usually to advance a novel musical cause. The Lou- Carnegie Hall—to essay three of the great sona- House. 212-362-6000.) isiana Philharmonic, in its Carnegie début, hitches tas of Schubert, with the gentle Sonata in A Major its star to the great wagon of Philip Glass, who is (D. 664) bookended by the more imposing sonatas “Oyster” the hall’s composer-in-residence this season. The in C Minor (D. 958) and G Major (D. 894). Feb. 26 Alan Lomax was an ethnomusicologist, archivist, able Carlos Miguel Prieto conducts Glass’s “Days at 8. (212-247-7800.) and American original who attempted to catalogue and Nights in Rocinha” and Concerto Fantasy for and code folk songs using Cantometrics, a numer- Two Timpanists and Orchestra, as well as another Ars Longa ical system he created. Now, in an ironic twist of work of irresistible percussive power, Revueltas’s The vanguard group of the Cuban early-music fate, the composer Joe Diebes makes music out of “Night of the Mayas.” Feb. 27 at 8. (212-247-7800.) scene returns to Gotham after a sold-out début in Lomax’s analysis in this new, experimental opera. 1 2017. This time, its program centers on villancicos Phil Soltanoff stages the work, in which Lomax by the eighteenth-century Cuban maestro Esteban (played by John Rose) gives a lecture on his find- RECITALS Salas, as well as additional Baroque works from ings. Feb. 20-21 at 8. (Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., Bolivia, Mexico, and Peru. Feb. 27 at 6. (St. Paul’s Brooklyn. roulette.org.) Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma Chapel, Columbia University, Broadway at 116th St. 1 Three of the paramount musicians of our time—on No tickets required.) piano, violin, and cello, respectively, and each with ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES an indelible style—make some celebrity chamber Garrick Ohlsson music together, climbing three of the big moun- Ohlsson, a veteran pianist of both muscular- New York Philharmonic tains of the repertory: the piano trios of Johannes ity and keen insight, returns to Lincoln Center In a welcome but stunningly predictable program, Brahms. Feb. 22 at 8. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) to offer an all-Beethoven program that features Joshua Gessen, the orchestra’s talented assistant con- four of the composer’s most popular sonatas: the ductor, earns his stripes with three ultra-canonical Dante Boon “Pathétique,” the “Appassionata,” the “Waldstein,” works of classical Americana: Barber’s melting Boon, a young Dutch pianist and composer, shows and the “Moonlight.” Feb. 27 at 7:30. (Alice Tully Adagio for Strings, Bernstein’s vibrant Symphonic an uncommon affinity for music that demands pa- Hall. 212-721-6500.)

6 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 A RT

marrying a doctor, having a child—until her marriage unravelled, in her late twenties, and art became her full-time passion. From 1920, when she enrolled in Paris’s famed Académie Julian, until the stock market crash of 1929, which reversed her fortunes, she lived between Europe and Brazil. The show doesn’t stint on process- revealing black-and-white drawings or biographical ephemera (look for a photo of Tarsila in Paris, with a group that in- cludes a wild-looking Brancusi, hanging out in a boat). But the paintings are the main event. These include cartoon-bright scenes set in a railway station, a hilltop favela, and a carnival, all intentionally flirting with folkloric kitsch. More sig- nificant are the perversely proportioned nudes. The earliest is “A Negra,” from 1923, a monumentalized cross-legged woman, situated against horizontal bands of brown, green, and blue; she could be the Afro-Brazilian cousin of a Cézanne bather. (For a deep dive into this idea, read the invaluable catalogue essay by Stephanie D’Alessandro, who co-curated the show with Luis Pérez-Oramas.) That figure morphed, in 1928, into what is arguably Tarsila’s most important picture, “Abaporu.” Seated in a stripped-down landscape—green ground, a greener sa- Tarsila do Amaral’s 1928 painting “Abaporu” was so radical in its day that it inspired a manifesto. guaro, blue sky, and a lemon-yellow disk that splits the difference between flower Tropicália do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in and sun—the subject is portrayed in the Brazil.” (It’s on view until June 3.) pose of a thinker, with a tiny head resting MOMA introduces New York to New Yorkers have had a crash course on a spindly arm and a monstrously swol- Brazil’s original modernist. in Brazilian art in recent months, be- len foot, as if the intellect were dwarfed Some artists are so iconic, they’re known tween Lygia Pape’s subversive geome- by the body’s sensations. by only one name: Brancusi, Léger, Tar- tries, at the Met Breuer, and the sand- “Abaporu” was made as a gift to Tar- sila. Wait, who? The painter Tarsila in-your-toes installations of Hélio sila’s second husband, the poet Oswaldo do Amaral is so famous in her native Oiticica, at the Whitney. Neither would de Andrade, who was galvanized by its Brazil that forty-three years after her have been conceivable without the path- brazenly tropical modernism to write the death she helped close out the 2016 Rio breaking work of Tarsila, who synthe- “Manifesto of Anthropophagy,” a call to de Janeiro Olympics, when a projected sized the volumetric treatment of the cannibalize foreign influences; it re- pattern of red-orange-yellow arcs graced human form, which she encountered in sounded in Brazilian culture for decades. the stadium floor, an homage to her 1929 the studios of Léger and others in Paris, This sublimely weird show is an painting “Setting Sun.” That chimerical and the vibrant visual culture of her eye-opening corrective to an art history landscape—stylized sunset above tubu- home country, in an art that still feels that has treated key chapters—those that lar cacti and a herd of capybaras that open-ended. She was born on a coffee aren’t Eurocentric—as if they were writ- shape-shift into boulders—hangs now plantation outside of São Paulo, in 1886, ten in invisible ink. As Andrade wrote in at MOMA, in the artist’s first-ever mu- and seemed destined for the conven- his manifesto, “Joy is the decisive test.”

COURTESY TARSILA DO AMARAL LICENCIAMENTOS DO TARSILA COURTESY seum exhibition in the U.S., “Tarsila tional life of a daughter of privilege— —Andrea K. Scott

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 7 1 1A RT MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES GALLERIES—CHELSEA tion,” a folding commode that Darling, who divides his time between London and Berlin, Frick Collection “Of Earth and Heaven: Art from the Middle has outfitted with uneven legs—it looks as if “Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons: Ages” it’s trying to crawl away. A pair of smaller alu- Paintings from Auckland Castle” In a refreshing deviation from standard gallery minum works, both titled “Collapsed Cane,” Francisco de Zurbarán was the second-best painter fare, this exhibition features European works from feature similarly surreal distortions. These in seventeenth-century Spain—no disgrace when the the twelfth through the sixteenth century—gory modified medical aids land first as slapstick. champion, his Seville-born near-exact contemporary, and ornate renderings of Biblical themes, with all Then they instill some sense of dismay: after happened to be Diego Velázquez, who arguably re- the visual hyperbole and perspectival weirdness all, our bodies are designed to break down. mains better than anybody, ever. In this room-filling one could hope for. Organized with the British Through March 11. (Chapter, 249 E. Houston St. show, thirteen life-size imagined portraits, painted art dealer Sam Fogg, the show brings together a 347-528-4397.) by Zurbarán circa 1640-45, constitute a terrific feat of range of privately held treasures, including a life- Baroque storytelling: the movies of their day. Each size wood sculpture of the crucified Christ from “Mature Themes” character has a distinct personality, uniquely posed, thirteenth-century Spain, with a supernaturally The infantile carnality of cartoons unites costumed, and accessorized, and towering against long rib cage and maroon paint drizzling from his this entertaining seven-artist show, curated a bright, clouded sky. All appear in the forty-ninth wounds. Nicolás Falcó’s lush painting, made circa by John Garcia. Some works have an under- chapter of Genesis, in which the dying Jacob proph- 1510-20, is just as breathtaking: the sage Christ stated creepiness, including Kiki Kogelnik’s esies the fates of the founders-to-be of the Twelve child perches on the shoulder of a gilt-haloed Saint 1970 sculpture “Untitled (Hanging),” a human Tribes of Israel. After nearly four centuries, the can- Christopher, who stands shin-deep in dark water. silhouette cut out of white vinyl and folded vases sorely need cleaning. The brilliance of their Majestic limestone sections from Canterbury Ca- over a clothes hanger, and Brian Kokoska’s colors has dimmed, notably in passages of brocade thedral may be touted as the centerpiece, but it’s “Love Triangle (Goofy Cage Slave),” in which and other sumptuous fabrics—a forte of Zurbarán, a stained-glass triptych, glowing in the darkened a powder-blue cartoon dog appears to twerk whose father was a haberdasher. But most of the pic- back room, that steals the show. Through March 10. inside a cage, for the benefit of two Teddy tures retain power aplenty. Spend time with them, (Luhring Augustine, 531 W. 24th St. 212-206-9100.) bears. “Judith DreamWeapon,” a painted- half an hour minimum. Their glories bloom slowly, 1 polyurethane sculpture by Erika Vogt, dan- as you register the formal decisions that practically gling from the ceiling and onto the floor, sug- spring the figures from their surfaces into the room GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN gests a Brobdingnagian charm bracelet. The with you, and as you ponder, if you will, the stories show’s sleeper highlight is the scattering of that they plumb. Through April 22. Jesse Darling delightfully grotesque ceramic figurines by Hidden behind a torn shower curtain, the Chelsey Pettyjohn. Through Feb. 25. (Foxy Pro- New Museum show’s unnerving standout is “Comfort Sta- duction, 2 E. Broadway. 212-239-2758.) “Anna Craycroft: Motion Into Being” Step off the elevator on the museum’s fifth floor and enter a mysterious, grayscale diorama—the set for Craycroft’s stop-motion animation. Craycroft has created an enlarged version of the vintage tech- nology known as a “setback” camera, a twentieth- century innovation that films animation cells on a MOVIES horizontal plane, allowing drawn shapes and charac- ters to appear to move in three-dimensional space. 1 In one area, a long table lined with geometric forms in a triumph for transference, moves in with her. is theatrically lit, evoking Bauhaus stage scenery; in NOW PLAYING One day, she sees him in the street; in fact, it’s not another, viewers can sit down and watch a flicker- him but his twin brother, Louis (Renier again), also ing, text-based video work that elucidates the sur- Born in Flames a shrink, of whom she was unaware. She consults prising raison d’être for the project, in which the art- Lizzie Borden’s fierce and trenchant political fan- him, too, whereupon he abuses her, verbally and ist confronts such thorny legal and ethical issues as tasy, from 1983, is set in New York ten years after a physically; her decision to return for more may be whether “personhood” should be granted to corpo- second American revolution, peaceful yet drastic, the point at which some viewers, now more than rations. And, if so, why not extend that right to eco- which has brought about democratic socialism and ever, will have had enough. With leading perfor- systems? Through animation, we imagine talking an- sparked new conflicts centered on race and gen- mances that verge on the robotic, and a steady ac- imals and singing trees; Craycroft uses the medium der. Two underground feminist radio stations are cumulation of mirror images and split screens, the to ponder the idea that we might consider such or- in competition—one led by Honey (played by the movie feels so calculated that Ozon often seems to ganisms people. Through May 13. actress of the same name), a black woman who con- be working out an equation rather than tracking any 1 siders the revolution unfulfilled, and another by credible relationships. The macabre comedy that the white lesbian musician Isabelle (Adele Bertei), David Cronenberg extracted from a similar setup, GALLERIES—UPTOWN whose activism is cultural. Meanwhile, the vigilante in “Dead Ringers” (1988), is largely absent here, Women’s Army patrols the city by bicycle, a gov- though there is a freakish beauty to Ozon’s carnal Amy Sillman ernment employment program leads to riots, and inventions, not least in the foursome involving both The New York painter, who is also known for her three female journalists (one of whom is played by brothers and a double helping of Chloé. With Jac- forays into sculpture, animation, and zine-making Kathryn Bigelow) report on divisions within the queline Bisset. Based on a novel by Joyce Carol (her latest issue is available by the door for a dollar), socialist movement. After an activist (Jean Sat- Oates. In French.—Anthony Lane (In limited release.) seems to confine herself enthusiastically to a single terfield) dies in police custody, the feminist the- medium here, but pay attention: she’s still blurring oretician Zella Wylie (played by the activist and The 15:17 to Paris lines. More than two dozen works on paper are in- writer Flo Kennedy) calls for direct action to get With wide-eyed wonder, Clint Eastwood tells the stalled single file around the town-house rooms, the message out in the only way that matters— real-life story of three young American men who, their frames almost touching. (A larger unframed on television. Borden’s exhilarating collage-like in 2015, thwarted a terrorist attack aboard a train work is wryly pinned above the fireplace mantel.) story stages news reports, documentary sequences, bound for Paris. His admiration and astonishment The dense abstractions have both speed and spon- and surveillance footage alongside tough action are embodied in his gonzo casting of the three taneity, with grand swipes of the brush and squir- scenes and musical numbers; her violent vision is men—Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek relly black lines, but also a seductive trickery, with both ideologically complex and chilling.—Richard Skarlatos—as themselves. (All first-time actors, transparent screen-printed layers functioning as Brody (MOMA, Feb. 25 and Feb. 27, and streaming.) they perform with lively earnestness.) The attack scratchy backgrounds, jagged veils, or both. It’s takes only about ten minutes of screen time; most difficult to discern which gestures are painted and Double Lover of the film traces their friendship, starting in mid- which are printed—until a downcast cartoon face If François Ozon had set out to infuriate the psy- dle school, in Sacramento, in 2005, when the three or a sneakered foot appears again in a neighboring chiatric profession, he couldn’t have done a more boys, disdained and angry, bond—and become ob- drawing, the charming glimmers of figuration that efficient job. Chloé (Marine Vacth), suffering from sessed with playing war. After some floundering, are Sillman’s calling card. Through March 3. (Glad- inexplicable stomach pains, consults a shrink named Spencer and Alek enter military service; Anthony stone 64, 130 E. 64th St. 212-753-2200.) Paul (Jérémie Renier), who not only cures her but, goes to college. The three young men take a jaunty

8 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 MOVIES

summer trip through Europe and, as if they’ve least—soon leaks away. Paired with Will and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), is his mother; the other, been training for it, they make history. Eastwood’s are her brother Hale (David Joseph Craig) and his Ester (Ingrid Thulin), is her sister, whose cough- film (written by Dorothy Blyskal) only masquer- partner, Reece (Morgan Spector), who have issues ing jags force the group to leave the train in a ades as a drama; it’s a thesis about the traits that of their own, including Hale’s fervid wish to adopt strange city and stay in a desolate, palatial hotel forge the men’s heroism. There’s also a bit of poli- a child. The film, despite the agonizing of its cen- while she tries to recuperate. In a country where tics—a view of social trends that foster or frustrate tral figures, melts like a lemon drop the moment they don’t speak the language (one invented by the men’s best qualities—but it hardly figures in you’ve seen it, and the most fun seems to be had Bergman), the women endure their monotonous Eastwood’s briskly ecstatic vision of the lives of by Lydia, an adventuress who takes her pleasures isolation by contriving hothouse passions, playing secular saints.—R.B. (In wide release.) neat, snapping up Will along the way, and who gives erotic games, and unleashing pent-up resentments, Gina Gershon her most succulent role in quite a all in the presence of the blankly bewildered boy. Loveless while.—A.L. (2/12 & 19/18) (In limited release.) Bergman unfolds grand themes—childhood and its The new movie from Andrei Zvyagintsev, who mute sensibility, adulthood and its unhealed emo- made “The Return” (2003) and “Leviathan” Phantom Thread tional wounds—in highly inflected images, which (2014), is no less bleak than its precursors. Alyo- The role taken by Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul have an anguished intensity unseen since the age sha (Matvey Novikov), age twelve, is the only child Thomas Anderson’s strange and sumptuous of silent films. In Swedish.—R.B. (Film Forum, of Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey film—the actor’s final screen appearance, he has Feb. 23, and streaming.) Rozin), whose marriage is inches away from col- claimed—is, in every sense, tailor-made. He plays lapse. They all still live together, just about, in a Reynolds Woodcock, a fashion designer of the The Young Karl Marx Moscow apartment block, but each adult has a nineteen-fifties, who, in the London house that he This biographical drama melts five crucial years in lover (Boris’s girlfriend is pregnant), leaving no shares with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), cre- the life of a revolutionary into the buttery batter one around to love the boy. When he vanishes, ates immaculate dresses for a selection of wealthy of a romantic bio-pic. The action runs from 1843 it takes his parents a while to notice, and longer women. As devout as a priest in his calling, he to 1848 and follows the twentysomething journal- still to panic. The police are unable to help; as so seems to resent any intrusion upon his professional ist Karl (August Diehl) and his wife, Jenny (Vicky often in Zvyagintsev’s films, the state is at best in- peace, yet he invites a waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps), from Prussia to Paris, where he encounters competent and at worst oppressively corrupt. In- Krieps) into his life as a model, and, eventually, Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske), the wealthy stead, it is volunteers who start a search, and the as far more. The result is a pact as perilous and as son of a textile manufacturer, whose study of En- camera prowls with them through empty wood- claustrophobic as that between the guru and his glish laborers is abetted by his romance with Mary lands and the husks of ruined buildings—a dank disciple in Anderson’s “The Master” (2012), with Burns (Hannah Steele), an Irish factory worker. rebuke to the new existence, adorned with cell the camera closing in remorselessly on stricken or Exiled to Brussels by the French government for phones and exercise machines, that Zhenya covets. adoring faces, and a strong tincture of sickness in his political agitation, Karl tries to turn his ideas As in Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” (1960), the plot the romantic atmosphere. All three leading play- into a movement. As Karl struggles with poverty feels at once gripping and open-ended, but that ers respond with rigor to this Hitchcockian inten- and Friedrich struggles with his family, they both film’s mood of cool mystery is supplanted here by sity, and Reynolds—fussy, cold, and agonized—is head to London and plot to take over a secret in- an atmosphere of hopelessness and spite. In Rus- a worthy addition to Day-Lewis’s gallery of obses- ternational society of workers. The director, Raoul sian.—A.L. (Reviewed in our issue of 2/12 & 19/18.) sives. The costumes, every bit as alluring as you Peck, who wrote the script with Pascal Bonitzer, (In limited release.) would expect, are by Mark Bridges, and Jonny looks admiringly on Karl’s principled revolution- Greenwood contributes a swooning score.—A.L. ary ardor while highlighting the alluring folly of The Party (1/8/18) (In wide release.) his theoretical ideals. Marx comes off, above all, The British writer and director Sally Potter’s as a supreme tactician whose empathy remains ab- cinematic playlet gathers a remarkable cast for The Silence stract; the movie’s hidden hero is the radical hu- a frenzied but narrow one-set comedic drama. This 1963 drama by Ingmar Bergman begins with manist Wilhelm Weitling (Alexander Scheer), who Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), a veteran politician, one of the director’s signature sequences: a boy foresees destructive violence arising from Marx’s has just won a long-desired appointment as her (Jörgen Lindström) riding with two women in a ideological purity. The movie’s plush, cozy aesthetic party’s shadow Health Minister. She hosts a gath- compartment of a train breaks free and beholds, and unintentionally funny melodrama are at odds ering to celebrate, but her husband, Bill (Timo- with frozen wonder, an ominous transport of tanks with its subjects: revolt, theory, originality, and ob- thy Spall), sits in stone-faced silence while playing on the opposite track. One of the women, Anna servation.—R.B. (In limited release.) d.j. with his sophisticated collection of LPs. Then, friends arrive: the cynical April (Patricia Clarkson) and her New Age-y husband, Gottfried (Bruno Ganz); the scholarly Martha (Cherry Jones) and her much younger wife, Jinny (Emily Mortimer); and the banker Tom (Cillian Murphy), who shows up without his wife but with a pistol. The revela- tions start flying, at a bewildering pace: a termi- nal illness, a pregnancy, an affair or two, a long-ago romance. Filming in black-and-white, keeping the pace brisk and the tone stage-loud as if angling for the balcony, Potter presses plenty of action into the seventy-minute span, but none of the life-changing confessions or outsized gestures seem substantial or deep-rooted; the movie’s ideas and impulses are a grab bag of bourgeois-bohemian emblems.—R.B. (In limited release.)

Permission Will, played by Dan Stevens, and Anna, played by Rebecca Hall, are a couple. Will loves Anna. Anna, um, loves Will. Will and Anna live in Brooklyn, played by Brooklyn. Will and Anna have good but not shattering sex, somewhere around a 5.6 on the Richter scale. Anna can’t help imagining what it would be like to sleep around and, you know, maybe hit an 8.8. Will is unconvinced, but he goes along with her because he’s a nice guy. Or an idiot. Such is the premise of Brian Crano’s ro- mantic comedy, which is fitfully comic, and from The Technicolor palette is nearly a co-star of the 1953 film noir “Niagara,” alongside Marilyn Monroe,

SNAP STILLS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK which the romance—of the conventional kind, at who plays a scheming woman married to a mentally ill war veteran. It screens Feb. 21 at MOMA.

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 9 THE THEATRE

Python to the “Capitalism for Beginners” book he owned as a child. (He grew up in blue-blooded Houston, where his family attended the same church as the Bushes.) The real inspiration, though, was the ascendance of Paul Ryan during the 2012 Presidential race. “I just kept having this nausea during that election,” he said, “because that man with those cold, soul- less blue eyes was articulating this hor- rifying vision—and there were people who were persuaded by it.” Not that he expects theatre to solve our societal ills. “I would never say that my impact on the world has been a positive one, be- cause I’m so horrified at the naked hy- pocrisy. Look at where we’re sitting!” (We were at the Time Warner Center, near where “The Low Road” was in re- hearsal.) “Everything about what we do is just world-destroying.” Norris, who is fifty-seven, became a playwright to escape being an actor. In 1987, he starred in a short-lived sitcom called “The Popcorn Kid,” as a conces- sions boy at a movie theatre. He recalled a photographer chastising him during a promotional shoot: “I was not making enough of an ecstatic, toothy smile, and he kept yelling at me, ‘Wipe that irony off your face!’” Staring down a future of being typecast as the “awkward juvenile, stupid dad, or nasty bureaucrat,” he wrote a play called “The Actor Retires,” first In “The Low Road,” the author of “Clybourne Park” melds Henry Fielding and Monty Python. staged in Chicago in 1991. He began working with Chicago’s Lookingglass The Misanthrope hating bourgeois family that friends of Theatre Company and dated the director friends started calling him “that Repub- Mary Zimmerman, an ensemble member, The playwright Bruce Norris turns his lican playwright.” until they broke up and he moved to New jaundiced eye on free-market capitalism. In fact, he said, “I’m a big economic York, in the mid-nineties. Soon after, he “I screwed up my back yesterday, so if I’m lefty,” which should become clear from received a commission from Steppenwolf, grimacing that’s why,” the playwright his new play, “The Low Road,” in pre- which has premièred six of his plays. Bruce Norris said recently. Norris has a views at the Public Theatre. Commis- As for winning the Pulitzer, he re- reputation as a grimacer, at least in the sioned by London’s Royal Court Theatre, called having an eight-hour window of way he expresses his acidic world view where it ran in 2013, the play is a histori- satisfaction before thinking, “That was onstage. Best known for his Tony- and cal parable that lampoons the eighteenth- the apex of my life, and clearly everything Pulitzer Prize-winning “Clybourne Park” century roots of free-market capitalism, is downhill from here.” A committed (2010), a disenchanted gloss on “A Raisin with a cast of eighteen playing characters pessimist, Norris feels alienated from his in the Sun,” he is often said to make his including Adam Smith. Norris described political kin. “I wouldn’t call myself a pro- liberal audiences squirm. His 2006 com- it as a parody of a Henry Fielding novel, gressive,” he said, “because progress is an edy, “The Pain and the Itch,” so effec- charting a young man’s progress in life, illusion.” Cue that grimace.

tively satirized an NPR-loving, Bush- but it draws on everything from Monty —Michael Schulman COE JAMIE BY ILLUSTRATION

10 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 1 THE THEATRE OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Albee’s play, which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize and a reckoning with mortality ensued. Now Ensler for Drama. Joe Mantello directs. (Golden, 252 recalls that experience in a solo outing that’s been The Amateurs W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. Previews begin Feb. 27.) given a beautiful Manhattan Theatre Club pro- Jordan Harrison’s comedy, directed by Oliver 1 duction by the director Diane Paulus (“Waitress”) Butler, follows a theatre troupe trying to stay and the set designer Myung Hee Cho. Ensler isn’t ahead of the Black Death in fourteenth-century NOW PLAYING a great actor—she mostly sticks to an unflaggingly Europe. With Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Michael chipper tone—but she is a canny raconteur who tog- Cyril Creighton, and Thomas Jay Ryan. (Vine- America Is Hard to See gles between blunt descriptions and fuzzy-wuzzy yard, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. In previews. Life Jacket Theatre Company (“Gorey: The Se- feels, the personal and the political, the micro and Opens Feb. 27.) cret Lives of Edward Gorey”) introduces us to a the macro. Spontaneous applause greets Ensler’s strange community that could only be American. arias of self-empowerment, but ultimately this Angels in America The writer-director Travis Russ put together this superficial, feel-good show makes as much of a Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, and Lee Pace lovely show, drawing on interviews that his New lasting impression as a warm bath. (City Center star in the National Theatre’s revival of Tony York-based company conducted in Miracle Vil- Stage I, at 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.) Kushner’s epic two-part drama about New York- lage, Florida, a small settlement populated with ers living through the nineteen-eighties AIDS convicted sex offenders. Dodging prurience and [Porto] epidemic. Directed by Marianne Elliott. (Neil judgment, the piece, dotted with brief songs by Kate Benson’s play is a deconstructed rom-com Simon, 250 W. 52nd St. 877-250-2929. Previews Priscilla Holbrook, is a deceptively gentle look and a stealth heartbreaker. It’s set in a “boushy” begin Feb. 23.) at redemption, faith (a local pastor emerges as a bar, with characters named after drinks or occu- charismatic character), and what makes a com- pations. (“Boushy,” an unseen narrator explains, is Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo: munity. Discomfort slowly seeps in as you find a portmanteau of bourgeois and douchey.) After a Homelife & The Zoo Story yourself sympathizing with some of the men, just gruesome monologue on sausage-making, Porto Lila Neugebauer directs Albee’s diptych of one- as you remember that these seemingly nice guys (played by Julia Sirna-Frest, with a tremulous mix- act plays: his 1959 classic “The Zoo Story” and were described as proficient liars. Under its plain ture of hope and resignation) perches on a stool, an- its 2004 companion piece, “Homelife.” (Pershing exterior—the stage is nearly bare, the tone will- ticipating another Malbec-fuelled night. She sees Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-244- fully low-key—the play is a heartbreaking, compli- Hennepin (Jorge Cordova), a cute guy forking up 7529. Opens Feb. 21.) cated portrait of people adrift. (HERE, 145 Sixth his first taste of foie gras. Hennepin spots Dry Sac Ave., near Spring St. 866-811-4111. Through Feb. 24.) (Leah Karpel), Porto’s flighty, blotto best friend. Frozen And Porto has to decide if it’s even worth wanting Disney brings its hit film to the stage, with songs Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill him. “I don’t know how to do that,” she says, “make by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. After her rock-star boyfriend dumps her onstage something with someone else that isn’t going to Caissie Levy and Patti Murin play the sisters in the middle of a concert, Joni throws herself kill me.” The play is messy, but it should be. Work, Elsa and Anna in Michael Grandage’s produc- into the single life. She conjures an entire rela- booze, books, chat, doubt, faith, desire: this is how tion. (St. James, 246 W. 44th St. 866-870-2717. Pre- tionship with a waiter in the span of five minutes, the sausage of adult life gets made. (McGinn/Cazale, views begin Feb. 22.) finds herself in a threesome with a swinging cou- 2162 Broadway, at 76th St. 866-811-4111.) ple, and somehow ends up on a game show pro- Hello, from the Children of Planet Earth duced by her roommate’s boyfriend. You might Returning to Reims The Playwrights Realm stages Don Nguyen’s say that Joni, played as a sweet, goofy dork by The French philosopher Didier Eribon’s memoir comedy, in which a lesbian couple trying to have Sarah Chalfie, is trying to fill fill fill the hole in about growing up working-class and gay in the a baby ask a friend who works at NASA to be her life. As its title indicates, Steph Del Rosso’s French provinces doesn’t sound like promising their sperm donor. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 new comedy of millennial manners is in constant terrain for the stage. But this import from Berlin’s W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010. Previews begin Feb. 24.) overdrive, and the director, Marina McClure, dou- Schaubühne doesn’t so much adapt as complement bles down with a madcap staging that’s difficult the text. In this conceit, the quietly magnetic Nina Jerry Springer—The Opera to sustain. Del Rosso doesn’t seem to know how Hoss (“Homeland”) portrays an actress recording Richard Thomas (“Anna Nicole”) and Stewart to wrap up Joni’s story, either, and she abruptly the voice-over for a documentary based on Eri- Lee wrote this musical ode to the talk-show host, ends the show just as it’s finding its groove.(Flea, bon’s book. Halfway through, the play, directed by staged at London’s National Theatre in 2003. John 20 Thomas St. 212-226-0051.) Thomas Ostermeier, changes tack, and the charac- Rando directs the New Group’s production, fea- ter intervenes in the story by bringing up Hoss’s turing Terrence Mann and Will Swenson. (Per- Flight own real-life father, a Communist welder turned shing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212- Created by the Scottish company Vox Motus and parliamentarian. The seemingly dry subject mat- 279-4200. In previews. Opens Feb. 22.) based on a novel by Caroline Brothers, this un- ter relies heavily on political and sociological the- classifiable experience narrates the attempt of two ories—Marxist historical materialism comes up, Later Life young brothers to escape from Kabul to London. and there is a Noam Chomsky joke—and the evo- Keen Company revives A. R. Gurney’s 1993 ro- The presentation is profoundly imaginative: each lution of European leftist politics. But the ques- mantic comedy, directed by Jonathan Silverstein, audience member sits in a private booth around a tioning production, which deftly incorporates about two middle-aged guests at a cocktail party black carrousel that conveys a succession of hun- new and archival footage, never feels less than who consider rekindling a flame from thirty years dreds of gorgeously designed miniature diora- compassionately human. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 earlier. (Clurman, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. mas, which in sequence tell the story of the boys’ Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779. Through Feb. 25.) Previews begin Feb. 27.) two-year journey. Each vignette is a still-life, but 1 an immersive soundtrack of dialogue, narration, An Ordinary Muslim music, and effects, delivered by headphones, fully ALSO NOTABLE In Hammaad Chaudry’s play, directed by Jo Bon- animates the scenes. You could call it theatre, or art ney, a Pakistani-British couple navigate religious installation, or some mad hybrid of comic book, Balls 59E59. Through Feb. 25. • The Band’s Visit doctrine, their families’ expectations, and West- peepshow, and radio play; one audience member Ethel Barrymore. • Bright Colors and Bold ern secular culture. (New York Theatre Workshop, 79 was overheard describing it as “analog virtual real- Patterns SoHo Playhouse. • Cardinal Second E. 4th St. 212-460-5475. In previews. Opens Feb. 26.) ity.” No matter the name, it’s unforgettable in both Stage. Through Feb. 25. • Disco Pigs Irish Reper- content and form, a devastating concatenation of tory. • Farinelli and the King Belasco. • Fire and Air They, Themself and Schmerm dreams and nightmares on the run. (The Heath at Classic Stage Company. • Hangmen Atlantic The- The transgender actor Becca Blackwell performs the McKittrick Hotel, 542 W. 27th St. 212-564-1662.) atre Company. (Reviewed in this issue.) • John this solo comic confessional dealing with gen- Lithgow: Stories by Heart American Airlines The- der, molestation, and a self-produced video by In the Body of the World atre. • Latin History for Morons Studio 54. Through the child star Corey Haim. (Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafa- Eve Ensler (“The Vagina Monologues”) has built Feb. 25. • Miles for Mary Playwrights Horizons. yette St. 212-967-7555. Feb. 22.) a career on body positivity. But what happens Through Feb. 25. • Once on This Island Circle in the when the body turns against you? Ten years ago, Square. • The Parisian Woman Hudson. • Sponge- Three Tall Women as she was working with a doctor helping Congo- Bob SquarePants Palace. • Springsteen on Broad- Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf, and Alison Pill lese women who had been raped, Ensler was diag- way Walter Kerr. • X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. the Na- play the same woman at different ages in Edward nosed with uterine cancer. Tests, chemotherapy, tion Theatre at St. Clement’s. Through Feb. 25.

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 11 Bessie Award. (Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 212- 415-5500. Feb. 23-24.) DANCE “Works & Process” / Washington Ballet Before becoming the artistic director of Washing- ton Ballet, in 2016, Julie Kent had a long and illus- New York City Ballet ance. Nine dancers in gym shorts and knee pads trious career with American Ballet Theatre. Now The company returns to fertile ground with a pro- go all out—jerking, jabbing, hurling, spinning, she has commissioned a work from an A.B.T. col- gram of Balanchine works set to the music of Igor launching, crashing. For an hour, they breathe league, the rising choreographer Gemma Bond. Stravinsky. Balanchine first tackled “Le Baiser de hard and grunt and urge one another to never This preview event combines excerpts from the la Fée” in 1937, though the more or less abstract ver- give up. When the work débuted, last April, new ballet, which will début in March, with a dis- sion presented here dates from the 1972 Stravinsky its sweaty intensity caused a stir. This reprise cussion between Kent and Bond moderated by the Festival, as do “Duo Concertant” and “Symphony in run, opening the 2018 Harkness Dance Festi- dance critic (and New Yorker contributor) Marina Three Movements.” “Agon” is a pathbreaking exam- val, at the 92nd Street Y, offers another chance Harss. (Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Ave. at 89th St. ple of ballet modernism, from 1957. • Feb. 20-22 at to see what won the young choreographer a 212-423-3575. Feb. 25-26.) 7:30 and Feb. 23 at 8: “Romeo + Juliet.” • Feb. 24 at 2 and Feb. 27 at 7:30: “Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée,’ ” “Agon,” “Duo Concertant,” and “Symphony in Three Movements.” • Feb. 24 at 8 and Feb. 25 at 3: “Neverwhere,” “Mothership,” “The Decalogue,” and “Namouna, a Grand Divertissement.” (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-721-6500. Through March 4.) ABOVE & BEYOND Jennifer Monson Monson is an exceptional improviser, unprepos- sessing yet shamanic. Doing almost nothing, she can maintain the suspenseful aura of someone who might do anything. “Bend the Even,” her latest proj- ect, is concerned with shifts of sound, light, and mo- tion that are barely perceptible, like the exact mo- ment when dawn becomes day. The performance’s gratifications are likely to be subtle, intangible, eva- nescent. (The Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City. 866-811-4111. Feb. 20-24.)

Bebe Miller Company & Susan Rethorst Entrepreneurs Festival deteriorating Presidential busts, which were exca- “The Making Room,” which premières at New York For the seventh year running, New York Univer- vated from a Virginia sculpture park in 2010 and Live Arts, is just one part of an ongoing project that sity invites business-owning alumni to share ad- left to languish in a rural field not far away. As brings together two veterans of the downtown dance vice and anecdotes at the largest student-run en- the film screens, giant images of George Wash- scene. Both of them are known for enigmatic works trepreneurial event in the country. The conference ington’s stone likeness loom over Broadway, in a that combine everyday movement with imagery includes panels and discussions exploring the nu- somber comment on political representation and that alludes to hidden stories and private experi- ances and unforeseen challenges of starting and impermanence. (Times Square. arts.timessquarenyc. ences. The evening includes pieces by each chore- managing a company, and culminates with the org. Through Feb. 28.) ographer, as well as a conversation about their col- Pitch, where attendees present their ideas to an au- 1 laboration. (219 W. 19th St. 212-924-0077. Feb. 21-24.) dience of experts. This year’s participants include Di-Ann Eisnor, the director of growth for the pop- READINGS AND TALKS Tatyana Tenenbaum ular navigation app Waze; Dr. Nedal Shami, the A singing voice produces vibrations that are both co-founder and chief strategy officer of CityMD 92nd Street Y sound and motion. This is the relationship that Urgent Care; and Tony Shure, a co-founder of the Mary Norris, a copy editor for this magazine from Tenenbaum examines and exaggerates in her for- salad chain Chopt. (N.Y.U. Tisch Hall, 40 W. 4th St. 1978 to 2017, gathered her musings on the many in- mally playful works. Her drive toward abstraction, nyuef.org. Feb. 23-24.) tricacies of the English language in “Between You in tension with the emotional tug of conventional & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.” Raised musical theatre, produces an intriguing energy. In New York International Children’s Film in Cleveland and educated at Rutgers Univer- her newest effort, “Untitled Work for Voice,” that Festival sity, Norris carried the New Yorker style into the tension acquires a political cast, in a kind of back- This annual festival, founded in 1997, hosts shorts, modern world with warmth and humor, finding stage musical that grapples with white guilt. (Dan- features, Q. & A.s with directors, and national whimsy in rigidity and simplifying the tiny gram- space Project, St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Second premières. (The winning films are eligible for Acad- mar dilemmas that trip up even the most book- Ave. at 10th St. 866-811-4111. Feb. 22-24.) emy Award consideration.) Among the highlights ish. She’ll read from her memoir at this talk, and this year are a preview of Season 2 of the Netflix discuss life after editing. (1395 Lexington Ave. Panta Rei Dansteater / “Lullaby” adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfor- 92y.org. Feb. 22 at 7.) This intimate work—a meditation on masculinity— tunate Events” and the New York première of the brings Norway’s Panta Rei Dansteater to the U.S. Japanese musical anime “Lu Over the Wall,” about Just a Show for the first time. Three men, dressed in work trou- an aspiring musician who joins a band in search of Though he works by day as a staff writer for “The sers and button-down shirts, engage in a series of the perfect lead singer—who happens to be a mer- Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Harris May- visceral interactions, ranging from tender to con- maid. (Various locations. nyicff.org. Feb. 23-March 18.) ersohn also hosts a regular comic variety show at versational to combative. The partnering is fluid, Sunnyvale, a remote Bushwick bar that takes its unspooling like a succession of run-on sentences. A Midnight Moment name from the wacky mockumentary television pianist and a cellist, also male, accompany the action Since 2012, Times Square has taken a few short series “Trailer Park Boys.” On the last Sunday of with music by the composer Sverre Indris Joner; minutes each night for art, when its mammoth, each month, Mayersohn gathers fellow standup many of the melodies are drawn from lullabies world-famous video displays are wiped of adver- performers and yuckster writers from the city’s that originated in countries President George W. tisements in favor of short films and other exper- bustling comedy community for an unpredict- Bush called the “axis of evil.” (Schimmel Center, Pace imental visual works, curated by Times Square able night of sketch antics and pranks. This spe- University, 3 Spruce St. 212-346-1715. Feb. 23-24.) Arts. This February, if you find yourself strolling cial two-year-anniversary edition features the co- through the world’s intersection between 11:57 and medians Dan Chamberlain, Peter Smith, Sandy Abby Z and the New Utility midnight, you’ll catch the final week of “Save the Honig, Lucy Cottrell, Jay Weingarten, and Mat- Abby Zbikowski’s “Abandoned Playground” is Presidents,” a short documentary by Tali Keren and thew Goldin. (1031 Grand St., Brooklyn. sunnyvalebk.

a hard-core workout, a team effort in endur- Alex Strada. The lens stalks a field of forty-three com. Feb. 25 at 6.) AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

12 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 F§D & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO arind baby-back ribs were slick with BA R TA B Tetsu grease but not sauce, and octopus with cilantro was far from tender. But robata- 78 Leonard St. (212-207-2370) grilled yellowtail was fresh and juicy, and It may seem that Masa Takayama, the fried duck tongues were as cute as you’d chef and owner of the sushi mecca Masa, want, crunchy and cheerful and dusted earned mythical status owing solely to with chili powder. The squid-ink “pasta” the sheer audacity of his prices—at $595 noodles were made from fish—slippery 2�B Teahouse per person, before drinks and tax, dinner and firm, they took well to bottarga. A 29 Avenue B (646-864-0093) at Masa must be the most expensive prix rather luscious burger, available only be- The city can be tough on extroverts who have made fixe in the city—but it’s worth remem- fore 6 P.M., was prodigiously fatty, seared it into February with their healthful resolutions bering that he got there because of the to a crust, on a pretzel bun that disinte- more or less intact: if you’re still attempting to cut ethos he has built around his skills with grated after not too long. It came with back on booze, going out with friends is risky—one drink inevitably leads to another. Luckily, Stefen fish. Takayama apprenticed for years at excellent crispy fries strewn with fried Ramirez, an owner of Tea Dealers, a longtime pur- Ginza Sushi-ko, in Tokyo, before setting herbs and bacon. veyor of high-end teas, is intent on cultivating, at out on his own in Los Angeles, in the late There’s one exception to the spotti- this elegant new Alphabet City establishment, what he calls “an air of sobriety.” “Now more than ever, eighties. By the time he débuted Masa, ness: the sushi, which is impeccable. Here people need that,” he said, on a recent Saturday, as in the Time Warner Center in 2004, he is where Takayama’s influence is deeply patrons chatted quietly over pots of tea and glasses was operating at the pinnacle of fine din- felt, in perfect little pieces of nigiri or of wine, in an airy ceramic-lined space flooded with pristine afternoon light. The drinks are inventive ing. Where do you go from the top? delicate temaki on crisp nori. The rice is and tasty (try one of the Korean-tea-infused sojus Last November, Takayama opened the pillowy, with just enough vinegar to pro- or the Moon Over Hadong, with yuzu and pepper). much more casual Tetsu, an izakaya in vide counterpoint to the soft, silky slabs But the pièce de résistance is the exquisite matcha beer, for which friendly attendants, expert in the banker-haven Tribeca. The heavily de- of mackerel, scallop, salmon, amberjack, art of making tea, whisk ceremonial-grade matcha signed space, with a vast open kitchen, even maitake mushroom. Perhaps a bit into Koshihikari beer. Poured into a delicate glass, moody steel-panelled walls, and glaring of cynicism can be detected in the uni- the emerald concoction resolves into an inch of pale-green foam. The earthiness of the tea offsets overhead spotlighting, feels a little like a toro nigiri: it sounds good, but these two the sweetness of the rice-based lager, and the flavor Las Vegas-styled modern-day dungeon. worshipped ingredients really don’t be- expands as the drinker continues topping off her (The name means “iron.”) There’s an long together; the metallic taste of the glass with the remaining beer in the can. Patrons concerned with sobriety will be delighted with the extensive sake menu, but the food is the tuna belly overpowers the delicate sweet- nonalcoholic terrain—there is an impressive array focus, and it’s remarkably hit or miss. ness of the sea urchin, plus, one piece of oolong, pu-erh, matcha, and other teas. But for To start one evening, the duck with costs sixteen dollars. But there’s nothing something unexpected, order from 29B’s rotating selection of house-made sparkling teas. With eyes cabbage slaw was bland, sweet, and un- cynical about opening the best sushi closed, one might mistake a flute of the honey-hued derseasoned, oddly studded with raisins restaurant in Tribeca, which is exactly jasmine variety for a very dry prosecco, save for the and drenched in a dressing that could what Takayama has done, whether he intense floral perfume that lingers after each sip. “A few people I’ve given it to have started crying,” have been mayo. Fried pork-belly skew- meant to or not. (Dishes $6-$26.) Ramirez said. “It reminded them of their family,

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES POMERANTZ FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR POMERANTZ JAMES BY PHOTOGRAPH ers were eerily similar to corn dogs. Tam- —Shauna Lyon or something from their past.”—Wei Tchou

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COMMENT opment of nuclear weapons and ballis- into a “sea of fire,” they worry that, even PEACE GAMES tic missiles, Kim surprised his adversar- under the best of circumstances, reunit- ies by proposing talks about sending a ing with an impoverished dictatorship n enduring bromide about the North Korean delegation to the Games. could hobble South Korea’s economy. AOlympic Games holds that they The two nations restored a military hot- According to the Korea Institute for Na- provide a respite from politics. That has line and agreed to field a joint women’s tional Unification, a think tank based in been a fiction since at least 424 B.C., ice-hockey team. Kim’s gambit was cal- Seoul, sixty per cent of South Koreans when Sparta, fighting Athens in the Pelo- culated to appeal to South Korea’s Pres- in their twenties oppose reunification. ponnesian War, was barred from the ident, Moon Jae-in, an ardent proponent In the first encounter of the new di- Olympiad. In the modern age, it has re- of engagement. Moon hailed the deal as plomacy, Kim deployed an unexpected mained thus. As Seoul prepared to host a breakthrough, saying, “Many consid- tactic: he sent his powerful and reclusive the 1988 Summer Games, Pyongyang ered it an impossible dream to have an younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to the tried to scare the world away by detonat- Olympics of peace, in which North Korea Games, where she caught the United ing a time bomb on a South Korean pas- would participate and the two Koreas States off balance. She posed with Moon senger jet, killing all hundred and fifteen would form a joint team.” for photographs, and invited him to a people onboard. Two spies who planted The South Korean people, however, summit “at his earliest convenience” in the bomb were caught, and swallowed are less sanguine. Many older citizens, Pyongyang. He did not formally accept, cyanide, but one survived. She revealed whose families were riven by the war, but he came close, saying, “Let’s create that the attack had been ordered, in a long for reunification, but younger peo- the environment for that to be able to handwritten directive, by Kim Jong Il, ple, with no memory of an undivided happen.” the heir apparent to the nation’s founder. Korea, tend to regard the North as a bi- Vice-President Mike Pence, repre- The Games have returned to South zarre embarrassment. Having grown up senting the United States, was a step be- Korea at another moment of acute anx- under Pyongyang’s threats to turn Seoul hind. He ignored Kim, and refused to iety, with the potential for hostilities be- stand when the North and South Ko- tween the two nations at a level rarely rean athletes entered the stadium to- seen since the Korean War ended, in 1953. gether at the opening ceremony. Daniel The North Korean regime, now led by Drezner, a professor of international pol- Kim’s son, the thirty-four-year-old Kim itics at Tufts University, considered that Jong Un, is still violent, unpredictable, approach “wrong-footed.” Pence’s allies and isolated, but, this time, it did not try complained that the media was swoon- to stop the Games. Instead, it adopted a ing over Kim—CNN tweeted that she more sophisticated strategy: a diplomatic was “stealing the show.” But, Drezner play, with a fragile potential to defuse wrote in the Washington Post, “it seems the confrontation. hard to avoid the conclusion that Mike For months, experts on North Korea Pence had a bad weekend.” have suspected that Kim might switch Then, as Pence headed back to the course, from confronting the United United States, last Monday, the Trump States and South Korea to playing on Administration, too, abruptly changed tensions between them. In a New Year’s course. With the inter-Korean overtures Day speech, after months of flouting in- gaining strength, and Washington risk-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS ternational condemnation of his devel- ing a breach of its alliance with Seoul,

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 15 the White House said that it was now not changed their assessment. Dan Coats, postpone any exercises until after the willing to join preliminary talks with the director of National Intelligence, said, Paralympic Games end, in March; if they North Korea. That’s encouraging: they “The decision time is becoming ever resume, Kim Jong Un could respond would present the first possibility of sub- closer in terms of how we respond” to with more missile launches. If he moves stantive progress since a failed round of North Korea’s weapons development. to follow through on threats to test a nu- “exploratory” talks between Washington If Moon does accept Kim’s invitation, clear device over the Pacific, the White and Pyongyang in February, 2012. the talks could take place as soon as this House could try to prevent it with a lim- But the Olympic rapprochement does summer. (A poll published last Thurs- ited strike, a strategy that carries extraor- not likely herald an imminent end to the day, by the Yonhap news agency, found dinary risks of escalation. President crisis. John Delury, a North Korea ex- that sixty per cent of South Koreans sup- Trump, for his part, also could end the pert at Yonsei University, in Seoul, who port a summit.) American and South rapprochement with a tweet. has advocated for talks, said, “Moon suc- Korean experts believe that North Korea Nevertheless, for all the doubts sur- ceeded in making the Olympics safe and remains unlikely to give up its nuclear rounding the Olympic thaw, history sug- positive, but he has always been clear weapons, but could, in time, be persuaded gests that it would be wrong to dismiss that the goal was to change the atmo- to limit further production and allow in- this moment. In the nineteen-seventies, sphere and start a dialogue. They have spectors to return. The most plausible Ping-Pong diplomacy helped rebuild ties to sustain this momentum and bridge early deal could involve a suspension of between the United States and China; the gap between inter-Korean détente joint military exercises between the in recent years, wrestling competitions and the United States. It’s a big test, and, United States and South Korea, which have afforded the United States and Iran if it fails, it makes it easier for others to Pyongyang considers a rehearsal for in- a basis for communication. “Sport,” say, ‘We tried talks and they didn’t work.’” vasion, in exchange for a halt to weap- George Orwell wrote in 1945, “is war Last Tuesday, the chiefs of the U.S. se- ons tests. But, in the months ahead, the minus the shooting.” In South Korea this curity agencies told the Senate Intelli- chances of derailment are significant. week, that, at least, is something to cheer. gence Committee that the Olympics had Washington and Seoul have agreed to —Evan Osnos

WHISTLE-BLOWING DEPT. Russia’s state-sponsored doping program, and hold the fabric away from his lips INCOGNITO stored on a laptop and two hard drives— (“It’s coming into my mouth!”), so that the project took a more serious turn. At it looked like a duck’s bill when he talked. one point in the movie, Rodchenkov tells His voice was recognizable from “Icarus.” Veronika, over Skype, “I’m going under He would neither confirm nor deny hav- witness protection.” The film, titled ing undergone cosmetic surgery. “Icarus,” and released by Netflix, has been By this point, the Games in Pyeong- nominated for an Oscar. chang were in full swing, and Rodchen- fter Grigory Rodchenkov left his All the hubbub surrounding Rodchen- kov had reverted from whistle-blower to Aposition as the director of a Rus- kov’s whistle-blowing (“RUSSIAN IN- sports nut. “I adjust my routine to watch sian anti-doping lab, in November of SIDER SAYS STATE-RUN DOPING FU- live transmission,” he said. He’d been set- 2015, some burly guards showed up in ELED OLYMPIC GOLD,” a Times headline ting an alarm to catch particular events. his front yard. Ostensibly, they were sent read) has not played well in Moscow: the That morning, he had risen early for the to protect Rodchenkov from prying re- former head of Russia’s Olympic com- women’s ten-kilometre pursuit biathlon. porters. But he knew enough about Vlad- mittee said that Rodchenkov “should be “Ladies competition is a little more emo- imir Putin’s Russia to fear the worst. shot for lying, like Stalin would have tional than men,” he said. “One day, he is security,” Rodchenkov done”; Putin called him “an imbecile.” In There was a knock on the door. Room said last week. “Next day, he is killer.” December, the International Olympic service. Rodchenkov turned his body to Rodchenkov promptly fled. He is an Committee banned Russia from the Win- face a wall as one of his guards cracked asthmatic, and he told his wife, Veron- ter Games, in Pyeongchang. Shortly the door to take the delivery. Rodchen- ika, that he couldn’t handle another Mos- afterward, Rodchenkov’s lawyer, Jim kov passed on lunch, in part because of cow winter, so he planned to wait it out Walden, got a tip that a team of Russians the balaclava and in part because of his in sunny Los Angeles. He packed light, was in the U.S., hunting for Rodchen- growing paunch. “When you are stressed, to avoid arousing suspicion. He recalled, kov. Since then, Walden said, an armed you are coming to the fridge,” he said. of bidding Veronika goodbye, “It was not security detail has kept Rodchenkov on This reminded one of Walden’s as- long kiss. I don’t want make her scared.” the move, and sometimes in disguise, so sociates to fetch her purse and remove a Bryan Fogel, a competitive cyclist and that his pursuers “can’t pick up his scent.” ziplock bag of chili peppers from her a filmmaker, was waiting for him in L.A. Last week, Rodchenkov was holed up garden that she’d brought for Rodchen- Fogel and Rodchenkov had been collab- in a hotel conference room in the tri- kov to cook with. Delighted, he replied, orating on a gonzo documentary about state area. He had on jeans and a button- “Yes! I love them.” He went on, “Because doping. When Rodchenkov unzipped down shirt, and his face was covered by I am chemist, I am cooking all the time.” his suitcase and showed Fogel what he sunburst sunglasses and a black Lycra Soups are one of his specialties. “But you had spirited out of Russia—evidence of balaclava. He had to pinch the balaclava cannot cook soup in small cup. You need

16 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 volume, especially for borscht.” He hinted Two years ago, Chandler and her busi- and it’s taking over Europe,” she read. that his large-quantity cooking was re- ness partner, Walter Pearce, who is a “She’s fabulous,” Chandler said, holding sponsible for his weight gain. Asked if twenty-two-year-old downtown It Boy, up the phone to show the crustacean to he shopped for ingredients in Russian created an agency called Midland, which the others. markets in the U.S., he replied, “It’s un- aims to cast real people (with an em- A panicked voice from the hallway imaginable. If I hear a Russian voice, I phasis on the eccentric or the unpol- intruded. “Oh, it’s not over? Thank God!” just make U-turn.” ished) in fashion shows and ad cam- the voice yelled, in a thick French accent. Back home, he said, Veronika would paigns. Their clients include Adidas, “Well, it’s technically over,” Chandler watch his diet. These days, their conver- Gucci, Barneys, and the C.F.D.A.-winning told the pouty-lipped woman, when she sations tended to be brief and perfunc- designer Telfar. walked in. “But we’ll see you.” tory. Her phone is almost certainly being Pearce explained, “I’m drawn to The woman removed her jacket and tapped. He said, “It’s just ‘How are you? women who seem like they’re deer in posed for a head shot, still breathless. “I How are children? I’m O.K. You’re the headlights, parents-as-cousins, and don’t know if you know my story,” she O.K.?’” His daughter recently married, ‘Are we uptown or downtown?’” He de- said. but Rodchenkov missed the wedding. scribed the look Chandler is going for “What’s your story?” Eckhaus asked. It was getting late, and one of Rod- as “grown, scary women who will yell at “I’m transgender,” she said. chenkov’s guards announced, “We got you if you drop something in their house.” “O.K.,” Chandler said. to wrap up.” Rodchenkov fidgeted with For Eckhaus Latta, Chandler hoped “I was going to miss the casting, but his shades and his mask. His plans for to cast a mix of working models and I love your brand so much,” the model later? “I’d like to see speed skating. Wom- “nodels,” as nonprofessionals are called. said, as she scurried out. en’s fifteen hundred metres.” Maybe he Some of these are friends of hers and could even get in some calisthenics during of the designers, and some are people the commercials. And for dinner? He whom she stops on the street. Last year, had made a pot of Chinese mushroom a friend she cast walked the runway soup, which was waiting on the stove, with the middle buttons of her dress but upon further thought he said, “I think undone to reveal a pregnant belly. Eck- I will take little bit diet. Only fruits.” haus Latta’s line often features gender- 1—Nicholas Schmidle neutral sizing, and a recent series of ads pictured models having sex. For an- ON THE RUNWAY other campaign, Chandler cast her as- REAL PEOPLE sistant and the babysitter of a stylist friend; both were topless and wore clown makeup. When it comes to casting models, the line between “real” and “too real” can be tricky to discern. The label’s designers— Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, thirty- few days before Fashion Week year-old graduates of the Rhode Island Rachel Chandler A began, the avant-garde label Eck- School of Design—were worried about haus Latta held a casting call in a Chi- coming off as gimmicky this season. Some “I liked her, but she’s too sexy in the natown basement for its runway show. agencies had misinterpreted their aes- face,” Eckhaus said. Women with pink hair, men with full- thetic and sent over candidates with ob- Latta, who is tall and blond, with rosy back tattoos, plus-size and transgender vious shticks, or with too many tattoos. cheeks, stood in front of a wall of head models, and not terribly tall civilians— Chandler and the designers pored shots and scrunched her mouth. “It’s all were fair game in the eyes of Rachel over a pile of head shots, frowning. Eck- feeling very white right now,” she said. Chandler, the casting director who’d sum- haus, who has tousled black hair and was Chandler leaned in and began count- moned them. wearing a white turtleneck and black ing. Toward the bottom of the wall were Chandler was reviewing the day’s jeans, picked up a photo of a young three young black men, all shirtless. “It’s snapshots as a few stragglers showed up. woman with white-blond hair and sunken actually not that white,” she said. A lanky woman with a short Afro and eyes. “No, no,” he said. “She looks like a “It’s unbalanced to me,” Eckhaus said. an unplaceable accent sauntered in and piranha.” “It feels too model-y,” Latta added. handed over her modelling card. Chandler held up a shot of a classi- “It’s not as strong on the nodels.” “Where are you from?” Chandler, who cally beautiful woman with thick brown “That’s because we don’t have any is thirty years old and petite, with blond hair parted down the middle. “She’s so friends anymore, because all we do is sit hair, asked. She is a new mother, and she pretty,” she said. in the studio,” Eckhaus said. wore a hoodie and baggy jeans. “We could shave her head?” Eckhaus They mulled the idea of casting Thea “Panama,” the woman said. joked. Westreich, an art adviser in her seven- “Cool,” Chandler said. “I’ve never had Chandler’s phone vibrated with a news ties, who’d modelled for them before. a model from Panama before.” alert. “This mutant crayfish clones itself, Latta looked at the board. “These

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 17 girls are so pretty,” she said with disgust. anthology called “Letters to My Uterus”), erary left no time for extracurriculars. “I “Maybe that’s good,” Chandler said. she is, according to a recent poll, the ate a club sandwich,” she said. Her im- “I’m thinking we need more of a vibe fourth most popular member of the Ma- pressions owed as much to Tocqueville of a masc woman,” Latta said. cron cabinet, and among the most out- as they did to Lena Dunham and to Je- Eckhaus pointed to a photo of a spoken. Since her appointment, last May, zebel, both of whom she cited as in- woman. “She’s butch,” he said. They she has campaigned against les violences fluences. “I always notice the energy and thumbed through the pile, stopping at a obstétricales—painful or traumatizing the volunteerism that exist in America,” model they’d liked earlier. procedures that women undergo during she said. “Regarding the place of women, “She was great,” Chandler said. “She’s childbirth, including unnecessary epi- the reflex in France is to say, ‘What’s the trans!” siotomies. The day after the publication state going to do for me?’” In New York, “Cool,” Latta said. “And she didn’t say, of the Deneuve letter, which Schiappa Schiappa had announced that the French ‘So do you know my story?’” deemed “dangerous,” she exchanged government was creating, in partnership 1—Carrie Battan friendly tweets with Asia Argento, one with the World Economic Forum, a task of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers. force, in order, she said, “to take the best PARIS POSTCARD “The French feminist movement has of public engagement from France, and CHERCHEZ LA FEMME never been a single bloc, it’s never been the best of private engagement from monolithic,” Schiappa said upon her re- the States.” turn to Paris, receiving a visitor in her Macron has designated gender equal- office. Among other jabs the Deneuve ity the grande cause of his five-year term. letter made at American-style feminism, In the legislative elections last June, half it denounced the “puritanism” of the of his party’s slate of candidates were #MeToo movement. Schiappa went on, women. (Gender parity has been the law ast month, just before “Saturday “In France, when one wants to say that in France since 2000, but parties often LNight Live” parodied Catherine we mustn’t go too far, the expression is choose to pay fines rather than heed it.) Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot as ‘We must not Americanize society.’ As if Two hundred and twenty-three women wine-swilling reactionaries, Marlène people in the United States don’t seduce were elected to the French parliament, Schiappa, a Frenchwoman with signifi- each other, don’t have relationships. I was making it thirty-eight per cent female, cantly greater authority on gender is- in New York for two days. I took eleva- nearly fifty per cent more than the pre- sues, made a quick visit to New York. tors with men. They didn’t make me sign vious record. Still, some feminists feel let Schiappa is the gender-equality minis- a contract beforehand saying that I wasn’t down by Macron, who had strongly ter in President Emmanuel Macron’s going to sue them. It’s even possible that hinted that he might pick a female to be government. A former blogger (her Web some of them might have flirted.” Prime Minister, only to select Édouard site, Maman Travaille, was among the Schiappa, who is thirty-five, had gone Philippe, an establishmentarian whose country’s first online resources for work- to New York to attend a conference on sole contribution to diversity is his beard. ing mothers) and author (she edited an women in corporate leadership. Her itin- And this month a woman accused Gérald Darmanin, Macron’s young budget min- ister, of having raped her in 2009. (Dar- manin has said that he will sue her for defamation. In 2004, she was convicted of blackmail.) The situation has put Schiappa in a tricky position. “I couldn’t be in a gov- ernment with someone who was charged with rape,” she said. “But there is a pre- sumption of innocence, and he hasn’t been charged.” (Last week, another min- ister, Nicolas Hulot, was accused of sex- ual assault. He denies any wrongdoing.) She continued, cleverly, “Just because there was a complaint against this woman for defamation doesn’t mean we have to consider her guilty of defamation.” In a recent profile titled “How Far Will Marlène Schiappa Go?,” the newsweekly Le Point characterized her as “the blun- dering, too talkative young cousin” of the administration. Annoyed with such cov- erage, she has begun wearing her hair in “It’s more expensive, but I raised it myself.” a businesslike updo, but she is determined, kicks in. Every month or so, under cover ing writing?” Arakas asked, pointing at of predawn darkness, he and his team the bottom of the sketch, where the word take a van to a different location in the “love” was penned in. city and swiftly unload treasure: buckets “Yeah, that’s the message,” Miller said. and buckets of flowers. Then, as quickly “It’s not about stupid Valentine’s Day as they can, they shove the blooms into love but ‘I love New York.’” corner trash cans, or tuck them into the “And if people take these carnations nooks and crannies of construction sites, they’d better give them to their moms or drape their garlanded stems around or their sweethearts,” Arakas said. statuary. Miller calls these guerrilla in- Miller had planned a second Valen- stallations Flower Flashes: he puts them tine’s installation: a six-foot-tall heart- together in less than twenty minutes; shaped wreath made of dried grapevines they vanish within a matter of hours. In- threaded with ivy. The wreath’s armature stagram saves them for posterity. was premade, but the following day he “So here’s what I want to do,” Miller would fill it out in the studio with fuch- said last week, at his East Village stu- sia Mamy Blue and David Austin En- Marlène Schiappa dio. He was sitting at a worktable, next glish roses, chrysanthemums, blue del- to a pair of potted orange trees in full phinium, and, of course, red roses. whatever controversy may come, to enact fruit, talking to his special-projects di- At 5:35 A.M., the van brought the half- a law that would make street harassment rector, Irini Arakas. “I want to get a done wreath to its flash site, at the West punishable by an on-the-spot fine. “There’s bunch of cardboard boxes of various Fourth Street subway station, in front of a study that just came out that says that sizes and just prime them white, then the basketball and handball courts. eight women in ten in France are afraid roll on blue stripes—very graphic—and “That is beautiful!” a man in a long when they go out by themselves at night,” paint some huge red hearts on top of overcoat and a wool cap exclaimed, emerg- she said. “Importuner des femmes”— that. Then just have these hedges of car- ing from the shadows. Miller and his bothering women—she went on, using De- nations in the boxes.” The designer Tory helpers were poking the final flowers into neuve’s formulation.“It’s not like they’re Burch had donated seventeen thousand the wreath—red anemones, blue and pink offering women a rose in the street.” pink carnations, left over from her Fash- sweet peas, pink-and-green ornamental- That weekend, she said, she had heard ion Week show, for the project. cabbage stems, Queen Anne’s lace. her eleven-year-old exchanging tips with “They’re a perfect color,” Arakas ob- “Can I have some to give to my a friend: “My daughter said, ‘Watch out served, the clovish scent of carnations mother?” the man asked. “She’s eighty- if there’s a group of guys coming—you enveloping the studio. “A cross between two and housebound.” Arakas grabbed need to look straight in front of you.’ Pepto-Bismol and Sweet’N Low.” a bunch of roses from a bucket and And her friend said, ‘That’s not my tech- “It’s the ultimate free gift,” Miller said. dropped them into the man’s out- nique. I pretend to be on the phone or “I mean, who was lucky enough to see stretched hand. “This will mean so much listening to music.’” Schiappa continued, Tory Burch’s show? Only a handful of to her,” he said. “I want to sing a song “That says that we’re steeped in this, that special people. So now we can take these right now, if you don’t mind.” He began, it’s an inevitability—that when it rains and do something cheeky, for the every- in a croaky voice, “Lean on me, when we take an umbrella, that when we’re day New Yorker.” you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, hungry we eat, that when we enter a shop Miller is tallish and trim, with wavy I’ll help you ca-a-ar-ry on . . .” we say ‘Bonjour,’ and that when some- chestnut hair, peony-pink skin, and eyes The team worked feverishly as he one harasses us in the street we do this. the color of forget-me-nots. He was wear- sang, then cheered him when he finished. I find that terrible.” ing a pressed navy chambray shirt over “Oh, I love it,” the man said of the 1 —Lauren Collins a striped T-shirt with khakis and blue wreath. “Artist effect. That’s what the suède sneakers. Arakas was dressed in a world needs right now.” He shuffled off, HERE TODAY DEPT. long skirt and dangling earrings. dragging a suitcase on wheels. FLOWER BOMBS After scissoring around the periph- The wreath completed, the sidewalk ery of a design he’d sketched with col- swept, Miller’s tag (LMDXNYC) sten- ored Sharpies, Miller laid the cutout over cilled in chalk on a railing, the team piled a photograph of the shuttered HSBC into a taxi and sped up to Fourteenth bank at Fourteenth Street and Sixth Av- Street to meet the van with the carna- enue, finessing it so that the sketch fit tions. They quickly set up the striped perfectly against the bank’s glass doors, boxes with hearts on the front, then added y day, the floral designer Lewis Miller which were scrawled with graffiti and the carnation hedges. Bleary-eyed peo- Bcreates arrangements of abundance featured a sign warning of rat poison. ple on their way to work stopped to take and originality for understated events at He continued, “So, super-fresh and op- photos with their iPhones. Miller took such venues as the Maidstone Club, the timistic and preppy, but it’s Valentine’s one, too, then bolted, just as the sun Stone Barns Center, and the New York Day—so not too sweet.” came up. Public Library. By night, his Banksy side “And, Toots, are you thinking of add- —Mary Hawthorne

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 19 Pir’s family were caretakers of a ANNALS OF WAR shrine in a northern valley, and if he read something disparaging about Yazidis in an Iraqi newspaper he would ESCAPING ISIS cool off in its stone rooms. If a neigh- bor returned from Mosul to Khana- How a small group of immigrants helped save their people back home. sour, Pir’s home town, saying that he had been mocked by Arabs or Kurds BY JENNA KRAJESKI for wearing traditional Yazidi robes, Pir might sit in one of the mountain’s rowing up in northwestern Iraq, Though Yazidis pray toward the sun, orchards and read Western philoso- GHadi Pir often went to Mt. Sin- and worship seven angels, they are phy—Hegel’s “The Philosophy of His- jar for solace. As a Yazidi, a member monotheistic, and there is little to dis- tory” was a favorite—before walking of an ancient religious minority, he be- tinguish their God from the Muslim home. lieved that the narrow mountain was or the Christian one. Under the Otto- Pir planned to write a novel about sacred, central to the Yazidi creation mans, Yazidi villages were raided so Yazidi persecution with his friend myth. Aside from the mountain, the often that the word firman, which means Murad Ismael, an engineering student region where the country’s six hundred “decree” in Ottoman Turkish, came to who loved poetry as much as Pir loved

ISIS intended to wipe out the Yazidi religion in Iraq. Yazidis in America had a plan, so they started driving to Washington. thousand Yazidis live, also called Sin- mean “genocide” among Yazidis. When philosophy. In their book, whose events jar, is flat and desert-like. To Yazidis, Saddam Hussein was President of Iraq, would take place in the nineteenth cen- it seems clear that God created the Yazidi villages were razed, and their tury, Yazidis are chased from their mountain because He knew that they inhabitants were resettled in planned homes by Ottoman soldiers. The slow- would need a place to hide. communities and compelled to iden- est among them are killed, but the lucky Yazidis have suffered centuries of tify as Arabs. By the time that Pir was ones hide on the mountain until it is religious persecution, based largely on in college, in the early two-thousands, safe to descend. the false idea that they revere the sun the Yazidis counted seventy-two geno- After 2003, when the United States

as God and worship a fallen angel. cides in their history. invaded Iraq, Pir and Ismael, like many MOISES SAMAN/MAGNUM

20 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 Yazidi men, took jobs as interpreters State had recently been taking terri- they didn’t make it, they would be for the U.S. military. Because they were tory in Iraq, which its leaders vowed killed by ISIS. Elias, who was studying a targeted religious minority, there was to make part of their caliphate. In June, biology at Houston Community Col- little opportunity outside the Army, ISIS had driven the Iraqi Army out of lege, spent the night calling his family and they were unlikely to join the Iraqi Mosul, but Sinjar, which was about but was unable to reach his youngest insurgency. In the military, they be- eighty miles west, was guarded by sol- brother, Faleh. In the morning, he friended another Yazidi, named Haider diers from Iraqi Kurdistan. found out that Faleh had been exe- Elias, who, in spite of his poor back- “No,” Adula said. Yara had a fever cuted, along with dozens of other men ground, spoke nearly perfect English, and Adula was depressed again. “I from their village. When Elias closed with a TV-made American accent. have to go,” she told her brother. “Be his eyes, he imagined his brother’s The three men worked with the careful.” phone ringing the moment the gun U.S. for years, often with the Special When Adula’s brother phoned again, was fired. Forces. Being an interpreter was dan- at midnight, they were taking Yara to Early the next morning, Yazidis gerous—Pir carried two guns, an au- the hospital, so they ignored the call. across America began to organize. In tomatic rifle to kill insurgents and a At three in the morning, when they Houston, they protested in front of the pistol to kill himself if he faced being pulled into the parking lot of their Galleria mall; in Lincoln, they marched kidnapped. On one mission, Pir, work- apartment complex, dozens of their to the governor’s mansion. But it was ing undercover to collect locations of Yazidi neighbors were outside on the a Sunday, and the mansion was dark. insurgents, met with a Sunni fighter lawn, talking on their cell phones and After two young Yazidi men were re- who later became a high-ranking ISIS crying. strained by the police for banging on militant. On another, his best friend “ISIS has taken over Sinjar,” a neigh- the gate, everyone went home. was killed. “We were soldiers, basically, bor said. “Everyone is running to the On the morning of August 4th, Pir more than interpreters,” Pir told me. mountain.” was going to work when a neighbor from After their service, they received spe- Khanasour called from the mountain. cial visas to come to the U.S. Elias and SIS came into Sinjar at dawn, with “Hadi, we’re still alive,” he said. “Me Ismael went to Houston, along with a Ithe intention of wiping out Yazidism and my brothers have a few AKs and dozen Yazidi families. In 2012, Pir and in Iraq. The group’s Research and Fatwa we’re guarding a shrine.” his wife, Adula, and their daughter, Department had declared that, unlike Pir began to cry. Ayana, ended up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Christians or Shia Muslims, Yazidis “Don’t cry,” the neighbor said. “You whose Yazidi community, with about were a “pagan minority.” The Kurdish have to do something. No one cares a thousand members, is the largest in soldiers retreated without warning, after about us.” Pir thought, If we are his the U.S. determining that their position was only hope, then there’s no hope. “Be Pir started working for a nonprofit untenable. Yazidis ran from their homes strong,” his neighbor said. “There are that assisted refugees—the group had and scrambled up the rocky slopes of a lot of families following behind us.” helped resettle his family—and he and Mt. Sinjar. Trucks jammed with peo- Elias, Ismael, and Pir hadn’t always Adula had another daughter, Yara. Iraq ple overturned on narrow roads. Homes agreed with how the U.S. military op- was consumed by sectarian violence, north of the mountain quickly emp- erated in Iraq. Pir would listen to sol- but their lives in America were stable. tied; with the roads controlled by ISIS, diers propose ransacking villages in They studied English, and on warm thousands of Yazidis were trapped in search of a single insurgent. “I know weekend evenings they joined other the southern villages. it’s not going to work,” he said. “But Yazidis in a park near their home. Even In Lincoln, Adula stayed on the they will not take my opinion.” Still, the source of the despair that some- phone with her family as they packed without other allies, Yazidis clung to times overtook them could be iden- a change of clothes, some photo- the belief, long after it evaporated for tified at a clinic in Lincoln. Adula’s graphs and papers, and cookies that most Iraqis, that the Americans would listlessness was postpartum depres- they had baked for an upcoming hol- help them. “A lot of people would call sion; Pir received a diagnosis of iday. As they walked along the dirt us and say, ‘No one can rescue us but P.T.S.D. He enrolled in a creative- road leading to the mountain, their the U.S.,’” Ismael said. writing class, where he wrote an essay voices were drowned out by the sound Pir wrote on Facebook, “We are about Mt. Sinjar. He wanted his class- of car engines. Adula worried most planning to go to Washington,” and mates, who talked about the U.S. as if about her mother, who had arthritis implored Yazidis to join them. Then all of it belonged to them, to under- and high blood pressure, and her he reserved a fifteen-passenger van. A stand that all Yazidis had in Iraq was sister-in-law, who was seven months few hours later, seeing the responses to the mountain. pregnant. his post, he reserved four more. On the evening of August 2, 2014, Pir couldn’t bear to take the phone The next day, Yazidis wearing shirts Adula’s brother called from Khana- from his wife, or to talk to Ismael or that read “Save the Yazidis” boarded sour. “We’ve heard villages south of Elias when they called. He was sure airplanes in Houston. Others came from Mt. Sinjar have been attacked by ISIS,” that all the Yazidis in Sinjar were Arizona, Virginia, West Virginia, and he told her. going to die. If they made it to the Canada. In Lincoln, Pir sat behind the “Is he sure?” Pir asked. The Islamic mountain, they would die of thirst. If wheel of a van at the head of a convoy

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 21 of cars. He entered “The White House” litia that had been formed in Sinjar. more about the U.S. military than any into his G.P.S. and started out on a Finally, the Americans had to persuade of us did.” twelve-hundred-mile drive. the Iraqi government to track the grow- Later that day, Melia attended an ing number of Yazidis held captive by interagency meeting, where an official he Yazidi group called itself the ISIS. They were convinced that, with- said that no one knew if anyone was TSinjar Crisis Management Team. out pressure from the U.S., nothing left on Mt. Sinjar. “She was explaining “We, a group of more than one- would happen. “When the big guy is that all the cell phones were dead,” he hundred interpreters, worked for the in, everybody’s in,” Pir said. told me. “I said, ‘No, the phones work. U.S. military in Iraq and our people The Yazidis asked to see the State We just got information in the last are under attack by terrorists,” Ismael Department’s maps of northern Iraq; hour.’” Melia found Padgett. “Call wrote to every lawmaker and journal- they found them to be hopelessly un- Haider or Murad,” he said. “Ask them ist he could reach. He also e-mailed specific, marking only major towns and if their cell phones are still working.” photographs of Yazidi children, weak- roads. Though President Obama had Padgett contacted Elias, who said ened by thirst, and a video of a moun- decided to intervene in Sinjar, the lim- that he had just spoken with his fam- taintop burial. ited U.S. assets in northern Iraq were ily. “We are in D.C., trying to do some- On August 7th, about a hundred focussed on protecting the U.S. con- thing,” Elias told his relatives, urging Yazidis gathered in front of the White sulate and the U.S. oil companies in them to give his number to anyone House. Their permit allowed them three Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. who wanted it. hours, after which they had to make The State Department was struggling way for a protest for Palestinian rights. to track the fleeing Yazidis and the he Yazidis checked into a nearby The story had begun to dominate the militants. Thotel, where they stayed five or six U.S. media, and a group of Yazidis from In Sinjar, everything had a name: to a room. That night, Obama an- Virginia and Canada had arranged for family homes; a fig tree and the well nounced that he had authorized aid a meeting at the Office of International used to water it; a crevasse that might, drops and air strikes in Sinjar, calling Religious Freedom, a division of the on satellite imagery, look like a hairline what was happening to Yazidis there State Department’s Bureau of De- fracture but was big enough to hide a a “potential act of genocide.” In cele- mocracy, Human Rights, and Labor family. In some cases, there were three bration, the Sinjar crisis team ordered (D.R.L.). names for one spot—an Arabic one, a pizza, their first real meal in days. With a dozen other Yazidis, Pir Kurdish one, and a Yazidi one. Ismael, When the first pallet of supplies was waited to be escorted to the meeting. who had received a master’s degree in dropped, Adula’s cousin called Pir from He hadn’t thought to bring a tie; he geophysics from the University of Hous- the mountain. “We can hear the air- wore sandals and a powder-blue polo ton, had begun aggregating information planes, but where is the food?” he asked. shirt, damp with sweat. An elderly from Sinjar onto maps, marking fleeing Adula’s family had made it to a large Yazidi dressed in a traditional white Yazidis with stick figures in wheelchairs northern valley, where they joined hun- robe cinched with a red cummerbund and ISIS positions with red octagons. dreds of others, exhausted and terrified. was so overcome that he could barely “Can I use your whiteboard?” Pir Pir and Ismael knew the valley; there walk. They were led to a conference asked at the meeting, and began to were two small temples and a deep well. room, packed with State employees. draw Mt. Sinjar. “Like, O.K., this is In the spring, Yazidis went there to grill Doug Padgett and Leanne Cannon, Iraq, this is Syria, this is the K.R.G.,” meat and drink beer. In the summer, two early-career officials Ismael recalls, using the though, the valley was scorched. The who had been fielding acronym for Iraqi Kurd- water, shared among the Yazidis, would calls from the Yazidis, istan. “The south is basi- soon become silty and putrid. stood by the windows, and cally impassable,” Pir told Pir realized that the Americans were Thomas O. Melia, their the group. ISIS occupied dropping aid near structures where boss at the D.R.L., sat at the roads out and the farmers stayed only during the harvest. a table. The Yazidis told area’s Sunni villages. “Those The team bought a cheap printer and stories of families killed people need to be able to the next morning returned to the State by ISIS, homes destroyed, make it to the north if Department offices with their maps. and the unbearable con- they have any chance of “These are empty,” Pir said, point- ditions on the mountain. Ismael no- surviving.” He tried to avoid politics: ing to the buildings. It alarmed him ticed that Padgett, a six-foot-five-inch although Kurdish soldiers had aban- that the U.S. knew so little about former Navy officer, was crying. “I didn’t doned Sinjar, Iraqi Kurdistan was a Sinjar. When he worked with the think that the U.S. will care that much U.S. ally. “Our message was, These peo- Army, officials seemed to have eyes in about us,” Ismael told me. “To be hon- ple could die and you can do some- every corner of Iraq. Now they needed est, we are a small minority in the mid- thing about it,” Pir said. him to tell them where to drop food? dle of nowhere.” The Yazidis were “the antithesis of He pointed to where Yazidis had The Yazidis had a three-point plan. Washington advocates,” Melia told me. gathered—places where there were The U.S. must drop food and water on “They also—and this is what may have wells, and far enough away from ISIS. the mountain, then help a Yazidi mi- helped them make the case—knew way “A lot of people are too tired now to

22 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 walk,” he said. “The closer you can drop them, the better.” He was elated when, later that night, he learned that aid had reached many of the Yazidis. In the course of a few days, the Yazidis met with organizations such as U.S.A.I.D. and the Institute for In- ternational Law and Human Rights. They went to the White House to meet with the deputy national-security adviser, Ben Rhodes, and the adviser on Iraq, Andy Kim, in the Roosevelt Room. “That was as emotional a meet- ing as I think I had,” Rhodes told me. “Given the role we played in invading and occupying and being present in Iraq for so many years, we had to care about what was happening to the Yazidis.” At every meeting, people seemed to be on the Yazidis’ side. Even a K.R.G. representative they met with, who tried to justify the Kurdish fighters’ with- drawal, was distraught about the plight of the fleeing Yazidis. “It frankly doesn’t get any more clear-cut,” Rhodes said. “There are people on a mountain. You “It slices! It dices! It drives a wedge between you and your can get those people food and water wife, because you stored all the unsold units in her writing nook, and you can bomb the people who are not like she was using it anyway but whatever!” laying siege to the mountain.” But, without granular intelligence, the mil- itary couldn’t respond quickly enough. •• Sarah Sewall, the Under-Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, for speaking out against them. They At night in Washington, when it and Human Rights, told me that the were pretty awful to a lot of people.” was morning in Iraq, twenty-two Yazidis came with “what we would call “It was incredibly unconventional,” Yazidis pooled their phones and com- in the policy world ‘actionable intelli- Colonel Chuck Freeman, a Depart- puters in a hotel room, where they pro- gence.’ That’s huge.” ment of Defense adviser at the U.S. cessed the information they were re- A system developed. The Yazidis consulate in Erbil, told me. Colleagues ceiving from Sinjar. When the hotel e-mailed and texted Cannon and warned him that Cannon’s job was to became too expensive, they moved to Padgett reports that they received by emphasize human-rights abuses above a motel, in Maryland, forty minutes phone from Mt. Sinjar. Cannon for- long-term military and political gains. from Washington. It was so grimy that warded the reports to an e-mail chain “They were concerned she was emo- they checked for bedbugs. They did that quickly grew to include some two tional,” he said. “Quite frankly, it was not know when they would return hundred officials, including people far extremely emotional, once we started home. They felt useful, and that feel- her senior, such as the U.S. Ambassa- realizing what was going on.” ing was a salve. “It was, like, now, yes, dor in Baghdad. Ismael, Elias, and Pir learned how we have a job,” Ismael told me. “We She included officials who disap- to transform G.P.S. coördinates into are here, we can get the Yazidis’ voice proved, at least initially, of using the the grid system favored by the military. to the strongest country.” Yazidis as sources, among them career An intelligence officer sent the men a diplomats who preferred their own high-resolution digital map, on which n August 9th, a Yazidi fighter in sources and were skeptical that mem- Ismael made layers for streets and tem- Othe northern town of Sharfadin bers of the Office of International Reli- ples, towns and villages, valleys and called Ismael. He was watching the gious Freedom, who are not Iraq experts, farms; a layer for people stranded on road with binoculars, and he noticed understood the consequences of focus- Mt. Sinjar and one for ISIS Humvees; that ISIS militants on a small hill were sing on Yazidis. “ISIS had already killed layers for water towers and cell towers, watching him, and they had better bin- two thousand Shia,” one official, who houses, sheds that looked like houses, oculars. “There are four trucks and a was working on Iraq in August, 2014, and garages where militants hid when DShK”—a mounted machine gun— told me. “They were killing Sunni imams they heard airplanes. “aimed at the road,” he told Ismael. “If

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 23 to his Muslim friends. One afternoon, they ordered sandwiches and opened the door to find a deliveryman with a dark beard. Though they knew they were being silly, even offensive, the sight of the deliveryman scared them, and they asked to change rooms. “We were basically blind,” Ismael recalled. “You get to the edge of your emotions, to the edge of everything.” Pir couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone in Sinjar was going to die. One night, he had watched an ISIS video in which Yazidi men were forced to convert; later, he heard that they were killed anyway. Pir, Elias, and Is- mael felt guilty that they were safe in America. More than once, they offered to go to Iraq. “We the former inter- preters present in DC today are ready “O.K., coffee break’s over.” to conduct these operations with the US Special Forces, or to go to Sinjar on our own to rescue what can be res- •• cued from our people,” they wrote to Padgett and Cannon. you are facing north, it’s on the left.” the mountain. “I don’t like my wife,” Pir and Elias were also increasingly “It’s a very good place for them,” Pir he joked. “Can you give the coördi- concerned about their remaining fam- told Ismael. His iPhone was old and nates to the Americans so they can ily members in Sinjar. Yazidis had begun needed to be constantly charged, so he bomb her?” Pir laughed and then leaving the mountain through a safe sat hunched by the bed, close to an jumped on the bed until he could feel corridor guarded by a Syrian Kurdish outlet. “They are in control.” Ismael’s disapproving stare and stopped. paramilitary group, the Y.P.G. The cor- Ismael called Attallah Elias, a Yazidi ridor began in Karse, a town on the in Virginia whose uncle was leading issing their families, and fearing north side of the mountain, followed the fighters in Sharfadin. He reported Mthat they would lose their jobs, a paved road for seven miles to Sinoni, the same thing. In Lincoln, Khalaf many of the Yazidis left Washington which was guarded by Yazidi militia Smoqi, a former interpreter, whose after a week, vowing to send informa- and Y.P.G., and then eight miles north brother had friends who were fighting tion from home. Soon, only Elias, Pir, to the Syrian border. Once Yazidis were in Sharfadin, provided more informa- and Ismael remained in the motel. inside Y.P.G.-controlled Syria, they tion. “My brother is a hundred per cent Their room became a wreck of could either stay in a refugee camp or sure they are about to attack,” he told papers and maps. They kept the door continue north and eventually cross Ismael. “If the DShK stays, no one will closed, avoiding the other guests and the border into Iraqi Kurdistan. be able to escape.” the cleaning staff. ISIS targets had been Adula’s family were still in the val- Ismael e-mailed Cannon and Padgett hit at checkpoints in the north, and an ley, charging their cell phone on car bat- with the information, and a few hours ISIS headquarters in Sinjar City had teries and eating small rations of mut- later the fighter in Sharfadin called Is- been destroyed. Aid drops were reach- ton. Pir told his in-laws that they had mael to tell him that ISIS targets were ing many more Yazidis. to go over the top of the mountain, a being hit in air strikes. Ismael e-mailed Elias, Pir, and Ismael struggled to journey of more than ten hours for a Padgett and Cannon: “Amazing, the resist the politicizing of the crisis. If healthy person. He worried that they attack took place. Love you America.” they suspected a journalist of trying to would be shot, that Adula’s mother would “Any more confirmation or details use the Yazidis to support partisan collapse, that her sister-in-law would you get would be great!” Cannon replied. talking points—“Fox News always give birth prematurely. They left on the “The attack got three of them and wants to take the argument of the Yazidi morning of August 10th, stopping often, the fourth one escaped eastward.” genocide to be anti-Islamic,” Ismael drinking a little water and watching for “Three what—people trucks units?” said—they pushed back. In the motel danger; twenty-four hours later, they Padgett asked. room, it was harder to resist. Their re- reached Karse. Pir tried not to show his “Three trucks.” sentment toward the Kurdish soldiers relief; he didn’t want anyone to think “We felt like, O.K., so we’re not simmered. They also worried that they that he cared more about Adula’s fam- wasting our time,” Elias said. wouldn’t be able to suppress their own ily than about the other Yazidis. One of Pir’s friends called him from prejudice; Ismael couldn’t bear to talk Elias’s family had reached Karse and

24 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 were making their way to the Tigris “Murad, unfortunately, I don’t be- action. “Helping an individual village River, which marks the border between lieve any U.S. planes would be allowed amidst a conflict is a more complicated Syria and Iraq. He gave them instruc- to land there so this is probably not a endeavor than dealing with an isolated tions culled from his military experi- feasible option,” Cannon wrote back. area like a mountain,” Rhodes said. ence. “Fall on the ground when you hear “I’m sorry.” Kocho was more like Syria, where shots,” he said. “Run when you don’t.” “OMG,” Ismael replied. Obama had resisted intervening in part Elias slept on the floor, not want- “Murad we are sending every bit of because of the difficulty in distinguish- ing to be comfortable. He quickly lost information you give us to very high ing between militants and civilians. ten pounds. One day, he went to the ranking officials at State and DoD,” Then, on the morning of August 15th, airport to exchange rental cars; on the Padgett e-mailed. “Write to Ben Rhodes,” the team sent Cannon and Padgett an way back, his phone died. He got lost he continued. “In some ways your voice e-mail with the subject line “KOCHO on the highway, which was full of signs is more powerful than ours.” MASSACRE TAKING PLACE.” to places he had never heard of. Over- “Here is the plan we are thinking “Help Help Help,” the message read. whelmed, he pulled over and wept. about,” Ismael wrote. ISIS was not yet “ISIL KILLING MEN IN MASS AND TAK- After Elias’s family crossed the inside Kocho; its forces were guarding ING WOMEN IN KOCHO. HAVE AIR- Tigris, they no longer had cell-phone the paved road to the mountain. If the PLANES GO THERE.” service, so he distracted himself with U.S. provided air cover, villagers could other calls: two villages in the south, escape on foot or in cars. They had kept SIS marched Kocho’s fifteen hundred Hatamiya and Kocho, where Elias had some guns hidden from ISIS, and were Ipeople to the village school and sep- spent part of his childhood, were under ready to use them. The Americans didn’t arated them by age and gender. The siege, and he felt sure that all the in- even have to drop bombs; just flying men were lined up and shot. The women habitants would be killed or kidnapped over the area would scare the militants were taken to a nearby town, where the unless the U.S. intervened. But, to the away. “We are looking at the map now,” younger ones were separated from the military, the south was a mystery. “We they wrote. “There is no ISIS present older ones. had no idea what was going on in in the northwest side of the towns all A military contact of Cannon’s Kocho,” the intelligence officer told me. the way to the mountain.” watched the massacre unfold on satel- A day later, after his family started As the days went by without U.S. lite imagery. “We saw guys getting shot walking, Elias got a call from a friend. action, the e-mails became more ur- in the back of the head and pushed into The family had stopped just beyond gent. On August 9th, the men sug- the ditches,” he told me. “Couldn’t do the checkpoint into Iraqi Kurdistan. gested air cover so that Yazidi fighters a damned thing about it.” U.S. forces Relieved, Elias and the others went to in Syria could go into Kocho. Ismael didn’t have airplanes at the ready, he ex- a McDonald’s. “Let’s relax,” Pir said wrote, “I think this is a wonderful plan plained, and even if they had it was too when they sat down. “Just for an hour.” and we can undertake it tonight as ISIS difficult to save the villagers while kill- A moment later, Ismael’s phone is under the shock of our air strikes ing the militants. “What happens if we rang. “We have to go back,” he said. (Murad Opinion).” go whack a bunch of guys who are gonna “Daesh”—the Arabic acronym for On August 10th, the villagers of Ha- get shot in the head, but they don’t have ISIS—“have given an ultimatum in tamiya escaped on foot. Villagers from to get shot in the head because we killed Kocho.” Kocho wanted to follow, but they were them?” he asked. “What does ISIS say? still waiting for the U.S. to intervene. ‘Americans killing innocents.’” n August 3rd, during ISIS’s initial “The people of this vil- Ismael called Padgett, Oadvance on Mt. Sinjar, the mili- lage would like to get this screaming. “They are tants had laid siege to Kocho and Ha- following question ad- saying just to bomb the tamiya, blocking the roads and killing dressed and time is run- whole village,” Ismael said anyone who tried to escape. Once ning out: what should we of the people of Kocho. Yazidis began leaving through the safe do?” the Sinjar crisis team “They would rather they corridor, ISIS turned back to the vil- wrote. all die.” Padgett was silent. lages. The Sinjar crisis team warned By August 14th, the Ismael didn’t seem to Padgett and Cannon about the im- men hadn’t slept in days. understand that he and pending tragedy on August 8th, the They had reported more Cannon worked for the day after they arrived in D.C., writing, than ten ISIS locations between Kocho human-rights department. The real “Women are fearful of rape and forced and the mountain, but the locations power of the U.S. government was far sexual slavery.” hadn’t been hit. They suggested, again, above them. That night, they reported that vil- that they go themselves, and asked for After the women were taken from lagers were threatening mass suicide. air cover. Ismael threatened to light Kocho, Padgett wrote to Pir and the “We are trying to reach them,” they himself on fire in front of the White others, “Have you lost all cell connec- wrote. They suggested that the U.S. House. tion with them?” conduct air strikes on ISIS positions, Cannon and Padgett read every mes- “We lost everything,” they replied. and then land a small force to protect sage, but not even the Yazidis’ intelli- The disillusionment was severe, both the civilians. gence could compel the military to take for the Yazidis and for many of the State

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 25 Department employees. “I think when ery, and every detail was e-mailed to and using their new contacts within the we did Sinjar their hopes were very Padgett and Cannon, along with maps, U.S. government to locate kidnapped high,” the intelligence officer told me. transcripts of phone calls, and plans. women and to support them after they “I don’t think we followed through on Predicting the Kocho massacre had are freed. The activists were determined those hopes.” confirmed the men’s worth as sources, that this genocide, unlike those which and they were visited by Army intelli- preceded it, would leave Yazidis with few days later, Pir and Elias de- gence officials, who proposed setting the ability to defend themselves. A cided to go home. Abid Sham- up lines of communication that by- In early October, 2014, ISIS repopu- deen and Ziyad Smoqi, two Lincoln- passed the State Department. They lated Kocho with captives. Seeing a sec- based former interpreters, would relieve agreed, but saving the Yazidis now had ond chance to save the village, Pir, Elias, them. Before they left, Padgett and none of the simplicity of early August. and Ismael returned to Washington. This Cannon asked to meet. At a café in Captives had been taken far from home, time, the Yazidis were granted a meet- Alexandria, Virginia, the Americans many of them to Syria, and their con- ing at the Pentagon. Elias was amazed and the Yazidis talked about their per- fused descriptions were difficult to con- by how big it was. Pir wasn’t sure why sonal lives for the first time. Padgett vert into precise coördinates. Laila Pentagon officials wanted to meet with and his wife were choosing a school Khoudeida, a Lincoln-based activist, them, except out of curiosity. “I think for their eldest daughter. Cannon told had little to offer the women when they they were more interested how three them about her nieces and nephews. called. “I want you to be hopeful,” she broken guys, refugees in the U.S., how Elias and Pir made fun of Ismael for said. “I want you to make sure your they got information,” he told me. living with his mother. “We called our phone is always charged.” Ismael did most of the talking. As wives every day,” they said. “We had to At the State Department, officials before, he brought maps with ISIS lo- remind Murad to call his mom!” tried to learn from the example of Sin- cations. “Yazidi fighters are ready to Padgett asked if they thought that jar, by cultivating sources at the D.R.L. help,” he said. “If you provide air cover, the U.S. occupation had precipitated and using them to undertake military you will scare ISIS. Just bomb the check- the attack against the Yazidis. Pir didn’t operations that prioritized saving lives. points.” He grew more and more ani- want to assign blame, so he said that “Once you put civilian protection into mated, until, eventually, he was shout- to Yazidis, who were poor and always the equation of a military mission, you ing and banging on the table. “We can under threat, it didn’t really matter. have to think differently,” Sarah Sewall, do this,” he kept saying. “We can do Not long afterward, Ismael left as the State Department under-secretary, this together! We can save them.” well. “I am in the airport now,” he wrote told me. But attempts to replicate the Pir felt sorry for his friend. He to the officials. “Thanks for everything, system in Syrian villages failed; in the turned to Elias, a tight smile on his Doug and Leanne, you’re both Yazidi chaos of the conflict, villagers couldn’t face, and whispered, in Kurdish, “Who angels in the time of their genocide. If accurately relay information quickly is this we?” we have a museum someday, your names enough. As the battle against ISIS es- The Pentagon officials were sym- will be honored.” calated, so did the number of civilian pathetic, but they told the Yazidis that Back home in Lincoln and Hous- casualties. it still wasn’t possible to intervene in ton, the three men tried to resume their Kocho. A few days later, Pir, Elias, and daily routines. They went to work and any Yazidis lost faith in the U.S. Ismael were home again. Pir met with to school and participated in social Mgovernment, which they felt had his Army intelligence contact at a Lin- events that had once been emblems of intervened in Sinjar mainly to justify coln café for the last time. He would their American lives but that now felt reëntering Iraq. It wasn’t America that still work for Yazda, and continue to irrelevant and guilt-inducing. saved the Yazidis, a Yazidi militia com- send information to Cannon and On September 10th, in a televised mander told me; it was the Syrian Kurd- Padgett, but he wanted to be a teacher, speech addressing the outcome in north- ish fighters, and even they had acted and to raise his children. “I want to be ern Iraq, Obama quoted a Yazidi survi- in self-interest, as a challenge to Iraqi a normal American,” he said. “I want vor. “We owe our American friends our Kurdish leadership in the region. “The to have a family, a job. I can’t save the lives,” the quote read. “Our children will Yazidis have no friends,” the com- Middle East.” always remember that there was some- mander said. “Before, I believed in destiny,” Ismael one who felt our struggle and made the Pir, Elias, and Ismael acknowledged told me. “After the genocide, I think long journey to protect innocent peo- that the intervention had been imper- the world moves on very practical ple.” Elias and Ismael had helped solicit fect, but they didn’t share the animus. things. For a community to be able to the quote, sending options to Cannon They poured their optimism into work- defend itself, you should not rely on and Padgett, and although the senti- ing as activists. The Sinjar crisis team humanity, you should not rely on good- ment was genuine, it felt premature. became Yazda, a Yazidi-rights organi- ness. For a community to protect it- Most Yazidis from Sinjar were now ref- zation. Dozens of Yazidis and non- self, it should have weapons, economic ugees in Iraqi Kurdistan; thousands more Yazidis started working for Yazda, strength, media.” were ISIS captives. Every day brought lobbying governments to take in dis- “At the same time,” he continued, another story of a woman’s desperate placed Yazidis; monitoring conditions “if you believe the sun is sacred, go and attempt to avoid being sold into sex slav- in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan; say it.” 

26 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 3:29-3:29.5 P.M.: Consider violating in- SHOUTS & MURMURS grained social norms and walking out of cement cube because it’s not enough paper. 3:29.5-3:30 P.M.: Remember that it’s bet- ter than no paper at all. 3:30-3:38 P.M.: Sit on a fixture of hard- ened white clay and expel any bird flesh that my body was not able to turn into itself. 3:38-4 P.M.: Play Free Chess App Lite atop the white clay fixture, even though I finished expelling a while ago. 4-6 P.M.: Continue wiggling my ten bony protrusions. Chemicals squirting A TYPICAL DAY through my brain ramp up the associ- ated feelings of unpleasantness, while BY ZACK BORNSTEIN other chemicals compensate by induc- ing hallucinations of desirable activi- Midnight–8 A.M.: Vividly hallucinate rocket-room that is powered by the ties, such as vibrations I might emit to while paralyzed atop a cushion-topped burnt remains of prehistoric kelp, in Jessica to make her like me. box of metal springs. which I avoid dying by spinning a plas- 6-6:38 P.M.: Re-strap myself into my 8-8:05 A.M.: A small plastic box gener- tic circle wrapped in optional cow skin. rocket-room and push a button that ates fast-moving vibrations strong 9-9:15 A.M.: Arrive at a cement cube that prompts the generation of vibrations enough for my eardrums to register I don’t own and consume a bitter, ad- that were recorded from the mouths them and communicate to my brain dictive toxin that tricks my brain into of four attractive teen-agers who live that it is time to switch from a hallu- thinking it’s more awake than it is. more than three thousand miles away. cinating state to a state of gathering 9:15-11:30 A.M.: Wiggle ten bony protru- Harry Styles ain’t bad. food and information. I smack the box. sions coming off the ends of my arms 6:38-7:50 P.M.: Press buttons on a plas- 8:05-8:15 A.M.: Spin a dial to release water over a grid of plastic-covered springs to tic box to pulse electromagnetic waves that has travelled from the top of a make numbers and letters appear on a at a Styrofoam cup full of elbow-shaped mountain through a maze of lead pipes light panel aimed at my eyes. wheat and edible chemicals that re- onto my outermost epidermal layer in 11:30-11:31 A.M.: Hear the intricate pat- semble cheese enough to trick my brain order to rinse away the salty liquid that tern of vibrations that others use to ad- into thinking that they are cheese. Use my body secreted through thousands dress me, and triangulate its source to a piece of rounded metal mined from of holes while I was hallucinating. a little man who decides whether or under the crust of the Earth by peo- 8:15-8:17 A.M.: Agitate a brush created by not I provide value to the people who ple I don’t know to stir together the children halfway around the world to own the cement cube. wheat and the chemicals, carry them remove minuscule invisible creatures 11:31 A.M.-Noon: Use my mouth and my toward my chin, and burn a flap of ex- from the bones in my mouth that I use throat to send vibrations back at the posed muscle in my mouth which is to turn all my food into soup before little man to persuade him that the the only body part of mine that allows swallowing it. Spit out excess soap that numbers and letters on my light panel me to taste. is chemically designed to taste like food, are “marketable to millennials.” 7:50-11:28 P.M.: Watch reruns of “Frasier.” but isn’t. “Forget” to floss. Noon-1 P.M.: Repeatedly slam my afore- 11:28-11:35 P.M.: Use aforementioned Chi- 8:17-8:20 A.M.: Tunnel my body into mentioned soup-making bones together nese-child-made brush to scrub away shapes made from interwoven threads to more easily swallow the flesh of a any scraps of bird flesh or elbow-shaped of dyed plant refuse which have been bird and turn it into parts of myself. wheat that my exposed muscle flap was pieced together by poor people a third 1-3:29 P.M.: Continue wiggling my ten unable to relocate into the tube that leads of the way around the world to match bony protrusions over the grid of plas- to the bag of acid in my midsection. the shapes of my limbs and my trunk. tic-covered springs. Certain chemicals 11:35-11:59 P.M.: Climb onto my cushion- 8:20-8:23 A.M.: Tunnel my body into a squirting through my brain tag this ex- topped box of metal springs. Leak salty different set of interwoven threads be- perience as unpleasant, while other liquid from the inside corners of my cause the first one didn’t satisfactorily chemicals, from a different part of my eyes while chemicals in my brain re- create the illusion that my body is de- brain, override this unpleasantness, be- create the images and the sounds of all sirably healthy for copulation as judged cause past experience has taught me of my past failures. by a theoretical stranger whom I may that wiggling my bony protrusions will 11:59 P.M.-Midnight: Smile thinking about encounter during the day. lead to acquiring paper that I can use how I am unique and in control of my 8:23-8:25 A.M.: Look for my wallet. to obtain more bird flesh, which I re- destiny, until my brain restarts its vivid

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI 8:25-9 A.M.: Strap myself into a small quire for life. hallucinations. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 27 his hand was a note from Chancellor LIFE AND LETTERS Angela Merkel praising his contribu­ tions to German culture. “You really shouldn’t read it,” van den DOKTOR ZEITGEIST Bergh said. “It’s not even a good letter, is it?” Germany’s celebrity philosopher explains the age of rage. Sloterdijk said. “It’s so short. She prob­ ably didn’t even write it.” BY THOMAS MEANEY “Of course she didn’t write it,” van den Bergh said. “But you would never get a letter like that in the Netherlands or anywhere else. Someone in her office worked very hard on it.” Reverence for intellectual culture is waning in much of the world, but it re­ mains strong in Germany. Sloterdijk’s books vie with soccer­star memoirs on the German best­seller lists. A late­ night TV talk show that he co­hosted, “The Philosophical Quartet,” ran for a decade. He has written an opera libretto, published a bawdy epistolary novel lam­ pooning the foundation that funds the country’s scientific research, and advised some of Europe’s leading politicians. Sloterdijk’s colleagues offered enco­ miums. The architect Daniel Libeskind said that his books have inspired a re­ thinking of European public space. Bruno Latour, the sociologist and historian of science, apologized for not knowing Ger­ man, and recited in French a long, droll poem he had written, describing Sloter­ dijk as a scribe of God. There was a video montage of Sloterdijk’s television appear­ ances across the decades, in which a young blond mystic with arctic­blue eyes and torn sweaters gradually morphed into the burgherly figure before us. On the second night of the sympo­ Peter Sloterdijk has emerged as his country’s most controversial public intellectual. sium, Sloterdijk and his partner, the jour­ nalist Beatrice Schmidt, invited some ne weekend last June, in an audi­ Clausewitz, and on his witty diaries, and friends to their apartment, on a stately Otorium in the German city of Karls­ slides of buildings inspired by his in­ street next door to a Buddhist medita­ ruhe, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk sights. Between sessions, Sloterdijk, who tion center. A picture by Anselm Kiefer celebrated his seventieth birthday by lis­ has long, straw­colored hair and a strag­ of a bomber plane hung in the hallway tening to twenty lectures about himself. gly mustache, prowled among luminar­ to the kitchen. In the building’s untamed A cluster of Europe’s leading intellectu­ ies of the various disciplines he has strayed back garden, Sloterdijk began pouring als, academics, and artists, along with a into, like a Frankish king greeting lords bottles of white Rhône wine for his guests. smattering of billionaires, were paying of recently subdued fiefdoms. The acad­ There were whispers about the wonders tribute to Germany’s most controversial emy bookstore was selling most of his of his cellar. On a small wooden porch, thinker, in the town where he was born books—sixty­odd titles produced over Sloterdijk spoke to two young women and where he recently concluded a two­ the past forty years. The latest, “After about his recent travails while getting decade tenure as the rector of the State God,” was displayed on a pedestal in a his driver’s license renewed. “It’s a com­ Academy for Design. There were lec­ glass cube. plete horror,” he said. “It takes nine hours tures on Sloterdijk’s thoughts on Europe, At a dinner in his honor, Sloterdijk in Germany. Only your most maniacally democracy, religion, love, war, anger, the surveyed the scene with a Dutch friend, loyal friends are willing to go with you.” family, and space. There were lectures on Babs van den Bergh. “Do you think I When Sloterdijk goes into one of his his commentaries on Shakespeare and should read out the letter?” he asked. In conversational riffs, there is a feeling of

28 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY MIKKEL SOMMER liftoff. A rhythmic nasal hum develops unproven,” and is unsurprised that so for the layout of Washington, D.C. momentum and eventually breaks into many people preferred the latter. Few The town is also the birthplace of the more ethereal climes, creating the sense philosophers are as fixated on the cur- inventor of the bicycle, an entrepreneur- that you have cleared the quotidian. “The rent moment or as gleefully ready to ial baron named Karl von Drais—a fact car is like a uterus on wheels,” he says. explain it. that Sloterdijk, who loves cycling, cher- “It has the advantage over its biological Sloterdijk’s comfort with social rup- ishes. When I met him a few weeks after model for being linked to independent ture has made him a contentious figure his birthday celebrations, he suggested movement and a feeling of autonomy. in Germany, where stability, prosperity, riding into town to try a new steak restau- The car also has phallic and anal com- and a robust welfare state are seen as rant. He talked about advances in bicy- ponents—the primitive-aggressive com- central to the country’s postwar achieve- cle design, which got him onto one of petitive behavior, and the revving up and ment. Many Germans define them- his favorite topics: inventors. “There are overtaking which turns the other, slower selves by their moral rectitude, as ex- people who are all around us who have person into an expelled turd.” hibited by their reckoning with the Nazi invented something essential,” he said. In Germany, where academic philos- past and, more recently, by the govern- “There’s a man in Germany who in- ophers still equate dryness with serious- ment’s decision to accept more refu- vented the retractable dog leash. Can you ness, Sloterdijk has a near-monopoly on gees from the Syrian civil war than any imagine? Millions of people have them irreverence. This is an important ele- other Western country. Sloterdijk is de- now. Of course, these leashes present an ment of his wide appeal, as is his eager- termined to disabuse his countrymen existential threat to me, since I’m an avid ness to offer an opinion on absolutely of their polite illusions. He calls Ger- cyclist. Sometimes I’m riding fast and anything—from psychoanalysis to fi- many a “lethargocracy” and the welfare there’s an owner over there, and the dog nance, Islam to Soviet modernism, the state a “fiscal kleptocracy.” He has de- over there, and in between—!” ozone layer to Neanderthal sexuality. An cried Merkel’s attitude toward refugees, We embarked. On his bike, Sloter- essay on anger can suddenly plunge into drawn on right-wing thinkers such as dijk seemed massive. In the light wind, a history of smiling; a meditation on Martin Heidegger and Arnold Gehlen, his plaid short-sleeved shirt became a America may veer into a history of fri- and even speculated about genetic en- billowing tube. The fusion of man and volity. His magnum opus, the “Spheres” hancement of the human race. As a re- machine looked top-heavy and precari- trilogy, nearly three thousand pages long, sult, some progressives refuse to utter ous, but his pedalling was strikingly includes a rhapsodic excursus on rituals his name in public. In 2016, the head of efficient, unstrenuous yet powerful. From of human-placenta disposal. He is al- one centrist party denounced him as a the chest up, he appeared no different most farcically productive. As his edi- stooge for the AfD, a new far-right from the way he does in a seminar room. tor told me, “The problem with Sloter- party that won thirteen per cent of the At the restaurant, Sloterdijk ordered dijk is that you are always eight thousand vote in last year’s federal elections. a glass of rosé. I asked him about the pages behind.” The rise of the German right has German federal elections, which were a This profligacy makes Sloterdijk hard made life more complicated for Sloter- few months away. Sloterdijk spoke dis- to pin down. He is known not for a sin- dijk. Positions that, at another time, paragingly of all the major parties, ex- gle grand thesis but for a shrapnel-burst might have been forgiven as attempts cept for the F.D.P., Germany’s closest of impressionistic coinages—“anthro- to stir debate now appear dangerous. A equivalent to libertarians. “The most ap- potechnics,” “negative gynecology,” “co- decade ago, Sloterdijk predicted a na- pealing scenario would be for the F.D.P. immunism”—that occasionally suggest tivist resurgence in Europe, a time when to share a coalition with Merkel’s Chris- the lurking presence of some larger system. “we will look back nostalgically to the tian Democrats,” he said. “They could Yet his prominence as a public intellec- days when we considered a dashing inject some sense into them.” tual comes from a career-long rebellion populist showman like Jörg Haider”— Most Germans think of health care, against the pieties of liberal democracy, the late Austrian far-right leader—“a education, and other basic services as which, now that liberal democracy is in menace.” Now Sloterdijk has found him- rights, not privileges, but the F.D.P. has crisis worldwide, seems prophetic. A self in the predicament of a thinker argued that the country’s welfare state signature theme of his work is the per- whose reality has caught up with his has become hypertrophied, a view close sistence of ancient urges in supposedly pronouncements. to Sloterdijk’s own. “It creates a dou- advanced societies. In 2006, he published ble current of resentment,” he said. “You a book arguing that the contemporary he rest of Germany thinks of Karls- have the people making money who revolt against globalization can be seen Truhe, when it thinks of it at all, as feel no gratitude in return for all they as a misguided expression of “noble” sen- a placid city where the Supreme Court give in taxes. Then you have the peo- timents, which, rather than being curbed, is situated. Nestled in the far south- ple who receive the money. They also should be redirected in ways that left-lib- west, where Germany begins to blend feel resentment. They would like to erals cannot imagine. He has described into France, Karlsruhe was one of the trade places with the rich who give to the Presidential race between Hillary first planned cities of Europe and an them. So both sides feel bitterly be- Clinton and Donald Trump as a choice oasis of the Enlightenment. When trayed and angry.” Sloterdijk argues “between two helplessly gesticulating Thomas Jefferson passed through, that taxation should be replaced with models of normality, one of which ap- in 1788, he sent a sketch of the street a system in which the richest members peared to be delegitimatized, the other plan back home, as a possible template voluntarily fund great civic and artistic

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 29 works. He believes that this kind of so- waiter asked. “Yes, but I want it colder,” ical tradition, we were told that we hu- cial web of happy givers and receivers Sloterdijk said. Later, as we got up to mans were poor devils,” he said to me. existed until around the end of the Re- leave, the waiter tentatively approached “But in India the message was: we weren’t naissance but was then obliterated by him and asked, “Are you Herr Sloter- poor devils, we contained hidden gods!” the rise of the European state. He gets dijk?” For a second, it seemed as if he In 1983, a few years after his return, excited about the profusion of philan- was going to kiss his hand. Sloterdijk published a thousand-page thropic schemes emanating from Sil- book that has sold more copies than icon Valley and sees in them an attrac- s we rode our bikes through Karls- any other postwar book of German tive model for the future. Aruhe, I asked Sloterdijk what he philosophy. The title, “The Critique of Compared with many other coun- remembered of his childhood. “We lived Cynical Reason,” seemed to promise a tries in the West, Germany still has a in another part of town,” he said over cheeky update of Kant’s “Critique of relatively high level of social equality. his shoulder. “I’ve gone back to visit it, Pure Reason,” but the book instead de- The Second World War decimated the looking for traces, but nothing came livered a wildly personal polemic about German aristocracy, and anti-élitist sen- back: there was no temps retrouvé! ” the deterioration of the utopian spirit timent surged during the protests of Sloterdijk was born in 1947, part of the of 1968 and called for Sloterdijk’s gen- 1968, as a generation of German stu- generation that Germans call “rubble eration to take stock of itself. His peers, dents began to question the bourgeois children”; he remembers playing in the as they reached middle age, were prag- priorities of their parents. There is a ruins left behind by the Allied bomb- matically adjusting to global capitalism widespread skepticism of unbridled ing campaigns. His mother worked at and to the nuclear stalemate of the Cold American-style capitalism and consumer a radar center during the war, and met War. He issued a challenge to readers culture. German bankers earn a fraction his father, a Dutch sailor, after the Ger- to scour history and art for ways of over- of what their American counterparts do, man collapse. The marriage did not last coming social atomization. Punning on and avoid ostentation. It is not uncom- long, and Sloterdijk lost contact with Kant’s concept of the thing-in-itself, mon for C.E.O.s and C.F.O.s to pains- his father in early youth. “I had to find he asked, “Have we not become the iso- takingly sort through their household my own father and mentors, which lated thing-for-yourself in the middle recycling on the weekends. People are meant that I had to look in the world of similar beings?” wary of credit—nearly eighty per cent around me,” he has said. “Somehow I The antidote to cynicism, he sug- of German transactions are made in managed to divide myself into teacher gested, was a re-immersion in the her- cash—and customers in hardware shops and student.” itage of the Cynics of ancient Greece. and bakeries pay, with unfathomable dil- Part of the “somehow” involved his He looked to the philosopher Diogenes, igence, in exact change. mother, who taught him ancient Greek who rejected the social conventions that But even in Germany inequality is sayings and harbored no doubts about governed human behavior and said that growing. Sharp hikes in apartment- her son’s genius. When Sloterdijk was people should live instinctively, like dogs. rental prices in major cities have dis- a teen-ager, they moved to Munich, The word “cynic” comes from the Greek solved neighborhoods and pushed or- where, outside school, he started con- kynikos, meaning “doglike,” and Sloter- dinary workers into long commutes. suming large amounts of expressionist dijk coined the term “kynicism” to differ- Last year, the government put forward poetry. In the late nineteen-sixties, he entiate Diogenes’ active assault on pre- a plan to privatize the Autobahn. Deut- studied literature and philosophy as an vailing norms from the passive disen- sche Bank, once a stolid provincial undergraduate at the University of Mu- gagement of the late twentieth century. lender, has transformed itself in the past nich, where his friend Rachel Salaman- He celebrated the direct way that Dio- two decades into a steroidal, Wall Street- der, now an editor and the owner of a genes made his points—masturbating style multinational, a leader in the col- Jewish-literature bookshop in the city, in the marketplace, defecating in the lateralization of debt, and a major cred- remembers him as a dazzling presence. theatre—and suggested that the answer itor of Donald Trump. Hippie beach “He spoke faster than everyone thought, to his generation’s malaise was to re- enclaves on the Baltic Sea have become and wrote faster than they spoke,” she purpose the spontaneous currents of resorts for trust-funders. told me. “I was not surprised at all by sixties counterculture. Germany’s embrace of luxury de- what he became.” The book caught a moment and made lights Sloterdijk. He believes that it was Sloterdijk pursued a doctorate at the philosophy seem both relevant and fun, a historic mistake of the international University of Hamburg but received only beguiling readers with arguments about left to “declare war on the beautiful peo- a middling grade on his dissertation, and, the philosophical import of breasts and ple,” and welcomes signs that Germans for a while, his academic prospects were farts. But although it made Sloterdijk’s are allowing themselves to take plea- uncertain. In 1979, he moved to India, name, he remained an academic out- sure in extravagance. The proliferation where he studied with the guru Bhag- sider, drifting from post to post for al- of sleek steak restaurants, such as the wan Shree Rajneesh, near Pune. He says most a decade. His response was to dis- one we were in, is but one promising that the greatest discussions of Adorno miss those who dismissed him—“Their sign among many. he ever heard were on the fringes of an codes and rituals are reliably antitheti- The waiter stopped by our table, and ashram there. His time in India led him cal to thought,” he told me—and to forge Sloterdijk handed him back his second to challenge many of his intellectual as- his reputation instead with articles in glass of wine. “Was it not cold?” the sumptions. “In the German philosoph- magazines and newspapers. He received

30 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 New in paperback—a study of genius, mania, job offers from America, but it was be- and character from the bestselling author of coming clear that he was by nature a gadfly—that he and Germany needed An Unquiet Mind each other because they agitated each other so much. Sloterdijk began picking fights with Kay Redfield Jamison some of the most renowned members of the German academic establish- ment, in particular the leftist theorists of the Frankfurt School. “It’s not ad- Robert Lowell visable to go up against Sloterdijk in a public setting,” Axel Honneth, a lead- ing figure of the school, told me. “He wins on points of rhetoric that are in “ INTELLECTUALLY THRILLING... inverse proportion to the irresponsi- bility of his ideas.” A French-Canadian achieves a magnificence and intensity that sets it apart. academic recently produced a diagram of Sloterdijk’s feuds with other Ger- It is both empathetic and astute, as heartfelt as it man intellectuals; it looks like a trick is heartbreaking.”—MICHAEL DIRDA, The Washington Post play in football. The most notorious episode oc- curred in 1999, after Sloterdijk pub- lished “Rules for the Human Zoo,” an essay about the fate of humanism. Since Roman times, he argued, humanism’s “ One of the latent message had been that “reading the right books calms the inner beast” finest biographies and its function was to select a “secret I have read.” élite” of the literate. Now, in the age of media-saturated mass culture, read- —ANDREW SOLOMON ing great books had lost its selective function. “What can tame man, when “ Deeply moving.... the role of humanism as the school for humanity has collapsed?” he wrote. Magnificent.” Channelling Heidegger and Nietzsche, —JOHN BANVILLE, Sloterdijk imagined an “Über-humanist” The Irish Times who might use “genetic reform” to in- sure “that an élite is reared with cer- A BEST BOOK tain characteristics.” In Germany, where the very word OF THE YEAR “selection” is enough to set off alarms, The Washington Post, Sloterdijk’s essay invited antagonism. The Boston Globe, Was he making a plea for eugenics? Jür- The Seattle Times, and gen Habermas, the country’s most re- Times Literary Supplement vered philosopher, declared that Sloter- dijk’s work had “fascist implications,” and encouraged other writers to attack him. Sloterdijk responded by proclaim- ing the death of the Frankfurt School, “ REMARKABLE.... One reads this biography— to which Habermas belongs, writing so full of incident—as one would read a novel.” that “the days of hyper-moral sons of national-socialist fathers are coming to —HELEN VENDLER, The New York Review of Books an end.” German intellectuals mostly sided with Habermas, but Sloterdijk emerged from the scuffle with his sta- “ One of the richest portraits ever written of bipolar illness.” — tus considerably enhanced. He was now Psychiatric Times a national figure who stood for every- thing that Habermas did not. Sloterdijk’s professional uncertainties VINTAGEBOOKS.COM KAY REDFIELD JAMISON is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 31 resolved themselves in the early nine- tuals in the nineties, when his broadsides came the AfD’s “party philosopher” and ties, when his appointment to a prime against left-leaning public moralists were recently took up a seat in the Bundestag. post at the academy in Karlsruhe gave first winning him a following among “In a perfect world, you are not respon- him the freedom to do whatever he liked. conservative and centrist politicians. After sible for your students,” he said. “But we Since then, his newspaper articles and our lunch, Sloterdijk was going to see live in a half-perfect world, and so now TV appearances have gradually estab- the country’s current President, Frank- people try to pin Jongen to me.” I asked lished him as a media celebrity. Over Walter Steinmeier. I asked if he ever saw if there was any common ground between the summer, ordinary Germans who Angela Merkel, and he laughed, saying, him and Jongen, and he replied with an spotted his books in my hands engaged “She’s got to this point where she exudes emphatic no, calling Jongen “a complete me in conversation on trains, in coffee the persona of a woman who no longer impostor.” He went on, “He came to the shops, at universities, and in bookshops. needs anyone’s advice.” university to study Sanskrit classics like “Sloterdijk creates for his readers the Since I had last seen Sloterdijk, Merkel the Upanishads, but then he gave it all feeling that they are suddenly in posses- and her party, the C.D.U., had pulled off up. A political career is the way out for sion of the solutions to the greatest prob- a narrow victory in the federal elections, him.” The response was unequivocal, but lems in philosophy,” the German liter- but major gains achieved by previously couched less in terms of moral abhor- ary critic Gustav Seibt told me. He also marginal parties were making it hard for rence than of professional disdain. has a strong following among wealthy Merkel to assemble a governing coalition. Sloterdijk deplored the rise of the élites, who value the intellectual patina The leftist party Die Linke had made in- right, but he couldn’t resist seeing some- he provides for their world views. Nico- roads into the youth vote, recalling the thing salutary in the spectacle. “It’s been las Berggruen, a billionaire investor who successes of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy coming for a long time,” he said. “It’s recently established an annual million- Corbyn. The libertarian F.D.P., which also a sign that Germans are more like dollar philosophy prize, told me, “Sloter- Sloterdijk had praised months before, had the rest of humanity than they like to dijk takes on the biggest issues, but in done well, too, but eventually turned down believe.” He started talking about “rage the least conventional ways.” the opportunity to join Merkel in a coa- banks,” his term for the way that dispa- In the academy, he is still regarded lition government. Overshadowing ev- rate grievances can be organized into with suspicion. The English philoso- erything else in the headlines were the larger reserves of political capital. pher John Gray argued, in a recent issue advances made by the nationalist AfD. He described this concept in his 2006 of The New York Review of Books, that, When I brought up the AfD, Sloter- book “Rage and Time,” an examination sentence by sentence, much of his out- dijk sank his head in his hands, and his of the loathing of liberal democracy by put is simply incomprehensible. It’s a expansive manner gave way to some- nativist, populist, anarchic, and terrorist common reaction among Anglophone thing more cautious. For years, the Ger- movements. The book follows his usual readers, who are often baffled by the man media have been making connec- detour-giddy historical method, compar- scale of his reputation. This is in part tions between Sloterdijk’s thought and ing political uses of anger, and of related because his metaphorical, image- new right-wing groups, and he’s become emotions such as pride and resentment, addicted style of philosophy has been used to rebutting the charge of harbor- from Homer to the present. In pre- in short supply in English since ing far-right sympathies. In my conver- modern societies, he argues, vengeance Coleridge. But in Europe it finds a sations with him, his political preoccu- and blood feuds provided ample outlet ready audience. His writings, abstruse pations seemed closer to libertarianism for these impulses. Later, loyalty to the yet popularizing, have than to anything more nation-state performed a similar func- made him an uplifting blood and soil, but he has tion, and international Communism man- guru for some and a con- a habit of saying things aged to direct class rage into utopian proj- venient devil for others— that, depending on your ects. But modern capitalism presents a the crucial fact being that view, seem either like dog particular problem. “Ever more irritated he is never ignored. “The whistles to the far right or and isolated individuals find themselves most interesting thing like the bomb-throwing surrounded by impossible offers,” he about Sloterdijk may not reflexes of a born contro- writes, and, out of this frustrated desire, be anything particular he versialist. When Sloterdijk “an impulse to hate everything emerges.” has written,” the Berkeley said, of Merkel’s refugee It was this kind of rage, Sloterdijk be- intellectual historian Martin Jay told policy, that “no society has the moral ob- lieves, that was on display in the riots in me, “but simply the fact that he exists.” ligation to self-destruct,” his words called the banlieues of Paris in 2005. to mind Thilo Sarrazin, a former board In “Rage and Time,” Sloterdijk writes hortly after the German federal elec- member of the Bundesbank, who, in that the discontents of capitalism leave Stions in September, I met Sloterdijk 2010, published an anti-Muslim tract societies susceptible to “rage entrepre- for lunch, at a small Italian restaurant in with the title “Germany Abolishes It- neurs”—a phrase that uncannily fore- the west of Berlin. “This is a restaurant self,” which became a huge best-seller shadows the advent of Donald Trump. where Gerhard Schröder used to come,” and made racial purity a respectable con- When we spoke about Trump, Sloter- Sloterdijk told me with satisfaction. The cern of national discussion. dijk explained him as part of a shift in former German Chancellor began invit- I asked Sloterdijk about Marc Jongen, Western history. “This is a moment that ing Sloterdijk to gatherings of intellec- a former doctoral student of his who be- won’t come again,” he told me. “Both

32 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 of the old Anglophone empires have within a short period withdrawn from the universal perspective.” Sloterdijk went so far as to claim that Trump uses fears of ecological devastation in his favor. “The moment for me was when I first heard him say ‘America First,’” he said. “That means: America to the front of the line! But it’s not the line for global- ization anymore, but the line for re- sources. Trump channels this global feel- ing of ecological doom.” I asked Sloterdijk if there was some- thing specifically American about Trump- ism. “You can’t go looking for Trump in Europe,” he told me. “You know, Hegel in his time was convinced that the state in the form of the rule of law had not yet arrived in the new world. He thought that the individual—private, virtuous— had to anticipate the state. You see this in American Westerns, where the good sheriff has to imagine the not-yet-existent state in his own private morality. But Trump is a degenerate sheriff. He acts as if he doesn’t care if the state comes into being or not, and mocks the upright townsfolk. What makes Trump danger- “He’s somewhat risk-averse, so you might have a ous is that he exposes parts of liberal de- hard time getting him onto a pier.” mocracies that were only shadowily vis- ible up until now. In democracies, there is always an oligarchic element, but Trump •• makes it extremely, comically visible.” For Sloterdijk, Trump’s true significance lies read “Here I stand, I can do no other.” that all of humanity is our family. That in the way that he instinctively subverts Sloterdijk had come to speak at a local idea helped destroy the Roman Empire. the norms of modern governance. “He’s Protestant academy about the meaning Now we’re in danger of letting that met- an innovator when it comes to fear,” of the Reformation. “Luther had the aphor get out of control all over again. Sloterdijk told me. “Instead of waiting great fortune to be followed by Bach,” People are not ready to feel the full pres- for the crisis to impose his decree, his Sloterdijk told his audience. “His form sure of coexistence with billions of their decrees get him the emergencies he needs. of individualism was illuminated by the contemporaries.” He went on, “In the The playground for madness is vast.” most beautiful music.” past, geography created discretionary “But he was also followed by Hitler!” boundaries between nations and cultures. he day after our lunch was the a young man in the audience said. Distances that were difficult to overcome Tfive-hundredth anniversary of the “Hitler was a degraded Papist,” Sloter- allowed for mental and political space.” beginning of the Reformation. The city dijk shot back. Space and distance, he argued, had al- of Wittenberg, half an hour outside Little by little, the discussion grav- lowed for a kind of liberality and gener- Berlin, where Luther had—allegedly— itated to assaults on Sloterdijk’s posi- osity that was now under siege—by ref- nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door tions. “You sound like the right-wingers ugees, by social media, by everything. of the Castle Church, had suddenly when you speak of the refugees,” an el- At the end of the talk, the faithful been transformed into something like derly doctor stood up and declared. of all ages lined up to buy copies of an American Christian-college campus. “We cared about refugees after the war “After God.” The polite chatter mo- Midwesterners and Californians mixed and we can do it again.” mentarily gave way to the brisk ritual with fellow-pilgrims in squares and out- Sloterdijk replied impatiently. “The of book-signing. Sloterdijk scrawled side churches, discussing the doings of Americans gave us this idea of multi- on the open books offered to him. Bear- St. Paul and debating whether Luther culturalism that suited their society fine, ing a freshly signed copy, a pastor vis- was a monk or a friar. Faux-medieval but which, as software, is not compatible iting from the Rhineland sympathized stalls were selling Reformation souve- with our German hardware of the wel- with Sloterdijk’s predicament as a sales- nirs, including T-shirts that said “Viva fare state,” he said. “There’s this family man. “We become more like America la Reformation!” and Luther socks that metaphor spreading everywhere: the idea every day,” he told him. “Isn’t it a pity?” 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 33 LETTER FROM MOSCOW THE MISS UNIVERSE CONNECTION Beauty pageants long helped Trump’s businesses. One of them may also have helped his Presidential bid.

BY JEFFREY TOOBIN

he first-round results of the 2013 He’d whisper to Paula about the girls, the Trump campaign and Presidency, Miss Universe pageant seem to and she’d write it down. He basically featuring some of the same themes and T have come as a surprise to some told us he picked nine of the top fifteen.” characters. Miss Universe represents a of the competition’s judges, who thought Kerrie Baylis, who was Miss Jamaica in paradigmatic example of Trump’s busi- that they would declare the finalists. 2013, described a similar scene and added ness style in action—the exaggerations The seven judges of the pageant’s pre- that, when the finalists were announced, that teeter into lies, the willingness to liminary round were charged with win- “the list looked like the countries that embrace dubious partners, the hunger nowing eighty-six contestants to fifteen Donald Trump did business with, or for glamour and recognition. Trump finalists. Divided into two groups, they wanted to do business with.” Shi Lim, got away with this kind of behavior for had brief conversations with each of the who competed that year as Miss Sin- decades, and he played by the same contestants, who then paraded onstage, gapore, told me, “The finalists were rules during his run for the Presidency. first in bathing suits, then in evening picked by Trump. He was really in Last Friday, Robert Mueller, the spe- gowns. The judges—including pub- charge. We called it the Trump card.” cial counsel, unveiled the indictment of lic-relations professionals, a modelling (A Miss Universe spokeswoman said thirteen Russian nationals, and three entrepreneur, and a fashion reporter— that the pageant rules allowed the com- Russian organizations, on charges that rated each woman on such qualities as pany’s staff, including Trump, to partic- they conspired to throw the 2016 elec- “appearance” and “personality,” after ipate in naming the finalists.) tion to Trump. Their main method, the which the ballots were whisked away. Trump has long viewed his busi- indictment contends, was the manipu- “They told us not to share how we voted nesses as mutually reinforcing, with all lation of social media through posts by with each other, but we did anyway,” the products—from hotels to steak, Russians operating under stolen identi- one of the preliminary judges told me. vodka to golf resorts—complementing ties. The Russians’ diction was some- When the finalists were announced, he one another. As he said in the intro- times imperfect—one Instagram post said, the winners included several who duction to the first episode of “The Ap- said a “particular hype and hatred for hadn’t been selected. “I was shocked,” prentice,” the reality-television show Trump is misleading the people and the judge told me. “I didn’t know what that made him a global celebrity, “I’ve forcing Blacks to vote Killary”—but their had happened. I felt ridiculous.” The mastered the art of the deal and have goal was apparent. In the words of the contestants were not so naïve—they un- turned the name Trump into the highest- indictment, the conspirators sought to derstood who was in charge. quality brand.” Trump often staged the provide information to the American From 1996 to 2015, Donald Trump Miss Universe pageant in cities where public “supporting the presidential cam- co-owned the Miss Universe Organi- he had other business interests, and paign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump zation, which also included the Miss finalists usually came from countries and disparaging Hillary Clinton.” U.S.A. and Miss Teen U.S.A. pageants. where Miss Universe had strong tele- The indictment does not explicitly A day or two before a pageant began, vision ratings. Under Trump, the pag- assert that Trump or his campaign Trump would casually visit the contes- eant was held twice in Las Vegas, twice knowingly participated in the Russian tants while they conducted their final in Florida, and twice in Puerto Rico. conspiracy. On Friday afternoon, Sarah rehearsals. Former contestants told me In the other years, Trump kept the pag- Huckabee Sanders, the White House that Trump would circulate among the eant true to its origins as a swimsuit press secretary, said that the President young women, shaking hands and chat- competition by setting the ceremony in took this omission as vindication, not- ting with each of them, periodically warm-weather locations like Panama ing that Trump “is glad to see the Spe- turning to speak with Paula Shugart, City, São Paulo, Quito, and Mexico cial Counsel’s investigation further in- the president of the Miss Universe Or- City. (Although interest in beauty pag- dicates—that there was NO COLLUSION ganization, who followed him at a dis- eants has faded in the United States, it between the Trump campaign and Rus- creet distance. (Paula Shugart declined remains high in Latin America.) Only sia and that the outcome of the elec- to comment.) Adwoa Yamoah, who once did Trump steer the pageant away tion was not changed or affected.” In competed as Miss Canada in 2012, told from temperate environments—in No- fact, Mueller’s charges suggest the op- me, “He made comments about every vember, 2013, when Miss Universe took posite. The undertaking had more than girl: ‘I’ve been to that country.’ ‘We’re place in Russia. eighty employees and a budget of more building a Trump Tower there.’ It was Today, the Miss Universe pageant than a million dollars a month. clear the countries that he liked did well. in Moscow looks like a harbinger of The indictment does not address

34 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 In Moscow, Trump partnered with the property tycoon Aras Agalarov, describing him, wrongly, as Russia’s richest man.

ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 35 several other efforts that American in- In 1971, Adams arranged for the Miss he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ be- telligence agencies have tied to Russia, Universe contestants to walk down Sev- cause she was Latina.” After a pause, such as the hacking of e-mail accounts enth Avenue as a publicity stunt for the Clinton said, “Donald, she has a name: linked to prominent Democrats. And pageant, which was to take place in Her name is Alicia Machado.” (Trump Mueller has not yet made public his Miami that year. “Cops studded the route. was unrepentant, telling Fox News, “She findings on the clearest link between Nobody was allowed near the contes- gained a massive amount of weight, and the Trump campaign and Russian in- tants in the line of march,” Adams wrote it was a real problem.”) terests: the link that emerged from the later, in the New York Post, where she Trump also boasted about ogling Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. is a columnist. “I look over. Who’s along- Miss Universe contestants during the The ever-more-pressing question is side some nifty beauty from some events. “I’ll go backstage before a show whether Trump and the Who-Knows-Where- and everyone’s getting dressed, and ev- Russians used the relation- Country? My brand-new erything else, and you know, no men ships cemented at the pag- Best Friend. He wasn’t The are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in eant to advance Trump’s Donald then.” Adams con- because I’m the owner of the pageant goal of becoming Presi- cluded, “I also knew then and therefore I’m inspecting it,” he told dent of the United States. that he loved beauty, loved Stern. “You know, they’re standing there blondes, and loved the with no clothes.” Over the years, when hortly after Yolande Miss Universe Pageant.” asked about his management of the SBetbeze was named In 1996, Trump at- pageants, he has often replied with some Miss America 1951, she tended the Miss Universe version of the quip “The bathing suits precipitated a crisis. An aspiring opera pageant, which was being co-hosted in got smaller and the heels got higher singer, Betbeze announced that she Paradise, Nevada, by the second of his and the ratings went up.” The part about would not pose in a bathing suit when three wives, Marla Maples. Trump heard ratings isn’t true. As the book “Trump she went on tour. Executives at Cata- that the owner of the organization was Revealed,” by Michael Kranish and lina swimwear, a sponsor of the pageant, putting the business up for sale. “How Marc Fisher, noted, when Trump were offended, and the company de- could I pass up the opportunity to own bought Miss Universe the viewership cided to create competing events, which the world’s premiere beauty pageant?” in the United States had declined from came to be called Miss Universe and he later wrote. As with so much regard- around thirty-five million in 1984 to Miss U.S.A. (Miss U.S.A., not Miss ing Trump’s finances, the price he paid twelve million in 1997. The numbers America, advances to the Miss Universe for it is something of a mystery. In “The kept falling during Trump’s ownership, competition.) That rift still defines the Art of the Comeback,” he wrote that and the American audience for the 2013 differences between the pageants. Miss he beat out several competitors with a pageant consisted of fewer than four America, with its earnest talent com- bid of ten million dollars; in subsequent million. Still, Trump recognized that petitions and its scholarships for win- interviews, he said that he had paid only the pageant was a useful vehicle for ex- ners, purports to reward a multidimen- two million. panding his reach overseas, and no coun- sional female ideal. Not so Miss Universe. From the beginning, Trump did lit- try so consistently kindled his ambi- As Candace Savage put it, in “Beauty tle to conceal his attitude toward women. tions as Russia. Queens,” her amusing history of the As he told Howard Stern in an inter- pageants, “The new competitions were view, when he bought the pageant he rump’s interest in the country goes to emphasize ‘beauty,’ pure and simple, found that it had strayed from its roots Tback to the days of the Soviet with none of the ridiculous folderol as a beauty contest. “They had a person Union. His first book, “The Art of the about talent.” who was extremely proud that a num- Deal,” published in 1987, begins with By the late nineteen-sixties, own- ber of the women had become doctors,” an account of a typical day in his life, ership of the Miss Universe Organi- Trump said. “And I wasn’t interested.” including a phone call with an acquain- zation had passed to a lingerie com- In 1997, during his first year as owner, tance who conducted a lot of business pany called Kayser-Roth. Cindy Adams, Trump became embroiled in a conflict with the Soviet Union. “I’m talking who was an assistant at the company, involving Alicia Machado, of Venezu- about building a large luxury hotel, and her husband, the comedian Joey ela, who was the reigning Miss Uni- across the street from the Kremlin, in Adams, were friends of Roy Cohn, the verse at the time and had gained weight partnership with the Soviet govern- New York lawyer and fixer who had during her tenure. Trump went on a ment,” Trump wrote. “They have asked been a close aide to Senator Joseph public crusade to shame her. Wearing a me to go to Moscow in July.” Later McCarthy. “Roy used to invite us ev- suit and tie, and trailed by cameras, he that year, he did go to Moscow and erywhere, and once we went to a party followed Machado into a gym to watch what was then Leningrad (now St. Pe- on Long Island, where I happened to her work out. “This is somebody that tersburg), but his plans to build there be seated at a small table with this tall likes to eat,” Trump told the reporters. never came to fruition. young guy with blond hair,” Adams The controversy resurfaced during the Trump returned to Moscow in each told me recently. “Roy told me at that 2016 campaign, when Hillary Clinton, of the following decades, hoping to add dinner that one day Donald would own in the first Presidential debate, said, “He one of his eponymous towers to the New York. I said, ‘Yeah, pass the gravy.’” called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then city’s skyline. His regular visits have

36 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 led some to speculate that Trump had panied by a prominent American busi- (LeBow declined to comment. A White a kind of obsession with the country, nessman—Bennett LeBow, the chair- House spokesperson indicated that the but he looked for deals all over the man of the Vector Group, a holding President has “absolutely no memory of world, and he returned to Russia be- company with investments in tobacco any women attending a meeting with cause that’s where the money was. A and real estate. LeBow and Trump ar- him while there and disputes any sug- longtime adviser to Trump told me, ranged to meet with representatives of gestion to the contrary.”) Later, the Ros- “It’s a major metropolitan city, and Boris Yeltsin’s government in a confer- siya was torn down and replaced with around the years of 2000, give or take, ence room at the Moskva to discuss tak- a park. The Moskva was eventually ren- with the privatization, there was a lot ing over the hotel. ovated and converted into a Four Sea- of money in Moscow.” An expatriate businessman who at- sons Hotel. The atmosphere of post-Soviet Rus- tended the event that day told me, “I sia also seemed to suit Trump. He trav- was just a kid, and I was supposed to y the turn of the century, Trump elled to the city again in November, help out at the meeting. LeBow was up- Bhad moved away from the capital 1996, during the raucous “Wild East” stairs, in a room called ‘the library,’ but demands of developing real estate and days following the collapse of Commu- Trump was late. So they sent me down- begun leveraging his celebrity into fran- nism and the Soviet system. His arrival stairs to wait for him.” When Trump ar- chise deals. He had experienced repeated in Moscow came after a plunge in his rived, he was accompanied by two young bankruptcies in Atlantic City, and was financial fortunes. (His 1995 tax return, Russian women. The businessman said, cut off from traditional sources of fund- published in part by the Times in 2016, “I had never met Trump before, and I ing. As a result, he began to welcome showed losses of nine hundred and six- was nervous as hell. So I started panick- less reputable partners, as long as they teen million dollars.) He had lost the ing. I mean, this was a serious meeting. had access to cash. trust of American banks and was forced So I suggested to Trump that I wait His ambition of putting his name to search for credit and business oppor- downstairs at the bar with them. I’d keep on a building in Russia persisted. A tunities abroad. In a news conference them company until he was finished. He source in Moscow told me that “Trump shortly after his arrival in Moscow, he said no way. He thought it was hilari- was always trying to get in touch with said that he planned to invest two hun- ous. He wanted to go upstairs with them. Russian money,” adding that in 2007 dred and fifty million dollars to build a So what could I do? The three of them the source brought a Russian real-estate pair of luxury apartment towers in the went up to the meeting together.” developer to meet with Trump at Trump city, one to be called Trump Interna- As with Trump’s previous visit, noth- Tower, in New York, to discuss a fran- tional and the other Trump Tower. In ing came of this mission to Moscow. chise project in Moscow. “The deals addition, he said that he was looking into renovating and running two fa- mous hotels from the Soviet era. As Trump said in a Mark Singer profile in The New Yorker, published a few months later, “We’re looking at the Moskva Hotel. We’re also looking at the Ros- siya. That’s a very big project; I think it’s the largest hotel in the world. And we’re working with the local govern- ment, the mayor of Moscow and the mayor’s people.” The Moskva, steps from Red Square and the Kremlin, was the subject of a bizarre legend. The story goes that during the early thirties, in the midst of Stalin’s purges, the architect submitted a set of plans to Stalin for the dictator’s approval. Stalin didn’t notice that the architect had provided two versions of the front façade. Rather than risk Sta- lin’s wrath by pointing this out, the ar- chitect used both designs, one on the left side of the building, the other on the right. The architect survived the or- deal, but, by 1996, the building was fall- ing apart, and city authorities were look- ing for investors to renovate it. During this trip, Trump was accom- were always the same,” the source said. The extent of Trump’s financial ties Ilham Aliyev, the longtime Azerbaijani “Trump would lend his name, and the to Russia remains unclear, but he ap- President. (They have since divorced.) local guy would put up the money, build, pears to have had a number of inves- Christopher Steele, the former British and manage. Nothing came of it.” tors and business partners from the for- spy who examined Trump’s ties to Rus- Trump made his first foray into the mer Soviet Union. In 2008, Donald sia, may have hinted at a darker expla- Russian market when he lent his name Trump, Jr., told the audience at a real- nation for the Agalarovs’ interest in Miss to Trump vodka. “By the summer of estate conference, “Russians make up a Universe. Retained by the research firm ’06,” Trump said in a news release, “I pretty disproportionate cross-section of Fusion GPS, which was paid by Hil- fully expect the most called-for cock- a lot of our assets. ... We see a lot of lary Clinton’s campaign, Steele asserted tail in America to be the ‘T&T,’ or the money pouring in from Russia.” He that the “Russian regime has been cul- ‘Trump and tonic.’” The product was also said that he had made six trips to tivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP launched at a series of parties in New Russia during the previous eighteen for at least 5 years.” Even if Steele is York, Miami Beach, and Hollywood. months. In 2013, Trump’s son Eric told wrong and Russia was not cultivating Among the guests, according to news the sportswriter James Dodson, “We Trump as an asset, it seems clear that reports, were Stormy Daniels, the porn don’t rely on American banks. We have by this point Trump would do business actress, and the former Playmate Karen all the funding we need out of Russia.” with just about anyone. No licensing McDougal, both of whom were report- (On Twitter, Eric Trump denied hav- deal was too demeaning; he would at- edly later paid to conceal their rela- ing made the remark.) tach his name to steak, water bottles, tionships with Trump. In 2007, with neckties, mattresses, lamps, and vodka. similar fanfare, Trump announced that n 2013, Trump’s prospects in Russia On the trip to Las Vegas, Aras and his vodka would expand its distribu- Ibegan to look more sanguine, thanks Emin Agalarov were accompanied by tion into Russia, with a $1.5 million to a music video featuring a pop star Goldstone and came to an agreement deal for ten thousand cases. The vodka named Emin Agalarov. Emin’s father, with Trump that the Agalarovs would flopped, in Russia and elsewhere. A Aras, had made a fortune as a real-estate host the Miss Universe pageant in Mos- longtime vodka executive in Russia told developer in Moscow, and Emin had cow that year. With his characteristic me, “Trump vodka never even showed put the family fortune to work for the salesman’s bravado, Trump later said up on our sales reports—that’s how lit- benefit of his singing career. The Mos- that there had been eighteen other bid- tle it sold.” Production ceased in 2011. cow music scene favors hard-edged rap, ders vying for the pageant; in fact, it’s The 2008 recession shattered the but Emin found a degree of success as not clear that there were any others. real-estate market, but Trump’s posi- a crooner in the mold of Enrique Ig- According to various reports, the Aga- tion was cushioned by the success of lesias. In 2013, he had high expectations larovs invested twenty million dollars “The Apprentice,” which was being for a danceable tune called “Amor,” and to bring the event to Moscow. “Twenty syndicated around the world. Trump he wanted an especially beautiful woman million dollars is not even close,” Scott SoHo, a hotel and condominium in to star in the accompanying music video. Balber, a lawyer for Emin and Aras New York, had already begun selling Emin and his publicist, Rob Goldstone, Agalarov who has also represented space. His partners in the project in- a former tabloid journalist from Great Trump, told me. “The site fee to Miss cluded Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif, two Britain who was hired to promote Em- Universe was a couple of million dol- real-estate operators who were born in in’s singing career outside Russia, ap- lars at most.” the Soviet Union and maintained proached the Miss Universe Organi- In 2002, Trump had sold half of the strong ties to Russia. Sater, the son of zation and asked if the men could cast Miss Universe Organization to NBC, a Russian mobster, had immigrated to the reigning champion, Olivia Culpo, which broadcast the pageant, and the the United States as a child. In 1993, the former Miss U.S.A. Emin and network had representatives on the or- he went to prison for fifteen months Goldstone also suggested that the Aga- ganization’s board. “Trump didn’t de- after stabbing a man in the face with larovs host Miss Universe in Moscow cide alone that the pageant would take the stem of a broken margarita glass in 2013, so that Emin could perform for place in Russia,” Michael Cohen, a for- during a barroom confrontation; and the pageant’s global audience. That June, mer executive vice-president of the in 1998 he pleaded guilty for his role Emin and Aras travelled to Las Vegas Trump Organization and a personal in a forty-million-dollar stock-fraud to close the deal with Trump. attorney to the President who also scheme carried out with mobsters. In In some ways, the alliance between served on the Miss Universe board of 2010, Arif, who had worked at the So- the Agalarovs and Trump seems preor- directors, told me. “The board unani- viet Ministry of Trade, was arrested in dained. The Russian family’s mingled mously agreed that the package the Turkey with ten others aboard a lux- interests in real estate and show busi- Agalarovs put forward was best for the ury yacht and accused of being part of ness led some to call them the Trumps company and best for the contestants, a prostitution ring. (He was later ac- of Russia. Unlike Trump, Aras came so we approved it. I suspect that one quitted.) Sater and Arif were princi- from a family of modest means, but he of the Agalarovs’ motivations was to pals in the Bayrock Group, which in- had roots in Azerbaijan, where work advance Emin’s career.” vested in Trump real-estate ventures was under way on a Trump hotel and Trump, though eager to take his pag- from its offices on the twenty-fourth residence tower in Baku, the capital. eant to Moscow, likely had an exagger- floor of Trump Tower. Emin was married to the daughter of ated idea of the Agalarovs’ place in Rus-

38 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 Trump’s mistaken impression of Agalarov seems to have given him an MOZART’S FINAL HOUR exaggerated expectation of meeting Putin, which was one of his goals in 1 taking Miss Universe to Moscow. On My father is playing the B-Flat Sonata. June 18, 2013, just after Trump an- Hidden under the rented baby grand nounced that the Miss Universe pag- I press one pedal or another, eant would take place in Russia, he “damper,” “sustain”— tweeted, with a kind of desperate gid- diness, “Do you think Putin will be Mozart grows pompous, prissy, going to The Miss Universe Pageant or strangely tongue-tied. in November in Moscow—if so, will he become my new best friend?” That You can watch the shadows come— fall, before the pageant, David Letter- the elm in the French window man asked Trump, on “Late Night,” if impenetrable as a score. he had ever met Putin. “I met him once,” Rain is a diminished chord. Trump replied, falsely.

I press those huge slippers n Friday, November 8, 2013, Trump that smell of fart and wax, Otravelled to Moscow with Phil gently, and my father Ruffin, his business partner in Las Vegas. adjusts his timing delicately. Ruffin is married to Oleksandra Niko- layenko, a former Miss Universe from It’s late. Ukraine, who is forty-six years Ruffin’s junior. After they arrived, Trump at- Mozart bloated with sepsis says: tended a morning meeting about the Fetch me my quill. I have an idea pageant at his hotel, the Ritz-Carlton. that will make me famous. Keith Schiller, a former New York City police officer who had long served as Now the room is entirely dark. Trump’s bodyguard, sat on one side of My father is playing by heart. the room. At some point during the ses- That stupid grief—he memorized it. sion, Schiller testified to the House Per- manent Select Committee on Intelli- Our love is like nightfall gence, someone offered to send five or a trill: you can see through it women to Trump’s hotel room. Schil- but not it. ler said that he took the offer as a joke, rejected it, and told Trump of the invi- 2 tation, which he said the two men Then time shall be no more. laughed about. Later that day, the Agalarovs hosted —D. Nurkse a reception for Trump at a Moscow out- post of the Nobu restaurant chain. Emin Agalarov owns several restaurants run sian society. “I remember when we first developers are distinctly second-class in by the Los Angeles-based chef Nobu came to him for a meeting, he was sit- the pecking order. And Agalarov’s stuff Matsuhisa, who was also in Moscow to ting in the lobby of his own hotel, which, is mostly on the outskirts, in what’s called serve as a judge in the final round of of course, is called ‘Trump,’ ” Aras Aga- the Moscow region, on the way to the Miss Universe the next day. About a larov told the Russian magazine Snob. airport.” Nor does Agalarov wield out- dozen people attended, including Her- Trump, Aras continued, “began to shout, sized clout with Putin. “Real-estate de- man Gref, the former Minister of Eco- ‘Look who came to me! This is the rich- velopers like Agalarov are under the nomic Development and Trade under est person in Russia!’” According to thumb of the government, and they are Putin and the president of Sberbank, Forbes’s ranking of the wealthiest peo- expected to do as they are told,” Aslund the largest bank in Russia. From there, ple in Russia, Agalarov placed fifty-first, said. “Agalarov is building two stadiums the Agalarovs took Trump to Crocus with a net worth of about $1.7 billion. for the World Cup this summer, not City, their shopping mall, west of the Anders Aslund, an expert on the Rus- because he’ll make much money doing city, where the pageant would take place. sian economy at the Atlantic Council, it but because it’s what the government Aras Agalarov hosted a fifty-eighth- in Washington, told me, “Most of the expects of him. Agalarov surely had met birthday party for himself at which the great Russian fortunes come from nat- Putin, but in 2013 neither he nor Trump contestants gathered to sing “Happy ural resources, like oil, and the real-estate would have mattered much to Putin.” Birthday.” The event may have been

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 39 you, vote the most beautiful one!’” The judges included Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith; the supermodel Carol Alt, who had been a contestant on “Celeb- rity Apprentice”; and the ice-skater Tara Lipinski. An announcer provided a few facts about each finalist—“She never wears flats because she feels she is made to be a beauty queen”—until only Miss Venezuela and Miss Spain remained. (The contestants were referred to by their countries, not by name.) At the end of the show, Olivia Culpo handed her crown to Gabriela Isler, of Venezu- ela, who became the seventh winner from that country since 1979. Trump later boasted about how many important people he met during the weekend, telling Real Estate Weekly, a trade publication, “Almost all of the oli- garchs were in the room.” This was far from true––very few attended––but •• photographs and news reports show that Trump did cross paths with some wealthy Muscovites and a variety of Trump’s chance to inspect the women mova, a Moscow-based journalist who prospective business partners. Perhaps and render his judgments about who worked for the Russian edition of Forbes the most notorious guest was Alimzhan should advance to the finals. at the time and covered Aras Agalarov, Tokhtakhounov, a Russian business- The following morning, Emin, who told me that people thought Putin man widely suspected of fixing an ice- had asked Trump to shoot a scene for would attend the pageant, but he never dancing competition at the 2002 Win- his music video, brought a camera crew showed up. Later, Aras told the Wash- ter Olympics. At the time of the pageant, to the Ritz-Carlton. In a conference ington Post that Putin had sent Trump he was a fugitive from justice in the room, Trump recited his famous line— a sort of consolation prize—a note along United States, where he had been “You’re fired”—in one take. He also with a decorative box. charged with running an organized- held a news conference and sat for an crime money-laundering operation from interview with Thomas Roberts, an he faux triumphal arch that greets an apartment at Trump Tower, three MSNBC anchorman who would serve Tvisitors to Crocus City establishes floors below Trump’s penthouse. (He as the television host of the finals, along the grandiosity of the Agalarovs’ com- denies the allegations.) with Mel B., the British singer better mercial complex. It is three separate The after-party for several hundred known as Scary Spice. (Andy Cohen, but connected malls. One, dubbed guests took place in a large meeting the television personality, had co-hosted “Vegas,” features moderately priced re- room on the Crocus City campus. the previous year’s pageant but with- tailers. A second consists of dozens of Trump and the Agalarovs presided in drew from the 2013 contest because luxury shops, and a third offers home- one of the V.I.P. boxes, receiving guests Russia had passed an anti-gay law that improvement products. There is also an and taking photographs. Timati, a lead- year. Roberts—who, like Cohen, is gay— aquarium, a hotel, a heliport, and Cro- ing Russian rapper, came to pay his re- agreed to take his place.) Asked by Rob- cus City Hall, the six-thousand-seat spects. “It was a pretty sedate affair in erts about his relationship with Putin, theatre where the Miss Universe pag- their box,” one guest recalled, adding Trump again dissembled, saying, “I do eant would be staged. that, in the next box, Roustam Tariko, have a relationship, and I can tell you To accommodate the international the founder of the business empire that he’s very interested in what we’re television audience, the live broadcast Russian Standard, which was an offi- doing here today.” Trump went on, “He’s in Moscow began late on the night of cial partner of the pageant, held a live- probably very interested in what you Saturday, November 9th. Trump and lier celebration, with about a dozen and I are saying today, and I’m sure he’s Aras Agalarov sat next to each other young women, including numerous going to be seeing it in some form, but in the front row. One judge, an Italian Miss Russia contestants. (Russian Stan- I do have a relationship with him.” He wristwatch designer named Italo Fon- dard also sponsors the Miss Russia told Roberts that Putin had “done an tana, told me, by e-mail, that Trump pageant, a feeder event for Miss Uni- amazing job. . . . A lot of people would “greeted me like we were friends since verse.) The parties wound down at say he’s put himself at the forefront of ages and with a smile and a pat on my around four in the morning. the world as a leader.” Maria Abaku- shoulder he told me: ‘I recommend Trump stayed at the Ritz-Carlton

40 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 for only two nights, but his presence “I consider him a friend. We exchange as to the public. “We are not going to there has given rise to the most sensa- correspondence. We see each other a allow some Russian to tell us how to tional accusation about his time in few times a year.” vote and how to run our country. I think Moscow. The Steele dossier claims As a Presidential candidate, Trump there needs to be a national cry for that.” that Russian authorities had exploited continued working on a plan to build Trump, it seems, has never asked his Trump’s “personal obsessions and sex- in Russia. In October, 2015, based on a top intelligence officials for an account- ual perversion in order to obtain suit- proposal by Felix Sater, Trump signed ing of Russian activities during the cam- able ‘kompromat’ (compromising ma- a non-binding letter of intent to license paign or for a plan to stop such efforts terial) on him.” A source allegedly the Trump name to a potential office from continuing in the future. As a re- present at the scene said that Trump tower in Moscow. In an e-mail sent at sult, the quest for accountability rests had rented the Presidential Suite at the the time to Michael Cohen, Sater wrote, largely with the Mueller investigation, hotel, where Barack and Michelle “I will get Putin on this program and which is trying to determine whether Obama had stayed, and that he had we will get Donald elected. . . . Buddy Trump and his campaign staff knew employed “a number of prostitutes to our boy can become President of the about, encouraged, or sponsored the perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) USA and we can engineer it. I will get Russian efforts. To date, the most di- show in front of him,” as a way of all of Putins team to buy in on this.” rect evidence that they did is a result of defiling the bed in which the former Cohen, who negotiated on Trump’s be- connections forged in the lead-up to the First Couple had slept. The accusation half, recalled, “The licensee was intent 2013 Miss Universe contest. On June 3, seems unlikely, though not impossible, on developing the tallest building in 2016, Rob Goldstone, Emin Agalarov’s and Trump has denied the validity of the world, a hundred and twenty sto- publicist, e-mailed Donald Trump, Jr., the dossier. In any case, he seems to ries or so, with commercial space, a offering damaging information about have been in high spirits when he left hotel, and residential. But the most Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and Moscow. Shortly after his departure, important requirement we had was that its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” he tweeted to Aras Agalarov’s account, Felix find the right piece of real estate Donald, Jr., replied, “If it’s what you say “I had a great weekend with you and for it, because the Trump brand is all I love it.” Six days later, Trump, Jr., Jared your family. You have done a FANTAS- about location, location, location. By Kushner, the candidate’s son-in-law, and TIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is January, 2016, I saw that he couldn’t Paul Manafort, then the chairman of next. EMIN was WOW!” come up with any location, so I told the campaign, welcomed a group of vis- him the deal was dead.” itors to Trump Tower led by a Russian f Trump had simply gone back to his The scope of Russian meddling in attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Icareer in business, the Miss Universe the election remains unknown, but it In July, 2017, the Times informed the pageant in Moscow would today rank appears to have included hacking e-mail White House that it was working on a as little more than a footnote in the col- accounts affiliated with prominent story about that meeting. The President orful saga of a flamboyant New York Democrats, seeding social media with and his advisers, who were returning real-estate developer. But a year and a pro-Trump and anti-Clinton items, and, from a trip to Europe aboard Air Force half later, in June, 2015, Trump declared perhaps, directing financial assistance One, prepared a misleading statement his candidacy for President in a noto- to pro-Trump organizations. Accord- about the purpose of the meeting, as- rious speech at Trump Tower, in which ing to six U.S. intelligence chiefs, Rus- serting that it had been a harmless dis- he accused Mexico of exporting crim- sia is building on its 2016 efforts by cussion of adoption policy. inals and rapists and called for the build- launching a new round of attacks aimed Mueller’s prosecutors have taken a ing of a border wall. Outrage followed, at undermining the 2018 elections. On close look at the meeting, and at the especially in the Spanish-speaking world, February 13th, Dan Coats, the director President’s public response to its expo- and Trump quickly made a deal to sell of National Intelligence, warned the sure. It is illegal for foreign nationals to his ownership of the Miss Universe Senate Intelligence Committee, “We contribute to American campaigns, in- Organization, to the WME-IMG tal- expect Russia to continue using propa- cluding through in-kind contributions, ent agency. Neither the sale price nor ganda, social media, false-flag perso- such as opposition research. The mis- Trump’s profit on the deal, if any, has nas, sympathetic spokesmen, and other leading statement may become evidence been disclosed. means of influence to try to build on of obstruction of justice. And the in- In the Presidential campaign, Trump its wide range of operations and exac- dictments of the Russians on Friday continued his embrace of Moscow with erbate social and political fissures in the showed Mueller’s determination to re- a roundelay of ingratiation and defer- United States.” In the same hearing, veal the extent of foreign influence in ence to Putin. He had also kept in touch Christopher Wray, the director of the the election and to hold accountable with the Agalarovs. A year after the F.B.I., acknowledged that the President those who facilitated it. For decades, in pageant, he appeared in another of Em- had not asked his intelligence officials Trump’s business dealings, he never paid in’s videos, to celebrate his thirty-fifth to take specific measures to address a price for his salesman’s hype, which birthday. (“Emin, I can’t believe you’re Russian interference. “We need to in- repeatedly edged into falsehood. The turning thirty-five,” Trump said. “You’re form the American public that this is Mueller investigation may now bring a winner, you’re a champ!”) In April of real,” Coats said, in what sounded as an unprecedented and overdue moment 2016, Emin told the Washington Post, much like an appeal to the President of reckoning. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 41 The Vessel, in Hudson Yards, has a hundred and fifty-four staircases and eighty landings. Heatherwick has said that, at a site wher

42 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 profiles STAIRMASTER Has Thomas Heatherwick created a rival to the Statue of Liberty, or a hundred- and-fifty-million-dollar folly?

BY IAN PARKER

e where there is nothing else to commemorate, the Vessel can be a “monument to us.”

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN tephen Ross, the seventy-seven- readied for the construction of a hundred- In the fall of 2012, on a bye week for year-old billionaire property devel- and-fifty-foot head of Ozymandias. Ross the Dolphins, when his wife was away S oper and the owner of the Miami called it “my baby.” For the moment, it’s in Paris, Ross visited Storm King, the Dolphins, has a winningly informal, old- known as the Vessel—or, officially, as upstate museum of large outdoor art school conversational style. On a recent Vessel. (Ross longs for the public to give works. He was joined by Jay Cross, the morning in Manhattan, he spoke of the it an affectionate nickname.) One can Related executive in charge of Hudson moment, several years ago, when he think of it as a compressed extension of Yards. Cross brought along a monograph decided that the plaza of one of his the High Line, or as the site of a per- that had been published in advance of a projects, Hudson Yards—a Doha-like petual evacuation drill; it’s a proposed Heatherwick retrospective, “Designing cluster of towers on Manhattan’s West future venue for downhill mountain-bike the Extraordinary,” at the Victoria and Side—needed a magnificent object at its races. Starting sometime next year, it will Albert Museum, in London. Ross leafed center. He recalled telling himself, “It be open to the public, via free, timed- through the book as they drove up the has to be big. It has to be monumental.” entry tickets. Ross’s evident delight in Hudson Valley. He saw a bench, made He went on, “Then I said, ‘O.K. Who the piece—even as some of his associ- from extruded aluminum, with an allur- are the great sculptors?’” (Ross pro- ates wonder about its size and purpose, ingly rippled surface; a motorized pedes- nounced the word “sculptures.”) Before and its cost, which exceeds a hundred trian bridge that can curl up into a ball, long, he met with Thomas Heatherwick, and fifty million dollars—derives partly like a wood louse, on one side of a wa- the acclaimed British designer of inge- from his confidence that, in time, it will terway in London. And Cross reminded nious, if sometimes unworkable, things. become “the icon for New York,” just as Ross of the work that Heatherwick had Ross told me that there was a presenta- the Eiffel Tower is for Paris. The Vessel revealed a few months earlier, at the open- tion, and that he was very impressed by is about as wide as it is tall, and will fit ing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Heatherwick’s “what do you call it— nicely into an Instagram photograph. London. Two hundred and four copper Television? Internet?” An adviser softly Ross recalled a work of art that, in the cones attached to long stalks—one for said, “PowerPoint?” late nineteen-nineties, was incorporated each nation—came together, in a me- Ross was in a meeting room at the into the façade of a Related development chanical flourish, to create a cauldron. Time Warner Center, which his com- on the south side of Union Square. To Ross said, “Bring him in.” pany, Related, built and partly owns, and his regret, his company took the advice where he lives and works. We had a view of the Public Art Fund and the Munic- oanna Lumley, the British actress who of Columbus Circle and Central Park. ipal Art Society. “It was a disaster,” he Jstarred in “Absolutely Fabulous,” is a The room was filled with models of said. “That thing where the smoke comes friend of Heatherwick’s, and often refers Hudson Yards, which is a mile and a half out? Whatever the hell it is.” He was to him, fondly, as a child. She has said southwest, between Thirtieth and Thirty- talking about Kristin Jones and Andrew that, after his early successes, Londoners third Streets, and between Tenth Ave- Ginzel’s “The Metronome,” an unloved began asking, “What can this brilliant nue and the West Side Highway. There, combination of elements: a string of boy do next?” Speaking on a panel in Related and its partner, Oxford Proper- L.E.D. numbers displaying both the time 2014, she called him an “extraordinary ties Group, are partway through erect- of day and the amount of time left in the and brilliant boy.” Heatherwick is forty- ing the complex, which includes residen- day; puffs of steam emitted from a large eight, employs nearly two hundred peo- tial space, office space, and a mall— hole; a protruding human hand. Ross ple, and has two children. (He is sepa- with such stores as Neiman said, sadly, “I wanted to put rated from their mother.) But he projects Marcus, Cartier, and Urban a Frank Stella there. He an air of otherworldliness and innocence. Decay, and a Thomas Kel- wanted to do a great thing.” His hair is worn tousled—with a curl or ler restaurant designed to (Ross regularly attends Art two dangling over his forehead—and his evoke “Mad Men”—most Basel Miami Beach, and wardrobe is oriented toward very loose of it on a platform built his collection of modern pants, baggy white shirts, and vests. He over active rail lines. Ross painting and sculpture in- gives the impression of a child appren- refers to the project, which cludes works by Fernando tice in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. will yield eighteen million Botero, Jim Dine, and Niki His firm, Heatherwick Studio, is on square feet in sixteen build- de Saint Phalle.) a busy street in King’s Cross, in a red ings on twenty-eight acres, and cost about For Hudson Yards, Ross told him- brick Edwardian building that the com- twenty-five billion dollars, as the largest self, “I’m not giving this to anyone else.” pany shares with a two-star chain hotel. private-sector real-estate development He made the plaza’s centerpiece a per- The studio, reached through a court- in American history. sonal project, and started with the wise yard, first presents a visitor with a view Ross looked down on a model of the observation that “every visitor, and every of shelves holding dozens of design odd- plaza, which featured a miniature ver- New Yorker, wants to go to Rockefel- ities, such as might be displayed in a sion of the structure commissioned from ler Center during Christmas season, Victorian museum or a Paul Smith Heatherwick: a copper-colored, urn- to see the tree.” He continued, “So I menswear store. These include a Jap- shaped lattice of a hundred and fifty- said, ‘I need a three-hundred-and- anese mechanical lucky cat, spoons four staircases and eighty landings. It sixty-five-day tree, O.K.?’” He began with unusually long handles, an engine looked like scaffolding that had been to ask artists for proposals. part, and perfume bottles designed by

44 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 the studio for Christian Louboutin. Heatherwick has an earnest, expres- sive way of talking: wide eyes, little shakes of the head. He seems to be forever mak- ing the discovery that he has said some- thing delightfully apt. After the Olym- pics, there was a brief period of optimism in British civic life—a wave of national amazement that the event hadn’t ended in disaster and humiliation. Heather- wick helped to create that moment, and then came to represent it. In 2013, he be- came a Commander of the British Em- pire. Boris Johnson, the mayor of Lon- don between 2008 and 2016, and now the British Foreign Secretary, compared him to Michelangelo and invited him to join a trade delegation to China. British GQ included him on its annual list of the country’s best-dressed men. He was praised for his inventiveness, across a range of scales, using a range of materials. Heatherwick has a gift for dis- covering, in a commission for an object, the opportunity for an event: movement, spectacle, play. Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect, who has collaborated with him, recently said that, unlike many design- ers, “Thomas is focussed on the jaw- •• dropping centerpiece—the ‘wow’ mo- ment.” Heatherwick tends to achieve said. “An element of steampunk, almost.” Heatherwick also suggested that it effect more through texture than through Heatherwick largely avoids self- would make little sense for him to de- form—by, say, stitching or layering a mul- deprecation. Last year, he wrote in the sign a chair, because “someone else could titude of near-identical parts to make a Evening Standard that his scheme for a do just as good a job.” He added, “The highly conspicuous whole. His sculpture tree-covered “Garden Bridge” over the most satisfying thing is to make a differ- for an atrium at the Wellcome Trust, in Thames, in central London, was “ex- ence.” In 2004, Heatherwick designed a London, is made of a hundred and forty traordinary.” He has been known to sign limited-edition glass chair. He has also thousand suspended glass spheres, each his name with an exclamation point, and made molded-polypropylene chairs that the size of a plum, arranged into cloud- puts effort into couching even a passing can be spun like a top. They sell for like forms. He has proposed building a thought as a design insight. Not long seven hundred dollars each. Last year, footbridge entirely from a welded clus- ago, he told me, with raised eyebrows the studio designed a table. For years, ter of stainless-steel disks. His U.K. Pa- and a confiding chuckle, that a fireplace Heatherwick has said that he’d like to vilion for Expo 2010, in Shanghai, was a “creates a heart to a room,” and that rooms design prisons and hospitals, but he has rounded cube formed from sixty thou- lacking fireplaces “can be a bit focusless.” not done so. sand translucent acrylic rods that waved His keenness never to be consid- When we first talked, Heatherwick in the wind like bullrushes. The design ered unexceptional or businesslike is was working on three major projects in was widely considered a triumph. Rowan surely a spur to his creativity, but it can New York: the Vessel; a renovation of Moore, the architecture critic of the Lon- lead to confusion in conversation. When David Geffen Hall, at Lincoln Center, don Observer, called it “outstandingly we first met, at a Manhattan café, a lit- which was expected to cost half a billion memorable,” noting that “we expect build- tle more than a year ago, Heatherwick dollars; and a two-hundred-and-fifty- ings neither to be hairy nor in motion.” said that cultural institutions were a million-dollar pier, on the West Side, to Heatherwick Studio employs archi- “clichéd format” for a designer, and did be paid for largely by Barry Diller and tects, but Heatherwick is not an archi- not particularly interest him. “If every- Diane von Fürstenberg. Among projects tect. His work could be described as a one’s doing museums, how much differ- elsewhere, Heatherwick was co-designing, celebration of never having absorbed, in entiation are you going to be able to with the Bjarke Ingels Group, headquar- a formal architectural education, dogma make if you do one, too?” He was just ters buildings for Google in Mountain about designing things to be flush and then completing a major art museum, View, California, and in London. taut. “There’s a Harry Potter-esque, Vic- with an attached luxury hotel, in Cape Such success depends, in part, on torian quirkiness in the work,” Ingels Town, South Africa. gaining the confidence of people with

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 45 ment, but he was left within reach of it. He has the sensitivities of someone given not every advantage. His maternal grand- father, a Marxist poet and a virtuoso re- corder player who fought in the Span- ish Civil War, was the son of the owner of Jaeger, a leading London fashion firm. His uncle Nicholas Tomalin was a well- known journalist. Thomas’s mother was a jewelry designer who became an ex- pert on beads; his father was a musician, and ran an East London charity, before coming to work part time in his son’s studio. Heatherwick grew up in a house that was big, even if it was in bohemian disarray. (He has said that he was self- conscious about packed-lunch sand- wiches that weren’t as neatly made as those of his classmates.) After leaving primary school, Heatherwick attended two well-known private schools: Seven- oaks, in Kent, which was founded in the fifteenth century, and the Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley, in Hertfordshire, which puts an emphasis on gardening, •• handiwork, and a bespoke form of per- formance art called eurythmy. Heatherwick attended college in means. In an interview a few years ago, folly for the few and a venue for corpo- Manchester, and then pursued a gradu- Heatherwick described himself as shy in rate celebrations. It was expected to cost ate degree in furniture design at the Royal meetings, but Ingels told me, “I’ve seen two hundred and sixty million dollars. College of Art, in London. In the fall of him in action—he is almost a hypnotist.” Joanna Lumley, in the role of celebrity 1993, at the start of his final year, Terence Heatherwick could be thought of as a civic booster, has for years lobbied for a Conran, who founded Habitat, the Brit- tycoon’s idea of a creative spirit. Jay Cross, bridge of this sort, and has promoted ish furniture chain that popularized a Stephen Ross’s colleague at Related, said Heatherwick’s design, referring to it as modernist look, and who later founded that “Thomas sees Stephen as the ulti- “a tiara on the head of our fabulous city.” London’s Design Museum, came to speak mate patron, and I think Stephen sees James Corner, the landscape architect to students. Heatherwick introduced Thomas as the ultimate genius.” If Heath- who co-designed the High Line with himself. (Whenever Heatherwick de- erwick is indeed introverted, this hasn’t Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architec- scribes this encounter, he emphasizes cut him off from the world: he once sat tural firm, is among those who have de- grievance over good fortune; at an event in the front row at a Burberry fashion scribed it as a vanity project. at the Parsons School of Design, he said, show in London. Ross told me that he’d I asked Heatherwick about the way “My evil professor wouldn’t let me meet taken Heatherwick to Dolphins games, the planned bridge had become known, him. . . . I had to run down the stairs— and that his guest had begun to appre- fairly or not, as a symbol of privilege. He the fire stairs—to speak to him.”) Con- ciate the sport. (Asked about the rela- answered by saying, “I never went to ran, impressed by Heatherwick, invited tionship between Ross and Heatherwick, school with Boris, or anyone from power.” him to build his graduate-thesis design Cross said, “Don’t take this word out of That is, he underlined the class distance in a workshop at his seventeenth-century context, but I would say it’s loving.”) Will between himself and Johnson, the for- manor house in Berkshire. That spring, Hurst, an editor and writer at The Archi- mer mayor, whose style—honed at Eton Heatherwick lived in Conran’s home and tects’ Journal, in London, recently sug- and Oxford—is that of amused, ruling- made an eighteen-foot-high gazebo out gested that Heatherwick, more than any class insouciance. Heatherwick contin- of hundreds of strips of laminated birch. other British designer, knows “how to ued, “I went to a primary school in Wood They became friends, and with Conran’s pull the levers of power.” Green”—an unglamorous North Lon- encouragement Heatherwick quickly set Heatherwick would prefer to be seen don neighborhood. “My grandmother up a commercial studio. Conran has called as an outsider. At our initial meeting, I was a servant at Windsor Castle. My Heatherwick “the Leonardo da Vinci asked him about the Garden Bridge. It other grandmother was a German Jew- of our times”; he introduced Heather- was said that the bridge, sponsored by ish refugee who fled for her life.” wick to Lumley. The birch gazebo now an unscrupulous Conservative mayor and Heatherwick’s background didn’t drop stands in Conran’s garden. A few years paid for partly with public funds, was a him at the door of the British establish- ago, James Dyson, the vacuum-cleaner

46 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 entrepreneur, dislodged the top of it while posed building a stadium atop a plat- tectural contract. Nobody at Diller Scofi- landing a helicopter on the lawn; it has form spanning the wide trench, between dio + Renfro agreed to be interviewed since been repaired. Thirtieth and Thirty-third Streets, where for this article, but last year Liz Diller, the M.T.A. parks L.I.R.R. trains, on two one of the firm’s partners, told a journal- n a morning in September, before dozen parallel tracks. After the Games, ist that the eventual arrangement was a Odawn, a tugboat was pushing a the stadium was to become the home of “deal with the Devil,” adding, “We never loaded barge from Newark Bay to Man- the New York Jets. In support of the bid, imagined in a million years that we would hattan, at the pace of a kayak. In the gal- the city created the Special Hudson Yards be doing a commercial tower. But we ley, a crew member fried onions. On the District, stretching from Thirtieth to like to do everything once.” A penthouse bridge, the captain, Stephen Cluett, dryly Forty-first Streets, to encourage high- in the tower is currently listed at thirty- referred to the morning’s work as “a Car- density development, with the compen- two million dollars. nival cruise without Kathie Lee and the sation of new public space and a likely Related’s initial model for its plaza cocktails.” As the boat went under the extension of the 7 train. was Bryant Park, in midtown. The com- Bayonne Bridge, Cluett had a view of The stadium plan fell apart, and New pany commissioned a report from Dan the Tribute in Light searchlights, com- York subsequently lost the Olympics to Biederman, who, in the eighties and nine- memorating the 9/11 attacks; as the London. But the rezoning and the prom- ties, led the resuscitation of that space, searchlights faded into first light, the ised public spending drew developers. which had become a derelict spot for boat passed the Statue of Liberty. As Stephen Ross recently told me, “I drug dealing. He is now the president of On the barge lay two sculptural pieces learned, during Watergate, ‘Follow the the Bryant Park Corporation and runs a of steel, each about the size of a school money.’” In 2008, Related, then in part- consultancy. His advice, he recently said, bus. Painted gray, they were held in place nership with Goldman Sachs, made a was to “first program the space and then by their weight. Both were future Ves- deal with the M.T.A. to develop the space design the space.” (He also calculated sel landings that, at each end, had stairs above the tracks. that, although Bryant Park can expect a going up and stairs going down. The Related was obliged to leave half of hundred and ten days a year of nice people who had been fabricating and the platform open to the sky. A strip of sitting-outside weather, the far West Side transporting these objects referred to new parkland, running onto the site from can expect only eighty, because of wind.) them as “dog bones.” the north, would flow into a public space Biederman told me, without complaint, The tugboat reached Hudson Yards. about the size of Union Square Park. To that a public space dominated by one From the river, the half-built Vessel the east, there would be a shopping mall; very expensive object—the Vessel will seemed a little lost—a shiny brown to the south, Related was expected to ac- cost more than the highest price ever espresso cup—amid the clutter of cranes commodate, but not operate, an arts in- paid for a sculpture at auction—could be and unfinished high-rises. A clearer river stitution known as the Culture Shed. (It considered “the opposite of our philoso- view will emerge, but will then disap- is now the Shed.) This building was ini- phy” at Bryant Park, where the total cap- pear in a few years, after a second growth tially oriented on a north-south axis. In ital spending since the eighties has been of towers appears on the western half of 2010, a remarkable design, by Diller Scofi- about twenty-five million dollars. “This the Yards. If the Vessel becomes a rival dio + Renfro, was made public: a six- will be a real test,” he said. “I’m absolutely to the Statue of Liberty, it will be un- floor box with two nesting translucent undecided whether Hudson Yards will usual, in the landmark category, for being canopies, which could be rolled out onto be the greatest success or a failure.” corralled by skyscrapers. Approached an adjoining area, creating an additional By early 2012, the footprints of the from most directions, it will fully reveal covered exhibition or performance space. structures on the platform’s eastern side itself only when it’s almost overhead, like (These two canopies later became one.) were fixed: four towers, the Shed, shops, a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon of Ross was unhappy when he realized that restaurants. Related asked for proposals SpongeBob SquarePants. the canopies—expected to be deployed from three landscape-architecture firms. Heatherwick has said that, at a site for at least half the year—would claim The platform, only a few feet thick and where there is nothing to commemorate, space that he considered his. “I thought, heated up by idling trains below, pre- the Vessel can be a monument “to us”— There’s no way in the world!” he told me. sented a horticultural challenge. Related an opportunity to reflect on something “I said, ‘It’s going to block my retail.’” executives did not ask for a sculptural “timeless about humans and our physi- Related successfully pressed city plan- landmark, although they did explain the cality.” On the tugboat, Cluett spoke of a ners. The Shed was turned ninety de- need for a few concrete vents, which “hundred-and-fifty-five-million-dollar grees, to become parallel with Thirtieth could perhaps double as kiosks or cafés. head-scratcher.” When he was told that Street. In this orientation, it was squeezed One proposal, from the firm Nelson the cost estimate had risen to two hun- for space, so it was partly integrated into Byrd Woltz, included a lawn, a man- dred million dollars, including landscap- the base of a planned seventy-floor lux- made stream, and a reflecting quarter-inch ing, he said, “I forgot the landscaping part,” ury residential tower. Diller Scofidio + skim of water that could be drained when- adding, “That’s a lot of goddam mulch.” Renfro, a firm that had never worked on ever the Shed’s canopy was rolled out The development of the West Side a high-rise, was asked to co-design that over it. The firm also included a six-story rail yards was initially connected to New tower. A Related spokesperson told me lookout tower. This was sketched as a York’s bid, thirteen years ago, to host the that there was no connection between shaft around which two ramps spiralled 2012 Summer Olympics. The city pro- the Shed’s repositioning and the archi- in a double helix—all of it wrapped in a

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 47 perforated screen of weathered steel, the open platform at the back, echoing a and he made a sensation out of it. Dis- rust-covered material of a Richard Serra classic, defunct design. It seems to have counting a recommendation from offi- sculpture. In its pitch, the firm referred been commissioned, at the insistence cials that it should have no moving parts, to two rail tunnels that run beneath the of Boris Johnson, as much to symbol- he provided the opening ceremony with site. The tunnels, dug in the early twen- ize the city as to serve it: a double-decker a moment of high emotion. The cauldron tieth century, still transport all trains be- pavilion. It had advantages over off- looked like something that should mal- tween Penn Station and New Jersey. The the-shelf alternatives but cost nearly function, yet it worked. Today, the Mu- tower, vaguely suggesting a drill bit, would twice as much, was cramped and hot, seum of London has a permanent exhi- have been erected close to the point where and was more polluting than promised. bition celebrating the design. “Each stem tunnelling machinery was once lowered The bus was discontinued. carried a fragment of the Olympic flame down a shaft. Heatherwick Studio had submitted in a uniquely shaped copper piece, only I asked Ross about his reaction to designs for two Olympic structures—a burning as one when they finally and per- seeing N.B.W.’s tower. velodrome and an observation tower— fectly nestled together,” one caption reads. “Ugh,” he said. but had failed to win the commissions. “I grew up in a city where nothing Related hired the firm, but at a meet- A participant in the tower competition happened,” Heatherwick told me, refer- ing with Thomas Woltz, the owner of has said that Boris Johnson asked for ring to his sense of London’s creative N.B.W., Ross asked for a new land- a design that would “match the Eiffel stagnation, at least in terms of civic space, scape. “I said, ‘Throw those plans out!’” Tower.” The winning entry was co- in the seventies and eighties. But, after he recalled. He described Woltz’s face designed by Anish Kapoor, the British the Olympics, he said, “there was a win- falling, and added, “Nice young kid.” artist best known for Cloud Gate, a se- dow of opportunity to maybe not be cyn- If Ross had ever supported the idea ductive, seamless blob of polished stain- ical, and to maybe make something un- of another Bryant Park, he no longer did. less steel in Chicago’s Millennium Park. precedented.” A few weeks after the He took Woltz to a window at the Time Nicknamed the Bean, it is now part- closing ceremony, Heatherwick and Jo- Warner Center, saying, “Look at Colum- way to achieving Eiffel-like status. Ka- anna Lumley had their first meeting with bus Circle, how hard it is.” There would poor’s London Olympics tower, the Boris Johnson about the Garden Bridge. be no grass on his plaza. “I said, ‘Forget ArcelorMittal Orbit, is not. A three- Earlier that year, Lumley—who had pre- about it.’ I mean, people with their dogs?” hundred-and-eighty-foot lattice of red viously proposed such a bridge as a me- The final landscape will include no steel loops around a red steel trunk, it morial to Princess Diana—had written lawn, no stream, no skim of water. But has been likened to the site of a major to Johnson, saying that the project would Ross had clearly absorbed the idea of an roller-coaster accident. bring “great loveliness” to the Thames. ornament. Jay Cross acknowledged that The design for Heatherwick’s losing She had added, “Please say yes.” Cov- such a structure “wasn’t a part of our think- entry, which has never been published, ered with hundreds of trees, it would link ing until Woltz brought it up.” He added, was a staircase that split and split again— an area of diplomatic missions and bar- “Once the lawn was gone, Stephen was, “like a growing plant,” he told me. In the risters’ chambers, on the north side, to a like, ‘We’ve got to have a piece of art.’” It course of his twenty-five-year career, riverside walk, popular with tourists, on had to be a destination, Cross said. “It Heatherwick has generated ideas that the south. Heatherwick says that he and had to be ‘I’ll meet you at the Whatever.’” he has been loath to abandon; one was Lumley first discussed the idea some to adorn a design with large planters, fifteen years ago. She has always deferred efore the 2012 Summer Olympics, each holding a single tree. One of Heath- to him on its design, except for a few BHeatherwick was known in Britain erwick’s former colleagues told me that, suggestions: it should have a Christmas for three striking but impermanent de- in brainstorming sessions, “tree bowls al- tree during the holidays; it should not signs. His Shanghai Expo pavilion had a ways came up.” Another favored concep- provide a straight line of sight, encour- scheduled life of only six months. In 2002, tion was a connected set of staircases. aging pedestrians to meander; and, al- for a site in Manchester, Heatherwick His Olympic design echoed an unbuilt though the bridge’s platform would widen Studio had created B of the Bang, a two- 2006 commission for a structure on a at two points, above thick supporting hundred-foot-tall cluster of metal spikes hilltop in Baku, Azerbaijan. This mon- pillars, from the air its outline should not emanating from the top of a column, to ument—an ascending curlicue—was “a evoke a pair of sunglasses or a bra. suggest a midair explosion. It was finished heroic staircase,” Heatherwick wrote in Bjarke Ingels, describing his collabo- late and was over budget. The tip of a 2012. “It would give people stories to tell, rations with Heatherwick, recently said, spike fell off just before it was unveiled. such as the first time their child had half joking, “Whenever I wanted Heath- Other spikes later threatened to fall and walked up by herself or the time that, erwick to like something, I would start had to be removed. The Manchester City having made it to the top, a young man by talking about nooks and crannies—he Council sued Heatherwick and his con- went down on one knee and made a pro- says ‘nooks and crannies’ constantly.” tractors, and settled out of court. In 2009, posal of marriage.” (This is not the Azer- Heatherwick has described the Garden the sculpture was dismantled. baijani way, but perhaps it would have Bridge as “a series of intimate spaces in The New Routemaster, a handsome become so. Related executives expect which to stop and linger.” Richard Rog- double-decker bus designed for Lon- marriage proposals on the Vessel.) ers, the architect, has praised it as a likely don’s transportation authority, went Heatherwick did secure a more mod- “oasis of calm and beauty.” Lumley has into service in February, 2012; it had an est Olympic commission, the cauldron, imagined a place “where the only sounds

48 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 Heatherwick Studio’s Rolling Bridge. The curling, thirty-nine-foot bridge was installed in central London in 2004.

will be birdsong and bees buzzing and cently praised Heatherwick’s work but proposal, for a fee, but said no. Accord- the wind in the trees, and, below, the steady said that the initial design was “imprac- ing to Cross, Serra told Ross, “You know rush of water.” One can admire this op- tical” and “couldn’t be built.” The pier what I do—you know that it’s going to timism, after repressing thoughts of driv- evolved into an undulating park stand- be structural steel, you know it’s going ing rain and dense crowds. But Heath- ing on flared pilings—a cauldron half to be monumental. What do I need to erwick and the bridge’s supporters also submerged in the Hudson. show you?” He added, “Hire me and I’ll have asked that it be valued as transpor- Before the 2012 Olympics, Jay Cross, go to work.” (Serra, through a represen- tation infrastructure, and this is harder to the Related executive, asked Heatherwick tative, confirmed that he declined to par- accept. Heatherwick told me that the to “think about those vent shafts” which ticipate but denied that he used these Garden Bridge would be built in “the big- needed to be constructed at Hudson Yards, words.) Ross, recalling the encounter, gest gap” that exists between any two and propose designs that incorporated described Serra’s work as poorly suited bridges in central London, which wasn’t them into cafés or kiosks. Heatherwick, for the site, because it was “very subtle” true. It would be closed at night, and cy- remembering the assignment more sweep- and “not iconic.” cling would be banned. According to pro- ingly, told me that “Jay commissioned us In late 2012, Heatherwick had a pre- jections, its entrances would be congested. to work on the design of the square— liminary meeting with Ross. Heather- Indeed, Heatherwick has said, approv- to collaborate with Nelson Byrd Woltz.” wick told me that he conceived of his task ingly, that the bridge “has the potential In Woltz’s recollection, Related “asked to be “to play back to him what he must to be the slowest way to cross the river.” Thomas to look at pavilions, and he came be thinking.” Ross was bound to have A month after Heatherwick met with back with multiple concepts for the whole considered “the success of Chicago’s Mil- Johnson about the bridge, he was at the site.” One design, Woltz said, involved lennium Park, and a couple of the main Carlyle Hotel, in Manhattan, showing “giant rectangles at different elevations,” pieces there”—namely, Kapoor’s Cloud a proposal to Barry Diller. Pier 54, at the adding, “They were really—what can I Gate and Plensa’s Crown Fountain, in end of West Thirteenth Street, was set say?—extraordinarily inventive for pub- which water spouts from two walls dis- to be demolished. Diller had offered to lic space where you have to have disabil- playing videos of people opening their fund a replacement, and this had been ity access.” Cross described it as “the whole mouths. Heatherwick assumed that Ross sketched out by Michael Van Valken- plaza popping up and down,” and said, would be tempted to commission some- burgh, the landscape architect. Three “We were, like, ‘That’s complicated.’” Re- thing similar but bigger—“because you’re firms, including Heatherwick Studio, lated didn’t pursue these ideas. a billionaire,” he said. At the meeting, were asked to design a performance space After Stephen Ross decided to com- Heatherwick acknowledged his likely ri- for it. Heatherwick’s proposal went be- mission a monument for Hudson Yards, vals by suggesting the limitations of “what yond this brief. He designed a new pier, he consulted with curators and art deal- I think people refer to as the ‘turd-in-the- in a form that suggested a half-built ers—including Glenn Lowry, the direc- plaza syndrome.’” (The phrase was coined wooden boat, with curved ribs rising tor of MOMA—and began to gauge the by the architect James Wines.) That is, more than two hundred feet. With this, interest of such artists as Kapoor, Jaume Heatherwick told me, too many devel- the firm secured a commission for a new Plensa, Jeff Koons, Maya Lin, and Rich- opers remain attached to a shopworn

COURTESY STEVE SPELLER STEVE COURTESY pier. The ribs were later lost; Diller re- ard Serra. Serra was invited to outline a contrast between “cool, cold architecture”

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 49 and “an expressive object unconnected to just an immediacy to straining your leg.” they “were looking at amphitheatres, the- the normal functional requirements of His work consistently embraces the pub- atre spaces, performance spaces.” He con- humans.” He went on, “There’s an obvi- lic appetite for near-art experiences: vi- tinued, “Quite pragmatically, our think- ousness to the format, however amazing sual and experiential novelty, ideally in ing about leading people upward, as a the art work is. It felt to me that some- a noncommercial setting, delivered with- way to create more three-dimensional thing should have a use. It might be a out the distractions of ambiguities or public space, led to the idea of stairs.” different kind of use—but something that subtext. Other artists and designers har- But an amphitheatre “could seem to people touch and engage with.” ness the same desire: the German artist exclude,” Heatherwick explained. “If you Carsten Höller recently attached a helter- have people all sitting facing inward, fter this meeting, Related had a skelter slide to Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal there’s a back that’s pushing people away. Ashortlist of three—Heatherwick, Orbit tower. But Heatherwick is unusual, So—how could you be porous but also Kapoor, and Plensa—each of whom was and perhaps canny, for making work centrally focussed?” asked to produce a proposal. (“I paid one that’s widely understood to be sculptural, “We started to delete the non-neces- sculptor five hundred thousand dollars,” and that sells at auction as sculpture, even sary geometry,” Wood went on. “And Ross recalled. “I paid another two hun- as he relieves those who experience his what remained were stairs and landings.” dred and fifty thousand.”) I recently spoke products from the burden of paying He added, “We wanted it to be small at to Plensa on the phone. “Cities are not heightened attention. The Olympic caul- the bottom, to not jam up the space, but only buildings but people,” he told me, dron was given an award as the best Brit- not so small that you can’t get in it. So in a soft voice. He said that, when con- ish work of visual art of 2012, but, Heath- we found that sweet spot”—a base with templating Hudson Yards, he “felt it was erwick told me, “I’m not an artist.” And a fifty-foot diameter. Each floor, or ring important, in this huge geometry, to try he suggested that it would have been a of landings, would be wider than the one to offer something more organic, to cre- mistake, at Hudson Yards, to cause any- below it. The studio at first assumed that ate a space to breathe.” His design took one to “wonder what the artist had each level would include as many land- the form of giant iron leaves—“to re- meant.” (Jonathan Jones, the Guardian’s ings as possible: five on the bottom floor, mind us of nature”—that visitors could art critic, has written, of Heatherwick, increasing to nine at the top. But this walk beneath, after passing through a “If he were an artist, he would be a re- made symmetry difficult. The designers fine curtain of water. He told me, “It was ally bad one.” The Olympic cauldron, he decided to preserve a pattern of gradu- a very poetical project.” said, did its symbolic work well—sepa- ally inflating hexagons, with five land- At eight-thirty on a recent morning, rate nations, together—but “it did not ings on every floor. Heatherwick sat with Stuart Wood, a have any deep poetic secret.” And B of When I met Ross, he showed me a senior colleague, at a round table in the the Bang was a “monstrous and clunk- printed copy of Heatherwick’s Power- King’s Cross studio. Heatherwick said, ing expression of a slight idea.”) Point presentation, entitled “Vessel.” There “What I like about stairs—as soon as In Heatherwick’s studio, Stuart Wood were renderings of people facing one an- you start using your body, it breaks down said that when he and his colleagues other on bleachers. Ross, remembering potential artistic bullshit, because there’s started thinking about Hudson Yards Heatherwick’s commentary, which had been accompanied by music from the opening ceremony of the London Olym- pics, said, “What if you lifted people up, up, up, up, up?” There were images of peo- ple on floating platforms. Ross turned to an all-black page—a PowerPoint fade to black—and then to a rendering of the Vessel. Ross flicked through the remain- ing pages, saying, “I never got this far.” “I fell in love instantly,” he told me. “My guys around here thought I was out of my goddam mind. It was too big, too this, too that. ‘How are we going to build it?’ ‘What’s it going to cost?’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ The cost, I figured, would be seventy-five million.” (The ArcelorMit- tal Orbit cost thirty-six million.) Before making a final decision, Ross weighed the Vessel against Plensa’s pro- posal, which Jay Cross described to me as “surprising and beautiful,” and one by Kapoor. Ross told me, without naming Kapoor, that a prominent artist had shown “You never think it’s going to happen to you.” him something “bigger and better” than his best-known works. He then said, people whose job it is to save money,” he a long, low building in King’s Cross. Both “Who says it’s better? But it’s bigger.” said. The Vessel was the right size. “We projects are under way. He laughed. “You know, I wasn’t happy.” had a sense of how many people you Ingels recently applied to Heather- (Kapoor declined to comment.) needed for it to be alive and thriving,” wick’s work a Danish idiom: “Crossing In October, 2013, the Wall Street Jour- he added. “And I felt that you either the river to fetch water.” Sometimes nal reported that Heatherwick had been properly do the project or you don’t do “things are done for the sake of showing given the commission. The design was the project. You don’t negotiate.” that you’re putting more effort into it,” not made public for another three years, Cross spoke to Ross. “I said, ‘Stephen, Ingels said. “That’s where we’ve had most and Related took efforts to keep it secret. I think we should build a big model, and of our clashes. What inspires me, or el- Cimolai, the Italian company contracted put in the Vessel as he’s designed it, and evates me, is when things feel effortless.” to fabricate the Vessel’s parts, was asked we should put in a slightly His instinct, he said, is to to build a twenty-foot fence around its smaller one, and let’s all sit say, “Let’s get rid of the fat.” steelworks, near Venice. After a visiting down and look at it and But, when Ingels has welding inspector, not knowing what he whatever you decide is fine. lost arguments of this sort, was seeing, took a photo of a Vessel part But I think we owe it to he has come to appreciate and posted it online, Related protested ourselves—it’s a big deci- the result. “This obsession to Cimolai. “Being good Italians, we killed sion.’” They set up a model with making the effort ev- him,” Claudia Pavan, Cimolai’s project of Hudson Yards in an ident sometimes makes manager for the Vessel, said recently. empty storefront on Thir- him stumble onto things Heatherwick told me that his struc- tieth Street. Guests in- that are really quite bril- ture was commissioned “with no obvi- cluded Heatherwick and the architect liant,” Ingels said. Heatherwick’s curling ous commercial outcome” in mind, but David Childs, who often advises Ross pedestrian bridge, he noted, “is the most Ross did show the design to some and is largely responsible for the designs complicated way to make a drawbridge, would-be Hudson Yards tenants. Ross of the Time Warner Center and One and by far the most slow and expensive, Love, a managing director of the Boston World Trade Center. Seated, they had a but it’s also really cool.” Consulting Group, recalled a meeting in street-level view of the site. Cross put in Ingels recently visited Heatherwick’s which Stephen Ross brought out a model one Vessel, then the other. “I couldn’t get Cape Town project, the Zeitz Museum of the Vessel. “It was great theatre,” Love Thomas to redesign it as smaller,” he re- of Contemporary Art Africa. Its central said. “It was ‘I really shouldn’t be show- called. “So, for the alternate version, I space, carved out of an array of hundred- ing you this.’ He was like a proud father.” just took a ring off the top—or two rings, year-old concrete grain silos, is “jaw-drop- Love regarded the object as “a folly,” but I can’t remember which.” He laughed. pingly beautiful,” Ingels said, but “insane” an optimistic one. “You have this thing “Stephen goes, ‘O.K., so I’ve looked at at a practical level. To afford it, “you al- that is pointless—and that is the point,” them both, are we done?’” most have to starve the rest of the build- he said. The company took floors forty- “You don’t want to discuss it?” Cross ing.” To Ingels, this other space felt ne- two to forty-seven at 10 Hudson Yards. asked. glected: fire doors with push bars. “But “Nope,” Ross said. it is also what makes it possible. It’s not ccording to Cross, Liz Diller was As Cross recalled, Ross then asked a schmear of effort on everything. It’s A“aghast” when she first saw Heath- Heatherwick, “You good?” ‘We’re going to pile up intention in this erwick’s design, finding it “too big, and “Yep, bigger is better, for sure,” Heath- spot here.’” (Heatherwick’s Shanghai too close” to the Shed. (Diller denies erwick replied. Expo pavilion took up a fifth of the avail- this.) The Vessel was twenty-five feet Cross told me, laughing, “That was able site; the rest was artificial turf.) In- taller than the Shed; it was as if the Statue the end of that.” gels added, with respect, “He is capable of Liberty stood in front of the Metro- Later, on a visit to Cimolai, in Italy, of putting forward bold ideas that most politan Opera. “She lobbied against it,” Ross celebrated his seventy-sixth birth- people would self-censor, because they Cross said. “I think she’ll forever be some- day. A pastry chef, who had signed an want to come up with something that what bothered by it.” Cross was sympa- N.D.A., made a Vessel-shaped cake. Ross could actually happen.” Referring to the thetic to this concern. He recalled, “I tore off the top ring and teasingly offered Vessel, he said, “It’s really wild to get would have conversations with Thomas: it to Cross, saying, “Are you happy now?” away with that. That project could have ‘Are you sure you got the scale right?’” died a billion times.” Cross asked Heatherwick to consider n 2014, Google asked several architec- One morning in late September, I the difference between “a beautiful ocean Itural firms to submit eighteen-min- walked onto the Vessel with Heather- liner” of the mid-twentieth century and ute video proposals for the design of a wick. He wore a hard hat, and a reflec- the behemoth cruise ships of today. He new headquarters in Mountain View. tive vest over a wool vest. The Vessel was told Heatherwick, “In my view, it’s a wine Ingels and Heatherwick were then in- then two-thirds built. Like the vandal- goblet. Are you sure you don’t want it to vited to separate lunches with Larry Page, ized cake, it petered out in stumps of look like a champagne flute?” Google’s co-founder. Google decided to staircase. Around the base lay several of Asked about these discussions with pick both. The two firms began work- the “dog bone” landings, soon to be lifted Cross, Heatherwick told me that they ing on a Mountain View master plan; into place by a crane that stood in the were about budget, not scale. “There are later, they collaborated on the design of Vessel’s center. For New York steelworkers,

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 51 The atrium and the exterior of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, designed by Heatherwick Studio. this was an unusual project. It was closer and others in line for an elevator that will The Vessel, he told the audience, was than most to a kit assembly—all the rise on a snaking track, using a rack-and- no more than “a platform.” But the prom- welding had been done in Italy—and pinion mechanism, as on a funicular. “It’s ise of stairs, he said, is that you can “jump the parts required delicate handling. Pool definitely intimate,” Heatherwick said. on them, dance on them, get tired on noodles had been taped to the platforms But he was sanguine about congestion. them, and then plonk yourself down on of the boom cranes, to prevent dents. “As long as no one gets hurt,” he said. In them.” At an event a few weeks later, he Kaniehtakeron Martin, a crane foreman, a bold invitation to New Yorkers, he added, “Maybe it’s the best place to go told me, “It took a little getting used to, added, “I would love there to be more and smoke.” treating this thing with kid gloves.” On disorder in the world. I think it would I subsequently saw a list of recom- another visit to the Vessel, I lowered my- be a real shame if everyone was polite.” mended rules for the Vessel—drawn up self into the hollow center of a landing, He went on, “All you can try to do is by consultants, hired by Related, who com- through a manhole, and then crawled design something that will be an unusual pared the attraction to the Washington inside the structure, uphill, to where three experience. I do feel that this is a differ- Monument. “Visitors must be in good steelworkers were bolting on a new ent category of social device. There’s no health and free from any physical limita- section. They joked about not looking goal of relevance, no goal of making order.” tions,” the draft dictated. “Children must sweaty enough. A year earlier, I’d seen Heatherwick meet a minimum height requirement of Visitors will reach the new plaza from at an outdoor event where the Vessel’s forty-two inches.” There was a ban on the subway, from the High Line, or design was made public. Mayor Bill de food, gum, drinks other than water, stroll- through the shopping mall. Above, at the Blasio, Stephen Ross, and dancers from ers, backpacks, animals, running, jump- top of the tallest tower, a cantilevered ob- the Alvin Ailey American Dance The- ing, and throwing balls. Also: “No sitting servation deck will face southeast. One atre appeared onstage. De Blasio told on the stairs.” Heatherwick, shown the wonders if the plaza will feel less like a Heatherwick not to be discouraged if list for the first time, said, “What I’m sure park and more like a box packed with a New Yorkers shared blunt opinions of they want is for it to be used and loved Vessel. When I visited with Heatherwick, his design. Although Heatherwick is in and enjoyed.” we stood for a moment in what could be near-constant contact with American cli- When we climbed the Vessel, Heath- thought of as the Vessel’s lobby, from ents, and with America, his speech that erwick made a point of bounding up the which four staircases lead up to the first day included a cascade of Britishisms, as first staircase, two steps at a time. “Am I set of landings. Above us, polished copper- if to mark his distinctiveness: “trainers” running?” he asked, as if dismissing all colored cladding, on the undersides of for sneakers, “skip” for dumpster, “climb- debate about restrictions in a privately staircases and landings, offered distorted ing frame” for jungle gym, “Tube” for held, semi-public space. “Who’s going to reflections of people and machines out subway. He said that when he first came stop you going up stairs fast?” The Vessel of our direct view, as in a Hyatt atrium. to New York, in the eighties, he visited was a “brave commission,” he said. Only The lobby is twenty feet across, and the his “German Jewish grandmother.” (This “a very cynical person” would disagree. Vessel’s capacity will likely be seven hun- grandmother, who designed textiles for As we ascended, Heatherwick admired dred; one can imagine a crush of people Marks & Spencer, did not live in New what he described as handwelds. (Clau-

pausing here to take upward photographs, York, although a great-aunt did.) dia Pavan, of Cimolai, had explained that BAAN IWAN COURTESY

52 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 the Vessel includes both handwelds and ministration had run a rigged competi- that warned “Caution: Tripping Haz- automated welds that, at extra expense, tion, to deliver a commission to its pre- ard.” Heatherwick said, “Walking up six- were made to resemble handwelds.) “We ferred designer. For months before other teen stories is a daunting thing, but I wanted the structure to be skeletal, and firms were asked to make proposals, think you’ll be distracted by your expe- the spine to be raw,” he said. “The world Heatherwick had been discussing his de- rience, and not notice your legs.” A part seems, to me, to have become too shiny, sign with Johnson and his advisers, and of the Vessel’s appeal may be the work too polished.” I later attended a Related with London’s public-transportation au- of avoiding other visitors: it may set a meeting at which managers, with a mix- thority; he had even joined Johnson at challenge similar to that of exiting a sub- ture of exasperation and amused indul- a meeting at Apple, in Cupertino, Cal- way station efficiently, but lasting an hour. gence, discussed trying to make signage ifornia, to pitch, unsuccessfully, for cor- To the west, over open tracks that will for the landings that would look dis- porate sponsorship. When the compe- soon be covered by a second platform, tressed enough for Heatherwick but leg- tition entries were scored, Heatherwick and then by more buildings, there was a ible enough to meet the city’s fire code. Studio was given more points in the cat- clear view of the river. Heatherwick said But the primary view of the Vessel, egory of “relevant design experience” than that he wasn’t saddened by thoughts of for people not on it, is of polish. Heath- two firms that had each worked on more the eventual loss of this view. “I’m not erwick’s design looks like an industrial than a dozen bridges. Without criticiz- campaigning for no buildings there,” he relic reborn as a motivational object— ing Heatherwick, the review described said. Soon afterward, I was told that Re- and a mirror. According to directions that the process as “not open, fair, or compet- lated’s residential towers on the western Heatherwick Studio provided to Michael itive.” Khan withdrew the city’s finan- Yards will include work by Santiago Ca- Loughran, the Related executive who cial support. Fifty million dollars of pub- latrava, Frank Gehry, Robert A. M. Stern, managed the Vessel’s construction, the lic money had already been spent. and Heatherwick Studio. copper-colored soffits, or undersurfaces, “It’s such a shame,” Heatherwick said. should be “jewel-like.” Loughran told “I got an e-mail saying, ‘This is a vanity he Vessel topped out in December. me, “Their first ambition was ‘We want project blocking a view of St. Paul’s Ca- TThe last of eighty landings twisted it to be real copper.’” He pointed out that, thedral’! And you go, ‘I wonder what the in high winds and then dropped into thanks to “oxidization and everything biggest vanity project in the city ever was? place. “Three years,” Claudia Pavan, of else,” such a surface would soon look “like Probably St. Paul’s!’” He had previously Cimolai, said. “So much work.” the Statue of Liberty.” Instead, Related observed that “there was a huge resistance I asked Jay Cross how he thought the applied a very fine copper-colored finish to St. Paul’s being built.” This point—a Vessel looked. He smiled, and said, “It’s to aluminum, in a process that has also striking one to add to a conversation about forbidding.” He added, “That’s a little been used to apply color to iPhones. (Ev- vanity—has been echoed by Joanna Lum- too strong a term. It really depends on eryone I asked at Related, including Ross, ley, who has said, “When St. Paul’s was where you stand.” recalled the studio proposing copper, but built, London went mad with rage, and It had become Cross’s responsibility Heatherwick—perhaps protective of his said, ‘Take this filthy building down.’” to program the Vessel. Stephen Ross, he reputation as a designer “immersed in Adrian Tinniswood, the author of “His noted, laughing, had “never been overly materials and making,” as his Web site Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christo- focussed on that, which surprises me.” puts it—told me that “there wasn’t a deep pher Wren,” told me that this isn’t true; Cross was consulting with David Saltz, love for copper particularly.”) the most one could say is that, amid joy- the producer of Super Bowl halftime As we climbed the Vessel, its geome- ful appreciation of the new cathedral, shows, about a grand opening. “Saltz and try opened up; the tread plates of the steps some Londoners offered “quibbles.” I are the only ones thinking, How are became longer, making it slightly easier I asked Heatherwick if he agreed that we going to use it? How are we going to climb, as if delivering a lesson about the bridge had been poorly procured. He to ticket-time it, and have rules?” Cross the pleasantness of success. Heatherwick, said that he hadn’t yet read the report, talked of Easter-egg hunts. “And maybe however, was in a period of professional which had been published five months you have Kenneth Branagh do ‘Hamlet’ disappointment. Around this time, it was earlier, because it was too long. I said that down here—it’s a bit like a Shakespear- reported that the proposed renovation of it was fifty pages. He replied, “Oh,” be- ean theatre.” Related also seemed likely David Geffen Hall had been scrapped. fore adding, “I still think it’s the right to schedule musical events. Heatherwick And Barry Diller had withdrawn finan- idea, and I’m not rushing off to build it had pointed out to me what he consid- cial support for a new pier, after having somewhere else. I think it’s the right place. ered a happy coincidence: just as the Ves- tired of legal objections to it. (Later, the It may not have been the right time.” sel has eighty landings, the New York project sputtered back to life.) In New York, Heatherwick had Philharmonic has eighty members. (In Perhaps most distressingly for Heath- found a billionaire client who had seen fact, the orchestra has a hundred and six erwick, the Garden Bridge had been “an opportunity to leave a legacy be- members.) “Thursday-night concerts at scuttled. Sadiq Khan, who succeeded hind,” as Jay Cross put it, and who an- the Vessel?” Cross said. “If you’re look- Johnson as mayor of London, in 2016, swered to no one. “Stephen had total ing down, on top of their heads, I don’t had requested a review of the bridge’s control,” Cross said. “There was no real know how it’s going to work.” procurement. The judgment, confirming veto power anywhere else.” I walked back inside with Stephen reporting by The Architects’ Journal and Heatherwick and I stopped on the Ross. “Thomas is probably the most others, had been scathing: Johnson’s ad- Vessel’s seventh level, by temporary signs creative person in the world,” he said. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 53 FICTION

54 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PECKMEZIAN n the short walk from the to be buried in such an obscure place, ing on complicated assignments that other churchyard to her car, Mrs. wondering what it was she hadn’t lis- printers couldn’t be bothered with. In O Crasthorpe was aware of a pro- tened to when she’d been told. Faintly, their early forties now, they’d been mar- found humiliation. A lone mourner at on some foreign station, popular music ried since they were both twenty-three. her husband’s funeral, she had sensed passed from tune to tune, each one “It’s awful for you,” Janet said, gloomy it first in the modest country church he known to Mrs. Crasthorpe, since they as she sometimes was when she’d just had insisted upon for what he had called were of her time. woken up. his obsequies. A woman cleric unknown “Of course it isn’t.” Without an effort, to Mrs. Crasthorpe had conducted a theridge let himself in quietly, not the familiar reassurance came. bleak service, had said the necessary Ereleasing the catch of the lock until They smiled at each other. They knew words in an accent that appalled Mrs. he’d pulled it to and could open the it was awful. Crasthorpe, and then had scuttled off door soundlessly. With luck, Janet would “‘University Challenge’ tonight,” without so much as a glance in Mrs. have slept and would be sleeping still. Janet said. Crasthorpe’s direction. Two men were Sleep was everything to her now, the waiting, leaning on their shovels in the kindest friend, the tenderest lover. She “ ou’ll behave yourself,” the warder nearby graveyard, and within minutes didn’t allow it to be induced, the drugs Ysaid. had returned the clay to where they had she was offered invariably declined. “I always do.” dug it from, making a little mound, the He looked down at the sleeping face “She’s here. You see you do.” coffin gone forever and with it Arthur, that illness was taking from him, a lit- Derek wished she wouldn’t come. It all of it a mockery. She was wrong, Mrs. tle more each day. For a moment he saw was silly from both their points of view. Crasthorpe knew, to blame Arthur for in the wan, tired features the shadows She knew it was, it wasn’t as if she didn’t, the arrangements he’d put in hand be- of Juliet, the wisdom of Portia, Estel- but still she came. She’d tell him the fore he went, but she’d become used to la’s thoughtless pride. “I’ll go,” the carer latest about the old boy and he’d try not blaming him in his lifetime and couldn’t whispered from the doorway. to hear. She’d tell him because there was help doing so still. “Dear Janet,” he whispered himself, nothing else to tell him. She’d sit there She was a woman of fifty-nine who wondering how her day had been. in her finery, ashamed of him and declared herself to be forty-five because When he had made tea, Etheridge ashamed of being ashamed. She had forty-five was what she felt. She had carried the tray back to the bedside and called it “naughty” once, the way he was. married a considerably older man, who the rattle of the cup and saucer woke his She didn’t call it anything now. had died in his seventy-second year. She wife, as every day it did. It was what Janet He heard the click of her heels, a had married him for his money, but, in wanted, what she liked: that she should sprightly sound, different from the spite of the comfort and convenience always be awake when he was here. thump of boots. The warder respected this had brought, Mrs. Crasthorpe be- “Hello again,” she said. her, knowing her from her visits; he was lieved that in marriage she had failed He bent to embrace her, and held her a nice man, she said. She liked people to blossom. Always a rosebud was how, for a moment in his arms, then plumped being nice. privately, she thought of herself; and her pillows up and straightened the turn- “Now, you behave, lad.” The warder there was, in Mrs. Crasthorpe, a lot of down of her top sheet. She said, when again rebuked Derek in advance, a white privacy, there always had been. She knew he asked, that she was feeling better. But splotch on the shiny peak of his cap his she would tell no one, not ever, that Ar- she didn’t eat any of the cake he had only untidiness. thur had been buried without a decent brought, or the biscuits, and didn’t look “You see that?” Derek said when sendoff, just as she’d told no one that as well as she had that morning. she came. “A bird done its business on she was the mother of a son or that “Oh, nothing to write home about,” Mr. Fane.” there had been, in the late years of her he responded to a query as to how the He teased her with bad grammar marriage, Tommy Kildare and Donald. day had been for him. She’d finished and she winced when he did, although “I shall relish my widowhood,” she “A Fine Balance,” she said. She’d heard she pretended she didn’t mind. She was asserted, aloud and firmly, in her car. “I a program about silverware on the radio. on about something new: the old boy shall make something of it.” “Well, no,” she said. “Not interesting had died and no one had come to the A light rain became heavier as she at all.” funeral. Derek hadn’t known him, there drove, the windscreen wipers slushing “Some soup later, darling? Cream had never been a reason that they should it away, a sound she particularly dis- cracker?” have known each other, but even so she liked. In the driving mirror, which she “Soup would be lovely. No cream talked about him. glanced at now and then, her blonded cracker.” “You all right?” she asked. hair, her gray-blue eyes, the curve of “We landed the contract. I thought “Oh, great,” he said. her generously full lips pleased Mrs. we wouldn’t.” Crasthorpe. She liked the look of her- “I knew you would.” nd that was all; Mrs. Crasthorpe self, and always had. She was an actress. He had been set- Aaccepted without protest that their She turned on the radio to suppress tled for years in the offices of Forrester brief exchanges were over. “You’re good, the windscreen-wiper noise, wondering and Bright, a firm of specialist printers the way you come,” the warder said as she did so why Arthur had chosen that had made a corner for itself by tak- when she began to go. She left a pot

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 55 of damson jam, which was a favorite. had a calming effect before. Nothing At a cookery class, he learned to make She hailed a taxi and asked to be had changed: the Parades, the Grand risotto and eggs Benedict. He played taken to Pasmore’s. She had phoned, as Hotel, the well-dressed people on the the piano more skillfully than before, she always did, to make sure there’d be streets, the unfearful sea all drew once had a drink every evening in the Cock a table for her, and there it was, in the more from Mrs. Crasthorpe an admi- and Lion, read Mauriac in French, and corner she had come to regard as hers. ration that went back to her girlhood. was promoted at Forrester and Bright. They didn’t gush in Pasmore’s; you could It was in Eastbourne that she first had feel the dignity of their being above it. felt the better for being alive. She could rs. Crasthorpe had earlier noticed They spoke almost in whispers, but you think more productively in the briny Msomewhere the man who was could hear every word, because they air; she got things right. Funeral weeds coming toward her in Beaumont Street. wanted you to. She always had tea in had had their day, solemn rites were His tie bore the colors of a regiment or Pasmore’s after visiting Derek. dead and gone: in the dining room of a public school. His hands were deli- As she ordered from the waitress, the Grand Hotel, she sensed that she cate: gentle hands, Mrs. Crasthorpe sur- who had come at once to her, her was forgiven for her unshed tears, the mised, the fingernails well kept. He had thoughts picked up from where she’d grief she could not manage. Shambling looks and, she imagined, charm; she left them, no different from the thoughts through his days, Arthur hadn’t wanted liked the way he dressed. She liked his she always had in Pasmore’s. He couldn’t to know about Tommy Kildare or Don- serious expression as he walked, how he help himself; he didn’t try. He wasn’t the ald. “We’re chalk and cheese,” he’d said seemed to dwell on serious matters, un- kind to try, he had explained: he liked vaguely. He’d left her everything. ravelling confusion, clever. He wasn’t in being a persistent offender. Yet even so She walked about in Eastbourne, a hurry. She liked that, too. it couldn’t be less than horrid for him. going nowhere, wondering if she would “Enford Crescent,” she said to her- That it must be horrid had many times meet a chum, and when she didn’t it self, wondering how long it had been haunted Mrs. Crasthorpe at this same seemed better that she shouldn’t, that since Enford Crescent was plucked out table, and she pressed it away from her privately and on her own she should of nowhere by Tups or Primmie, she now, glancing about for a face she rec- dwell on how life should be now. In couldn’t remember which. You asked the ognized among the teatime people. But, this, she did not banish fantasy: Her way to Enford Crescent when a boy you as always, there wasn’t one. chums would give her a party, for they liked the look of came along. He wouldn’t “How nice!” She smiled away her were party people. In twos and threes, know, he couldn’t know: there was no dejection when her sultana scones came they would stand about and see in her Enford Crescent. For an hour once, and her tea was poured for her, which another woman, and Derek would come Primmie and a nameless boy had trailed they always did for one at Pasmore’s. with presents, as he never had before, about, searching for what they would and Tommy Kildare would be as once never find, falling in love, so Primmie hen Janet died, painlessly in her he’d been. So young she seemed, he’d had said. And Tups, another time, search- Wsleep, Etheridge moved from say, she could be seventeen. And Don- ing also, was taken to the Palm Grove the flat in Barnes to a smaller one in ald would kiss her fingers and call him- and was bought a Peach Surprise. Weymouth Street. No practicality or self a Regency buck. economic necessity inspired the change. “ think it’s probably quite near,” Ether- It was just that Barnes, shadowed now hen he’d first moved to Wey- Iidge said when he was asked for di- by death, was not as once it had been. Wmouth Street, Etheridge hadn’t rections to somewhere he thought he’d Its spaciousness, its quiet streets, stared hung up the print of Seurat’s “Sunday once noticed on a street sign. “Excuse back at Etheridge morosely, the jazz Afternoon,” but then he did, because it me,” he called out to a couple with a pub that had been theirs seeming or- was a shame not to. Framed and wrapped, dog on a lead. “This lady’s looking for dinary, the river unappealing. The same it had been waiting for him one Sep- Enford Crescent.” flowers blooming again in the window tember 12th, probably his fortieth, he The couple had been engaged in an boxes should have been a memory and thought. The sum of the accumulated argumentative conversation, which had a solace, but were not. Moving in at I.O.U.s, each one dated April 4th, hadn’t abruptly ceased. They were middle-aged Weymouth Street, Etheridge thought become enough for Janet’s earrings; it and tired-looking, a note of impatience of leaving Forrester and Bright, of leav- would have if there’d been one more in both their voices. The dog was a black- ing London, too, but when a few weeks year. Sometimes, even in Weymouth and-white smooth-haired fox terrier, had gone by Weymouth Street seemed Street, such lesser shadows flitted about, snappish because it disliked its lead. far enough. It had no past; it tugged at but Etheridge dismissed this interfer- “Enford?” the man who restrained it nothing. He settled there. ence as a trick of the light or of his own repeated. “Not round here, I shouldn’t imagination. Work was a help, and when think.” His companion nodded her rs. Crasthorpe set about making he had been in Weymouth Street for agreement. Msomething special of her widow- almost six months he ceased to lie sleep- The woman who’d asked for direc- hood with a will. She spent a week in less in the lonely early hours. Recollec- tions was smiling rather helplessly now, Eastbourne, clarifying her thoughts, for tions were less distinct; bits of remem- Etheridge thought. “Never mind,” she the town’s modest opulence, its unhur- bered conversation were somehow lost; said. ried peace and sense of other times had the last of the clothes were given away. The couple and the dog went on.

56 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 first but with time she’d persuaded him that he did. He died in Coppice Mews, WILD TURKEY apologizing for having to leave her on her own and for wanting to be buried Two remnant-dinosaur wild turkeys in a small country churchyard she con- walk between silence and silence. Not to themselves a meal of meat. sidered unsuitable for the urban man I, who am to myself also not meat, feed mosquitoes nightly, he’d been. She honored his wishes none- though day and night I wait for hunger theless, and was already on familiar to find me its dark wood violin, inside its dark wood case. terms with the people of the shops, had the mews house painted in the colors —Jane Hirshfield she had previously wanted. All of which, for Mrs. Crasthorpe, increased the plea- sure of widowhood. “You’ve been most kind,” the woman a delicate child. Her first theatrical ap- in search of Enford Crescent said. pearance, unnamed, unnoticed, was in faintly familiar face was what “Well, hardly that.” the pantomime chorus of “Jack and the A Etheridge was aware of, without “Oh, yes. Indeed.” Beanstalk.” Short-skirted, glamorous, knowing where or when he’d seen it be- “I’m sorry I misled you.” she was seventeen, while Etheridge, fore. Then he remembered and nodded “No, no.” not then known to her, was waiting for at the woman who was turning the pages “Someone will know when you ask a vocation to offer itself. They met when of a newspaper at the next table. again.” Janet came to London. She stared at him when he did so, “Of course.” Alone thirty years later, Etheridge as if her thoughts had been similar to could not forgive her death and imag- his. “Good Lord!” a moment later she rs. Crasthorpe watched the man ined he never would. He sensed that exclaimed. Her scent was as pungent Mshe had spoken to walking away his feelings were unreasonable and he as it had been when she had asked for from her, and when he passed out of struggled to dismiss them, disliking directions. Her clothes were different. sight she missed him as if she knew himself for what seemed to be a selfish- She held out a hand that was just within him. He had a cultivated voice and ness. But, still, resentment hung about. Etheridge’s reach. “I rather think we’ve was polite without being like an ici- Why should she not have what mostly met before,” she said. cle. She’d always been attracted by fair- people did have? Why was she now “Well, yes, we have.” haired men. mere dust? “What weather!” Still gazing into the empty distance, The autumn that came was an In- “It’s lovely.” she felt the weight of her age. She’d dian summer, and every weekend, on “A day for the races!” been impulsive once upon a time, hasty either Saturday or Sunday, Etheridge She used to go racing often, she said. and not caring that she was. Tups had walked in Regent’s Park. He learned The Oaks, the Derby, Cheltenham. called her a spur-of-the-moment girl. from a book the names of flowers he Wimbledon for the tennis, Henley. “Oh, Primmie had, too. They’d liked the im- didn’t know; he fed the birds. But such a lot,” she said, but things were pulsiveness in her; she’d liked it herself. mainly, while time passed more slowly quieter now. Inevitable, of course, as the He would have done, the fair-haired than on weekdays, he watched from a years pile up. man, she’d known he would. She would pavement table of a café the people She was handsome in her fleshy way, have told him. He would have listened who came and went. He envied them, Etheridge supposed. Careful, experi- and understood. She knew that, too, and he envied himself as he had been. enced. You couldn’t call her gross, and and yet she’d let him go. there was something in her lavish, well- hen, years ago and halfway used smile that was almost delicate. or no particular reason, when Janet Wthrough her marriage, Mrs. Her teeth were very white. Her breasts Fwas ill, Etheridge had begun to fill Crasthorpe had discovered this same were firm, her knees trim. She fiddled the remaining pages of a half-used led- part of London, she had liked it at once. with a brooch she wore, a loop of tiny ger book with autobiographical jot- She had visited it to inspect, and take stones, chips of sapphire and washed- tings. He did not intend this to be a her pick of, an elderly woman’s jewelry, out ruby they might have been, the diary, simply a record of early child- the woman once well-to-do but no only decoration on a pale-cream dress. hood, his own and Janet’s, some later longer. Mrs. Crasthorpe had bought Sometimes a languid look came into memories collected, too. It established three rings and a bracelet, and when, her features and, for a moment, then time and place, what had been shared a month or so later, the same adver- they were tranquil. and what had not, the marriage, and tisement appeared again she made a “What a troublesome country Cam- people known and houses lived in. second journey and on her return per- bodia is!” she chattily remarked, fold- While he was homesick at a Glouces- suaded her husband to sell their house ing away her newspaper as she spoke. tershire boarding school, Janet was and buy one she had seen in Coppice “You’d think they’d have more sense.” being taught at home by a Miss Fran- Mews. She liked the mews, she liked She was the worst in the world about cis, school being considered a risk for the streets, and so did he; he hadn’t at names, she confided, seeming to imply

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 57 that Etheridge had told her his on their some length, their place in Scotland Rest, which was farther away and previous encounter, which he hadn’t. His for the shooting, the child among them rougher. Once, he heard his name called coffee came, too hot to be drunk in a in the past who’d been a musical ge- out in Vincent Street and walked more couple of gulps, allowing him to go away. nius, and Nanny Fortescue, to whom quickly on. Mrs. Crasthorpe did not in- three generations had been devoted, terest or concern him, and it was hard t was extraordinary, Mrs. Crasthorpe and old Wyse Gilmour, who’d raced to believe that this pushy, over-lively Imarvelled, that he should again be at Silverstone and lived to be a hun- woman might possess qualities more here, this attractive stranger who had dred and two. appealing than her manner. Crowded continued to float about in her con- “Well, there you are,” she said, with- out by his continuing anger at the care- sciousness and whom she’d made her- out finality. She scribbled on the edge less greed of death, her attentions were self love a little. What lengths she went of her newspaper and handed him the hardly noticed. Mrs. Crasthorpe would to, she reflected, how determinedly she scrap of paper she tore off: she’d writ- fade away to nothing, which was what guarded herself from the cruelty that ten down her address. she had been before she asked him for was more than Tommy Kildare’s treach- “We clearly are not birds of a feather,” directions. ery or Donald deciding that he was ho- pensively she concluded. “But if you But, having lunch at Le Paon one mosexual, more than the haunting years should ever think we might know one day with the two men from the office of Arthur’s dreary world, more than te- another better I’m nearly always at home he regularly had lunch with, he thought diousness and boredom. How good the in the afternoon.” he saw Mrs. Crasthorpe on the street. everyday was, the ordinary, with its lesser He nodded vaguely. Abrupt and dog- The plate-glass terrace doors of the tribulations and simple pleasures. “What matic, her manner might have seemed restaurant had not been folded back, as are you thinking?” she asked. rude, but she managed to make it an in high summer they invariably were: Unable to find the white lies that unawareness, as probably it was. Le Paon in early autumn echoed only were always there for him, Etheridge “Your wife,” she said. “You mentioned with its own murmur of voices, enliv- muttered incomprehensibly. He won- your wife.” ened with occasional laughter. All three dered if this talkative woman was drunk, He shook his head. men had ordered chops; a glass of house but the flow of information about her- “I thought you said your wife . . .” wine had been brought to each. Their self had come in an orderly manner, “No.” conversation while they waited was de- suggesting that she was not. “I thought . . .” voted to the difficulties that had arisen “How attractive your name is,” she “My wife died.” because a typeface was neither available said. “Crasthorpe is appalling, don’t you nor obtainable. “I’ll try Thompson’s this think?” fterward, Etheridge avoided hav- afternoon,” one of Etheridge’s colleagues She had been Georgina Gilmour Aing coffee at that particular café, said, and the other mentioned J. Sin- once, she said, the same Gilmours who but several times he caught a glimpse clair’s in Edinburgh. Etheridge said had carried their name all over the of Mrs. Crasthorpe, once coming out nothing. English-speaking world. The Cras- of the Cock and Lion. It had surprised Mrs. Crasthorpe wasn’t wearing her thorpes had never been much and were, him when she’d said that they weren’t pale-cream dress but, instead, a flowery of course, unrelated to her. birds of a feather: he had imagined that one he had also become familiar with. “How much I enjoy conversation that was what she’d thought they were. She was standing still, in conversation with strangers,” in passing she revealed. He avoided the Cock and Lion, too, with a figure in a long black overcoat She spoke about the Gilmours at and frequented instead the Admiral’s that looked, at least from a distance, to be much too heavy for the time of year. Its wearer—his back to the restaurant’s façade and to Etheridge—gestured re- peatedly, as if in persuasion. Mrs. Cras- thorpe did not seem happy. From time to time, she attempted to move away, only to be drawn back by her compan- ion’s insistence that their encounter should continue. “Your chops, sir,” a waiter said, and there were roast potatoes and parsnips mashed and rich brown gravy. “Or possibly Langford’s.” Etheridge at last contributed something to what was being discussed, feeling that he should. When the meal ended, he noticed that while he hadn’t been looking the conversation on the street appeared to “Want to step outside for a reminiscence of when we smoked?” have become a fracas. Mrs. Crasthorpe and the man in the black coat were natural, too, to buy a house in quiet Pe- ago. It is a narrow passage, not greatly now at the center of a small crowd, the tersham, rescuing it from years of ne- used because it terminates abruptly and man still gesturing, Mrs. Crasthorpe glect and subsequent decay. A child was leads nowhere. No street lights burn at more agitated than before. Etheridge born there, and then another. night in Falter Way, no brass plate or could hear the voices of several by- To his second wife, Etheridge talked printed notice proclaims the practice of standers raised in angry abuse that was about his first, which caused neither commerce or a profession. There are no clearly directed at the blackly clad offense nor irritation, and even the bit- shops in Falter Way, no bars, no break- figure. Two elderly women pushed to ter chagrin of his mourning was under- fast cafés. No enterprising business girls get closer to him; a bearded man was stood. He considered himself fortunate hang about in doorways. restrained from striking him; a younger in almost every aspect of his life as it “Crasthorpe.” A uniformed police- woman was shouting into a mobile now was, in his wife and his children, man repeated the name and shrugged telephone. Then the gesticulating in the position he held at Forrester and away his dismay. ceased, and the man in the black coat Bright, in the open sward of Petersham, “Poor bloody woman,” his colleague shrugged, his arms raised in despair, his its city buses plying daily, its city sounds said, and closed his notebook. comic stance suggesting that something a whisper in a quieter London. There was nothing untoward to re- he considered to be a source of humor Another winter passed, another spring, port, nothing to add or alter. What had had been misunderstood. Etheridge and most of summer. August became happened here was evident and appar- didn’t feel the incident was worth draw- September, and it was then, as the days ent, without a trace of anything that ing to his colleagues’ attention, and by were shortening, that the name Cras- needed to be looked at more carefully. the time he reached the street himself thorpe occurred again. The name was In turn, the two men telephoned, the crowd had disappeared and Mrs. unusual, and it caught Etheridge’s eye then went away. Crasthorpe had, too. The man in the in a newspaper item concerning a black coat was laughing, his wrists held woman who in the night had fallen erek wondered why his mother out to the two policemen who had taken down in the street and had lain there Ddidn’t come and hoped it was be- charge of him. until she was discovered by refuse col- cause at last she’d realized that all of it lectors when the dusk of another early was ridiculous. When the old boy died nnatural little bastard, the ward- morning came. She had died while being she’d said, “Come to the house,” and he Uer’s unspoken thought was when conveyed to hospital in the refuse men’s hadn’t understood that she meant to he heard that this arrest had taken place. enormous vehicle, a reek of whiskey live there. She could pass him off as a His own mother, the thought went on, emanating from her sodden clothes. houseboy, her idea was; she couldn’t see who brought him jam and did her best. Cold print reported a scene that moved the snags. Once, she would have said His own mother, and in broad daylight. him: a shrunken body gently placed on that snags didn’t matter. Once, she’d a bed of waste, the refuse men stand- liked being teased. Funny how she was. “ nly teasing,” Derek said the next ing awkwardly then, saying nothing. Otime she came. “I thought you’d The woman was thought to be a va- theridge found it hard to forget be amused.” grant, but Etheridge saw blonded hair EMrs. Crasthorpe, although he bedraggled and stockinged knees, an wanted to. It shamed him that he had he wept where no one could see her. easy smile and clothes he remembered. thought so little of her, a woman not SShe never had where anyone could, Chatter he’d been unable to escape from really known to him, and then only be- not ever in all the days and nights, all he remembered, too: childhood friends cause she’d been embarrassing and even the waking up to another incident and recalled, and going to the races, and a nuisance. He had read about Falter Arthur knowing nothing. She hadn’t conversations with strangers. He’d Way in the newspaper report of her wept when Tommy Kildare had had thrown away the scrap of paper that death and had wondered why she had enough of her or when Donald needed had been pressed upon him, its sprawl gone there. On an impulse, when months something different. But she wept her of handwriting unread. In Vincent afterward he was near it himself, he private tears whenever she imagined the Street, he had hurried on. asked about Mrs. Crasthorpe, and al- coat unbuttoned, the sudden twitch as But the curiosity that Mrs. Crasthorpe though she was remembered, no one it opened wide, the torch’s flash. She had failed to inspire in her lifetime came had known her name. In nearby Dring wept because she loved him as she did now. Why had she lain all night where Street and the shoddy bars of Breck no other human being. She always had. she had fallen? Why were her clothes Hill, he imagined her, a different woman, She always would. saturated with whiskey, she who had been drinking heavily. She went with men, a so conventional and respectable? What barman said, she liked a man. n time, Etheridge married again, a did her wordless epitaph say? Etheridge guessed his way through Irelationship that strengthened as the the mystery of Mrs. Crasthorpe, but years passed, his contentment in it sim- ost somewhere in the crowded tan- too much was missing and he resisted ilar to the contentment he had discov- Lgle bound by Mare Street, Morn- further speculation. He sensed his own ered in marriage before. It seemed nat- ing Lane, and Urswick Road is un- pity, not knowing why it was there. He ural in the circumstances to move away marked Falter Way, the sign that once honored a tiresome woman’s secret and from Weymouth Street and he did so; identified it claimed by vandals long saw it kept. ♦

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 59 THE CRITICS

THE CURRENT CINEMA IMAGINARY KINGDOMS “Black Panther” and “Early Man.”

BY ANTHONY LANE

f you start in the center of Africa tain America: Civil War” (2016), but cial thing about that day was how it Iand head southeast, you arrive at there he was merely a part of the Aveng- ended, and the tension in “Black Pan- Wakanda. According to one map, it lies ers gang, and he made no more impact, ther” springs from Coogler’s instinctive somewhere near Uganda—below South to be honest, than the one with the bow urge to relay the rough textures of Sudan, above Rwanda, and abutting the and arrow whose name I can never re- non-heroic experience while also striv- Democratic Republic of the Congo. member. Hence the pressing need for ing to meet the demands of Marvel, by Unlike those nations, however, which this new film. There have been black offering a gadget-packed dogfight in the have been scalded by strife, Wakanda superheroes before, and Will Smith’s skies, say, or a ride on an armored rhino. is a model of serenity. It is a kingdom, character in “Hancock” (2008) was an The fact that he mainly succeeds is wisely ruled, and rich in a precious nat- unusual blend of potency and dysfunc- no surprise, since his previous movie, ural resource, vibranium, which is used tion, but none have been given domin- “Creed” (2015), a late but meaty addi- for hyper-technology. Foreign maraud- ion over a blockbuster. (The one who tion to the “Rocky” saga, with Sylvester ers have never pillaged that wealth, be- merits it best is Frozone, from “The In- Stallone as a coach, proved that Coogler cause they know nothing about it. In credibles,” who has to miss dinner to could hold his nerve in a franchise. On short, Wakanda is blessed among na- save the world. “We are talking about the one hand, “Creed,” like “Black Pan- tions, and there’s only one thing wrong the greater good!” he cries. Back comes ther,” keeps reminding us that a major with the place. It doesn’t exist. the reply: “Greater good? I am your wife. studio has money in the game; the mu- The map appears in “Black Panther,” I’m the greatest good you are ever going sical score, in both cases, is grimly insis- most of which is set in present-day to get.”) Nor has the genre, until now, tent, as if to insure that the emotional Wakanda, at a pivotal point. The old allowed black identity to be the ground content of each scene is packaged and king is dead; long live the new king, bass of a single tale. There are white ac- delivered on cue. On the other hand, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), a tors in “Black Panther,” including Andy every Coogler movie features Michael B. princely sort who comes with many ad- Serkis and Martin Freeman, but their Jordan, who is hardly someone to be vantages. His mother is played by An- roles are minor ones—the types of role, hemmed in. He ought to have won an gela Bassett, who rocks a ruff better than that is, to which black performers, in Oscar for his Oscar, in “Fruitvale Sta- any queen since Elizabeth I. His most this patch of the movie business, have tion”; he was the bullish young boxer in trusted combatant, should trouble loom, grown wearily accustomed. “Creed”; and now, in the latest film, he is the shaven-headed Okoye (Danai The director is Ryan Coogler, and shows up as T’Challa’s nemesis, Kill- Gurira), who can fell an aircraft with those of us who admire his work will be monger, who believes that he has a claim the toss of a spear. He has a thing going stirred to find that “Black Panther” is to the Wakandan throne. While Bose- with the wondrous Nakia (Lupita bracketed by short scenes in Oakland, man does what he can with the ever- Nyong’o). Oh, and I almost forgot: he’s California. That is where his début fea- noble hero, Jordan is so relaxed and so a superhero. Unlike Peter Parker, whose ture, “Fruitvale Station” (2013), began, unstiff that, if you’re anything like me, teasing, could-it-be-me act has worn with genuine cell-phone footage from you’ll wind up rooting for the baddie thin, T’Challa is super and proud, turn- an incident in 2009, when an unarmed when the two of them battle it out. Jor- ing at will into Black Panther. His suit, African-American, Oscar Grant, was dan has swagger to spare, with those at once bulletproof and clingy, makes shot and killed by police. The rest of the rolling shoulders, but there’s a breath of Tony Stark’s outfit look like a deep-sea movie traced the arc of Oscar’s final day, charm, too, all the more seductive in the diver’s. Sure, Bruce Wayne has the Bat- and what struck you was how normal overblown atmosphere of Marvel. He’s mobile, but T’Challa has a whole coun- and how plotless it felt—a mild domes- twice as pantherish as the Panther. try to drive. The king is the man. tic tiff, a trip to the store to buy shrimp, Few recent movies have been more

We have already met him, in “Cap- phone calls to his mom. The only spe- keenly anticipated than this one, in LEWIS SCOTT ABOVE:

60 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster stars Chadwick Boseman as an African king who morphs at will into a bulletproof superhero.

ILLUSTRATION BY KRISTIAN HAMMERSTAD THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 61 ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE regard both to its box-office potential Dug, as dauntless as ever, travels to and to the force of its mythmaking. With the stronghold of his foes. The entrance Best Documentary Short Subject its vision of an unplundered homeland, is shielded by one gate after another, blooming from liberty rather than from each shunting into position with a bondage, “Black Panther” is, in the full- mighty clang, and finally, in the mov- est sense, an African-American work, ie’s best gag, by a little sliding bolt, such and Carvell Wallace was rightly moved as you might find on a garden shed. to ask, in a Times essay, “Can films like Such attention not just to detail but to these significantly change things for the unforeseen and deliciously unnec- black people in America?” We shall see. essary detail is an Aardman hallmark; My only qualm concerns not so much in “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” the mission of Coogler’s movie as its (2005), the climactic chase had to pause form; I wonder what weight of politi- while the villain, a beefy mutt, produced cal responsibility can, or should, be laid a tiny flowered purse, took out a coin, upon anything that is accompanied by and fed it into the slot of a fairground buttered popcorn. Vibranium is no more ride. As a rule, Aardman scripts are un- real than the philosopher’s stone. More abashed by puns—“You haven’t eaten Americans will presumably watch “Black your primordial soup!” somebody ex- Panther” than have ever read “Black claims in “Early Man”—but it’s the vi- Boy” or “Invisible Man,” but do num- sual treats, too homely for surrealism bers alone make the difference? Are 3-D but too wacky to be cute, that anchor spectacles any more reliable than rose- the films and transfigure the whole tinted ones, when we seek to imagine world, ancient and modern, into a po- an ideal society? tential joke shop. Why not use mini- crocodiles as clothespins, when you he opportunity to see a warthog need to clip your washing to the line? Tplaying the harp doesn’t come along If “Early Man” slips below the stu- nearly as often as it should. All the more dio’s highest standards, that may be due reason, then, to welcome “Early Man,” to its length. In “A Grand Day Out” although whether the harpist in ques- (1989), Park managed to rocket Wal- tion is technically a warthog is open to lace and Gromit—one man and his dispute. He’s piggy enough in snout and dog—to the moon and back in twenty- trotter, and lavishly tusked, and he an- three minutes, whereas the new movie swers to the name of Hognob, yet he takes more than an hour longer to tell barks and bays like a wolf. Hognob is a plainer tale, topped with a lighter scat- the sidekick of Dug (voiced by Eddie tering of laughs. Dug and company FROM OSCAR® WINNER THOMAS LENNON Redmayne), and Dug, being in posses- confront the enemy in a soccer match; sion of a bucktoothed grin and oodles should they win, they will return to of true grit, is the hero. their beloved woods. The whole thing “Early Man” is the latest film from feels challengingly British, right down Aardman Animations, and the direc- to the sports commentators and the tor is Nick Park, the sultan of stop- munificent arrival of a queen (Miriam motion, to whom we are eternally in- Margolyes), and it’s also too Gromit- debted for Wallace, Gromit, and other less for comfort. Aardman is a haven gems of superpliability. As the title sug- for the humanish: for creatures that hail MUSIC BY ROBERT MILLER gests, the setting is prehistory. (No date from other species but match us or is given, although we are helpfully told even, in Gromit’s case, outstrip us in “Compelling, funny, heartbreaking that the opening sequence occurs proficiency and grace. The stage of and thoroughly human.” “around lunchtime.”) Dug belongs to “Early Man,” though, is stuffed with ANTHONY BOURDAIN a minor tribe, dwelling peaceably in men and women—on the Neanderthal the lush glades of an extinct volcano. spectrum, it’s true, but propelled by “A strength-and-hope builder of the This demi-paradise is invaded by a needs and greeds much like our own— fi rst order. . . . One for the heart.” more advanced people, brought there whereas the beasts of the field and the THE INDEPENDENT by a lust for metal ore, and led—or fowls of the air are reduced to the role bossed around—by the vainglorious of extras. It pains me to say so, but Hog- Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston). “The nob is not enough.  age of stone is over,” he declares, speak- ing in a heavy but unexplained French NEWYORKER.COM WATCH NOW: accent. “Long live the age of bronze.” Richard Brody blogs about movies. newyorker.com/video 62 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 different strategy that would have yielded A CRITIC AT LARGE a secure non­Communist South Viet­ nam? Max Boot’s “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American MADE IN VIETNAM Tragedy in Vietnam” (Liveright) is an argument that there was a winning strat­ Edward Lansdale and the war over the war. egy—or, at least, a strategy with better odds than the one we followed. BY LOUIS MENAND here were two major wars against Tthe Communists in Vietnam. The first was an anticolonial war between Communist nationalists and France, which, except for a period during the Second World War, when the Japanese took over, had ruled the country since the eighteen­eighties. That war lasted from 1946 to 1954, when the French lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu and nego­ tiated a settlement, the Geneva Accords, that partitioned the country at the sev­ enteenth parallel. The United States had funded France’s military failure to the tune of about $2.5 billion. The second war was a civil war be­ tween the two zones created at Geneva: North Vietnam, governed by Vietnam­ ese Communists, and South Vietnam, backed by American aid and, eventually, by American troops. That war lasted from 1954 (or 1955 or 1959, depending on your definition of an “act of war”) to 1975, when Communist forces entered Saigon and unified the country. The sec­ ond war is the Vietnam War, “our” war. The more we look at American decision­making in Vietnam, the less sense it makes. Geopolitics helps explain our concerns about the fate of Vietnam in the nineteen­forties and fifties. Re­ or almost thirty years, by means fi­ years when anti­Communist forces were lations with the Soviet Union and China F nancial, military, and diplomatic, the on a sustainable track to prevailing. Po­ were hostile, and Southeast Asia and the United States tried to prevent Vietnam litical and military leaders misunder­ Korean peninsula were in political tur­ from becoming a Communist state. Mil­ stood the enemy’s motives; they misread moil. Still, paying for France to reclaim lions died in that struggle. By the time conditions on the ground; they tried to its colony just as the world was about to active American military engagement beat unconventional fighters with con­ experience a wave of decolonization was ended, the United States had dropped ventional tactics; they massacred civil­ a dubious undertaking. more than three times as many tons of ians. They pursued strategies that seemed By 1963, however, “peaceful coexis­ bombs on Vietnam, a country the size designed to produce neither a victory tence” was the policy of the American of New Mexico, as the Allies dropped nor a settlement, only what Daniel Ells­ and Soviet governments, Korea had in all of the Second World War. At the berg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers effectively been partitioned, and the height of the bombing, it was costing us but once a passionate supporter of Amer­ Sino­ Soviet split made the threat of a ten dollars for every dollar of damage we ican intervention, called “the stalemate global Communist movement seem no inflicted. We got nothing for it. machine.” longer a pressing concern. And yet that We got nothing for pretty much ev­ Could the United States have found was when the United States embarked erything we tried in Vietnam, and it’s a strategic through line to the outcome on a policy of military escalation. There hard to pick out a moment in those thirty we wanted? Could we have adopted a were sixteen thousand American advis­ ers in South Vietnam in 1963; during In Lansdale’s counter-insurgency approach, soldiers were fighters but also salesmen. the next ten years, some three million

ILLUSTRATION BY BILL BRAGG THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 63 American soldiers would serve there. ical commentators back when political but nothing damaged our reputation like Historians argue about whether a commentary had such titles, warned, in Vietnam. It not only shattered our image given battle was a success or a failure, but, 1963, “The price of a military victory in of invincibility. It meant that a whole over-all, the military mission was cata- the Vietnamese war is higher than Amer- generation grew up looking upon the strophic on many levels. The average age ican vital interests can justify.” United States as an imperialist, milita- of American G.I.s in Vietnam was about De Gaulle and Nehru had reasons rist, and racist power. The political cap- twenty-two. By 1971, thousands of them of their own for wanting the United ital we accumulated after leading the al- were on opium or heroin, and more than States to keep out of Southeast Asia. liance against Fascism in the Second three hundred incidents of fragging— But Kennedy himself was keenly aware World War and then helping rebuild Japan officers wounded or killed by their own of the risks of entrapment, and so was and Western Europe we burned through troops—were reported. Half a million his successor. “There ain’t no daylight in Southeast Asia. Vietnam veterans would suffer from in Vietnam, there’s not a bit,” Lyndon American Presidents were not impe- P.T.S.D., a higher proportion than for Johnson said in 1965. “The more bombs rialists. They genuinely wanted a free the Second World War. you drop, the more nations you scare, and independent South Vietnam, yet People sometimes assume that West- the more people you make mad.” Three the gap between that aspiration and ern opinion leaders turned against the years later, he was forced to withdraw the reality of the military and political war only after U.S. marines waded ashore from his reëlection campaign, his polit- situation in-country was unbridgeable. at Da Nang, in 1965, and the body counts ical career destroyed by his inability to They could see the problem, but they began to rise. That’s not the case. As end the war. The first time someone could not solve it. Political terms are Fredrik Logevall points out in his study claimed to see a “light at the end of the short, and so politics is short-term. The of American decision-making, “Choos- tunnel” in Vietnam was in 1953. People main consideration that seems to have ing War” (1999), the United States was were still using that expression in 1967. presented itself to those Presidents, from warned repeatedly about the folly of By then, American public opinion and Harry Truman to Richard Nixon, who involvement. much of the media were antiwar. Yet we insisted on staying the course was do- Intervention in Southeast Asia would continued to send men to fight there mestic politics—the fear of being blamed be “an entanglement without end,” for six more years. by voters for losing Southeast Asia to France’s President, Charles de Gaulle, Our international standing was never Communism. If Southeast Asia was speaking from his own nation’s long ex- dependent on our commitment to South going to be lost to Communism, they perience in Indochina, told President Vietnam. We might have been accused preferred that it be on another Presi- Kennedy. The United States, he said, of inconstancy for abandoning an ally, dent’s head. It was a costly calculation. would find itself in a “bottomless mili- but everyone would have understood. In tary and political swamp.” Jawaharlal fact, the longer the war went on the more here were some American officials, Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, told our image suffered. The United States Teven some diplomats and generals, Kennedy that sending in American troops engaged in a number of high-handed who believed in the mission but saw that would be a disastrous decision. Walter and extralegal interventions in the affairs the strategy wasn’t working and had an Lippmann, the dean of American polit- of other nations during the Cold War, idea why. One of these was John Paul Vann, a lieutenant colonel in the Army who was assigned to a South Vietnam- ese commander in 1962, at a time when Americans restricted themselves to an advisory role. It seemed to Vann that South Vietnamese officers were trying to keep their troops out of combat. They would call in air strikes whenever they could, which raised body counts but killed civilians or drove them to the Viet- cong. Vann cultivated some young Amer- ican journalists—among them David Halberstam, of the New York Times, and Neil Sheehan, of United Press In- ternational, who had just arrived in Viet- nam—to get out his story that the war was not going well. Vann didn’t want the United States to withdraw. He wanted the United States to win. He was all about killing the enemy. But his efforts to persuade his superiors in Vietnam and Washing- “Honey, all we want is what’s quiet for us.” ton failed, and he resigned from the Army in 1963. He returned to Vietnam as a ci- “freely” elected. Internal opposition to munist because he was a nationalist. vilian in 1965, and was killed there, in a these leaders could then be character- Twice he had appealed to American helicopter crash, in 1972. In 1988, Shee- ized as “an insurgency” (in Vietnam, it Presidents to support his independence han published a book about him, “A would be termed “aggression”), a situa- movement—to Woodrow Wilson after Bright Shining Lie,” which won a Pu- tion that called for the United States the First World War, and Truman at the litzer Prize for nonfiction and is a clas- to intervene in order to save democ- end of the Second—and twice he had sic of Vietnam literature. racy. Magsaysay’s speeches as a Presi- been ignored. Only the Communists, he “The Road Not Taken” is the story dential candidate, for example, were had concluded, were truly committed to of another military figure sympathetic written by a C.I.A. agent. (The Sovi- the principle of self-determination in to the mission and critical of the strat- ets, of course, operated in exactly the Asia. The Geneva Accords called for a egy, Major General Edward Lansdale, same way, through fronts national election to be held and Boot says that his intention is to do and election-fixing. The in Vietnam in 1956; that for Lansdale what Sheehan “so memo- Cold War was a looking- election was not held, but rably accomplished for John Paul Vann.” glass war.) many people in the Amer- Boot’s task is tougher. Sheehan was in In 1954, fresh from his ican government thought Vietnam, and he knew Vann and the success with Magsaysay, that Ho would have won. people Vann worked with. He also knew Lansdale was sent to South Lansdale knew neither some secrets about Vann’s private life. Vietnam by the director of French nor Vietnamese. Boot did not know Lansdale, who died the C.I.A., Allen Dulles, For that matter, he couldn’t in 1987, but he interviewed people who with instructions to do even speak Tagalog, the did; he read formerly classified docu- there what he had done in the Philip- native language of the Philippines. (In ments; and he had access to Lansdale’s pines: see to the establishment of a pro- the Philippines, he is said to have some- personal correspondence, including let- Western government and assist it in times communicated by charades, or ters to his longtime Filipina mistress, finding ways to check Communist en- by drawing pictures in the sand.) Yet, Patrocinio (Pat) Yapcinco Kelly. croachment. (The Communists in ques- as he had done in the Philippines, he Lansdale was at various times an tion were, of course, Vietnamese op- managed to get close to a local politi- officer in the Army and the Air Force, posed to a government put in place and cal figure and become his consigliere. but those jobs were usually covers. For propped up by foreign powers.) In the Philippines, Lansdale could much of his career, he worked for the As Boot explains, Vietnam was a choose the politician he wanted to work C.I.A. He was brought up in Califor- different level of the game. The Philip- with; in Vietnam, he had to play the nia. He attended U.C.L.A. but failed to pines was a former American colony. card he was dealt. The card’s name was graduate, and then got married and went Almost all Filipinos were Christians. Ngo Dinh Diem. into advertising, where he had some suc- They liked Americans and had fought cess. In 1942, with the United States at with them in the war against Japan. En- iem was the personification of the war with the Axis powers, he joined the glish was the language used by the gov- Dparadoxes of American designs in Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), the ernment. The Vietnamese, by contrast, Southeast Asia. “A curious blend of her- nation’s first civilian intelligence service had had almost no experience with oism mixed with a narrowness of view and the precursor of the C.I.A. During Americans and were proud of their two- and of egotism . . . a messiah without a the war, Lansdale worked Stateside, but thousand-year history of resistance to message” is how one American diplomat in 1945, shortly after the Japanese sur- foreign invaders, from the Chinese and described him. He was a devout Cath- render, he was sent to the Philippines. the Mongols to the French and the Jap- olic who hated the Communists. One It was there that he had the first of anese. There were more than a million of his brothers had been killed in 1945 his professional triumphs. He ran co- Vietnamese Catholics, but, in a popu- by the Vietminh—the Communist- vert operations to help the Philippine lation of twenty-five million, eighty per dominated nationalist party. During the government defeat a small-scale Com- cent practiced some form of Buddhism. war with France, he had spent two years munist uprising, and he supervised the The South Vietnamese who wel- in the United States, where he impressed candidacy of a Filipino politician named comed the American presence after a number of American politicians, in- Ramon Magsaysay and got him elected 1954 were mainly urbanites and people cluding the young John F. Kennedy. In President, in 1953. To assist in that effort, who had prospered under French rule. 1954, the year of the French defeat, he Lansdale created an outfit called the Na- Eighty per cent of the population lived was appointed Prime Minister by the tional Movement for Free Elections. It in the countryside, though, and it was Emperor, Bao Dai, a French puppet who was funded by the C.I.A. the strategy of the Vietcong to con- lived luxuriously in Europe and did not This was Lansdale’s modus operandi. vince them that the United States was speak Vietnamese well. He was a fabricator of fronts, the man just one more foreign invader, no differ- Diem was a workaholic who could behind the curtain. He manipulated ent from the Japanese or the French, hold forth for hours before journalists events—through payoffs, propaganda, or from Kublai Khan. and other visitors to the Presidential and sometimes more nefarious means— In 1954, Ho Chi Minh, the President Palace. A two-hour Diem monologue to insure that indigenous politicians of North Vietnam, was a popular figure. was considered a quickie, and he didn’t friendly to the United States would be He was a Communist, but he was a Com- like to be interrupted. But Diem did not

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 65 leaders when one seemed to falter—a privilege we bought with enormous amounts of aid, some $1.5 billion between 1955 and 1961. It is to Lansdale’s credit that Diem survived as long as he did. After landing in Saigon and setting up a front, the Saigon Military Mission, Lansdale began sending infiltrators into North Vietnam (violating a promise that the United States had made about re- specting the ceasefire agreed to at Ge- neva, though the North Vietnamese were violating the accord, too). The agents were instructed to carry out sabotage and other subversive activities, standard “You’ll never catch me! Not without arms!” C.I.A. procedure around the world. But almost every agent the agency sent in •• underground somewhere was captured, tortured, and killed, usually quickly, and this is what happened to most of Lans- see himself as a Western puppet. He Presidential Palace with his wife, Tran dale’s agents. People survive in totalitar- was a genuine nationalist—on paper, Le Xuan, a woman known to the press, ian regimes by becoming informers, and the plausible leader of an independent and thus to the world, as the Dragon those regimes were often tipped off by non-Communist South Vietnam. Lady, Madame Nhu. She operated as double agents. On the other hand, Diem was no Diem’s hostess (he was celibate) and was The Geneva Accords provided for a champion of representative democracy. free with her usually inflammatory po- three-hundred-day grace period before His political philosophy was a not en- litical opinions. American officials in Sai- the partition in order to allow Vietnam- tirely intelligible blend of personalism gon prayed that the Nhus would some- ese to move from North to South or vice (a quasi-spiritual French school of how disappear, but they were the only versa, and Lansdale, using American thought), Confucianism, and authoritar- people Diem trusted. ships and an airline secretly owned by ianism. He aspired to be a benevolent Nhu ran the underside of the Diem the C.I.A., arranged for some nine hun- autocrat, but he had little understanding regime. He created a shadowy political dred thousand Vietnamese, most of them of the condition Vietnamese society was party, the Can Lao, whose members swore Catholics and many of them people who in after seventy years of colonial rule. loyalty to Diem, and he made member- had collaborated with the French, to em- The French had replaced the Con- ship a prerequisite for career advance- igrate below the seventeenth parallel. (A fucian educational system and had tried ment. According to Frances FitzGerald’s much smaller number immigrated to the to manufacture a new national identity: book “Fire in the Lake” (1972), he funded North.) These émigrés provided Diem Franco-Vietnamese. They were only the party by means of piracy, extortion, with a political base. partly successful. It was not obvious how opium trading, and currency-exchange Lansdale’s most important accom- Diem and the Americans were supposed manipulation. He also created a series of plishment was helping Diem win the so- to forge a nation from the fractured so- secret-police and intelligence organiza- called battle of the sects. The French de- ciety the French left behind. Diem’s idea tions. Thousands of Vietnamese sus- feat had left a power vacuum, and groups was to create a cult of himself and the pected of disloyalty were arrested, tor- besides the Vietminh were jockeying for nation. “A sacred respect is due to the tured, and executed by beheading or turf. In 1955, three of them united in op- person of the sovereign,” he claimed. disembowelment. Political opponents were position to Diem: the Cao Dai and the “He is the mediator between the peo- imprisoned. For nine years, the Ngo fam- Hoa Hao, religious sects, and the Binh ple and heaven.” He had altars featur- ily was the wobbling pivot on which we Xuyen, an organized-crime society with ing his picture put up in the streets, and rested our hopes for a non-Communist a private army of ten thousand men. a hymn praising him was sung along South Vietnam. Diem neutralized the religious sects with the national anthem. by the expedient of having Lansdale use This ambition may have been naïve. he United States had declined to be C.I.A. funds to buy them off. Boot says What made it poisonous was nepotism. Ta signatory to the Geneva Accords— the amount may have been as high as Diem was deeply loyal to and dependent which had, after all, effectively created a twelve million dollars, which would be a on his family, and his family were an un- new Communist state—but Lansdale’s hundred million dollars today. But the loved bunch. One of his brothers was arrival in Saigon on the eve of Diem’s Binh Xuyen, which controlled the Sai- the Catholic bishop of the coastal city official appointment was a signal that we gon police, remained a threat. Worried of Hue. Another was the boss—the war- intended to supervise the outcome. And that Diem was not strong enough to hold lord, really—of central Vietnam. A third the American government was always the country together, the U.S. Secretary brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, lived in the prepared to swap out South Vietnamese of State, John Foster Dulles, sent cables

66 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 to the American embassies in Saigon and he lied), but it was consistent with his for each other.” But Lansdale’s wife would Paris authorizing officials to find a re- usual strategy, which, in the case of Cuba, not give him a divorce, and he reconciled placement. Lansdale warned Diem that was to fund an indigenous opposition himself to trying to keep the marriage U.S. support was waning, prompting him movement whose suppression would give alive. He suffered for many years from to launch an attack on the Binh Xuyen. the United States an excuse to send in longing and remorse. When Lansdale The Binh Xuyen was routed, and Dulles troops. A lot of brainpower was wasted on was with his wife, Pat dated other men. countermanded his order. those anti-Castro schemes. Castro would There appear to have been no significant To secure his winnings, Diem called run Cuba for another forty-five years. dalliances on his part. Only after his wife for a referendum to determine whether The country is now ruled by his brother. died, in 1973, were he and Pat married. he or Bao Dai, the former Emperor, Lansdale was reassigned to Vietnam “The Road Not Taken” is not the first should be head of state. Diem won, sup- in 1965, but Diem was dead. He had been book devoted to Edward Lansdale, and posedly with 98.2 per cent of the vote. deposed in 1963, in a coup d’état to which it is not quite of the calibre of “A Bright He carried Saigon with 605,025 votes the American government had given its Shining Lie,” in part because Boot can’t out of 450,000 registered voters. Lans- approval. He and Nhu were assassinated provide the ground-level reporting that dale’s main contribution to the cam- shortly after they surrendered. (Madame Sheehan could. But it is expansive and paign was to suggest that the ballots for Nhu was in Beverly Hills, and escaped detailed, it is well written, and it sheds Diem be printed in red (considered a retribution.) There were celebrations in light on a good deal about U.S. covert lucky color) and the ballots for Bao Dai the streets of Saigon, but the event activities in postwar Southeast Asia. in green (a color associated with cuck- marked the beginning of a series of coups Boot is a military historian, a colum- olds). Boot does not mention that this and government by generals in South nist, and a political consultant who has simplified Nhu’s instructions to his poll Vietnam. Short of withdrawal, the United worked with the Presidential campaigns of watchers: he told them to throw out all States now had no choice but to take John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Marco the green ballots. over the war. Rubio. He has been highly critical of With Diem’s consolidation of author- Donald Trump, and describes his social ity, Boot says, Lansdale reached “the apo- y 1965, therefore, when Lansdale ar- views as liberal, but he has been a propo- gee of his power and influence.” In 1956, Brived for his second tour of duty, the nent of American “leadership,” a term he left Southeast Asia and took a posi- American military was fully in charge. that usually connotes interventionism. tion in the Pentagon helping to develop It had little interest in the sort of covert One might therefore have expected special forces like the Navy SEALS and operations Lansdale specialized in. The his book to adopt a revisionist line on the Green Berets. He enjoyed a brief re- strategy now was “attrition”: kill as many Vietnam—to argue, for example, that surgence with Kennedy’s election, in 1960. of the enemy as possible. “Life is cheap the antiwar media misrepresented the Kennedy was a Cold Warrior, but he was in the Orient,” as General William West- military situation and made it politically not locked into a Cold War mentality. moreland, the commander of American impossible for us to prosecute the war He liked outside-the-box types, and he forces, explained to the filmmaker Peter to the fullest of our capabilities. He clearly liked Lansdale and even considered ap- Davis—who, in his documentary “Hearts wants to suggest that the war was win- pointing him Ambassador to South Viet- and Minds” (1974), juxtaposed the re- nable, and he believes that Lansdale’s ap- nam. But the State Department and the mark with scenes of Vietnamese mourn- proach was the wiser one, but he is cau- Pentagon did not like outside-the-box ing their dead, imagery already familiar tious in his analysis of what went wrong. types and they certainly did not like Lans- from photographs published and broad- It was a war with too many variables for dale, who remained in the States and cast around the world. a single strategic choice to was assigned to head Operation Mon- Lansdale was not able to have tipped the balance. goose, charged with devising methods accomplish much, and he Interestingly, and de- for overthrowing Fidel Castro. returned to the United spite some prefatory claims Lansdale does not seem to have been States in 1968. to the contrary, “The Road directly involved in the notoriously wacko In 1972, he published a Not Taken” does not really assassination plots against Castro (the memoir, “In the Midst of transform the standard pic- poisoned cigar and so on), but Boot sug- Wars,” in which he was ture of Lansdale. Everyone gests that he knew of such plans and would obliged to recirculate a lot knew that he was C.I.A., not have objected to them. He did come of cover stories—which is and that he combined an up with a scheme for an American sub- to say, fabrications—about his career. affable and artless personality with a tal- marine to surface off the Cuban coast and Reception of the book was not kind. ent for dirty tricks. Boot’s Lansdale is fire explosives into the sky. Rumors, in- Lansdale’s private life turns out to not much different from the one Fitz- troduced inside Cuba by C.I.A. agents, have been a little sad. From the letters Gerald sketched in “Fire in the Lake,” that Castro was doomed would lead Cu- Boot quotes, it is clear that Pat was the back in 1972. “Lansdale was in many re- bans to interpret the lights in the sky as love of his life. “I’m just not a whole per- spects a remarkable man,” she wrote: a sign of divine disapproval of the regime. son away from you,” a typical letter to He had faith in his own good motives. No In the mid-seventies, in a statement Pat reads, “and cannot understand why theorist, he was rather an enthusiast, a man to a congressional committee, Lansdale God brought us together when I had who believed that Communism in Asia would denied proposing the scheme (Boot says previous obligations unless He meant us crumble before men of goodwill with some

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 67 concern for “the little guy” and the proper Tactics like this, Lansdale saw, only able South Vietnam to defend itself. counterinsurgency skills. He had a great alienated the population, and he advo- In the pursuit of civic action, though, talent for practical politics and for personal cated what he called “civic action,” which there was always the practical question involvement in what to most Americans would seem the most distinctly foreign of affairs. he defined, in an article in Foreign Affairs of just how South Vietnamese troops in 1964, as “an extension of military cour- and their American advisers were sup- If anything, Boot tries to moderate tesy, in which the soldier citizen be- posed to insinuate themselves into vil- some of Lansdale’s received reputation. comes the brotherly protector of the ci- lages in the countryside. It was univer- Sheehan, in “A Bright Shining Lie,” called vilian citizen.” In other words, soldiers sally understood, long before the marines South Vietnam “the creation of Edward are fighters, but they are also salesmen. arrived, that in the countryside the night Lansdale.” Boot thinks this is an exag- They need to sell the benefits of the re- belonged to the Vietcong. No one wanted geration, and a lot of his book is com- gime they are fighting for, and to do so to be out after sunset away from a for- mitted to restoring a sense of proportion by demonstrating, concretely, their com- tified position. John Paul Vann was no- to his subject’s image as a political Sven- mitment to the lives of the people. This torious for riding his jeep at night along gali, or “Lawrence of Asia.” So why did is what Lansdale believed that the Viet- country roads. People didn’t do that. he write “The Road Not Taken”? And cong were doing, and what the Philip- What was crucially missing for a why should we read it? pine rebels, who called themselves the counter-insurgency program to work, In many ways, Lansdale was a throw- Hukbalahap, had done. They under- as Lansdale pointed out, was a govern- back. He operated in the spirit of the old stood the Maoist notion that the peo- ment to which the population could feel O.S.S. He treated all conditions as war- ple are the water, and the soldiers must loyalty. Despite all his exertions as the time conditions, and so did not scruple live among them as the fish. Wizard of Saigon, pulling Diem’s strings to use whatever means necessary—from As Boot notes, Lansdale was by no from behind the curtain, he could not bribes and misinformation to black ops— means the only person who believed make Diem into a nationalist hero like to achieve ends favorable to the interests that the way to beat the Vietcong was Ho. As many historians do, Boot be- of the United States. Like the man who to play their game by embedding anti- lieves that the Diem coup was the key created the O.S.S., General William Communist forces, trained by Ameri- event in the war, that it put the United (Wild Bill) Donovan, he was a backslap- can advisers, in the villages. This hap- States on a path of intervention from per who prized informality and was in- pened to be the theme of “The Ugly which there was no escape and no re- different to such bureaucratic punctilio American,” by Eugene Burdick and turn. “How different history might have as “the chain of command.” He was a William Lederer, which was published been,” he speculates, “if Lansdale or a freelancer. He made his own rules. in 1958 and spent an astonishing seventy- Lansdale-like figure had remained close That is exactly what his C.I.A. mas- eight weeks on the best-seller list. enough to Diem to exercise a benign ters wanted him to do. And it is why, after Lederer and Lansdale were friends, and influence and offset the paranoid coun- the American military took charge in Lansdale appears in the book as a char- sel of his brother.” But Boot also recog- Vietnam and bureaucratic punctilio was acter named Colonel Hillandale, who nizes that events may have been beyond back in style, his influence waned and he entertains locals with his harmonica (as Lansdale’s or Diem’s control. “Perhaps was put on the shelf. Techno-strategists Lansdale was known to do). Lansdale’s achievements could not have like Robert McNamara, the Secretary of “The Ugly American” was intended— lasted in any case,” he says. Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, and was received by many—as a primer Probably not. Lansdale was writing had no use for Lansdale. They did not on counter-insurgency for battlegrounds on water. The Vietnam he imagined was even find him entertaining. They looked like Vietnam. Although the title has a Western fantasy. Although the best on him as a harebrained troglodyte. come to refer to vulgar American tour- and the brightest in Washington shunned Still, McNamara’s strategy failed. Did ists, that was not the intention. In the and ignored him, Lansdale shared their Lansdale know something that Mc- book, the “ugly American” is the hero, world view, the world view that defined Namara and the rest of Kennedy and a man who works side by side with the the Cold War. He was a liberal interna- Johnson’s “best and brightest” did not? locals to help improve rice production. tionalist. He believed that if you scratched Boot thinks he did, and one purpose of He just happens to be ugly. a Vietnamese or a Filipino you found a his book is to revive Lansdale as a pio- Boot, oddly, doesn’t mention it, but James Madison under the skin. neer of counter-insurgency theory. the United States was engaged in civic Some Vietnam reporters who were action in South Vietnam from the be- contemporaries of Lansdale’s, like Stan- ansdale was a proponent of the ginning of the Diem regime. Through ley Karnow, who covered the war for a L“hearts and minds” approach. He the Agency for International Devel- number of news organizations, and the believed in the use of subterfuge and opment, we had been providing agri- Times correspondent A. J. Langguth, as- force, but he rejected “search and de- cultural, educational, infrastructural, sumed that the artlessness and the har- stroy” tactics—invading villages and and medical assistance. There was graft, monica playing were an act, that Lans- hunting out the enemy, as American but there were also results. Rice pro- dale was a deeply canny operative who forces did repeatedly in South Viet- duction doubled between 1954 and 1959, hid his real nature from everyone. Boot’s nam. It was a search-and-destroy mis- and production of livestock tripled. book suggests the opposite. His Lans- sion that resulted in the massacre of We gave far more in military aid, but dale is a very simple man. Unquestioned hundreds of civilians at My Lai, in 1968. that is because our policy was to en- faith in his own motives is what allowed

68 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 him to manipulate others for what he knew would be their own ultimate good. He was not the first American to think BRIEFLY NOTED that way, and he will not be the last. The English writer James Fenton When Montezuma Met Cortés, by Matthew Restall (Ecco). In was in Saigon, working as a journalist, 1519, the emperor Montezuma received the conquistador when Vietcong troops arrived there in Hernán Cortés and some of his men as guests in the Aztec 1975. He managed, more or less by ac­ capital, Tenochtitlán. Within two years, Montezuma was cident, to be sitting in the first tank to dead, the Aztecs routed, and the city destroyed. This revi­ enter the courtyard of the Presidential sionist history contests received views of Cortés as either Palace. Fenton described the experience swashbuckling hero or bloviating villain, of the Aztecs as in a memorable article, “The Fall of Sai­ cannibals, and of Montezuma as a meek, mystical king who gon,” published in Granta in 1985. voluntarily capitulated. Restall skillfully describes a subtler Like many Westerners of his educa­ story of relationships both loving and coercive. He offers a tion and generation, Fenton had hoped particularly bold interpretation of Montezuma’s devotion to for a Vietcong victory, and he was im­ his palace zoo, arguing that he saw Cortés and his men as pressed by the soldiers of the North exotic creatures and hoped to learn by studying them. Vietnamese Army when they marched into the city. But he stayed around long First Time Ever, by Peggy Seeger (Faber & Faber). This whirl­ enough to see the shape that the post­ ing memoir follows the folksinger and activist through in­ war era would take. The Vietnamese ternational tours, crises in her famous musical family, and a Communists did what totalitarian re­ long, all­consuming relationship with the British singer Ewan gimes do: they took over the schools MacColl. Seeger’s conversational prose has a flair for captur­ and universities, they shut down the free ing the common (a 1938 Chevy “had a vertical fish­mouth press, they pursued programs of enforced and a fat lady’s rump”) and the cataclysmic; remembering relocation and reëducation. Many South her mother’s early death, she writes, “I try to see and hear Vietnamese disappeared. things for her, to lure her spirit back from the lost body.” Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh Colorful characters flit in and out, and, remembering them, City, and Ho’s body, like Lenin’s, was Seeger, who is now eighty­two, is often wistful. Of one friend, installed in a mausoleum for public she writes, “He died, but he is still in my present tense.” viewing. Agriculture was collectivized and a five­year plan of modernization Brass, by Xhenet Aliu (Random House). Set in Waterbury, Con­ was instituted. The results were calam­ necticut, the working­class town of abandoned brass mills itous. During the next ten years, many where the author grew up, this novel tells the parallel stories hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese of a mother and a daughter struggling to improve their fates. fled the country, most of them by launch­ The novel shifts between the perspectives of Elsie, a second­ ing boats into the South China Sea. Two generation Lithuanian who begins a furtive romance, and, hundred thousand more are estimated years later, her daughter, Luljeta, the issue of this ill­fated li­ to have died trying. “We had been se­ aison. Luljeta, a promising student, embarks on a misguided duced by Ho,” Fenton concluded. What search for her father after the shock of her rejection by N.Y.U. he and his friends had refused to real­ Both women yearn to escape Waterbury but face seemingly ize, he wrote, was that “the victory of intractable obstacles. Aliu is witty and unsparing in her de­ the Vietnamese was a victory for Stalin- piction of the town and its inhabitants, illustrating the gran­ ism.” By 1975, though, most Americans ular realities of the struggle for class mobility. and Europeans had stopped caring what happened in Southeast Asia. Three Daughters of Eve, by Elif Shafak (Bloomsbury). Peri, Then, around 1986, the screw of his­ the protagonist of this novel, is an Istanbul housewife and tory took another turn. Like many other mother who lives a good, stable life as “a fine modern Mus­ Communist states at the time, Vietnam lim.” But a violent encounter unleashes memories of her introduced market reforms. The econ­ time as a student at Oxford, which ended abruptly. We learn omy responded, and soon Western pow­ about her relationship with a handsome professor—who ers found a reason to be interested in was forced to resign, amid scandal, soon after she took his Southeast Asia all over again: cheap controversial religion seminar—and also about her struggle labor. Vietnam is now a major exporter with God. The child of a devout mother and a secular fa­ of finished goods. It is a safe bet that ther, she entered college feeling spiritually conflicted, and somewhere in your house you have a deeply alone. Moments in the narrative are heavy­handed, pair of sneakers or a piece of electronic but the book offers a complex portrayal of Turkey as a place equipment stamped with the words that, like Peri herself, once “had great potential—and look “Made in Vietnam.”  how that had turned out.”

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 69 and “The Woman in Cabin 10,” not to BOOKS mention “Gone Girl” (in which the tit- ular girl is the contriver of the mys- tery), while its frame of reference in- OCULAR PROOF volves classic American noir films: “Gaslight,” “Vertigo,” “Strangers on a Seeing and believing in A. J. Finn’s “The Woman in the Window.” Train,” “Wait Until Dark,” “Sudden Fear,” “Rope,” and, most explicitly, BY JOYCE CAROL OATES “Rear Window.” Indeed, although the protagonist of “The Woman in the Window,” a thirty-nine-year-old child psychologist named Anna Fox, is wryly self-aware, her mode of narration resembles a film script. We get very short chapters and a preponderance of single-sentence paragraphs, in cine- matic present-tense prose that seems to teeter breathlessly on stiletto heels: The phone rings. My head swivels, almost back to front, like an owl, and the camera drops to my lap. The sound is behind me, but my phone is by my hand. It’s the landline . . . It rings again, distant, insistent. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. Who’s calling me? No one’s called the house phone in . . . I can’t remember. Who would even have this number? I can barely remember it myself. Another ring. And another. I shrivel against the glass, wilt there in the cold. I imagine the rooms of my house, one by one, throbbing with that noise. Another ring. I look across the park. Such staccato paragraphs expand “The Woman in the Window” to more than four hundred pages even as they allow those pages to be read and turned in a near-continuous forward motion. n archetype, as Mark Twain might ing will be clear, decisive, and consol- Anna Fox, seemingly estranged Ahave observed, is nothing but a ing in a way that “literary fiction” usu- from her husband and young daugh- stereotype with a college education. ally is not. ter, and living alone in a five-story Where modernists and postmodern- “The Woman in the Window” brownstone in a gentrified Manhattan ists boldly plunder the collective trea- (Morrow), a highly successful début neighborhood, is a sophisticated addi- suries of myth, legend, fairy tales, and novel by the pseudonymous A. J. Finn tion to the sisterhood of impaired and art for their own idiosyncratic pur- (thirty-eight-year-old Daniel Mallory, befuddled female protagonists con- poses, commercially minded writers a former editor at Morrow), is a supe- founded by mysteries erupting in their replicate formulaic situations, charac- rior example of a subset of recent lives. Since a personally devastating ex- ters, and plots in order to appeal to a thrillers featuring “unreliable” female perience some months before, Anna wide audience. The challenge is to in- protagonists who, despite their consid- has become cripplingly agoraphobic: vest the generic formula with just erable handicaps—which may involve Many of us—the most severely afflicted, enough distinction—what dust-jacket alcoholism, drug addiction, paranoia, the ones grappling with post-traumatic stress blurbs might praise as “originality”— and even psychosis—manage to per- disorder—are housebound, hidden from the without leaving formula behind; to severe and solve mysteries where oth- messy, massy world outside. Some dread the fuse the familiar and the unfamiliar ers have failed. Its title evokes such heaving crowds; others, the storm of traffic. For me, it’s the vast skies, the endless horizon, while assuring the reader that the end- best-sellers as “The Girl on the Train” the sheer exposure, the crushing pressure of the outdoors. “Open spaces” the DSM-5 calls In many recent domestic thrillers, the credibility of the female witness is at stake. it vaguely. . . .

70 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY JEFFREY SMITH As a doctor, I say that the sufferer seeks an light.” Certainly, the novel’s most a mystery is so slow to figure out an environment she can control. Such is the clin- compelling passages deal not with the explanation that will long have been ical take. As a sufferer (and that is the word), “Rear Window”-inflected, credibili- obvious to readers. I say that agoraphobia hasn’t ravaged my life so much as become it. ty-straining mystery unfolding in a brownstone across the way but, rather, “ he Woman in the Window”— It is said that most agoraphobics are with Anna’s sense of herself as a Tin which our suspects are a fixed female and that there are far more of wounded individual, a highly intelli- cast of neighbors in another house- them than statistics suggest. For some, gent and educated person who has hold—is an updated variant of the the disorder seems to begin in child- virtually destroyed her life through a locked-room mystery, that reliably en- hood; for others, like Anna, agorapho- succession of bad decisions. Agora- tertaining standby. And the mystery, bia is a consequence of a traumatic ep- phobics are inmates in a kind of self- of course, plays by its own strict rules. isode or episodes, perhaps exacerbated imposed asylum, prevented from es- Of all literary genres, it tends to be by guilt and a wish to self-punish. caping by the violent panic attacks the most formulaic, since it presents As in “Rear Window,” the mystery that overcome them when they try to a succession of episodes that both ad- begins when a housebound but sharp- step outside: vance and befuddle the trajectory to- eyed and inquisitive person happens to What would I do if I were on that screen, ward a solution, which must be post- see, or imagines that she has seen, a a character in one of my films? I would leave poned until the very end of the novel. murder committed through a neigh- the house to investigate, like Teresa Wright in (In the real world, the first forty-eight boring window. Anna, in her quasi- Shadow of a Doubt. I would summon a friend, hours after a crime are generally con- paralysis, has become a shameless voy- like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. I wouldn’t sidered crucial.) Red herrings—false sit here, in a puddle of robe, wondering where eur; she has acquired a camera with a next to turn. clues, false leads, false suspects—must powerful zoom lens that apparently al- Locked-in syndrome. Causes include stroke, be embedded in the narrative, even as lows her not only to spy on lovers next brain stem injury, MS, even poison. It’s a neu- the villain hides in plain sight. To ac- door but to note the very “archipelago rological condition, in other words, not a psy- complish this sleight of hand, it helps of tiny moles trailing across the back” chological one. Yet here I am, literally locked to tell the story from the perspective in—doors closed, windows shut, while I shy of a beautiful red-haired adulteress. and shrink from the light. of an individual who is intensely in- (Her neighbors resent being spied on, volved in the mystery without having but not enough to pull down the Like its great predecessor Henry the capacity to comprehend what is blinds.) Anna can even peer some dis- James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” the happening around her. The reader can tance into rooms, as in an Edward classic tale of the seemingly unreli- thereby identify with the heroine and Hopper painting of preternatural ex- able female narrator witnessing events share in her increasing alarm and help- posure and clarity. she cannot explain or make plausible lessness. Such straightforward genre Indeed, “The Woman in the Win- to others, “The Woman in the Win- works maintain an implicit contract dow” seems set in mid-century small- dow” presents two mysteries. There’s between reader and author: keep turn- town America, not in twenty-first- the film-noir mystery, glimpsed in ing pages, don’t slow down to ques- century Manhattan. When Anna tantalizing fragments through the tion improbabilities; it will all be ex- summons the police, she is visited by window, and there’s the more en- plained in the final chapter, often by Conrad Little, an affable and loqua- grossing, though less explicable, mys- the villain to the protagonist, who is cious detective, and engages him in tery of the witness herself. Is she re- guaranteed to survive. TV-style repartee. Following the dic- liable? Is she sane? If the mystery genre does not abide tates of the genre, Detective Little Though the novel provides Anna much reality, it should be recalled that does not believe Anna; his cursory in- Fox with a painstakingly stitched no Shakespearean tragedy or sonnet— vestigation doesn’t indicate that any backstory that has consequences for no work of art in which the constraints crime has been committed. But, in the the present, she ultimately seems of form are exacting—is likely to with- manner of a kindly small-town sheriff, more a function of the plot than a stand the bracing winds of common he remains indulgent of her and her fully realized person, not quite as in- sense. Still, there are cultural currents to suspicions. teresting as her problems. Her inte- which novels like “The Woman in the Anna, when not addressing us in her rior voice is not especially female; it Window” are well suited. In the chorus breathless mode, is engagingly self- is, rather, genderless. She appears to of best-selling contemporary domestic doubting and self-loathing, by turns possess no physicality, no sexuality, thrillers, a triumphant #MeToo parable warmly funny and panic-stricken; though we’re told that she had a love has emerged: that of the flawed, scorned, she’s also an aficionada of the best of affair not long ago and, in a brief disbelieved, misjudged, and underesti- Hitchcock and the “Thin Man” mov- scene that particularly tests credulity, mated female witness whose testimony ies. She’s a sympathetic, professional she sleeps with an ex-convict who has is rejected—but turns out to be correct. woman who views her victimhood as rented her basement apartment. Most Vindication, cruelly belated, is none- more or less what she deserves (the improbable, Anna consumes cases of theless sweet. It is the voice of Detec- reader will learn why, eventually), even Merlot and an incapacitating quan- tive Little, shaking his head and telling as she is gamely trying, through ther- tity of opioids. But perhaps this is why the woman in the window, “I owe you apy, to recover and return to “the a protagonist who is preoccupied with an apology.” 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 71 Talens Lyriques, in 1991, has devoted MUSICAL EVENTS much of his life to the music of the ancien régime. His most ambitious undertaking has been to record the PALACE INTRIGUE tragédies lyriques, or tragic operas, of Jean-Baptiste Lully, the Sun King’s Christophe Rousset reinvigorates the French Baroque. master of music. Rousset is also closely associated with Jean-Philippe Rameau, BY ALEX ROSS Lully’s more freewheeling successor as the arbiter of French style. Yet Rous- set is prone to subversive gestures. The previous evening, at the Opéra Comique, he had conducted an operatic specta- cle titled “Et in Arcadio Ego,” in which arias and interludes by Rameau were joined to a modern-minded libretto by the novelist Éric Reinhardt and an avant-garde staging by the transgen- der artist Phia Ménard and the stage designer Éric Soyer. A traditional Pa- risian scandal ensued, with one faction booing and another shouting “Bravo!” “I am very happy with this show,” Rousset told me at lunch the follow- ing day. “Having a new text, a new dra- matic subject, makes the music speak in a different way. Lully wrote always for the glory of the king. With Ra- meau, a man of the eighteenth century, it is different. In that period, the free- dom is much wider, the criticism of the monarchy is very clear, and Rameau is part of it in the way he is always try- ing new things that can be disturbing and revolutionary. Rameau says to the audience, ‘You don’t like it? I don’t care.’ There is some of that in our show. And it is funny—since the big boos on the first night and a lot of talking on the Internet about how unacceptable it is, we are selling more tickets.” hen, on a recent snowy day in hit by a snowball, for which the perpe- Rousset is a short, slim man of fifty- WParis, members of the early- trators were apologetic. The protest six, with a faintly elfin appearance. He music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques prompted me to think about the polit- was dressed in a sweater, a rainbow scarf, arrived for a rehearsal at the Collège- ical significance of the music being black jeans, and hiking boots. He pres- Lycée Jacques-Decour, a secondary played inside. Les Talens Lyriques spe- ents a combination of airy aestheticism school near the Gare du Nord, they cialize in composers from the time of and intellectual toughness. He affects had to make their way around a revo- the French Baroque, when Versailles no grand manner in rehearsal: that day, lutionary barricade. That morning, stu- was the grandest court in Europe. Given Les Talens Lyriques and the Chamber dents at the school had gone on strike, that President Emmanuel Macron has Choir of Namur were preparing for a joining a nationwide protest against modelled himself on none other than performance of André Campra’s Re- proposed changes to the baccalauréat, Louis XIV—he aspires to what he calls quiem, from 1722, and Rousset hopped the French college-entry exam. The a “Jupiterian” style—one wonders about from one part of the ensemble to main entrance was blocked with gar- whether the French Baroque could once another. He does not pontificate or ed- bage bins; a sign decried “libéralisme again become an instrument of power. itorialize. Yet he is relentless in pursuit scolaire” and “sélection bourgeoise.” As I Christophe Rousset, a harpsichord- of what he wants. After spending sev- walked toward a side door, I was nearly ist and conductor who founded Les eral minutes trying to get the right shade of pianissimo, he said, “Finalement, When Rousset presents music of the ancien régime, he adds subversive gestures. je suis content,” to knowing laughter.

72 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOÉ POIZAT From an early age, Rousset was smit- dith van Wanroij and Emiliano Gon- Lycée Jacques-Decour often double as ten with the aesthetics of Versailles— zalez Toro, the singers, become gor- teaching sessions. One of these occurred the music of Lully and Rameau, the geously lost in each other’s sound. the day I visited. Once the protest had plays of Racine and Molière, the paint- Similar virtues elevate Rousset’s ended—it wound down before lunch- ings of Watteau. “I cannot say why,” he other explorations of seventeenth- and time—the rehearsal room was invaded told me. “My parents are not from the eighteenth-century repertory. He has by a throng of middle schoolers, who nobility, to say the least. I grew up in championed the operas of Salieri—“La received whispered lectures from a the South of France, and on occasional Grotta di Trofonio,” “Les Danaïdes,” and teacher and were invited to sit amidst trips to Paris I would say, ‘I want to go “Les Horaces”—as well as works by Ci- the ensemble. One boy gazed at Rous- to Versailles! I want to go to Versailles!’ marosa, Martín y Soler, Jommelli, and set as if hypnotized. Perhaps he has a I was a strange little boy.” He first stud- Traetta. Such offbeat choices can exas- future in Baroque conducting. ied piano, then gravitated to the harp- perate concert promoters, but Rousset sichord, winning national notice in his refuses to limit himself to brand-name hat night, I followed the Cham- teens. He became the chief continuo masters. He says, “If you go to a mu- Tber Choir of Namur out to the player for the expatriate American mae- seum, you can see the masterpieces by Chapelle Royale at Versailles, where, in stro William Christie, who, beginning Caravaggio, Vermeer, Watteau, and so league with the Millénium Orchestra in the nineteen-eighties, spearheaded on. But next to them you can see the less and the Argentine conductor Leonardo a revival of interest in the French Ba- celebrated ones, like Leonello Spada and García Alarcón, the group sang three roque. In 1989, Christie’s captivating Tournier, who are in the Caravaggio of Lully’s grand motets: the Dies Irae, presentation of Lully’s “Atys” travelled style, or Lancret, who is of the same pe- the De Profundis, and the Te Deum. to bam, causing a sensation. riod as Watteau. In music, it should be The journey was somewhat arduous, as “I was very happy being Christie’s the same. Let us hear the whole history.” the snow had wreaked havoc on the harpsichord player,” Rousset said. “I “Et in Arcadia Ego,” the Rameau subway and trains. Speckled in white, thought that would be enough. It was spectacle, seems, by contrast, an exer- Versailles had a ghostly, unreal air. It actually Christie who pushed me into cise in defamiliarization. Reinhardt’s seemed less a relic of an imperial age conducting.” In 1991, Rousset took libretto tells of a ninety-five-year-old than a Symbolist’s dream vision. charge of an entire production by Chris- woman who is reliving her life as she Lully’s sacred music has a distinctly tie’s ensemble, Les Arts Florissants. After faces death. At the beginning, as Ra- flamboyant, operatic character: the Te parting ways with Christie, the younger meau’s “Zaïs” Overture churned in the Deum is buttressed by trumpets and tim- man founded his own group. At first, orchestra, hyper-bright lights were pani. One could imagine Louis XIV bask- he delved into Italian opera, not wish- trained on the audience, representing ing in reflected musical glory. As in the ing to set himself up as Christie’s rival. the shock of birth. In an eerie tableau operas, though, the most potent passages Then, when Christie moved on to a of hazily remembered childhood, water are those in which ceremony falls away wider repertory, Rousset returned to dripped on frozen flowers and on what to reveal raw emotion. Lully’s setting of Lully and Rameau, his early loves. appeared to be a Pokémon statue, caus- the Lacrimosa in the Dies Irae takes the Lully wrote thirteen tragédies lyr- ing petals to droop and ears to fall off. form of a sensuous succession of upward- iques; Rousset’s survey has so far en- Toward the end, a “2001”-like mono- leaping and downward-stepping phrases. compassed “Persée,” “Roland,” “Ar- lith hovered over a distant, luminous Mathias Vidal, singing the high-tenor mide,” “Amadis,” “Bellérophon,” portal; then an inflatable tarp of garbage- part, gave a startling edge to a brief melis- “Phaëton,” and, most recently, “Alceste.” bag plastic covered the stage. None of matic line: it would have been excessive These impeccably refined treatments this made immediate sense, but it had if it had not been true to the text, with of mythological and legendary subjects a kind of hallucinatory precision. Less its tearful cry for forgiveness. can seem interchangeable to the first- compelling were the verbose literary Afterward, as I walked back to the time listener. Lully was a man of for- texts projected during orchestral inter- train and Versailles disappeared behind mulas, as was his prized librettist, ludes. Having got the gist, I often closed a scrim of snow, I thought about the Philippe Quinault: spare melodies un- my eyes and simply listened. Les Talens changing meaning of the royal Ba- fold over gravely dancing rhythms, every Lyriques, in the pit, offered their trade- roque. Lully served one of history’s su- word made clear. Rousset’s musicians mark combination of gossamer and grit: preme autocrats, and exercised his own animate the scores without trying to the young mezzo-soprano Lea Desan- form of musical absolutism. Seldom inject every moment with drama—an dre, portraying the dying woman, sang has a composer been so enmeshed in urge that often leads to overheated per- with elegant fire. worldly power. For Rousset, though, formances of Baroque fare. Rousset is The production seemed to go over the values attached to such music have restrained in his interventions, yet he best with younger members of the crowd. shifted over time. “Lully and Rameau can be piercingly effective. In Act II of Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques have are now in a state of resistance to the “Alceste,” at the end of a duet between pitched themselves toward a youthful chaotic world around us,” he told me. the title character and King Admetus, audience, resisting staid, élitist stereo- “Their kind of beauty is something the lovers repeat each other’s names types of classical performance. They alien, maybe even something shock- over lamenting dissonances. Rousset have launched various educational pro- ing. They feel out of place, and so they imposes an expansive ritardando; Ju- grams: their rehearsals at the Collège- are absolutely necessary.” 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 73 community-oriented scene, in Washing- POP MUSIC ton, D.C.—Carrabba became a poster child of the genre at a time when major record labels were realizing its commer- THE “TRL” GENERATION cial potential. Wholesome despite his full-arm tattoos, Carrabba was, in many Dashboard Confessional and Justin Timberlake try again. ways, the perfect pop star: someone who made emotional pain sound like an as- BY CARRIE BATTAN pirational state. His lyrics were eminently shoutable by crowds of thousands: “My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me/So won’t you kill me/So I die happy,” he sings on “Hands Down,” from 2002, one of the band’s biggest hits. During the aughts, Carrabba inched away from this hyper-specific torrent of inner dialogue, toggling between an in- timate acoustic sound and something more like sweeping stadium rock. On the band’s new full-length album, “Crooked Shadows,” its first in nearly a decade, this transition is complete. Car- rabba, rather than rely on the demons of his youth, uses his lyrics as a rallying cry for younger people who suffer from ev- ergreen types of emotional distress. He no longer speaks to an imagined audi- ence of one but to an entire generation. He is newly fond of the pronoun “we”: “We never learned to keep our voices down, no/We only learned to shout,” he sings, on “We Fight.” For Carrabba, who is forty-two, de- spondence is now buttressed by an al- most gospel-like optimism. “Ooh, we’re gonna be all right!” he tells his listeners, a stark turn from the man who, on the early hit “Saints and Sailors,” described himself as “a walking open wound, a tro- phy display of bruises.” Carrabba under- ast summer, the emo-pop band Like Bieber, Carrabba has a knack for stands that a young person’s angst is as LDashboard Confessional made an vocal melody, but the tone and the in- fleeting as it is potent, and he speaks as unexpected choice at the end of a live tensity of his version made the song anew. a figurehead for anguish rather than as show in Central Park. All evening, it had Bieber’s bratty lyrics were defanged, and a victim of it. Yet, even from this van- performed its blockbuster singles, most the chorus—“If you like the way you tage, he remains true to the tenets of of which are known for their pared- look that much/Then, baby, you should emo—that life is essentially terrible, and down, acoustic intimacy and the epic, go and love yourself ”—was transformed that every experience is rooted in a kind agonized wail of the front man, Chris from a kiss-off into an outpouring of of emotionally stunted suffering and ad- Carrabba. But Carrabba closed the set pure reaction. Carrabba can mold any versity that must be tackled. “There’s still with an emotionally labored rendition sentiment into totalizing torment with- a kid somewhere that needs to hear this, of Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself,” from out surrendering its sweetness. who’s tired of bleeding and battered and 2015, a master class in acoustic pop. The In the past two decades, this ability being torn up,” Carrabba announces, on cover version illuminated how much has enabled Carrabba to cut a singular “We Fight.” Carrabba shares with the world of main- path. A child of punk rock who eventu- Commitment to honoring emotional stream pop. But it also demonstrated ally found a calling as an emo-rock singer, distress is one thing. Meaningful expres- what separates the band from its peers— in the late nineteen-nineties—more than sion of those emotions is another, and in pop, emo, indie rock, and punk alike. a decade after emo’s genesis as a small, Dashboard Confessional’s late-career music is less powerful than its early work, Chris Carrabba no longer sings to an audience of one but to an entire cohort. precisely because it comes from a place

74 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY AMY MATSUSHITA-BEAL of remove. “Crooked Shadows” is as con- to reposition Timberlake as a soulful, cise and earnest as Dashboard has ever salt-of-the-earth guy reconnecting with been, but its sound has been flattened his Memphis roots. (“Act like the South into a pop-rock haze, with Carrabba’s ain’t the shit,” he taunts, on “Midnight voice lower in the mix than on previous Summer Jam,” as though Atlanta has releases. “Crooked Shadows” will not do not been widely accepted for a half de- much for the Dashboard Confessional cade as the most important city in fan—or for the young teen who has never music.) For someone hoping to boost heard of the band but desperately craves the reputation of the South, Timber- its strain of emotional laceration. lake demonstrates only a cursory con- For younger generations, emo is less cept of what it can represent, lyrically Ohana Family Camp in Vermont a genre that speaks to a moment than a and musically. Drained beer cans, twangy perennial force that generates waves of guitar, low whistles, flannel shirts, an el- Swim Archery Sail Tennis searing, confessional rock music. Because emental connection with nature and Kayak Hiking emo was never exactly cool, it has been God, laments about work and bills—all Canoe Biking insulated from the questions of relevance are jammed into this record. The effect Ohanacamp.org • (802) 333-3460 that squashed other niche types of music, is a pop-identity hall of mirrors, and such as indie rock and grunge. There is “Man of the Woods” is both the most near-annual chatter about emo’s revival, bizarre and the dullest major pop record in the form of older bands resurfacing, of this decade. or of new generations of alt-rockers pay- “Man of the Woods” could have been ing homage to the genre. Taylor Swift is a fascinating, if not particularly com- a rabid Dashboard Confessional fan— mercial, concept album about a famous, and Carrabba could be cited as the in- talented man’s return to his birthplace. spiration for the emotional precision of But Timberlake—who made the album her lyrics. The stigma of emo sincerity with the guidance of Pharrell, another has long faded, so much so that today’s early-aughts star who has persisted into most exciting hip-hop and pop stars are this decade—cannot seem to stick to his Your Anniversary explicitly calling on its sound. One man’s conceit. One moment, he’s a carefree Immortalized in Roman Numerals emotional turbulence may be fleeting, party instigator with a dirty mouth; the 3-Day Rush Available! but emo is eternal. next, he’s a downtrodden Southerner Crafted from Gold and Platinum who’s behind on his bills. He’s a weath- JOHN- CHRISTIAN.COM OR CALL 888.646.6466 nother early-aughts front man ered sage addressing his young son, then Awhose legacy has benefitted more he’s a guy with no finer point to make from his prolonged absence than from than “Success is cool/Money is fine/But his presence is Justin Timberlake, who you’re special.” returns to the spotlight this year, unwit- The production is not much more tingly alienated from today’s culture. focussed: Timberlake is both a one-man Like Carrabba, Timberlake is a prom- barbershop quartet and a neo-funk Fran- inent ambassador of the era of MTV’s kenstein. Despite all of his attempts at “TRL”; he is also one of the most suc- cross-genre noodling, the best song on cessful graduates from the academy of the album is the most straightforward boy bands. He launched his solo career, attempt at country music, “Say Some- in 2002, with the album “Justified,” for thing,” which finds Timberlake playing which he and the producer Timbaland backup for Chris Stapleton. “Miss you, too.” teamed up to create genre-bending pop It’s not difficult to understand why songs that, despite their ugly, low-range Timberlake made a record like this. squelch, made you want to dance. But Aging pop stars must navigate the chal- Mike Twohy, February 11, 2013 Timberlake was not just a sonic inno- lenge of maintaining relevance while vator; he was also a harbinger of the avoiding desperation. They also strain ways in which hip-hop has overtaken to capture the attention of listeners who the pop landscape, and of the ease with are barraged with innovation. An artist New Yorker which white stars have co-opted hip- like Timberlake, for better or for worse, hop and R. & B. must aspire to high art and grand ges- Cartoon Prints But Timberlake’s new album, “Man tures. These, of course, are harder to pull Find your favorite cartoon of the Woods,” his fifth, fumbles awk- off than they appear. Artistic vision can- wardly with the present. On its sur- not be faked, which is an unfortunate on virtually any topic at face—and there is plenty of surface on reality that Timberlake has been able to newyorkerstore.com this sixteen-song slog—it’s an attempt elide until now. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 75 the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Linda THE THEATRE Gross), his eighth to be produced in New York, illustrates, perhaps more than any other, how the slick, self-satisfied cyni- THE TROUBLES cism that infects his weakest scripts threatens to overtake his real gifts— Martin McDonagh’s pastiche about the patriarchy. which include an excellent sense of struc- ture and, as evidenced in “The Beauty BY HILTON ALS Queen of Leenane” (1996) and other early works, a genuine understanding of how loneliness can twist bodies and twist the truth. At forty-seven, the London- born writer is relatively young, and has, one hopes, many more plays and films ahead of him. (His 2017 movie, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” which he wrote and directed, has been nominated for seven Oscars.) Still, what one senses squatting onstage at the Linda Gross is the playwright’s tattered drive; no amount of spirited dialogue and ac- tion can hide his intellectual and spiri- tual exhaustion. Like many, many writers before him, McDonagh may now be trapped by his own success: it, too, sits exhausted cen- ter stage—embedded in the violence and lack of moral consequence that pit his characters’ skin. Despite the contempt in his work—or because of it—Mc- Donagh’s “bad boy” image still gives au- diences a racy thrill, particularly Amer- ican audiences, who, for the most part, look at the world through a moral lens. But the excitement that he elicits is hol- low. As the characters in “Hangmen” en- gage in all sorts of brutal and morally misguided hijinks, without quite realiz- ing what they’re doing (or allowing it to get to them), much is exposed beyond ust as playwrights’ artistic develop- tough love in equal measure. Kenneth what McDonagh has actually written. Jment can be charted through their Tynan’s pieces about Noël Coward, Ter- “Hangmen” relies on McDonagh’s tech- work, critics tell us who they are—and ence Rattigan, and John Osborne are not nical skill and his jadedness: he knows how they grow, or don’t grow—when only intimate dialogues with the play- what contemporary audiences want—to they’re fortunate enough to be able to wrights but, collectively, a descriptive be dominated by “real” men who piss on focus on a particular dramatist over a pe- narrative about how empire is changing the theatre’s generally liberal air while riod of time. An engaged critic jumps at and must change. And Elizabeth Hard- conversing in unspeakable language. the chance to dance with an artist’s vi- wick’s New York theatre reviews are as sion; it teaches him so much about him- much about her love for the city that “ angmen” begins excitingly. It’s self and, by extension, his job, which is promoted such non-natives as Sam Shep- H1963. A prison cell in the North and isn’t subjective. Brooks Atkinson, the ard and Peter Weiss as they are a defense of England. The space is grim, just the Times’ lead theatre reviewer for decades, of drama as a literary art. kind of place you’d imagine as an ante- wrote many pieces about Tennessee Wil- Thinking about Martin McDonagh’s chamber to the gallows, or to Hell. Plus, liams’s triumphs and fascinating failures; work over the years hasn’t led me to any the lighting is terrible. James Hennessy taken together, those reviews read like a definitive conclusions just yet, but his (Gilles Geary) sits at a table, head in his long letter from a fair and unsentimen- latest play, the comedic drama “Hang- hands, a guard on either side of him. tal uncle, offering encouragement and men” (directed by Matthew Dunster, at He’s as miserable as one of Kafka’s sup- plicants, and just as perplexed: what has In “Hangmen,” the writer’s slick cynicism threatens to overtake his real gifts. he done to end up in such a terrible

76 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS place? He’s been convicted of abducting Hanging has been abolished, a certain That’s what continues to make his 2003 a girl in Norfolk and murdering her. political sense is entering the country, play “The Pillowman” his best work. It Hennessy’s innocent, though, and we and a young reporter named Clegg looks at why people generally need Big know he’s innocent: we can hear it in (Owen Campbell) would like a com- Brother, if not Big Daddy: because liv- his voice. He says he’s never been to ment about it all, but Harry brushes Clegg ing in the adult world means having to Norfolk, and he would never do a “nasty off, belittling him. Change has no place choose and to answer for one’s actions. thing” like that. But what do the facts in Harry’s world. The government—his (Harry feels like a leftover from that play.) matter here? Harry (Mark Addy), the government—is something that he Being a crippled man-child, divested of hangman, and his shorter, thinner assis- doesn’t need to question or interpret; it’s responsibility, takes on a kind of erotic tant, Syd (Reece Shearsmith), aren’t buy- all he knows and wants to know. As he aura in “The Pillowman,” and McDonagh ing any of it. Guilt is guilt, never to be says to Bill: could have been something truly new— questioned if it has been decreed so by an Orwell of the stage—if he hadn’t opted, the courts. Anyway, Harry has a job to Cos one thing I’ve always prided myself ultimately, to be the Big Daddy himself, on, for right or for wrong, I’m not saying I’m do, and he wears his hideous responsi- a special man, but one thing I’ve prided my- in 2010’s dreadful play “A Behanding in bility like a badge he can’t help shining. self on is that, on the subject of hanging, I’ve Spokane,” and again here. Look at those But, as with any self-important pro- always chosen to keep me own counsel. I’ve blacks—at least we’re not that, he and his fessional, it doesn’t take much to throw always chosen not to say a public word on this characters seem to say in both works. (I Harry off his game. Albert Pierrepoint, very private matter, and why have I chosen to stopped watching “Three Billboards” for do that you may ask? . . . For the past twenty- Harry’s rival executioner, is considered five years now I’ve been a servant of the Crown the same reason.) None of the people of the superior hangman. (Harry: “I’m just in the capacity of hangman. color in McDonagh’s plays exists outside as good as bloody Pierrepoint!” Hen- his dream of whiteness versus that “other.” nessy: “Hung by a rubbish hangman, Harry longs for the authority that It took a moment for Mooney’s hateful oh that’s so me!”) And it’s during this comes with order—established order— laugh to sink in, because at first I thought, scene that McDonagh’s brand of Flann while Mooney (the very attractive Johnny O.K., guys like that, at that time, spoke O’Brien-influenced absurdity flexes it- Flynn), a newcomer to the pub, rep- that way. But, later, when Bill gratuitously self most frighteningly and amusingly: resents something like disorder, an al- describes an encounter with a black man in addition to correcting Hennessy’s luring controlled chaos, the cool turbu- at the bookie’s who’s maybe all right— English, Syd, who stutters, spends the lence of the dandy. Stepping sharply in for a black man—I just couldn’t rational- last moments of Hennessy’s life telling his Beatles boots, Mooney’s another ize it. Were there no other signs of differ- him that if he would just relax he’d be bloody Londoner, whose very presence ence in class-conscious England—the dead by now. Lights out. shows up the shabbiness of the place, the poor, the unemployed, the general “prob- Lights up on a pub on the outskirts tiredness of the men’s talk. He’s just pass- lem” of immigration—for McDonagh to of Oldham. It’s a couple of years after ing through, but he likes jostling with use to make his characters feel superior? Hennessy’s hanging. Harry’s behind the these rubes. Not only does he flirt with You can see how McDonagh has in- bar, pulling pints, along with his wife, Alice, but, when her fifteen-year-old fluenced my criticism here: I am shame- Alice (Sally Rogers). The pub is grim in daughter, the pudgy Shirley (Gaby fully calling for him to pick on another a different way. You can somehow see French), relieves her father behind the marginalized group. But after nearly a the smoky funk of a thousand stale cig- bar, he starts messing with her, too. decade of seeing and reading his plays, arettes oozing down the walls. Talk oozes Mooney’s the kind of guy folks can’t take one revolts at being told, again and again, out of the drinkers’ mouths, too. There their eyes off; he radiates something bad that one is revolting. are a few regulars—latter-day patrons of and exciting, or he’s exciting because he’s “Hangmen” is a pastiche about the pa- Harry’s Bar in Eugene O’Neill’s “The bad. Before he offers his opinion about triarchy, old and new, and when, at the Iceman Cometh,” except that Mc- a dim-witted friend of Shirley’s who’s end of the play, Mooney has to pay for Donagh’s guys, including Arthur ( John been sent to an institution, he eggs Clegg his cat-and-mouse sadism, the violence Horton), the oldest and deafest of the on to go up the road and interview Pierre- and the casualness with which that vio- lot, Charlie (Billy Carter), and Bill (Rich- point, who was a better hangman. That lence is met are simply proof of Harry’s ard Hollis, turning in a very smart char- gets Harry started. But to what end? right to keep his own counsel. McDonagh acterization of a self-pitying alcoholic), Mooney isn’t so much a McDonagh char- performs another version of that on the aren’t nearly as deep as O’Neill’s cre- acter as McDonagh’s idea of a Pinter page. “Hangmen” would have been infi- ations, in part because they don’t yearn character—Lenny in “The Homecoming,” nitely more interesting—more energetic for anything. O’Neill’s drunks used to say, a menace who changes the estab- and more true—had McDonagh’s point believe in something—God, love—but lished order just by being, and hating been to show how illusory power is, and have lost or misplaced their faith, be- what others do with their being. Sitting how destructive. Harry’s need for empire cause of life, not in spite of it. Their pipe down with his pint, Mooney laughs out and Mooney’s racism come from the same dreams—dreams that express their in- loud, and when someone asks why, he place: a love of the only power they can terior world—would be out of place here, says it’s because of a picture of a funny- recognize—the old male power that builds where no one shows anything that could looking black chap in the newspaper. and destroys lives and kingdoms with a be called interest in another person. Throughout his career, McDonagh laugh and little real feeling for the lesser Things have changed in Harry’s world. has wrestled with the idea of authority. body falling through that trapdoor. ♦

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 77 pensively tattered sleeve. But, in place ON TELEVISION of Ball’s trademark playful anarchy, it is weighed down by a deadening self- consciousness: it’s a Way We Live Now FAM AND CHEESE show, about a multiracial family col- liding with the Trump era. (“We lost, Family drama on “Here and Now,” “This Is Us,” and “The Fosters.” folks. We lost,” Robbins growls, in one typical speech.) Robbins and Hunter BY EMILY NUSSBAUM play Greg Boatwright and Audrey Bayer, a cranky philosopher and his high-strung wife, a former therapist who now runs a nonprofit called the Empathy Project. The couple, who are white, have a teen-age daughter, the snarky Kristen (Sosie Bacon). They also have three older kids, who were adopted from countries harmed by U.S. policies. Jerrika Hinton plays Ashley, a Liberian-born fashion marketer mar- ried to a white Republican, with a bi- racial child. Raymond Lee is Duc, a Vietnamese-born sex addict/celibate who works as a “motivational archi- tect.” Daniel Zovatto is Ramon, a gay orphan of the Colombian drug wars who is a video-game designer. He sees a psychiatrist (the terrific Peter Mac- dissi, who is Alan Ball’s partner and a co-producer of the show), an Iranian secular-Muslim immigrant married to a more devout Palestinian; they have a gender-fluid son. So, you know, it’s a lot. In the first episode, Ramon has a spooky halluci- nation that involves the number 1111; he also has a dream that is tied to his psy- chiatrist’s painful past. His mother sus- pects schizophrenia, but the show quickly begins to hint at other, gooier explana- tions—perhaps some kind of mystical n the first episode of “Here and Now,” isodes are—despite a very HBO com- globalism, a special gift that lets one cup Ion HBO, a liberal Portland mother, bination of worldly themes and super- of trauma spill into another. It’s “Par- played by Holly Hunter, defends her horny sex scenes—more of an irritant enthood” crossbred with “The Leftovers,” choice of party supplies to her daugh- than an intoxicant. “Six Feet Under” basically—the kind of concept that tilts ter. “Bamboo is sustainable!” she says. was not a perfect show, either, but it fast from grand to grandiose. It also gave “The world is bigger than us.” Her daugh- was an amazing one: a comedy about me worrisome flashbacks of another ter scoffs. “Sweetie, remember,” Hunter death, with great characters and a philosophy-stuffed HBO drama that coos back. “Thoughts create reality.” uniquely Californian embrace of dec- sniffed way too hard at the fumes of the If only that were true. “Here and adence. It was also the first real “trau- supernatural, “True Detective.” Now” crashes to the shore on a glitter- medy,” presaging many of the best mod- The bigger problem with “Here and ing wave of high hopes, with an A-list ern shows, from “Transparent” to “Crazy Now” is that, when characters are not cast that includes Hunter and Tim Rob- Ex-Girlfriend” and “Orange Is the New seeing portents, they’re giving speeches. bins; it’s made by the beloved show- Black”—genre blends that are at once You know the people who say, “I don’t runner Alan Ball, the creator of the generous and unsentimental about dam- make small talk”? This is them. An ob- much missed “Six Feet Under” (and also aged people. sequious philosophy T.A. gushes, “The the less missed but still fun and filthy “Here and Now” is a family drama. way you marry epicureanism with pres- “True Blood”). Sadly, the first four ep- It wears its good intentions on its ex- entism and then reboot them both into something so deeply, deeply moral!” “Here and Now” wears its good intentions on its expensively tattered sleeve. Ramon describes his new video game

78 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIE COE as an exploration of “how we perceive one point, I tried to watch it on my com- cross-racial adoption feels suspiciously impossibility.” In one truly cringewor- puter but clicked on what appeared to like a structural shortcut to a diverse thy scene, Ashley and Duc banter about be an hour-long ad for the Jeep Wag- cast. Not so on “The Fosters,” where racial microaggressions in a manner so oneer. Nope, that was the latest episode. the relationships are less stylized, more inorganic that it would be banned from “This Is Us” is way more heavy-handed lived in, with funk and warmth and any Portland co-op: “You’re sassy!” than the best shows in its lineage—“Fri- looseness that feel like real life, captur- “You’re inscrutable!” The show wants day Night Lights,” “Once and Again,” ing the bickering bonds among parents to poke fun at liberal neuroses, but it’s “My So-Called Life.” But, when you add and teens. It’s an issues show, for sure— so focussed on meaning that it’s a huge butter, food tastes good. “This Is Us” over the years, “The Fosters” has folded fun-suck. Even a ludicrously uncon- makes people cry, even me, and, as far as everything from DACA to sex-offender vincing gang of “alt-right” teen-agers I’m concerned, that’s serving a public registries into the lives of its sprawling deliver talking points: it’s like Twitter, purpose, if only because, unlike its more ensemble. But the themes are grounded the TV show. ambitious predecessors, it’s not constantly and granular, the characters allowed to A few characters—especially the in- on the verge of cancellation. grow and change. Jude, once a saintly secure, arrogant Duc and the mourn- Sadly, my own favorite, “The Fos- child, has matured into a likably messy ful therapist, Farid—do resonate. And ters” (on Freeform), is ending this sum- gay teen-ager, far better than any mere the show’s basic model, which might mer. Like “Here and Now” and “This empowering role model. But, really, no be summed up as “hot people yammer- Is Us,” “The Fosters” is about a multi- one on “The Fosters” is just a symbol: ing about abstractions,” can feel charm- racial family built through fostering and they live in the here and now. ingly theatrical, like George Bernard adoption: two moms, one a white cop The show has basic aesthetics: close- Shaw for stoners. The homes are lus- and the other a biracial vice-principal; ups, pop ballads, nothing fancy. But or- cious, rich-hippie real-estate porn; the a white son from the cop’s first mar- dinary TV tools allow for quietly radi- chemistry between Ramon and his tat- riage, to a man; Latino twins, fostered cal moves, such as showing a trans boy tooed beardo of a boyfriend, Henry, is to adoption; and two newly adopted in a love scene with his shirt off, scars almost worth the price of admission. white kids, Callie and her sweet younger visible. In a recent episode, that charac- But depth requires digging. “Here and brother, Jude, who were abused in their ter, Aaron, was arrested while protesting Now” clearly wants to be part of the previous foster home. It’s had its ups an ICE raid, then had to decide whether resistance. So far, it’s more the sort of and downs, in five seasons, with a few to “come out,” to avoid being placed with thing that makes people mutter, “This spikes of melodrama that went to eleven. male prisoners—a plot that may sound is why he won.” (It was not strictly necessary to have like clickbait thrown into a Crock-Pot. Adderall addiction and a nail-gun-in- But the story was hugely affecting, be- he current series that “Here and duced brain injury in the same episode.) cause the terrific trans actor Elliot TNow” most closely resembles is this And yet “The Fosters,” for all its Fletcher, as Aaron, and Maia Mitchell, year’s monster hit “This Is Us,” on NBC, bumps and swerves, is a show whose as Callie, played it not as social-justice another family weepie about a diverse-ish loss is worth protesting—a soothing, theatre but as something intimate, ordi- family (fat daughter, addict son, black empathetic alternative universe in a nary. “When you come out as gay,” Aaron son adopted by white family). Aesthet- world that needs them, badly. It has lay- told Callie, “people see you as being more ically speaking, it’s like the middle-class ered performances, especially by Teri authentic. Whereas, when you come out analogue to HBO’s gated community: Polo and Sherri Saum as the moms, as trans, people sometimes think you’ve we get product placement instead of Hayden Byerly as Jude, and Cierra deceived them.” It was an educational threesomes and speeches that are heart- Ramirez as Mariana, one of the twins. message, no doubt. But it felt like a talk, felt rather than pseudo-intellectual. At On “Here and Now” and “This Is Us,” not a Ted talk. 

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THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 26, 2018 79 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Robert Leighton, must be received by Sunday, February 25th. The finalists in the February 5th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the March 12th issue. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ” ......

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

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“The food’s good, but the atmosphere’s a little thin.” “I thought you said it wouldn’t need much attention.” Matthew Raihala, Madison, Wis. Peter Gynd, Brooklyn, N.Y.

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