PRICE $8.99 MAY 15, 2017

THE INNOVATORS ISSUE

MAY 15, 2017

7 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 31 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson on politicians and speaking fees; Streep and Sondheim; Real News; luxury bongs; Sheelah Kolhatkar on compliance officers. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE SCIENCES Nicola Twilley 38 Sight Unseen The promise of sensory-substitution technology. SHOUTS & MURMURS Ian Frazier 43 Goodbye, My Funding PROFILES Matthew Trammell 44 Track Record Richard Russell and XL Recordings. DEPT. OF LABOR Nathan Heller 52 The Gig Is Up Adventures in the sharing economy. ANNALS OF LAW William Finnegan 64 A Righteous Case Zainab Ahmad’s counterterrorism mission. FICTION Etgar Keret 76 “Fly Already” THE CRITICS A CRITIC AT LARGE Adam Gopnik 79 Rethinking the American Revolution. BOOKS 83 Briefly Noted Vinson Cunningham 85 John McWhorter’s “Talking Back, Talking Black.” Dan Chiasson 88 Two début poetry collections. THE ART WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 90 A Florine Stettheimer retrospective. MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 92 Chaya Czernowin’s cataclysmic new opera.

Continued on page 2 THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 94 “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” “Chuck.” POEMS Emily Jungmin Yoon 58 “Time, in Whales” Yusef Komunyakaa 70 “The Soul’s Soundtrack” COVER Roz Chast “Motherboard”

DRAWINGS Emily Flake, Jeremy Nguyen, Amy Kurzweil, P. C. Vey, Harry Bliss, Edward Steed, Roz Chast, Trevor Spaulding, Benjamin Schwartz, Christopher Weyant, Liana Finck, Paul Noth, Will McPhail, John O’Brien, Tom Chitty, Robert Leighton SPOTS Sébastien Plassard

“It’s still in beta.”

2 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017

CONTRIBUTORS

Nicola Twilley (“Sight Unseen,” p. 38), a William Finnegan (“A Righteous Case,” contributing writer for newyorker.com, p. 64), a staff writer, won the 2016 Pu- is the author of the blog Edible Ge- litzer Prize in biography for his book ography and a co-host of the podcast “Barbarian Days.” “Gastropod.” Amy Davidson (Comment, p. 31), a staff Etgar Keret (Fiction, p. 76) is an Israeli writer since 2014, has been at The New writer. “The Seven Good Years” is his Yorker since 1995. most recent book. Matthew Trammell (“Track Record,” Nathan Heller (“The Gig Is Up,” p. 52), p. 44) joined the magazine in 2015, as a staff writer, has contributed to the the Night Life editor of Goings On magazine since 2011. About Town. He covers music for newyorker.com. Emily Jungmin Yoon (Poem, p. 58) is a poet and translator. She currently serves Roz Chast (Cover; Cartoon, p. 60), a New as the poetry editor of The Margins, Yorker cartoonist since 1978, is the au- the literary magazine of the Asian thor of the graphic memoir “Can’t We American Writers’ Workshop. Talk About Something More Pleasant?”

Adam Gopnik (A Critic at Large, p. 79), Vinson Cunningham (Books, p. 85) joined a staff writer, has been contributing to the magazine as a staff writer in 2016. The New Yorker since 1986. His most recent book is “The Table Comes First.” Sheelah Kolhatkar (The Financial Page, p. 37) is a staff writer. Her book, “Black Alex Ross (Musical Events, p. 92) is a Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, staff writer and the author of “The Rest and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Wanted Man on Wall Street,” came Century” and “Listen to This.” out in February.

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

PHOTO BOOTH PODCAST Carolyn Kormann writes about Bryan On this week’s episode, Etgar Keret Thomas’s photographs of a changing reads “Fly Already,” his short story Florida coastline. from the issue.

SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the

App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) THOMAS BRYAN BY PHOTOGRAPH LEFT:

4 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 THE MAIL

LEADING THE REVIEW Dreher is unable to see the liberative as- pects of gospel identity along with the Though my memory may be imperfect “ordering” aspects that he so admires. after half a century, it is highly unlikely Mark Genszler that Norman Podhoretz, the author of St. Francis Episcopal Church “Making It,” a critique of New York in- 1North Bellmore, N.Y. tellectuals, was asked to become a co- editor of The New York Review of Books, TRUMP’S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS as my late wife, Barbara Epstein, has re- counted and as Louis Menand reports I share many of David Remnick’s opin- in his essay on Podhoretz (Books, May ions about Donald Trump and his so- 1st). When Barbara and I, along with called policies, but not the dread expressed Elizabeth Hardwick and her husband, in his recent Talk of the Town piece Robert Lowell, envisioned the Review at (Comment, May 1st). The article attempts dinner, in the early nineteen-sixties, we to convince the reader that President decided immediately that Bob Silvers— Trump poses a threat to America’s de- and only Bob—could edit it. That eve- mocracy. It warns that we may be wit- ning, we called Bob, who immediately nessing the nation’s demise, and notes grasped what we were planning and ac- that, to date, many democracies have cepted the job. (Bob died a few weeks failed. The United States was never as ago.) I became estranged from Podho- liberal as Remnick seems to imply, nor retz some years later, after he threatened are democracies from different eras quite to end our friendship if the Review did as comparable as he suggests. Our de- not celebrate his book. I told him that mocracy remains a work in progress. We the Review leaves such judgments en- should embrace vigilance rather than de- tirely to the reviewer. In the case of “Mak- bilitating anxiety about the future. ing It,” the reviewer, like most others, Jeffrey J. Cymrot found the book foolish. Newton, Mass. Jason Epstein 1New York City Remnick spends nearly all his extended Comment talking about the Bad Guy, CHRISTIAN EXILES Donald Trump. But, if there is to be a liberal, democratic future, Remnick, the I am a gay, married Episcopal priest, so media, and the Democratic Party need I was particularly interested to read Joshua to start promoting true progressives, such Rothman’s Profile of Rod Dreher, the as Bernie Sanders, who are not beholden religious writer, whose recent book, “The to corporations, rather than Democrats Benedict Option,” entreats Christians to like Elizabeth Warren, who has been exile themselves from modern life and moving toward the center for the past retreat into religious communities (“The two years. They must also realize that, Seeker,” May 1st). Much of what Dre- as unhappy as many people are with her writes about resonates with me, from Trump, some citizens—even on the left— his dislocation, his restlessness, and his are relieved that the candidate whom yearning to belong to his critique of both they consider the greater of two evils was right-wing and left-wing Christianity, not elected. with their vapidities and identity poli- Alan Cohen tics. But I take issue with the gender bi- Eugene, Ore. nary that Dreher seems to adhere to, and the fear associated with it. It is possible • to experience the truth of God—and to Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, withdraw from the world into a small, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited religious community—without subscrib- for length and clarity, and may be published in ing to essentialist notions of gender, sex- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume uality, or identity. It is sad to me that of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 5

MAY 10 Ð 16, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The Bronx Zoo is one of many institutions under the aegis of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which protects ecosystems around the world. New to the zoo are eight Indian gharials—critically endangered reptiles of the crocodilian order, indigenous to the Chambal River, in India—identifiable by their needle-nose snouts. They can be found basking in the JungleWorld exhibit, along with white-cheeked gibbons, painted storks, and Indian fruit bats. The gharials eat mainly fish, and not humans, perhaps only because their mouths aren’t wide enough.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY body of work. He now spends much of his time in New York City, and his Symphony Space residency includes a recital by the sterling pianist Lisa Moore CLASSICAL MUSIC at the intimate Thalia Theatre. It also sprawls beyond 1 the venue, with the esteemed chorus the Crossing performing “Canticles of the Holy Wind” at St. Mi- OPERA Rutter performs all twenty-four songs in the sev- chael’s Church, while Alarm Will Sound disperses enty-five-seat Cabaret Theatre at the Duplex, with throughout Morningside Park to play “Ten Thou- Operamission’s director, Jennifer Peterson, at the sand Birds.” May 11 at 7, May 12 at 7:30, and May 14 Metropolitan Opera piano. May 16 at 9:30. (61 Christopher St. at Seventh at 3. (Broadway at 95th St. symphonyspace.org.) A crew of topnotch singers brings a wealth of dra- Ave. purplepass.com/operamission.) matic specificity to the current revival of “Don 1 Chiara String Quartet Giovanni.” Mariusz Kwiecien’s leathery-voiced The Chiara, a favorite ensemble at the Met Mu- Don is a dandy with an alpha male’s desire to dom- ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES seum, returns to offer a concert of two substantial inate those around him, but that doesn’t stop Erwin works: the Clarinet Quintet by Brahms (with Todd Schrott from stealing the show as a best-in-class New York Philharmonic Palmer) and the String Quartet No. 6 (“Canticle”) Leporello marked by a bone-dry wit and a thun- The Philharmonic continues its deep and unex- by the respected American composer Pierre Jalbert, dering bass-baritone. The entire cast—including pected dive into live cinema accompaniment. First in its New York première. May 11 at 7. (Fifth Ave. at Angela Meade, Matthew Polenzani, Marina Re- comes a screening of Blake Edwards’s “Breakfast 82nd St. 212-570-3949.) beka, and Isabel Leonard—copes admirably with at Tiffany’s” (with its splendid score by Henry Plácido Domingo’s sluggish conducting and keeps Mancini), which serves as the orchestra’s spring Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center the musical values high. May 11 at 7:30. • Also play- gala. Then it’s on to a short run of Steven Spiel- Charm and rusticity abound in an intimate recital by ing: Franco Alfano’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” is a fluent berg’s “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” one of the high two outstanding young musicians, the violinist Al- example of Italian opera after Puccini, but it really notes in the professional love affair between Spiel- exander Sitkovetsky and the pianist Wu Qian. Their owes its contemporary renewal to a few star tenors berg and his favorite composer, the venerable John program includes sonatas for violin and piano by who have been unable to resist the chance to play Williams. Joshua Gersen (the orchestra’s assistant Schumann (in D Minor, Op. 121) and Grieg (No. 3 the immortal title character. Roberto Alagna head- conductor) and David Newman conduct, respec- in C Minor), in addition to Falla’s “Suite Popu- lines the current revival, opposite Jennifer Rowley tively. May 11 at 7:30; May 12 at 7 and May 13 at 1 laire Espagnole” and Schnittke’s “Suite in the Old and Atalla Ayan; Marco Armiliato. May 10 at 7:30 and 7. (David Geffen Hall. 212-875-5656.) Style.” May 11 at 7:30. (Rose Studio, Rose Bldg., Lin- and May 13 at 8:30. • Opening night of the Met’s coln Center. 212-875-5788.) revival of Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer” was BAM: “Silent Voices” the occasion for a well-deserved round of toasts: to Hilton Als, a critic for this magazine, and the poet Alexandra Gardner the veteran German baritone Michael Volle (in the Claudia Rankine are among the writers contribut- Many contemporary composers are interested in title role), whose voice may have lost a little rich- ing original texts for this concert by the beloved combining acoustic instruments with digital sounds, ness over the years but not a bit of authority or style; Brooklyn Youth Chorus, a program that highlights but few achieve the particular alchemy of craft, to the American dramatic soprano Amber Wagner, social injustice and marks the ensemble’s twenty- whimsy, and sensual appeal that the Baltimore-based who offered a star-making performance (as Senta) fifth anniversary. The commissioned composers in- composer Gardner consistently produces. Appearing that, with its dark intensity of coloring, could stand clude Nico Muhly, Kamala Sankaram, Paul Miller as part of the “Musical Ecologies” series at the Old comparison to Astrid Varnay; and to the conductor (DJ Spooky), and Caroline Shaw. May 12-13 at 7:30. Stone House, in Brooklyn, she presents works for Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music direc- (Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., unaccompanied shakuhachi and for alto flute, am- tor designate, whose solo curtain call brought forth Brooklyn. bam.org.) plified violin, and cello, each paired with electron- a cascade of roses, thrown by a grateful orchestra. ics. May 11 at 8. (336 3rd St. 718-768-3195.) May 12 at 7:30. • Robert Carsen’s unmissable new American Symphony Orchestra: production of “Der Rosenkavalier” brilliantly up- “The Apostles” Bargemusic dates Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s eighteenth-cen- The conductor Leon Botstein has been a prominent A highlight of the weekend at the floating cham- tury setting to the turbulent, militarized pre-First champion of Edward Elgar, and, in 2007, demon- ber-music series is a recital by the admired pianist World War Vienna of Schnitzler, Klimt, and Musil— strated his affinity for the English composer’s regal Yael Weiss, who interleaves three Beethoven so- even if some of his gestures (such as setting Act III œuvre throughout a memorable Bard Music Fes- natas (including No. 24, “À Thérèse”) with more in a brothel) go too far. Renée Fleming is a poignant tival. Here, the festival’s chorus, plus six vocal so- recent works inspired by classic American pop- Marschallin, Elīna Garanča a thrilling and highly loists, joins the orchestra in “The Apostles,” a rav- ular forms, by Paul Chiara (“Rag 109”) and Paul original Octavian, and Günther Groissböck a sur- ishing 1903 oratorio in which Elgar set texts from Schoenfield (“Boogie 54”). May 12 at 8. (Fulton prisingly dashing and youthful Ochs. Also with the Bible and the Apocrypha. May 12 at 8. (Car- Ferry Landing, Brooklyn. For tickets and full schedule, fine performances from Erin Morley, Matthew Po- negie Hall. 212-247-7800.) see bargemusic.org.) lenzani, and Markus Brück; Sebastian Weigle. May 1 13 at 12:30. (Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000. Five Boroughs Music Festival: Quicksilver These are the final performances of the season.) RECITALS The enterprising, citywide festival’s next concert features a group—led by the superb violinists Rob- On Site Opera: “The Secret Gardener” NYFOS Next ert Mealy and Julie Andrijeski—that’s become a Before the exquisite madcappery of “Le Nozze di The soprano Lauren Worsham became an alt-clas- firm presence in New York’s early-music scene. Figaro,” an eighteen-year-old Mozart set loose a sical star in 2012, with her incendiary performance Here, the ensemble ranges somewhat beyond the different cast of characters on a picturesque estate in David T. Little’s opera “Dog Days.” Not exactly a usual precincts of Renaissance and Baroque cre- for a day of mistaken identity and jealous reversals. slouch in music theatre, either, the Tony-nominated ativity to explore work by composers from Poland On Site Opera takes great care in selecting the lo- Worsham and her husband, the Obie-winning mu- (Mielczewski), Austria (Fux and Schmelzer), Swe- cales for its shows, and this production is no dif- sician Kyle Jarrow, like to get into trouble with their den, and Belgium. A performance in Queens, on ferent, with Eric Einhorn staging the opera buffa band, Sky-Pony, which enticingly mixes indie rock, May 12, precedes the Brooklyn engagement. May in the Westside Community Garden, accompanied burlesque, and performance art. New York Festival 13 at 7:30. (Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 85 by a wind octet and double bass. May 11-13 at 7. (123 of Song, hopelessly smitten, gives them the last of S. Oxford St., Brooklyn. 5bmf.org.) W. 89th St. osopera.org.) its season’s contemporary-music events, which will take place in the stylish and judgment-free Wil- Carolyn Sampson Operamisson: “Behind the Mind: The liamsburg venue National Sawdust. May 10 at 7. (80 The British soprano, whose clarity of voice shines Complete Cabaret Songs” N. 6th St., Brooklyn. nationalsawdust.org.) through a broad repertory, offers a Mother’s Day The cabaret literature is populated with a long line recital at Alice Tully Hall in which a floral theme of eccentric characters, and some of the most memo- Symphony Space: John Luther Adams connects songs by several composers from across rable ones can be found in William Bolcom’s jaunty Residency the centuries. The selection includes works by Pur- collection, including the shady “Black Max,” the Living in Alaska for more than twenty-five years pro- cell (“Sweeter Than Roses”), Schumann, Britten, flamboyant “George,” and the irresistible charmer vided the composer John Luther Adams with ample Schubert, Strauss (“Mädchenblumen”), and Pou- known only as “Amor.” The countertenor Jordan inspiration for a singularly expansive, contemplative lenc (“Fleurs”). May 14 at 5. (212-721-6500.)

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Shiba Inus and an undead celebrity roam an Earthlike planet in a far-off future, in a still from Ian Cheng’s digital simulations, “Emissaries.”

Never-Ending Story in life, rules do not control outcome. isn’t entirely random, given Cheng’s The thirty-three-year-old artist, who canny use of cinematic techniques, from Landscape and consciousness evolve over studied cognitive science at Berkeley omniscient aerial views to extreme eons in an exhibition at MOMA PS1. and worked at the visual-effects com- closeups. But this isn’t a movie, and ex- What if a work of art was so smart pany Industrial Light & Magic before pectations of conventional narrative that it could free itself from the artist earning his M.F.A., at Columbia, is should be checked at the door. Cheng who made it? The digital whiz Ian fond of a quote by Philip K. Dick: “Re- has said, “I hate that art is given the Cheng takes a deep dive down that ality is that which, when you stop be- burden of having to be meaningful. I wormhole with “Emissaries,” a trio of lieving in it, doesn’t go away.” The same think this is a misunderstanding. Maybe color projections, now unfolding in might be said of Cheng’s alternate re- the real purpose of art is to wrestle with three rooms at MOMA PS1, which he alities. Even when the museum is the relationship between meaning and describes as “video games that play closed, “Emissaries” continues, thanks meaninglessness and how they trans- themselves.” These simulations are set to a live stream on the Web site twitch.tv, form each other.” millennia apart in the same landscape, which plays twenty-four hours a day. Cheng’s project is impressive, even which evolves from volcano to lake During a recent visit to the exhibition, profound, but it is not without prece- to atoll. (Politically minded viewers I never encountered the owl—whose dent. Chance operations have been might grok a cautionary climate- existence I learned of in a handsome, central to art since the mid-twentieth change tale.) The characters start out diagram- laden brochure that Cheng century. Matthew Ritchie has been vi- shamanic and end up sci-fi. They in- designed—but the dogs were busy sualizing character- driven cosmologies clude, by time line, a prophetic owl dodging laptops, furniture, and a Bran- for more than twenty years; Paul Chan’s and the plucky daughter of a village cusi sculpture, which floated by as they postapocalyptic video cycle “The 7 elder (a prehistoric Arya Stark), a pack swam in the lake. The meerkat-ish tribe, Lights” is another touchstone. And the of Shiba Inus and an undead celebrity whom Cheng has dubbed “Oomen,” compassion of Cheng’s transhumanist (a skeleton with sunglasses intact), and just huddled forlornly on barren terrain. vision aligns him with a cohort of other a meerkat-like race of futurist ranch- They reminded me of the abandoned young artists working in New York, ers. Activity unfolds in real time ac- family on David Bowie’s home planet staying awake as they dream of the cording to rules programmed by in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 movie “The Man future.

Cheng and his collaborators, but, as Who Fell to Earth.” The association —Andrea K. Scott THE ARTIST COURTESY IMAGE

10 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017

1 A RT MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES tume,” a pageant gown made of countless white concrete from cardboard shipping boxes and sup- gloves, which she wore to exhibition openings in ported with walkers. Matherly’s ingenious idea for Metropolitan Museum her iconic guerrilla performances of 1980-83, is a semi-reprise at his New York gallery was to make “Adrián Villar Rojas: The Theater of wonderful to encounter. Painting is well repre- new sculptures with the same molds, which he had Disappearance” sented by dense, textured color-field marvels by broken off the original casts. Now the once dig- In this whimsically apocalyptic rooftop installa- Howardena Pindell, from the seventies, which are nified Asclepius, clutching his staff, is split down tion, the Argentinean artist arranges foam-ure- placed in quiet dialogue with Virginia Jaramillo’s the middle, and a figure of Telesphoros, a symbol thane replicas, based on 3-D scans of more than a gorgeously bright, hard-edge abstractions, from of recovery, is pierced with holes and missing an hundred pieces from the museum’s collection and the same decade. A strikingly slapdash self-por- ankle. These degradations, rather surprisingly, scans of live models, in sixteen black-and-white trait by Emma Amos, from 1966, centers the art- serve to make the figures—survivors, all—that tableaux. Figures from across cultures and history ist’s intense, direct gaze. Not surprisingly, there is much more powerful. Through May 20. (Cooper, kiss, gesture at one another, and vamp around sev- a great deal of powerful photography on view, from 521 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105.) eral long white tables set as if for a Mad Hatter Coreen Smith’s spontaneous portraits of Harlem- 1 banquet—“Alice in Wonderland” meets “Night at ites in the seventies to Lorna Simpson and Carrie the Museum.” In one piece, an early-twentieth-cen- Mae Weems’s poignant pairings of image and text, GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN tury tomb effigy from Kentucky is adorned with a from the eighties. But it’s the ephemera here—the staff from West Africa’s Dogon people and an an- raw documentation and spirited newsletters—that Céline Condorelli cient Chinese vase. In another, a child in a seven- becomes the exhibition’s fascinating glue, showing For the final show at this experimental space, the teenth-century Japanese helmet shaped like a conch these women not as anomalous achievers but as design guru Prem Krishnamurthy tapped the Lon- shell sleeps peacefully atop an enormous fragment part of a formidable movement. Through Sept. 17. don-based artist Céline Condorelli, whose art re- of an Egyptian queen’s head. Through Oct. 29. flects the gallery’s ethos: art meets graphic design American Folk Art Museum in aestheticized self-reflection. A 1930 gouache Guggenheim Museum “Carlo Zinelli” by Herbert Bayer, titled “Extended Field of Vi- “Anicka Yi: Life Is Cheap” Born in 1916, the self-taught Italian artist was sion,” which depicts an eye surveying a range of The New York artist—the winner of the museum’s drafted by Mussolini to fight in the Spanish Civil flat planes, is displayed in a large hole cut into a 2016 Hugo Boss Prize—works provocatively across War but sent home after only two months, suffering wall—one of several such interventions—in be- mediums, but has distinguished herself as a Con- from shell shock. He was committed to a psychiat- tween an abstract screen print on acrylic by Con- ceptualist of scent. For this exhibition, she teamed ric hospital in Verona in 1949, and lived there until dorelli and a large plant, which, per the accompa- up with molecular biologists and forensic chemists. his suicide, in 1974, producing hundreds of color- nying checklist, is promised to Krishnamurthy’s At the entrance, we’re confronted with an olfactory ful gouaches, distinctive for their obsessive repe- archive. (Although he is giving up his physical mystery: metal gates at either end of the short cor- tition and figural silhouettes filled with bubbles or space, he will continue to work with artists.) In ridor suggest a holding pen, and insecticide spray holes. The earliest piece in this exhibition depicts a “It’s All True,” a four-color lithograph, five years’ cans on the floor emit a custom fragrance acidly city teeming with giant birds, naked humans, and worth of displays in the gallery’s window are seen titled Immigrant Caucus. It’s a subtle, sociopolit- arching roads, with almost no empty space. Later, superimposed. Like many of the preceding exhi- ical concoction—something slightly bitter, maybe Zinelli introduced adroit changes of scale, in com- bitions, this one is irresistibly complex and color- resinous, that you might not usually notice—made plex, graphic compositions that balance keen de- ful, if a little hard to decipher. Through May 21. (P!, of compounds derived from, we’re told, carpenter sign instincts with the mysterious depths of great 334 Broome St. 212-334-5200.) ants and Asian-American women. There’s a men- art. In one work, from 1960, a man with green legs acing allure to the installation, which you may sus- twice as long as the rest of his body is surrounded Amy Douglas pect is working on you subconsciously. After all, by cutaway houses, oversized leopards, and scores The British artist deploys her specialized trade— Yi makes no secret of her interest in exploiting ad- of small figures in brown, black, and dark green. the restoration of antique Staffordshire ceramics— vanced scientific methods to manipulate sensory A remarkable red-and-yellow piece from 1963 in- to devilish effect in this wonderful show of small perception. (It’s also the theme of her stunning 3-D cludes a female silhouette lying amid a phalanx of sculptures. Salvaging broken nineteenth-century video “The Flavor Genome,” currently on view in smaller figures, suggesting a portrait of the collec- figurines, she seamlessly reconfigures shards of the Whitney Biennial.) Two strange, complemen- tive unconscious. Through Aug. 20. shepherds, maidens, saints, and a menagerie of tary dioramas, like luxury-department-store win- 1 animals. Douglas’s vignettes are witty, perverse, dow displays, occupy the dim gallery. “Lifestyle and sometimes macabre, as in “I Lost My Head,” Wars” is a dark, glittering, L.E.D.-lit cybernet- GALLERIES—CHELSEA which shows a princely, decapitated figure jug- ic-themed environment populated by industrious gling an assortment of heads, including those of ants; “Force Majeure” is a glowing Cronenber- Walead Beshty a child and a tabby cat. Another standout features gian scene of paintings made using bacteria. On The London-born, L.A.-based artist seems to be a woman looking to the heavens, as four rosy- the walls, white tiles are stained with growing col- aiming for radical transparency regarding both the cheeked men peer out from a horizontal slice in onies, and flesh-like silicone sheets decorated with art-making process and its industrialized context. her white frock. Douglas often underscores the living splotches are draped on tripods. With “Life Deconstructed computer scanners are impaled on sneaky political content of her ingenious brico- Is Cheap,” the ever-inventive Yi again taps into the poles, and wall-mounted flat-screen TVs have been lage with sarcastic titles. “I Will Be Phenomenal anxious undercurrents that haunt our fondest tech- sliced in half or cored like apples. Also on view are to the Women” pokes fun at the forty-fifth U.S. nological fantasies. Through July 5. big color photograms and copper etchings of the President, showing him as a dandyish aristocrat artist’s handprints and medical prescriptions. Some with a lemon-yellow comb-over and a golden apple Brooklyn Museum of the pieces, particularly the destroyed electronics, stuffed in his mouth. Through May 21. (Hanley, 327 “We Wanted a Revolution: risk fetishizing Beshty’s ability to transmute other Broome St. 646-918-6824.) Black Radical Women, 1965-85” people’s work into profit (he’s a very successful art- In this superlative survey, familiar names mingle ist). More compelling is a series of five-foot-tall, Richard Tinkler with those that deserve much more recognition. L-shaped copper monoliths, which were deliber- Whenever the artist sells one of the hundreds of The several dozen black women artists whose work ately installed without gloves, so that their mir- drawings—dense geometric webs of mostly straight is featured did not conform to one style, but they ror-bright surfaces would accrue evidence of their lines in colored pen or pencil—that he stores in al- did share urgent concerns, often addressing is- circulation through the art system in the form of bums in his studio, he produces a duplicate to take sues of bias and exclusion in their art—and in their dark fingerprints—a portrait of behind-the-scenes its place. This may sound obsessive, but paging art-world organizing. Senga Nengudi used her re- labor that verges on the sublime. Through June 17. through the album included in this enticing show markable, corporeal abstract sculptures, made from (Petzel, 456 W. 18th St. 212-680-9467.) of small paintings elicits a mood of tranquillity, stuffed panty hose, as elements of her performance and the seven untitled oils, each of which Tink- art, captured in haunting photographs, which are Justin Matherly ler made in a single sitting, are even more serene. contextualized by correspondence detailing her af- Last year, the New York-based sculptor exhibited In one, thick lines scraped into a rose-pink back- filiation with Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM), cast-gypsum figures of Asclepius, the Roman god ground form repeating panels of prismatic stars. In a crucial New York institution of the black avant- of healing, his son Telesphoros, and his daugh- another, large diamonds of orange, red, and blue- garde, instrumental to the careers of a number of ter Hygeia, at Zurich’s Galerie Eva Presenhuber. black have the securely corralled improvisational the included artists. Lorraine O’Grady is one of Somewhat blocky but full of earnestly eccentric beauty of a textile. Through May 28. (56 Henry, 56 them: her sardonic “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Cos- personality, they rested on hollow pedestals cast in Henry St. 646-858-0800.)

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DANCE

startup money for. “The idea just came to me,” she said. “What would we give to have seen Mozart coaching Don Giovanni?” So, twice or three times a year, for the past twenty-odd years, one of Balanchine’s veteran dancers has come into a studio under Reynolds’s direction, taken a skinny little dancer, usually from New York City Ballet, by the hand, and, in front of a bat- tery of video cameras, demonstrated how Balanchine taught her to dance one of his ballets. If, at any moment, the younger dancer says, “Oh, that’s not the way we do it now,” and shows her something different, the master dancer may perhaps say, “Oh, how nice,” or not, but it is her job to point up the disagreement, so that people watch- ing this tape in the future will know what the original was. (The recordings—there are now more than fifty—are available at the New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division and at research libraries around the world.) Last month, I went to a studio at the School of American Ballet to watch Patri- cia McBride, who danced for Balanchine from 1959 to 1989, coach Lauren Lovette and Daniel Ulbricht, both from City Ballet, in the famous pas de deux from “Rubies,” now a half century old. The mu sic, by Stra- vinsky, is complicated, and so is the mood. The ballet is fun and jazzy, but, according to McBride, the original female lead, Bal- anchine said he wanted “angry legs.” When I asked her whether, in coaching, she was A video project attempts to record the choreography of George Balanchine as he himself taught it. ever tempted to repair changes made since she stopped performing the ballet, she an- Lost and Found It’s hard to remount a ballet from a single swered that she did so only when the new filmed performance, because that’s just that steps seemed to be going against the mu sic. Patricia McBride rehearses young dancer’s idea of what it should look like, Music: that was the theme of the taping dancers in “Rubies.” which she may have got secondhand or session, as it was of Balanchine’s career. People are always telling us, wistfully, tenth-hand. Furthermore, the film can It was very moving to watch McBride that dance is evanescent, here this minute, show only how she did it on one night, work. This diminutive woman, with a fore- gone the next, and therefore that it’s like when perhaps she was in a bad mood or head full of bangs, seemed like an angel life. This is not true. Balanchine went on dancing on a sore toe. with a fiery sword, standing at the gates. staging his “Prodigal Son” for fifty years. The solution would be to make the Nothing dates faster than yesterday’s “street” Every time a dancer came through his choreographer immortal, so that he would ballet. McBride in “Rubies” was always cool door looking as though he would make a always be there to coach the ballet accu- and sexy, but also tidy and cheerful and good Prodigal ( Jerome Robbins, Edward rately. And that, in a way, is the goal of the exact. And now this normalcy of hers, this Villella, Mikhail Baryshnikov), Balanchine George Balanchine Foundation Video lack of vulgarity—documented by the Bal- would pull that ballet out of the cupboard Archives, which Nancy Reynolds, a former anchine Archive tapes—will stand forever and put it on again. New York City Ballet dancer, founded, in as protection of a vulnerable ballet.

But what if the ballet’s creator is dead? 1994, and even provided some of the —Joan Acocella ROWNTREE/EXPRESS/GETTY

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American Ballet Theatre by the group’s artistic director, Jonathan Hol- traditional music and dance from rural Japa- Ballet season begins in earnest as the city’s two lander, features Smko and also live participa- nese festivals into his own painstaking practice. major companies, A.B.T. and New York City tion by the Syrian visual artist Kevork Mourad (St. Mark’s Church In­the­Bowery, Second Ave. at Ballet, face off at Lincoln Center. As usual, and the Syrian musician Kinan Azmeh. (Schim­ 10th St. 866­811­4111. May 11­13.) A.B.T.’s spring offerings at the Met are dom- mel Center, Pace University, 3 Spruce St. 212­346­ inated by big, full-evening ballets (“Giselle,” 1715. May 10­11.) Rocha Dance Theatre “Le Corsaire”), the kind adored by old-fash- Jenny Rocha is as much a costume designer as ioned balletomanes. But there are some nov- Hilary Easton + Co. she is a choreographer, and the outfits she’s cre- elties as well, in particular Alexei Ratman- In many New York buildings, a radiator is a ated for her hour-long dance work “Battledress” sky’s new take on Richard Strauss’s 1924 ballet noisemaker, disturbing the peace with clanking are wild. Hoopskirts like armor, frilly materi- “Schlagobers”—here translated as “Whipped and hissing. But Hilary Easton’s latest piece, ti- als made knife-sharp, curlers or a heeled pump Cream.” It’s a fantasy ballet with a whisper-thin tled “Radiator,” is a hushed meditation on the worn as a protuberant helmet: this is female at- plot involving a boy with a passion for sweets quiet power of dance. The low-key prowess of tire that makes a statement, at once protective who finds himself dreaming of dancing parfaits the dancers Michael Ingle, Alexandra Albrecht, and aggressive. (Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 and cream puffs—a perfect excuse for a suite of and Jessica Weiss combines with Easton’s com- W. 37th St. 866­811­4111. May 12­13.) imaginative, often tongue-in-cheek dances for positional expertise. (Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis a vast array of daffy characters, all set within Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway. 646­837­ François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea a dreamlike world created by the pop surreal- 6809. May 11­13.) In recent years, Dia:Beacon has presented the ist Mark Ryden. Other season highlights in- work of such dance eminences as Merce Cun- clude Diana Vishneva’s farewell, in the tear- Koma Otake ningham, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, and jerker “Onegin” (June 23)—and Alessandra For more than forty years, Eiko and Koma were Steve Paxton. Now this less established and Ferri’s return to the role the same week—as a celebrated husband-and-wife duo, the king less exalted Paris-based duo gets the museum’s well as a week of one-act Tchaikovsky ballets, and queen of coupled slow motion. Then, in imprimatur. Their 2004 piece “Sylphides” is an including George Balanchine’s “Mozartiana.” • 2014, Eiko started doing solos; Danspace Project intriguing art project that involves vacuum- May 15-16 at 7:30: “Don Quixote.” (Metropol­ presented three astonishing weeks of them last sealing dancers in body bags. “Dub Love,” itan Opera House, Lincoln Center. 212­477­3030. year. Now Koma gets his turn. “The Ghost Fes- from 2014, shallowly mixes ballet pointe work Through July 8.) tival” is part art installation, with twenty-four with moves from club and street dance. The portraits of the dead, made of sticky-rice paste accompanying reggae-and-dub d.j. set should New York City Ballet and hair, arranged around St. Mark’s Church get the former factory thumping. (3 Beekman Since creating his first ballet for the company, and in a mobile trailer outside. Koma’s solo per- St., Beacon, N.Y. 845­440­0100. May 12­14. in 2012, Justin Peck has been hard at work, pro- formance honors those spirits, incorporating Through May 21.) ducing new pieces for his colleagues at a pace of two a year. On May 12, the troupe unveils its fourteenth Peck opus, “The Decalogue,” a dec- tet set to a piano score by the Brooklyn-based songwriter Sufjan Stevens. The two have collab- orated before, with success. Also this week, on a program that includes Alexei Ratmansky’s “Pic- MOVIES tures at an Exhibition,” the company presents Christopher Wheeldon’s “Carousel (A Dance),” 1 from 2002, which includes a pas de deux with OPENING matic personal stories, which they divulge in dark, sensual undertones. • May 10 at 7:30 and the hope of being cast. Meanwhile, Green stays May 13 at 2: “Carousel (A Dance),” “The Blue of above the fray and out of the question; her mo- Distance,” “The Infernal Machine,” “Pictures at King Arthur: Legend of the Sword Guy Ritchie di- tives and interests, as well as her presence in the an Exhibition,” and “Year of the Rabbit.” • May rected this version of the medieval tale, starring locale and her presentation of the project to its 11 at 7:30 and May 13 at 8: “Ash,” “Funérailles,” Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon participants, are rigorously kept out of the film. “Common Ground,” “Oltremare,” and “Rodeo: Hounsou, and Jude Law. Opening May 12. (In wide (Also, she doesn’t speak with any nonwhite Boul- Four Dance Episodes.” • May 12 at 8 and May release.) • Paris Can Wait Eleanor Coppola di- der residents.) Green’s editing squeezes the ac- 14 at 3: “Slice to Sharp,” “Chiaroscuro,” “Stabat rected this comedy, about the wife of a director tors’ outpourings into sound bites; the snippets Mater,” and “The Decalogue.” • May 16 at 7:30: whose business partner joins her on a day trip. of dramatizations that she films are insubstantial, “Red Angels,” “Varied Trio (in Four),” “Polaris,” Starring Diane Lane and Arnaud Viard. Opening undeveloped, disengaged. Every aspect of the “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux,” and “Con- May 12. (In limited release.) • Snatched A com- movie is trivialized—the experiment with docu- certo DSCH.” (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. edy, directed by Jonathan Levine, about a mother mentary form, the participants’ experiences, and 212­496­0600. Through May 28.) (Goldie Hawn) and daughter (Amy Schumer) the case itself.—Richard Brody (Netflix.) who take a jungle vacation together. Opening Richmond Ballet May 12. (In wide release.) • Stefan Zweig: Fare- Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane On its visits to New York, the State Ballet of well to Europe A historical drama, about the Aus- Documentary Virginia likes to show off the variety of works trian Jewish writer’s exile in the nineteen-thirties A dully conventional film about a brilliantly that it regularly commissions. This program of and forties. Directed by Maria Schrader; star- unconventional musician. The director, John New York premières includes Ma Cong’s “Lift ring Josef Hader, Barbara Sukowa, and Aenne Scheinfeld, starts the account in the mid-fif- the Fallen,” a sentimental swirl about overcom- Schwarz. Opening May 12. (In limited release.) ties, when Coltrane first came to prominence, ing grief, and “Polaris,” a cosmic-themed trip 1 as the saxophonist in the Miles Davis Quintet, by the contemporary choreographer Katarzyna from which he was fired for his drug and alco- Skarpetowska. The title of Val Caniparoli’s NOW PLAYING hol habits. Quitting cold turkey, Coltrane found “Swipe” refers to its sideways motion, its bor- fresh inspiration in the company of Davis and rowings from African dance, and the way the Casting JonBenet Thelonious Monk before forming his own band, composer Gabriel Prokofiev remixes music by This narrowly reflexive documentary reduces reaching new heights of popularity and then re- his grandfather Sergei. (Joyce Theatre, 175 Eighth its participants to reality-TV entertainers. The pudiating it in the interest of deeper and wilder Ave., at 19th St. 212­242­0800. May 9­14.) filmmaker, Kitty Green, goes to Boulder, Colo- musical ideas. The sketch of Coltrane’s early days rado, and auditions, on camera, local residents emphasizes the influences of his two grandfa- Battery Dance Company for a dramatization of the unsolved killing of thers, who were ministers, and the film draws a In recent years, this stalwart troupe has dis- JonBenét Ramsey (which occurred there in 1996) through-line regarding his spiritual quest. It fea- tinguished itself with international collabora- and its aftermath. She shows only brief perfor- tures many performances by Coltrane (includ- tions. This season, the company’s forty-first, mances from her script by the aspiring actors, ing some fine if familiar film clips) but buries includes “Echoes of Erbil,” a solo by Hussein and instead interviews them at length about the them under graphics and voice-overs; the mov- Smko, who is from the Kurdish region of Iraq. case and their interest in it, eliciting speculations ie’s one enduring contribution is interviews with “On Foot,” an ensemble piece about refugees and reminiscences in addition to deep and trau- some of Coltrane’s musician friends, including

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MOVIES

Jimmy Heath, Reggie Workman, Wayne Shorter, the bar he owns, and tries to take stock of her in Kyoto, in 1865, where the Shinsen militia—a and Benny Golson, but these discussions are ed- life. Then she and the world are gripped by the government unit organized to suppress dissent ited to snippets. Meanwhile, the film offers al- sudden appearance of a gigantic monster that ruthlessly—enlists two new swordsmen, the most no musical context; Scheinfeld seems more wreaks havoc in Seoul for a few minutes each suave young Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda), who’s only interested in Coltrane’s story arc than in his day. The connection between Gloria’s story and eighteen, and Tashiro (Tadanobu Asano), who art.—R.B. (In limited release.) the monster’s is too good to spoil; suffice it to falls madly in love with him. Soon, Kano—a say that its metaphorical power brings a furi- quiet, stone-cold killer with little worldly ex- Close-Up ously clarifying and progressive insight to Glo- perience but a steely attitude—sets men’s hearts Abbas Kiarostami’s intricately reflexive 1990 ria’s troubles and aptly portrays them as the aflame throughout the unit, sparking deadly drama tells the true story of an unemployed quasi-universal woes of humanity at large. The rivalries among his cohorts and rattling his Tehran movie buff who passes himself off as the trope takes a lot of setting up, but it’s worth it— commanders, notably the cunning and tautly internationally acclaimed filmmaker Mohsen and Hathaway’s self-transformative, forceful controlled Toshi (Takeshi Kitano). Oshima is Makhmalbaf. Invited into the home of a cred- performance brings Vigalondo’s strong idea to unsparing in his depiction of the militia’s bloody ulous couple, the impostor announces his plan life.—R.B. (In wide release.) exploits (Kano’s first assignment is a behead- to make a film starring their adult son. The fa- ing, shown in horrific detail) and in his revela- ther, growing skeptical, invites a journalist to The Fate of the Furious tion of Kano’s motive for joining up—the desire visit, who, in turn, brings the police. After read- The latest and loudest addition to the franchise to kill with impunity. His restrained, elegant ing a report about this case, Kiarostami filmed a that will not die. Most of the regulars return, images capture life on the edge of death; the reënactment with each participant (himself in- including Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Roman warriors’ sparring and training, their rigid dis- cluded) playing his own role, and he gained per- (Tyrese Gibson), and Hobbs (Dwayne John- cipline and furious bloodlust, come off as the mission to film the impostor’s trial. The ironic son), who grapples once more with the prob- ultimate aphrodisiacs. In Japanese.—R.B. (Quad politics of Kiarostami’s audacious method blend lem of finding a vehicle large enough to fit him. Cinema; May 12-13.) the intellectual impulse of documentary obser- He also has to lay aside his enmity of Deckard vation and the emotional need for self-drama- (Jason Statham) for the sake of a higher pur- Leon Morin, Priest tization—the free play of imagination and the pose: the taking down of Dom (Vin Diesel), Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1961 drama, spanning the free range of vision, both of which, in the course who has turned against his erstwhile pals. Such Second World War and the postwar years, is cen- of the action, are crushed from the high stool of is Diesel’s dramatic range that the difference tered on a young widow, Barny (Emmanuelle a courtroom’s clerical overlord. In Kiarostami’s between the good Dom and the bad Dom is al- Riva), who lives in a small French town. Barny furiously clear view, religious dogma suppresses most too subtle to be seen by the naked eye. Be- is a Communist; her late husband was Jewish, the eye’s observations through the dictate of the hind the chaos lurks the figure of Cipher (Char- and, under the Occupation, she struggles to spare word; his calmly unwavering images, with their lize Theron), who combines the roles of hacker their two young children from being deported wry humor and generous sympathy, have the and seductress, and whose party trick—the hot to a concentration camp. Melville’s depiction force of a steadfast resistance. In Farsi.—R.B. spot of the story—involves taking command of of wartime France is peerless: he shows the bra- (Anthology Film Archives; May 12 and May 14.) multiple vehicles, by remote control, in New zenness of collaborators, the casual anti-Semi- York, and making them race around the streets tism, and the arrests and disappearances with a Colossal like packs of dogs. The rest of the film, directed harrowing simplicity. But the film’s main drama The director Nacho Vigalondo’s new movie is by F. Gary Gray, is threatened by both silliness concerns Barny’s relationship with the hand- partly a blandly schematic drama of self-discov- and exhaustion; cracking crime at the wheel, you some, brave, vigorous, and intellectual priest ery and partly a thinly sketched sci-fi monster sense, is not a theme on which variations can be of the title (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who seduces thriller—yet his mashup of these genres is inge- spun forever. With Helen Mirren, who doesn’t women’s souls—and Barny’s above all. Melville nious and, at times, deliciously realized. Anne even get to drive.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in presents their relationship without irony; to Hathaway stars as Gloria, a hard-drinking and our issue of 4/24/17.) (In wide release.) make it the heart of his film, he cut out an hour unemployed New York blogger whose boyfriend of footage about the Occupation. (This ver- (Dan Stevens) throws her out of his apartment. Gohatto sion restores eleven minutes of it.) Melville She retreats to her late parents’ empty house in The last film by Nagisa Oshima, from 1999, films the religious dialectics with remarkable her rustic home town, bumps into a childhood is a spare and cruel drama about sex and vio- but dispassionate skill, and he uses the story of friend (Jason Sudeikis), gets a part-time job in lence within the ranks of the samurai. It’s set Barny and Morin to skew the postwar political context—to reinforce the role of Catholics in the newly founded Fifth Republic and suppress that of Communists. In French, English, and German.—R.B. (Film Forum; May 12-18.)

The Lost City of Z The new James Gray film has a scope, both in time and in geographical reach, that he has never at- tempted before—an anxious wrestle with the epic form. The movie, based in part on the book of the same name by David Grann, of The New Yorker, stars Charlie Hunnam as Percy Fawcett, a British soldier who journeyed repeatedly up the Amazon in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His goal, which came to consume his life and to cut it short, was to locate the remains of a forgotten civ- ilization in the jungle. So implacable a quest could be taken as foolish or futile, but Gray prefers to frame it in terms of heroic striving. Whether Hun- nam is the right actor to assume such a burden is open to question, and the whole movie, though shot with Gray’s defining elegance and his taste for deep shadows, is often a dour affair. Still, there are welcome touches of levity and mystery, supplied by Sienna Miller, in the role of Fawcett’s long-suf- fering wife, and by Robert Pattinson, overgrown with facial hair, as his equally loyal sidekick. With Tom Holland, as the explorer’s eldest son, who van- David Bowie co-stars in the Second World War drama “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” (1983), along- ished in the company of his father.—A.L. (4/17/17)

side the composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also wrote the score. It screens May 12-13 at the Quad Cinema. (In wide release.) ALAMY

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The Lovers way, Poitras, in voice-over, expresses her own diction of the actors who play them (Yolande This bittersweet romance thrusts its fertile growing distrust of Assange, and says that the Moreau and Jean-Pierre Darroussin). Then the and clever dramatic framework into the fore- distrust is mutual, but she never makes clear drama kicks in, and the movie goes off the rails. ground and leaves it undeveloped. Mary and any mutual expectations that may have under- Jeanne marries a local man named Julien (Swann Michael (Debra Winger and Tracy Letts) are lain her access to him from the outset. Embed- Arlaud); he promptly impregnates her servant long-married and long-frustrated suburban cu- ded within the portrait of Assange is Poitras’s (Nina Meurisse) and has an affair with a neigh- bicle jockeys, and both are having affairs. Mary own refracted self-portrait, in which she hints bor (Clotilde Hesme), whose husband (Alain is seeing Robert (Aidan Gillen), a writer; Mi- at her naïveté regarding Assange’s motives—a Beigel) kills him. Jeanne and Julien’s son, Paul, chael is seeing Lucy (Melora Walters), a dancer; naïveté that was already in plain view in “Cit- grows into a ne’er-do-well whose debts reduce and each is waiting for the right moment to tell izenfour,” from 2014, her film about Edward Jeanne to destitution. The tale of worldly afflic- the other that the marriage is over. But the im- Snowden, clips of which turn up as a fascinat- tion and spiritual redemption is, unfortunately, pending visit of their son, Joel (Tyler Ross), a ing subplot in this new film.—R.B. (In lim- merely illustrated; Brizé pays more attention to college student, puts a crimp in their plans; ited release.) the tasteful costumes and the alluring settings while waiting to separate, Mary and Michael than to the drama or the images. The perfor- suddenly rekindle their relationship—in ef- Stalker mances are muted as well, as if to link formal- fect, cheating on their lovers with each other. In the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci- ity and misery, but the view of the milieu’s hy- Winger is commanding in action and in repose, ence-fiction drama from 1979, the near-future pocrisy and constraint is bland and passionless. and Letts invests his role with gruff energy, but is a cold and mucky ruin, both physically and In French.—R.B. (In limited release.) they and the other actors exert themselves in a emotionally. A man whose strange status as void—none of the characters have any substance a “stalker” allows him to enter the Zone—a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? beyond their function in the story. The writer sealed-off area of menace and promise—defies Robert Aldrich’s 1962 melodrama about two and director, Azazel Jacobs, offers a few visual his distraught wife to lead two voyagers there, ruined sisters joined in torment and degra- grace notes that resonate beyond the plotlines, the cynical Writer and the rationalist Profes- dation is also the stylistic clash of the two ac- but his script is devoid of imagination. With sor. Their perilous trip, however, resembles tresses who play them, Joan Crawford and Bette Jessica Sula, as Joel’s girlfriend, Erin, whose nothing so much as an escape through the So- Davis. The story starts in the nineteen-tens, quandaries go utterly unaddressed.—R.B. (In viet Union’s industrial wastelands and highly when Jane Hudson was a child vaudeville star. limited release.) militarized border regions to an isolated glade In the nineteen-thirties, she was overshadowed of psychedelia that stands in for the ostensibly by her older sister, Blanche, a movie star; then A Quiet Passion utopian West. Tarkovsky realizes the allegorical Blanche was crippled by an accident for which Terence Davies, who has previously adapted tale with an overwhelming density of visual de- Jane was held responsible. Now, three decades the work of Edith Wharton, in “The House of tail; the riot and clash of textures—black-and- later, Blanche (Crawford), a paraplegic, is to- Mirth,” and Terence Rattigan, in “The Deep white and color, agonized contrasts of light and tally dependent on Jane (Davis), an embit- Blue Sea,” now turns his attention to Emily murk, shimmery reflections on pools of water, tered, alcoholic fantasist. Blanche is still fa- Dickinson. The arc of the film is a long one, and abrading striations of grass and stone—form mous; Jane, who is completely forgotten, is marked by regular readings of her poems; we a frenzied vocabulary and lend the film the tor- planning an absurd comeback—and, gripped by meet the author first as a defiant schoolgirl, rential inner force of Dostoyevskian rhetoric. envy, inflicts ever-crueller tortures on Blanche, played by Emma Bell, and trace her through One subterranean dialogue sequence, in which who struggles desperately to save herself from the years of her maturity, her gradual seclu- the three travellers wrangle over metaphysi- them. The famously grotesque impasto of Jane’s sion in the Amherst family home, and the cal fantasies and long-stifled grudges, could makeup (Davis’s own invention) matches her shuddering awfulness of her death, in 1886. be borrowed directly from a grand existential roaring theatrical flamboyance; Blanche, plain- Cynthia Nixon takes the role of the adult Dick- novel. In Russian.—R.B. (Film Society of Lincoln spoken and sculpturally stark, is reduced to inson, and does so without ingratiation, will- Center; May 10-11.) muddled deceptions in order to elude Jane’s ing to make her difficult or, when occasion de- clutches. With his biliously ironic images, Al- mands, unlikable; Dickinson’s manners, always Suture drich stares ruefully at the women’s ugly bat- forthright, grow more barbed as her ailments The writer-producer-directors Scott McGehee tles and sees Hollywood’s own sickness re- worsen. There is strong support from Keith Car- and David Siegel come off as virtuoso deadpan flected in them. With Maidie Norman, as the radine and Joanna Bacon, as her parents; Jodhi wiseacres in this engaging, cutting-edge neo- housemaid Elvira, who tries to help Blanche get May, as her sorrowful sister-in-law; and Cath- noir, from 1993. The plot involves patricide and free.—R.B. (Film Forum; May 10.) erine Bailey, as a flirtatious friend, although amnesia, but what makes the movie fascinating the social badinage seems forced in compari- is their casting of Dennis Haysbert, a solidly Win It All son with the quieter scenes around the hearth. built black man, as Clay Arlington, a character The ambient violence in Joe Swanberg’s previ- Most striking of all is the presence of Jennifer who is constantly said to look exactly like his ous feature, “Digging for Fire,” bursts into the Ehle, whose compassionate calm, as the poet’s half brother, Vincent Towers—played by Mi- foreground in this casually swinging yet terri- sister, does much to lighten the movie’s dark chael Harris, who’s svelte and white. When fyingly tense drama of a compulsive gambler distress.—A.L. (4/24/17) (In limited release.) Vincent rigs an explosion that results in Clay’s on the edge. Jake Johnson (who co-wrote the taking on his identity, the casting becomes film with Swanberg) stars as Eddie Garrett, a Risk an avant-garde ploy with punch. It pivots on part-time Wrigley Field parking attendant and Laura Poitras made this documentary about Ju- questions of what constitutes identity—the full-time poker player who’s constantly in debt. lian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in the internal stuff of life or the external compo- When a rough-hewn friend prepares for a term course of six years, on the basis of her extraor- nents of race, wealth, and status. The graphic in prison, he gives Eddie a duffel bag to hide. dinary access to him and his associates. She fol- vitality of Greg Gardiner’s black-and-white Eddie finds cash in it, and, despite the best lows Assange through a wide range of circum- cinematography and the straight-faced wit of efforts of his Gamblers Anonymous sponsor stances and activities, starting earlier in the the gifted ensemble (including Sab Shimono, (Keegan-Michael Key), yields to temptation. decade, when, via WikiLeaks, he disseminated Mel Harris, David Graf, and Fran Ryan) make Eddie turns to his easygoing but tough-lov- classified information received from Chelsea it pleasurable for audiences to suspend their ing brother, Ron (Joe Lo Truglio), who runs a Manning (then known as Bradley Manning), disbelief.—Michael Sragow (Metrograph; May 13.) landscaping business, for help; besides saving a U.S. Army soldier, and called attention to his own neck, Eddie also wants to save his new abuses by American forces in Iraq and Afghan- A Woman’s Life relationship with Eva (the charismatic Aislinn istan. She depicts Assange’s efforts to contest This adaptation of Maupassant’s 1883 novel Derbez), a nurse whose intentions are serious. the Swedish government’s investigation of him about a woman’s fall from aristocratic ease to With a teeming cast of vibrantly unglamorous for accusations of sexual assault, and even films careworn dependency starts deceptively well. Chicago characters who hold Eddie in a tight him during his clandestine escape from a Lon- Jeanne le Perthuis des Vauds (Judith Chemla) social web, Swanberg—aided greatly by John- don hotel to the Ecuadorian Embassy, where returns from convent school to her family’s es- son’s vigorous performance—makes the gam- he has been granted asylum to avoid deporta- tate and enjoys domestic amusements and the bler’s panic-stricken silence all the more ago- tion to Sweden. She also discusses allegations splendors of nature. She revels in the warm nizing, balancing the warm veneer of intimate of collusion between WikiLeaks and Russia to wisdom of her parents, even as the director, normalcy with the inner chill of secrets and aid in the election of Donald Trump. Along the Stéphane Brizé, seems to revel in the delicate lies.—R.B. (Netflix.)

20 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017

covered her own voice and become a popular feminist writer under a pseudonym. (Condola Rashad, as Emmy, the daughter Nora left be- hind, is perfect in every way.) The ideas keep THE THEATRE coming, fast and delicious. Although Hnath’s 1 Nora is free, she, like most of us, is still bound to the thing that we can leave behind but never Seven Spots on the Sun OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS fully divest ourselves of: family. (Reviewed in In Martín Zimmerman’s play, directed by Weyni our issue of 5/8/17.) (Golden, 252 W. 45th St. Mengesha, a reclusive doctor in a town ravaged 212-239-6200.) All the President’s Men? by civil war and plague discovers that he has a The Public and London’s National Theatre stage miraculous healing touch. (Rattlestick, 224 Wa- Groundhog Day a one-night-only reading of transcripts from the verly Pl. 212-627-2556. Opens May 10.) Harold Ramis’s 1993 film had it all: an in- confirmation hearings for President Trump’s spired performance by Bill Murray, a sweet Cabinet, edited and directed by Nicolas Kent. Sojourners & Her Portmanteau romance, and a premise that was both a vehi- The cast includes Ellen Burstyn (as Elizabeth Ed Sylvanus Iskandar directs two installments cle for endless comedic variation and a spiritual Warren), Aasif Mandvi (Scott Pruitt), and Ron of Mfoniso Udofia’s nine-part saga, which charts brainteaser, akin to a Buddhist parable. After Rifkin (Bernie Sanders). (Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd the ups and downs of a Nigerian matriarch. (New all, aren’t we all repeating the same day over and St. 212-840-2824. May 11.) York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St. 212-460-5475. over again, trying to find meaning in the banal? In previews. Opens May 16.) Credit this fine musical adaptation for not sim- Arlington ply inserting songs into a ready-made formula The Irish playwright Enda Walsh wrote and di- Venus but teasing out new ideas. The Australian mu- rects this Orwellian tale of a man monitoring a Suzan-Lori Parks’s play, directed by Lear deBes- sical satirist Tim Minchin wrote the catchy and young woman in the waiting room of a tower. sonet, is inspired by the life of Saartjie Baart- cerebral score, his follow-up to “Matilda,” with (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718- man, a South African woman who became a nine- Danny Rubin, the original screenwriter, updat- 254-8779. Opens May 10.) teenth-century sideshow attraction because of ing the script. As Phil Connors, the weather- her large posterior. (Pershing Square Signature man stuck in a time loop on February 2nd, Andy Can You Forgive Her? Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-244-7529. In previews. Karl doesn’t re-create Murray’s misanthropic In Gina Gionfriddo’s play, directed by Peter Du- Opens May 15.) euphoria—who could?—but gives the charac- Bois, Amber Tamblyn plays a woman afflicted by ter his own sardonic stamp. And the director, financial and romantic problems who finds ref- The Whirligig Matthew Warchus, infuses the tale with clever uge with an engaged couple on Halloween. (Vine- The New Group presents Hamish Linklater’s theatrical flourishes, like a vertical car chase. yard, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. In previews.) play, directed by Scott Elliott and featuring Zosia (August Wilson, 245 W. 52nd St. 877-250-2929.) Mamet, Dolly Wells, and Norbert Leo Butz, in The Cost of Living which divorced parents care for their ailing adult Happy Days Martyna Majok’s play, directed by Jo Bonney for daughter as figures from her past reëmerge. Samuel Beckett wrote this play later in his ca- Manhattan Theatre Club, tells the parallel sto- (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd reer; it was first performed in 1961. Winnie, ries of an unemployed truck driver who reunites St. 212-279-4200. In previews.) based on certain aspects of his voluble mother, with his ex-wife and a doctoral student who hires 1 is a busybody who wonders about religion, the a caregiver. (City Center Stage I, 131 W. 55th St. way things look, and the way the universe turns, 212-581-1212. Previews begin May 16.) NOW PLAYING without knowing much about herself. In the first act, she’s buried up to her waist in earth; Derren Brown: Secret Come from Away in the second, up to her neck. As performed by Brown, an Olivier-winning British performer Canadian hospitality doesn’t seem like grist the terrific Dianne Wiest, Winnie has a beauti- known for his feats of mind-reading and audience for drama, but this gem of a musical, by Irene ful voice, light and questioning. But what she manipulation, presents an evening of “psychological Sankoff and David Hein, makes kindness sing has in beauty of expression she lacks in gravi- illusion.” (Atlantic Theatre Company, 336 W. 20th St. and soar. On 9/11, thousands of airline passen- tas. Wiest doesn’t have a mean bone in her 866-811-4111. In previews. Opens May 16.) gers were rerouted to the tiny Newfoundland body, and Winnie has plenty of mean bones— town of Gander, population nine thousand. The and muscles, too. She converses with her hus- The Golden Apple Ganderites opened their doors—and fetched band, the nearly silent Willie (Jarlath Conroy), Encores! presents Jerome Moross and John La- sandwiches, underwear, and kosher meals— and at one point they talk about castration. We touche’s 1954 musical, a retelling of the Iliad and while the “plane people,” trapped in a five- should feel, then, what we don’t feel enough of the Odyssey as a whimsical American fable, com- day limbo, reckoned with a changed world. A in James Bundy’s production: menace. (Polon- plete with pie contests and hot-air balloons. (City splendid twelve-person cast plays dozens of sky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Pl., Brook- Center, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. May 10-14.) characters, but Sankoff and Hein deftly spot- lyn. 866-811-4111.) light a few, including an American Airlines The Government Inspector pilot (Jenn Colella) trying to maintain con- Hello, Dolly! Red Bull Theatre stages the Gogol satire, di- trol of her charges and an Egyptian chef (Cae- In Jerry Zaks’s fairly standard production of rected by Jesse Berger and featuring Michael sar Samayoa) coping with the first glimmers the 1964 musical, by Jerry Herman and Mi- Urie, in which an undercover inspector comes of post-9/11 Islamophobia. Christopher Ash- chael Stewart, Horace Vandergelder (David to a provincial town to investigate local corrup- ley’s production doesn’t dwell on inspirational Hyde Pierce) is a sour, money-grubbing mer- tion. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St. messaging, instead letting the story, along with chant from Yonkers. His two young assistants, 646-223-3010. Previews begin May 16.) some fine fiddle playing, put the wind in its Cornelius Hackl (Gavin Creel) and Barnaby sails. (Schoenfeld, 236 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.) Tucker (Taylor Trensch), head into New York The Lucky One City, where they fall for two women: Irene Mol- The Mint revives A. A. Milne’s 1922 play, di- A Doll’s House, Part 2 loy (Kate Baldwin), a hatmaker on whom Van- rected by Jesse Marchese, about two brothers Lucas Hnath’s invigorating ninety-minute dergelder has set his sights, and her assistant, whose enmity erupts when one of them lands in work, directed by Sam Gold, is an irrespon- Minnie Fay (Beanie Feldstein). But the plot legal trouble. (Beckett, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239- sible act—a kind of naughty imposition on a turns on Dolly Levi, the matchmaker, and the 6200. In previews.) classic, investing Ibsen’s signature play with show offers ample opportunity for whoever the humor that the nineteenth-century artist plays the part to showcase her ability to convey Seeing You lacked. When Nora Helmer, Ibsen’s protago- pathos and defiance, grief and comedy. And who The immersive-theatre producer Randy Weiner nist, shut the door on her husband, her chil- better than Bette Midler to give us all that? The and the choreographer Ryan Heffington (known dren, and her bourgeois life, it was left to the role isn’t necessarily tailor-made for her—she’s for Sia’s “Chandelier” video) created this site-spe- audience to wonder what would become of her. infinitely more complicated and funny—but she cific piece, which transforms a former meat mar- Here she is again, after so many years—fifteen, has remade the character in her own image: as a ket into nineteen-forties Hoboken. (450 W. 14th to be exact. Since leaving her husband, Torvald scrappy trickster with needs and vulnerabilities. St. 866-811-4111. In previews.) (Chris Cooper), Nora (Laurie Metcalf) has dis- (5/1/17) (Shubert, 225 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200.)

22 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017

THE THEATRE

Pacific Overtures The best thing about this strange and ultimately lifeless production is Stephen Sondheim’s amaz- ing—and amazingly complex—lyrics and music. First produced in 1976, the piece recounts the story of Western forces infiltrating and influenc- ing a closed-off nineteenth-century Japan, told from the Japanese point of view. (George Takei plays the Reciter, the musical’s narrator.) There are layers of political and aesthetic understanding and misunderstanding here that add something to the conversation about Asia, imperialism, and colonialism, but, as staged by John Doyle—who has given us fascinating versions of other Sond- heim shows, including his Broadway revivals of “Sweeney Todd” and “Company”—the production feels abbreviated and misconstrued. Still, there are wonderful performers in the cast, including Karl Josef Co (he’s a new matinée idol) and Ann Harada, who has great comic timing. (Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. 866-811-4111.) Solange Knowles presents “An Ode To,” a performance piece riffing on her latest album, “A Seat at the Table,” at the Guggenheim on May 18, as part of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival. The Roundabout J. B. Priestley’s play, basically forgotten since its In & of Itself gina. Linney portrays the villainy with gleeful première, in 1932, is receiving its American début, Newly imported from Los Angeles, this solo per- relish, while Nixon makes us fully understand as part of the “Brits Off Broadway” series. The formance by the world-class sleight-of-hand art- how Regina’s anger has been fuelled by decades script takes the form of a classic roundelay, but in- ist Derek DelGaudio is not merely a magic show of frustration. It’s worth seeing the show twice if stead of romantic shenanigans the comic intrigue with theatrical trappings but a thoughtful piece you can. Hellman’s incisive storytelling, her ra- turns on social, financial, and political concerns. of theatre that makes inspired use of DelGaudio’s zor-etched insights into women’s limited options The only overtly sexual agenda is pursued by Com- skills, conjuring a haunting essay on secrets and in a patriarchal society, are largely good enough rade Staggles (Steven Blakeley), a brandy-lov- identity. The level of difficulty at which he exe- to withstand the scrutiny. (Samuel J. Friedman, ing Bolshevik who has accompanied Pamela Ket- cutes conventional magician’s fare—card tricks, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.) tlewell (Emily Laing) to the country estate owned a disappearance, a ship in a bottle—is plenty di- by her father, Lord Kettlewell (Brian Protheroe). verting on its own. What makes these devices Mourning Becomes Electra Hugh Ross directs a cast of eleven accomplished linger in the mind is how he uses them to build Eugene O’Neill’s sorcerous inspection of the Civil farceurs, notably Richenda Carey, as a Depres- an ephemeral illusion of intimacy with his audi- War’s haunted aftermath, an update of Aeschy- sion-hit member of the gentry, and Hugh Sachs, ence. If it doesn’t all necessarily cohere, it’s only lus’ “Oresteia,” finds Expressionistic life in this as a family friend whose every line pierces the hy- in the way a poem might choose not to resolve—to new production, from Target Margin. Much of pocrisy around him, including his own. “You’re al- leave ample room for wonder. Frank Oz directs, the power of the five-hour-long affair is owed to ways jumping to conclusions,” Lord Kettlewell tells and Mark Mothersbaugh composed the wistful, the grandness of O’Neill’s scope and the demand him. “I know I am,” he says, “but it’s the only exer- carrousel-style music. (Daryl Roth, 20 Union it makes on the audience’s endurance. By the time cise I get.” (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.) Sq. E. 800-745-3000.) the curtain falls, we feel a wrenching exhaustion that echoes the attrition of the doomed Mannon Six Degrees of Separation Indecent family. To this epic effect (and perhaps because The playwright John Guare has written at least Paula Vogel’s revelatory play—her belated Broad- of the vast canvas it offers), the director David three masterpieces, and this is one, a brilliant in- way début—begins in Warsaw in 1906 and ends Herskovits adds an ongoing—and often comic— vestigation into the lies we tell ourselves—and in Connecticut a half century later, but it’s as in- commentary on theatrical conventions and his- our children—without admitting how much we timate and immediate as a whispered secret. It tory, as the actors flit among naturalistic, melo- need to believe them to get through. A wealthy tells the story of another play, Sholem Asch’s Yid- dramatic, and cartoonish readings of their lines. Manhattan couple, Ouisa (Allison Janney, tall and dish drama “God of Vengeance,” which toured the Whole sections whiz by with a tossed-off, mod- nimble) and Flan (John Benjamin Hickey), live to theatres of Europe before coming to Broadway, ern kind of cool. By slow, erotic degrees, Hersko- succeed while forgetting how to love. When Paul in 1923, and causing a scandal, in part because of vits draws us close—then, via a funky approach (Corey Hawkins) enters their home, saying he’s a passionate lesbian kiss. The cast was tried for to staging, closer still—into the drama of family. the son of Sidney Poitier, the couple begin to feel obscenity, and Asch chose to distance himself (Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. 212-598-0400.) things they haven’t felt for years, like the excite- from the work—all before Nazism overtook the ment that comes with letting difference into their play, its people, and the world it came from. Di- Oslo lives. While the director, Trip Cullman, manages rected with poetry and polish by Rebecca Taich- J. T. Rogers’s play, which has upgraded to the the relatively large cast with clarity and power, man, Vogel’s play thrums with music, desire, big stage at Lincoln Center, introduces us to the nothing feels inspired except for Hawkins’s per- and fear, and it’s shrewd about the ways in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Middle East formance and Peter Mark Kendall’s, as Rick, one America isn’t free, and about how art does and peace process: a married Norwegian couple who of Paul’s lovers and victims. Both characters want doesn’t transcend the perilous winds of history. orchestrated the secret talks between Israelis and to believe in the power of love, but are undone, in (Cort, 138 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200.) Palestinians which led to the 1993 Oslo Accords. different ways, by romance: Rick’s with a man he Played by the exceptional Jennifer Ehle and Jef- cannot know, and Paul’s with himself, the person The Little Foxes ferson Mays, Mona Juul and Terje Rød-Larsen he dreams of being but can never realize. (Ethel Long dismissed as ripe melodrama, Lillian Hell- are tight-lipped diplomatic professionals, as cau- Barrymore, 243 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.) man’s 1939 play, about a Southern family rot- tiously neutral as their all-gray wardrobes sug- ten with greed and rancor, has a Greek trage- gest. (Bartlett Sher’s staging is Scandinavian in Sweat dy’s implacability and the taut plotting of film its clarity.) Plying their guests with herring and Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, noir. Daniel Sullivan’s production, for Manhat- waffles, they oversee colorful characters from newly transferred to Broadway from the Public tan Theatre Club, is traditional in every respect both sides, who bond tentatively and tell jokes Theatre, opens at top intensity in a parole office but one: Cynthia Nixon and Laura Linney take while haggling over Gaza. At nearly three hours, in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 2008, as two young turns playing the imperious, steel-willed Regina the play provides a journalistic service without men, one black, one white, attempt to confront Giddens—one of modern theatre’s greatest cre- having much to say, ultimately, about the conflict the mess they’ve made of their lives. But this is ations—and the vulnerable, alcoholic Birdie Hub- itself, aside from a “We Are the World” coda that really the story of their mothers (embodied with bard. While both stars play Birdie along the same shows how close we were, once, to peace. (Vivian rich authenticity by Michelle Wilson and Johanna

lines, each brings very different shadings to Re- Beaumont, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.) Day), who have spent their adult lives working INÈS LONGEVIAL BY ILLUSTRATION

24 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 THE THEATRE the assembly line of a steel-tubing factory, and whose friendship crumbles the day in 2000 when the plant locks the workers out. By the end, ev- erything is fully explained—perhaps too fully ex- NIGHT LIFE plained, depending on your taste. But Nottage isn’t interested in hinting at what went wrong; 1 she wants to make it known. It’s a play that listens ROCK AND POP Donna McGhee, at this comprehensive trib- deeply to the confounding plight of blue-collar ute to his catalogue. (Alhambra Ballroom, 2116 workers in the world’s richest country, and which, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 6th floor. nyc.red- in a just world, would shake their bosses to the Musicians and night-club proprietors lead bullmusicacademy.com. May 11.) core. (Studio 54, at 254 W. 54th St. 212-239-6200.) complicated lives; it’s advisable to check 1 in advance to confirm engagements. DJ Harvey Harvey Bassett came of age in England in the ALSO NOTABLE The Music of Patrick Adams late nineteen-seventies, amid pivotal develop- Each year, the Red Bull Music Academy, an ments in the city’s music and politics. Punk Amélie Walter Kerr. • Anastasia Broadhurst. • The amorphous organization responsible for vari- and disco germinated alongside oil shocks, Antipodes Pershing Square Signature Cen- ous music-themed events and a twenty-four- bloody culture wars, and seismic shifts in ter. • Bandstand Jacobs. • Charlie and the Choc- hour online radio station, hosts a sprawling government. Inspired by rapid change, Bas- olate Factory Lunt-Fontanne. • The Emperor festival of talks, concerts, and parties through- sett sought out a new route; on a trip to New Jones Irish Repertory. • Ernest Shackleton Loves out the city, diving deep into pockets of pop- York City, he encountered hip-hop, then just Me Tony Kiser. • Gently Down the Stream Pub- ular and underground music and living up to blossoming. Soon, he was spending up to eight lic. • The Glass Menagerie Belasco. • Miss Saigon its scholastic title. This year, the series pre- hours a night behind decks in London, Cam- Broadway Theatre. • The Play That Goes Wrong sents a concert celebrating the work of the bridge, and Bristol, playing everything from Lyceum. • Present Laughter St. James. • The Price musician and record producer Patrick Adams, the Pop Group to the Fat Boys. Now infa- American Airlines Theatre. Through May 14. • Sa- whose credit appears on influential releases mous for his marathon sets, he takes the reins mara A.R.T./New York Theatres. Through May from the disco, soul, and hip-hop eras. The at Output this week, playing from open to 14. • Sunset Boulevard Palace. • Sweeney Todd: The Harlem native cut his teeth working at the close. (74 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn. outputclub. Demon Barber of Fleet Street Barrow Street The- Apollo, where he once watched a young Mi- com. May 12.) atre. • 3/Fifths 3LD Art & Technology Center. • chael Jackson soundcheck, and went on to pro- Twelfth Night Public. Through May 14. • Vanity Fair duce records for acts as varied as Black Ivory Perfume Genius Pearl. • The View UpStairs Lynn Redgrave. • War and Rakim. He plays with a stacked band, Mike Hadreas, who performs otherworldly Paint Nederlander. including the soul icons Leroy Burgess and art-rock as Perfume Genius, has built a career

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 25 NIGHT LIFE

flux of artists and musicians over the past de- cade has certainly reshaped its global identity. This weekend marks the inaugural edition of this new pop-culture festival, meant to build bonds between the buzzing creative commu- nities of artists, chefs, innovators, and crafts- people in Tokyo and Brooklyn. The main draw is an eclectic music program, featuring Miyavi and the Taiko Masala Thunder Drummers, from Tokyo, and Blonde Redhead, Anamanaguchi, and Miho Hatori, based in Brooklyn. (Brooklyn Expo1 Center, 72 Noble St., Brooklyn. May 13-14.) JAZZ AND STANDARDS

The Bad Plus The Bad Plus is dead, long live the Bad Plus. The pianist Ethan Iverson, a contributing com- poser for this epochal ensemble, is leaving the band, to be replaced, at the beginning of next year, with Orrin Evans, another formidable, forward-thinking keyboardist. The original unit will be saying its final goodbyes in De- cember, at the Village Vanguard, but a chance to hear the group in its definitive, genre-twirl- ing configuration is not to be squandered. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. May 9-14.)

Eric Comstock and Sean Smith Balance lies at the heart of the most effective jazz-leaning cabaret acts. Insuring the right amount of overt charm, reverence for the past, instrumental bravura, and in-the-moment con- nection with an audience is an art carefully perfected with experience. The pianist and singer Comstock has the goods, and, in tan- Patrick Adams, a prolific crafter of disco, soul, and hip-hop, is honored in Harlem this week. dem with the superb bassist Smith, he will offer expert musicianship and joie de vivre in equal measure. (Birdland, 315 W. 44th St. 212- sifting through traumas from his teens, when Village institution will proceed as planned. 581-3080. May 13.) he received death threats for being openly gay, (Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. 212-505- and from his twenties, when he struggled with 3474. May 11.) Leslie Pintchik substance abuse. Now, with the release of his Pintchik sits comfortably among the many un- fourth album, “No Shape,” he’s gingerly mov- Colin Stetson der-heralded, imaginative keyboardists who are ing on, focussing on the little things required The alto saxophone has played a significant keeping things interesting without grabbing to exist in the face of adversity. His deeply role in the development of the classical, jazz, attention. A crafty, lyrically minded improviser personal music is intensely therapeutic for avant-garde, salsa, and punk-rock genres. But and a compelling composer, she has the added the marginalized and the oppressed, and he’s the Michigan-born, Montreal-based saxo- advantage of a seasoned trio that includes the found a fitting tour partner in Serpentwith- phone innovator Stetson is proof that the bassist Scott Hardy and the drummer Michael feet, a stunning avant-gospel project by Jo- instrument’s most thrilling possibilities are Sarin. (Jazz at Kitano, 66 Park Ave., at 38th St. siah Wise, who spent his adolescence burying still being uncovered. In his years of touring 212-885-7119. May 11.) his difference as a queer boy in a strict reli- with the likes of Tom Waits and Bon Iver, and gious household in Baltimore. Both artists are as a solo performer, Stetson has been honing Chita Rivera crushing and glorious, and the tour’s New York a technique known as circular breathing, in Witnessing the charisma, stagecraft, and du- stop is an excellent opportunity to check out which woodwind players inhale through their rable glamour of a theatrical legend in a hal- Brooklyn Steel, a new venue housed in a for- nose and use their cheeks as bellows, allow- lowed night spot is an experience to be savored. mer steel factory in East Williamsburg. (319 ing them to sustain a tone for a very long Rivera, a venerable Broadway potentate, will Frost St. May 16.) period of time. Stetson’s skill, which results undoubtedly take possession of the house that in a visceral experience for the listener, is Bobby Short built, relinquishing her command Omar Souleyman evident on a set of conceptual albums (the only when she deigns to do so. (Café Carlyle, Souleyman’s approach to the Arabic wedding “New History Warfare” trilogy) and on a Carlyle Hotel, Madison Ave. at 76th St. 212-744- music known as dabke features sampled beats stunning 2015 release, “Sorrow,” with the vi- 1600. May 9-20.) melded with pleasingly overdriven melodic olinist Sarah Neufeld. On his recent album, passages drawn partly from Kurdish, Iraqi, “All This I Do for Glory,” Stetson ruminates Chucho Valdés Quartet 75th Birthday and Syrian sources (all expertly played, on on the ideas of ambition and intent. (Baby’s Celebration keyboard, by his longtime accompanist Rizan All Right, 146 Broadway, Brooklyn. 718-599- A powerhouse virtuoso, the Cuban pianist Sa’id). A former brick mason with a gruff, 5800. May 12.) Valdés remains a force of nature, both lushly commanding voice, the singer, who began his romantic and bitingly percussive in his sweep- career in 1994, is a star in the Middle East, Tokyo x Brooklyn Festival ing improvisations. Celebrating his seven- and has released more than five hundred re- In 2013, Shinzō Abe, the Prime Minister of ty-fifth birthday at the helm of a galvanic cordings, almost entirely on cassette; a new Japan, pledged nearly a billion dollars to the quartet, Valdés will demonstrate an undimin- full-length album, “To Syria, with Love,” is so-called Cool Japan cultural-funding initia- ished ability to fuse Afro-Caribbean rhythms due out in June. There were murmurs that tive, in part to compete with South Korea’s and Stateside hard bop with joyous aban- Trump’s travel ban might keep him out of the vast pop-cultural impact. Brooklyn may not don. (Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. 212-475-8592.

U.S., but Souleyman’s gig at this Greenwich have similar financial initiatives, but its in- May 9-14.) AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION OPPOSITE: TODD; MARK BY ILLUSTRATION

26 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 ABOVE & BEYOND

1 Drones: Is the Sky the Limit? • AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES 212-636-2000.) A bust by Alberto Giacometti of There are few more fitting locations for the his younger brother, Diego, and an aqueous land- first major exhibition on pilotless aircraft than scape by Monet (“Vétheuil”) lead Sotheby’s May 16 the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, housed The season of blockbuster art sales is upon us. evening sale of Impressionists and moderns. Lov- in an aircraft carrier that towers over Twelfth Which auction house will reign supreme? Both ers of the fin de siècle will be enticed by a portrait, Avenue. This show combines artifacts, mod- of the big houses start off with auctions of Im- by Gustav Klimt, of a pale woman engulfed in fiery els, rare footage, and grand installations to pressionist and modern art. Christie’s goes first, reds (“Dame Im Fauteil”), created during the dawn connect the technological developments of with an evening sale (May 15) led by a painting of the Viennese Secession, in 1898. The sale fol- the First World War to the varied and increas- of Dora Maar by Picasso (“Femme Assise, Robe lows one of African and Oceanic art, on May 15, ingly immersive spectrum of drone capabili- Bleue”), with a provenance worthy of a Spielberg that includes a Chokwe female figure from Angola, ties today. Guests will have a chance to handle opus: the painting was confiscated from the paint- its taut, rounded shapes carved out of glistening drone hardware; see the world’s first “flying er’s dealer, Paul Rosenberg, by the Nazis, only to wood. (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212-606-7000.) • Bon- dress,” Volantis, on display; and learn how be “liberated” from a German train by the Resis- hams’ sale of postwar and contemporary art (May drone technology has affected the fields of po- tance. The sale also includes a resting ovoid head 16) offers works by Wayne Thiebaud (one of his licing, firefighting, photography, performance, by Brancusi, “La Muse Endormie,” rendered in pa- scrumptious-looking dessert paintings, “Camellia and more. (Pier 86, Twelfth Ave. at 46th St. in- tinated bronze and gold leaf. Works on paper fol- Cake”), Lichtenstein, and Frankenthaler (“Sum- trepidmuseum.org. Opens May 10.) low the next day. (20 Rockefeller Plaza, at 49th St. mer Angel”). (580 Madison Ave. 212-644-9001.)

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 27 F§D & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO bonara, chorizo, frisée-lardons salad), and BA R TA B Monroe the quality is about the same as a cafete- ria’s: recognizable, edible, filling. Stick to 49 Monroe St. (347-361-8054) the staff ’s recommendations: the burrata, “Twenty years ago, Brooklyn was the the steak tartare, the cacio e pepe, the Wild West. Now if you want grimy you eggplant parmesan. The tartare is so light come here,” a bar-side patron explained. and tender that it tastes only like the olive He was talking about Monroe, the latest oil and spring onions used to season it. Pine Box Rock Shop offering in the area, south of Manhattan’s The burrata—a generous blob—is served 12 Grattan St., Brooklyn (718-366-6311) East Broadway stop on the F train, known over a bed of pesto with halved cherry At most decent vegan establishments, the exclusion as Two Bridges. The neighborhood is still tomatoes. But even the good dishes have of meat and dairy from the menu is not conspicu- relatively ungentrified, despite the recent a texture problem—everything is so soft ous, and the politics of animal liberation take a intrusion of beautiful-people eateries like that a regular was overheard ordering her back seat to the culinary experience. Not so at the Pine Box Rock Shop, perhaps the most aggressively Dimes, Mr. Fong’s, and Kiki’s. Kiki’s may pasta “undercooked.” Al dente, it was still herbivorous bar in the five boroughs. At its most be the sexiest restaurant in the city—not gummable. recent strictly plant-based monthly pop-up market, glamorous by any means, but sexy in a Other items are riskier. The escargots a bakester wore a black hoodie bearing a directive to “arm the animals” and an illustration of a panda bare-mattress-on-the-loft-floor kind of are disturbingly fat. The paella, which toting an M249 machine gun. But try one of her way, where the simple Greek food is cheap, comes topped with a decadent tower of seven-dollar cruelty-free marshmallow-filled fudge the wine carafes are inexpensive enough seafood, is like a soupy risotto. The salad brownies, and any reservations you may have about arming pandas swiftly disappear. Situated in a to order too many, and the people are so Niçoise is surprisingly professional—the former casket factory, on an artsy stretch of East stunning that you think you and your date, tuna perfectly seasoned and seared—until Williamsburg, the industrial-woodsy barroom by extension, must be, too. Monroe, a you land on a piece of fish that didn’t draws a diverse crowd of twenty- and thirtysome- things. At the pop-up, the collective wardrobe month-old restaurant from the same fam- survive its freezing very well and feels included a beret, a hijab, man leggings, protective ily as Kiki’s, continues that tradition: the slimy on the tongue. headphones (on an infant), camo, and tie-dye. Some wine is just as reasonable and the portions Share dessert. There’s passable choco- people studied a drink menu that carefully avoided any beers or spirits made with animal by-products just as large and beside the point. The late mousse or fridge-cold crème brûlée, like gelatin and cochineal extract, a coloring agent crowd is a little older and a little more which, more often than not, is comped, as made from crushed insects. Others grazed on the local, and the wait, for now, unlike Kiki’s if in apology. Then head around the corner proffered risotto burgers, coconut bacon, and ar- tisanal faux cheese. A vat of raw chaga- mushroom hours-long one, is relatively nonexistent. to 169 Bar in a spell of abandon. Remem- “mylk” was produced—“It’s medicinal,” a vender Monroe is dark and romantic, stuffed ber when you were young enough for te- with knuckle tattoos explained—and quickly de- with enough greenery to look like a lost quila shots and P.B.R. on a Monday night? pleted. Proceeds from an organic hot sauce went to an animal sanctuary in New Jersey, where about city tucked in the Amazon. The waitstaff, No? Thanks to Monroe’s—the alchemy two hundred pigs, goats, ducks, turkeys, chickens, like the place, is not fussy. Angelique, a of low lights and wine, legs intertwined rabbits, and peahens live out their natural lives. bartender, looks like Jennifer Garner on like the plants above you—you’ll be in- The bar’s mission to facilitate principled eating and drinking is eclipsed only by its commitment a grocery errand. The food is indiscrim- spired to pretend. (Entrées $11-$29.) to irony. There is one arcade game in the place, and inately southern European (pasta car- —Becky Cooper it’s Big Buck Hunter.—David Kortava SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR FAIBYSHEV DOLLY BY PHOTOGRAPH

28 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT PAY DAYS

year ago, during the Democratic Presidential- provide? A reason that Obama has been criticized for the Can- A primary debate in Flint, Michigan, Senator Bernie tor Fitzgerald fee may be not that he would take the money Sanders was railing against “the crooks on Wall Street” when but that he would do so before his identity outside the White he turned to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and said, “One of House has been solidly defined. Now almost the first thing us has a super PAC. One of us has raised fifteen million dol- that the public is learning about this next stage in his life is lars from Wall Street for that super PAC. One of us has given the one thing they think they already know about politicians: speeches on Wall Street for hundreds of thousands of dollars.” they are financially beholden to corporate interests. Clinton had a ready response: “If you were going to be in some Obama will not run for office again. And, unless the Obamas way distrusted or dismissed about whether you can take on have learned nothing from the Clintons’ experience, his deci- Wall Street if you ever took money, President Obama took sion to accept the speaking fee should finally put to rest any more money from Wall Street in the 2008 campaign than any- notions that Michelle might run. Still, one hopes, and Obama body ever had!” Obama had still stood up to Wall Street, she has said, that he is not done with public life. Last month, in said, and so would she. But there was a problem with that ar- Chicago, he talked about wanting to inspire young people to gument: although Barack Obama’s two campaigns had raised feel good about politics as a profession. He might consider about twenty-five million dollars from Wall Street, he had not how the financial decisions he makes in the next few years personally received large fees from the industry. Meanwhile, could compromise that goal, and others. He is committed to since 2001, Hillary and Bill Clinton’s paid speeches had earned working with Eric Holder, the former Attorney General, in them a hundred and fifty-three million dollars. the battle over congressional redistricting, which will require Obama may yet catch up. Last week, it was reported that, fund-raising for state campaigns. having returned from sailing around Tahiti with friends, he Obama has also begun accepting money from donors would embark on the working stage of his post-Presidency like John Doerr, the venture capitalist, and Reid Hoffman, by giving a speech for which the finan- of LinkedIn, for the Obama Presi- cial-services firm Cantor Fitzgerald dential Center. The design for the would pay him four hundred thousand twenty-one-acre library-and-museum dollars. During his time in the White complex, on the South Side of Chi- House, Obama made his share of mis- cago, was revealed last week, at an takes, but he worked hard. While en- event near the site. Obama announced during insults about his family and his that he and Michelle would donate citizenship, he won landmark progres- two million dollars to a youth-jobs sive victories—including the expansion program, and emphasized that, while of health-care access to millions of other Presidential libraries had in- Americans—all without a hint of sor- volved retrospective “ego-tripping,” didness or scandal, and then he cam- his would look forward. According to paigned tirelessly for Clinton. He de- the Times, the fund-raising target is serves a comfortable retirement. But eight hundred million dollars, to cover isn’t that what the joint book deal that construction costs and the initial en- he and Michelle Obama recently signed, dowment. The modern imperative for for a reported sixty-five million dol- a former President to collect cash for lars, is supposed to provide? For that a monument to himself as soon as he

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS matter, what should a post-Presidency leaves office allows little respite from

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 31 the culture of political financing. The minute you stop being and, crucially, the ability to articulate what the Democratic pharaoh, you have to start building a pyramid. Party stands for, it would be fine for him to focus on his own Until quite recently, it was considered perfectly proper for projects until the next time he’s called on to give a Conven- a former President to trade his conversation and his com- tion speech. The Democratic field, however, is in a state of un- panionship for a check. Jimmy Carter, who eschewed per- productive entropy, in part because the Party has not resolved sonal enrichment in favor of quietly effecting humanitarian the divisions and the contradictions that drew younger voters, advances around the world, was viewed as an outlier. Yet, if in particular, to Sanders. The list of potential standard- the tradition was ever a healthy one for our democracy, voters bearers includes everyone from Joe Biden and Elizabeth War- no longer seem to see it that way. Russian hackers may have ren, who will be in their seventies in 2020, to traditional ma- been a factor in Hillary Clinton’s defeat, but so were a num- chine politicians, like Andrew Cuomo and Terry McAuliffe, ber of Americans who believed that the Clintons had sold and younger senators, such as Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Har- their independence. The Democratic super PAC Priorities ris, and Chris Murphy, who as yet lack the constituencies and USA recently commissioned a study of voters in Wisconsin the institutional support that they will need in order to suc- and Michigan who had chosen Obama in 2012 and Don- ceed on the national level. But, if any of them are standing on ald Trump in 2016, and found that thirty per cent had voted a primary-debate stage in 2020, they are going to have to offer not for Trump but against Clinton. Many also distrusted the better answers than the ones Clinton gave in Flint. Democrats’ economic allegiances. The G.O.P., meanwhile, Her campaign was full of confidence after that debate, but was short on elder statesmen who had enough credibility Sanders, in an upset, won the Michigan primary, and Clin- with its populist wing to halt the lurch toward a demagogue ton went on to lose the state, narrowly, to Trump. Many ob- who said that all politicians were crooks, and that he knew it servers wondered why the candidate hadn’t done more poll- because he had bribed them himself. ing, or deployed a better field operation, or, at least, made Obama may feel that he’s had enough of this kind of head- better use of a surrogate who would have been a great asset ache, but the fact is that his party still needs him. If he could there: President Barack Obama. Maybe next time. just hand over the reins to successors with national reputations —Amy Davidson

SIDE BY SIDE Streep had on a white shirt over He added, “That’s a profound joke.” WHALES AND DINOSAURS black-and-white striped pantaloons. A PEN guest approached Streep and “It’s my springtime outfit,” she said. asked her to pose for a photo holding a “It’s your harlequin outfit!” sign urging Russia to free the Ukrainian Sondheim asked Streep if she was a filmmaker Oleg Sentsov. “I don’t have regular at PEN events. “I came because I social media,” she responded. But PEN love you,” she said. does, so she complied. (The picture ended Where to next? The summer-stock up in the KyivPost.) Then, after wander- s a child, Stephen Sondheim theatricality of finding each other dis- ing past the giant clam and the embalmed A lived a few blocks from the Amer- sipated as the pair walked along the squids, they found the Milstein Hall of ican Museum of Natural History, but museum’s Stygian passageways. Attend- Ocean Life. “I remember this as a sort he hadn’t been back in a while, so on ees in black tie were beginning to stream of atrium,” Sondheim said. Someone a recent rainy night, in search of the in. Sondheim told a joke whose punch took a picture of him, puckish grin on PEN America Literary Gala and his line was “I don’t care. It’s still kreplach.” grizzled face, leaning on the railing, with friend Meryl Streep, he found himself Streep tilting her head toward him, disoriented. Streep was going to give sorority-girl-like, the blue fibreglass whale him an award for Literary Service on hovering in the background. Sondheim behalf of the organization, which ad- had been playing around with whale vocates for persecuted writers. He came metaphors earlier. “Whales and dino- to the diorama of Peter Stuyvesant in saurs? It’s almost too easy.” Dutch Manhattan. “If you get rid of Once seated, they set out to tell the the Indians, it looks like Barbra Strei- story of their friendship. sand’s compound!” he said. It put him Sondheim: “Let her do it. Then I’ll in mind of a Rodgers and Hart line correct it.” about Peter Minuit buying Manhat- Streep: “I didn’t have to bring my hus- tan Island: “For twenty-six dollars and band, because there you are!” a bottle of booze.” He mused on a Sondheim (triumphant): “Now you rhyme he loved. “Yip Harburg rhymed have a portrait of Meryl’s marriage. It’s ‘everybody’ with ‘ladeedadee,’ ” he said. called ‘The Bickersons.’ ” “It’s really terrific.” They first met more than forty years Out of the gloaming, Streep appeared. ago, when Streep had a bit part in Sond- He: “Hi there!” heim’s adaptation of Aristophanes’ “The She: “Hi-i-i there!” Stephen Sondheim and Meryl Streep Frogs,” at Yale, a production that was

32 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 staged half in and half out of a pool. saw each other more. They have houses the pen, our weapons are keystrokes (“Chorine Chokes on Chlorine” was near one another in Connecticut, but on our iPads and our iPhones and our her suggested headline.) “I don’t think they’re busy: He’s working on a Buñuel laptop computers,” Rose Tennent, a he even noticed me,” Streep said. “He adaptation. She’s preparing to play Kath- conservative radio host and one of the was a god.” arine Graham in Steven Spielberg’s ver- event’s organizers, said from a lectern. Sondheim (demurring): “Oh, I’d only sion of “The Pentagon Papers.” But that “We must use those effectively to re- written a few shows. ‘West Side Story,’ isn’t the real reason. store liberty to this great country.” ‘Gypsy,’ and ‘Forum.’ ” “We plan—” Sondheim began. Jim Hoft, another organizer and the “Just ‘West Side Story,’ ‘Gypsy,’ and “—and then he cancels,” Streep said. editor of the pro-Trump Web tabloid ‘Forum’?” “Or you do! And there’s a third per- the Gateway Pundit, spoke next. “Those “And ‘Anyone Can Whistle.’ They son, and that’s Christine Baranski, people who are meeting across town, at stripped my epaulets after that, as they say.” who does a lot of cancelling.” This they the White House Correspondents’ din- True collaboration waited until 2013, agreed on: Baranski was the problem. ner—those people are not the ones who and the movie version of “Into the 1—D. T. Max are telling the truth,” he said. The crowd Woods,” in which Streep played the witch. booed, and someone shouted, “Very fake He wrote a special song for her and she DEPT. OF HOOPLA news!” “They’re running these crazy con- asked him to sign the sheet music. “Don’t ALT DANCE-OFF spiracies on Russia,” Hoft continued. fuck it up!” he wrote on it. Both agreed “But what’s wonderful is, the public is that she didn’t, but the song was cut. starting to not listen to them.” There In the meantime, their friendship were about a hundred people in atten- grew through one of Sondheim’s favor- dance, including Michael Flynn, Jr., who ite mediums, games. Natasha Richard- was smoking a cigar and wearing a son and Liam Neeson hosted holiday “Golden Girls” T-shirt. TVs were tuned parties that included charades, in which here is a woman in Washington, to a Fox News special about Donald Streep participated. Mia Farrow brought T D.C., who, during the week, works Trump’s first hundred days; while Hoft Sondheim to one. at a law firm. Some weekends, she d.j.s spoke, photographs of Michael Flynn, “I play a different kind of charades at weddings or corporate events, as DJ Sr., the former national-security adviser, than Meryl does,” he said. “I play run- Applause. Recently, she took a Saturday- who is under investigation by the Pen- ning charades, in which there are two night gig, at a downtown cigar bar. “I tagon, flashed on the screen. teams in relay. She likes to play the kind was told that it would be a group of The first speaker was Lucian Win- of charades where her team makes up journalists having an eighties-themed trich, from the Gateway Pundit. He in- all the things and our team acts them party,” she said. She was not told that troduced Gavin McInnes, a talk-show out and they giggle at what assholes we the party would be called the Real host and a self-proclaimed “Western chau- are as we’re doing it.” News Correspondents’ dinner—not vinist,” who took the microphone from Streep replied, “His version is too com- the White House Correspondents’ As- Wintrich and kissed him on the mouth. plicated to do when you’re drunk.” sociation dinner, and not Samantha “You can’t get AIDS from kissing, right?” The room filled. The awards were Bee’s “Not the White House Corre- McInnes said. He wore a studded denim given. Talk turned to children (hers) and spondents’ Dinner,” but a smaller event, vest, and his face was smeared with dirt. art (his). They have hopes for a new col- held as a form of right-wing counter- “This is how I dressed in the eighties,” laboration, but, for now, they wish they programming. “Our weapons now are he said. “I was an anarchist punk, and I think in many ways I still am.” He argued that the G.O.P. was the party of freedom. “You became the Nazis, Democrats,” he said. “You became the Fascists.” He concluded with what he called “a poem that I just came up with right now.” The poem was a chant: “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” During the speeches, the d.j. stepped outside for some air. Three of the attend- ees—two young men wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, and a blond middle-aged woman—asked whether she was a Trump supporter. “I try to re- main neutral,” she said. Wrong answer. “They started in on me, asking me all kinds of aggressive questions,” the d.j. said later. “I stayed quiet. I was the only black person there, and I didn’t want it to become a thing. I just kept thinking,

Shit, just play the music and get out.” Weed Chocolate Because She’s Stupid.” ing show, at Brooklyn Glass, a glass She went back to her turntables. “We (Bienenstock’s wife was the “Edibles Ed- studio in Gowanus. Fifteen local con- have a surprise for you,” Hoft told the itor” at High Times. They both left the testants were each given the same ma- audience. “We have a Thrilla in . . . wher- magazine recently.) Bienenstock is also terials, the same equipment, and four ever we’re at.” It was a dance-off between the author of the 2016 book “How to hours to create a pot pipe. Their finished McInnes and James O’Keefe, a self- Smoke Pot (Properly),” which is less a work was on display at the back of the described “guerrilla journalist,” whom primer than a plea—less how than why. gallery; the winner had been selected Andrew Breitbart once referred to as “a He considers himself to be an advocacy by Bienenstock. “It seemed like some- cross between Morley Safer and Sacha journalist, a member, in a way, of an ab- thing I’d want to display in my house,” Baron Cohen.” McInnes went first, danc- olitionist press. “Cannabis was my gate- he said. “It doesn’t look like a pipe, at ing to “Let’s Go Crazy,” by Prince. He way to social justice and to the idea of first glance.” shimmied his hips, lifted his shirt to ex- the government as an oppressive, illegit- The lampworkers in the show had pose his chest, and ended by doing the imate force,” he said the other day. Still, pseudonyms like Elbo, Banjo, Kinda, and Worm. Then O’Keefe, in a fedora, per- there is useful advice here and there in Snic. The so-called godfather of glass is formed Michael Jackson’s choreography the book, such as a three-step plan for Bob Snodgrass, a seventy-one-year-old to “Billie Jean,” including a passable combatting “amotivational syndrome,” hippie who lives in Eugene, Oregon. His moonwalk. As measured by crowd ap- also known as “couch lock”: work filled an entire vitrine. He started plause, O’Keefe was the clear winner. out in the late seventies, selling his im- “Fuck that guy,” McInnes said. “He just Step 1: Decide what you’re going to do after plements at county fairs and Kiwanis you get stoned before you get stoned. memorized a bunch of moves. I was danc- Step 2: Get stoned. Clubs, and then, beginning in the late ing from the heart.” Hoft returned to the Step 3: Do whatever you decided on in Step 1. eighties, became a parking-lot fixture on microphone. “That’s it for our program tour with the Grateful Dead. Bienen- tonight,” he said. “We have some food Bienenstock came to town from Los stock said, “Deadheads knew that if you in the other room. . . . Thank you so much, Angeles last month, to guest-curate an bought a Snoddy it would pay for itself, and God bless America.” It was 8:53 P.M. exhibit, at apexart, in Tribeca, called “Out- because everyone wanted to put their The audience dispersed, and the d.j. law Glass”—a showcase of glass pipes good weed in it.” Snodgrass’s innova- spun to a near-empty dance floor. After and bongs, handmade by master lamp- tions are legion. He conceived of the so- a while, the blond woman from outside workers for the purpose of smoking mar- called sidecar design—wherein the bowl approached and requested “Girl You ijuana in various forms. Technically, this is affixed to the side of the pipe, rather Know It’s True,” by Milli Vanilli. “I al- is known as artistic hard glass. There were than the top—while he and his wife were ready played that, actually,” the d.j. said. four large vitrines, each about the size of spending the night in a friend’s water- In response, the woman called her “a lit- a coffin and populated by an array of bed. Every time they put the pipe down, tle bitch” and stormed off. flamboyant, filigreed apparatuses, lurid it tipped over. But if you had the bowl The event ended at eleven. “I was in plumbing in many colors and forms— as an outrigger—eureka! my car and gone by 11:24,” the d.j. said. dragons, skulls, krakens—which one Though none of the works at the gal- “I have never packed up that fast.” She might find either fetching or hideous, lery were for sale, the finer ones can go votes, but otherwise she tries to ignore depending upon one’s taste for velvet for six figures. The collectors, Bienen- politics. “My main takeaway was to do heavy-metal posters and airbrushed land- stock said, “are a self-selecting group of more homework next time,” she said. scapes on vans. No question, the crafts- people who have money and love weed.” 1—Andrew Marantz manship was humbling. Delicate leaves Included in this category, apparently, are and lace, tubes within tubes, ghouls em- growers looking to park their unbank- FORM OVER FUNCTION DEPT. bedded inside chambers like ships in bot- able cash. Bienenstock calls it a “legally BONG SHOW tles. One object widely admired by the gray art form.” In 2003, at a time when other lampworkers was a pea-green mon- the Department of Homeland Security ster truck with big black tires and flames had declared that the risk of a terrorist exuding from six tailpipes—every inch attack in the U.S. was orange in magni- of it glass. Mais oui: Ceci, c’est une pipe. tude, the Justice Department devoted Bienenstock, who is forty-one and was personnel to a sting that it called Op- reared in Rahway (he first smoked pot eration Pipe Dreams. Dozens of people hen David Bienenstock says, behind the bowling alley), invited his were arrested for selling parapherna- W “I’ve been smoking weed profes- mother to the opening. She told him, “I lia. (You may recall the subsequent sionally for fifteen years,” he is referring can remember throwing out one of your prison sentence of the comedian Tommy to his two stints as an editor at High contraptions, but it wasn’t nearly as elab- Chong.) Though there didn’t seem much Times and the intervening years as a fre- orate or beautiful as one of these things.” of a chance that anyone would raid the quent contributor to Vice, where, among “Some of these guys probably started exhibit in Tribeca, the gallery included other things, he co-produced the out selling weed,” Bienenstock said, a this statement in the brochure: “apexart pot-cooking show “Bong Appétit” and couple of days later. A few weeks ear- does not endorse or advocate the use of once wrote a rebuttal to the Times, en- lier, the gallery had held a “flame-off,” illegal substances.” But Bienenstock does. titled “Maureen Dowd Freaked Out on based loosely on “Chopped,” the cook- —Nick Paumgarten

36 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 THE FINANCIAL PAGE both in and out of office, is creating a new atmosphere. STICKLER STATUS During cocktail hour by Camana Bay, holding plates of crab claws and sushi, conference-goers exchanged anecdotes about how traders at their firms were starting to ask whether the old, strict rules still applied. The compliance officers seemed to be channelling a concern about what leadership rand Cayman, the largest of the Cayman Islands, is theorists call “tone at the top.” Michael Useem, a professor G distinguished by a crescent-shaped, white-sand beach of management at Wharton, said that words alone don’t lined with four- and five-star hotels, dive shops, and stores change rules, “but when repeated, promoted, articulated, in selling luxury goods at a price point you might expect a whole variety of communication channels, it does affect in the Zurich airport. Two of the most popular activities the tone in the middle.” He went on, “The tone at the top are swimming with stingrays and operating offshore tax right now coming from Washington may be sending a cor- havens. It is also a favored destination for corporate re- rosive message on compliance, ethical behavior, and so on. treats, and for four days this April more than five hun- I think it probably is, but we are going to have to wait and dred financial compliance officers converged on the Ritz- see.” (Useem did not attend the Grand Cayman conference, Carlton in Grand Cayman. Between sets of tennis, rounds which is called GAIM Ops; I was there as a speaker.) of golf, and seminars on operational due diligence and cash- Trump’s tone has been aggressive. In early February, he management efficiencies, it became clear that some of them signed an executive order directing the Treasury Secretary were a little nervous about their futures. to revisit Obama-era banking rules, Compliance officers are supposed and he has repeatedly complained to keep banks, hedge funds, and other about the burden of excessive regula- companies out of trouble. Doing so tion. (“Dodd-Frank is a disaster,” he sometimes means telling powerful declared, in January, referring to the money- makers that they have to fol- financial-reform legislation that was low rules, which might mean that they passed after the 2008 crisis. “We’re make less money. This is not always an going to be doing a big number on easy task. For every insider-trading ar- Dodd-Frank.”) His Administration rest, fake-account scandal, Bank Se- has been hostile toward the Consumer crecy Act fine, or money-laundering Financial Protection Bureau, which investigation, there is a compliance de- was set up to protect consumers from partment that failed in its job. In the the skullduggery of financial institu- movies, compliance officers are usually tions, and, in March, he fired Preet the meek ones wearing glasses, hid- Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the den in windowless rooms at the end of Southern District of New York, who long hallways. became famous for bringing insider- Compliance officers live in fear of trading prosecutions. missing something. “There are no great For the most part, Wall Street has days, like, ‘Oh, my God, we just found that one of our port- been pleased by these signals. But Andrew Kandel, the chief folio managers was doing something wrong and we told it to compliance officer and co-general counsel at Cerberus Cap- the C.I.O. and we’re going to get him kicked out of here,’ ” ital Management, a private-equity firm, said that regula- Thomas Sporkin, a securities lawyer who represents compli- tion helps promote ethical behavior. He and Schein have ance officers, said. “There’s no victory there.” When Mark given seminars at the Grand Cayman conference for seven Schein, a former Bronx prosecutor and enforcement lawyer years. “I try to scare people all the time by talking about for the New York Stock Exchange, became the chief compli- the regulatory environment and how difficult it is, that the ance officer of the hedge fund York Capital Management, in S.E.C. could examine us, or the C.F.T.C.,” he said, refer- 2005, he had golf shirts made. “On one side, it says ‘Your Cap- ring to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. ital Management Compliance Department,’ ” he said. “On the It’s one way to “remind people of how important it is to other side, it says ‘We Take the Fun Out of Funds.’ ” be compliant.” Despite compliance’s reputation as a buzzkill profes- There are other ways as well, such as setting an exam- sion, its status rose during the Obama Administration. ple. “Making a lot of money any way you can is something Regulations implemented after the financial crisis created that Trump brags about and advocates. And that creates a a need for internal watchdogs, as did the concern raised general climate. And you really need your people to be in- by prosecutions of banks and hedge funds for mortgage timidated,” Schein told me. “When you have an atmosphere fraud, currency-market rigging, and insider trading. In 2014, where people feel they can do whatever they want to make the Wall Street Journal went so far as to describe compli- money, and regulation is going to be going away, it just ance as a potential “dream career.” But President Donald makes our job a lot harder.” Trump, with his disregard for business-ethics standards, —Sheelah Kolhatkar TIM LAHAN

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 37 ports a tiny video camera; connected ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE SCIENCES to this by a cable is a postage-stamp- size white plastic lollipop, which he holds in his mouth. The camera feed SIGHT UNSEEN is reduced in resolution to a grid of four hundred gray-scale pixels, transmitted Seeing with your tongue and other surprises of sensory-substitution technology. to his tongue via a corresponding grid of four hundred tiny electrodes on the BY NICOLA TWILLEY lollipop. Dark pixels provide a strong shock; lighter pixels merely tingle. The resulting vision is a sensation that Wei- henmayer describes as “pictures being painted with tiny bubbles.” Reading the cards before his climb helped Weihenmayer calibrate the in- tensity of the electrical stimulation and make sure that the camera was point- ing where he thought it was pointing. When he was done, he tied himself into his harness and set off up Mad Dog, a difficult route marked by small blue plastic holds set far apart on the wall. Without the BrainPort, Weihen- mayer’s climbing style is inelegant but astonishingly fast—a spidery scramble with arms and feet sweeping like wind- shield wipers across the wall in front of him in order to feel out the next hold. With the device on his tongue, he is much slower, but more deliberate. After each move, he leans away from the wall, surveys the cliff face, and then carefully reaches his hand out into mid- air, where it hovers for a split second before lunging toward a hold several feet away. “You have to do the hand thing, because it’s hard to know where, exactly, things are in space,” Weihen- According to one scientist, “You don’t see with the eyes. You see with the brain.” mayer explained, as I prepared to tackle Cry Baby, a much simpler route. “Once he climbers at Earth Treks gym, sis, an inherited condition that caused my hand blocks the hold, I know I’m T in Golden, Colorado, were warm- his retinas to disintegrate completely in front of it, and then I just kind of go ing up: stretching, strapping themselves by his freshman year of high school. in there.” into harnesses, and chalking their hands Unable to play the ball games at which Weihenmayer told me that he as they prepared to scale walls stippled his father and his brothers excelled, he wouldn’t take the BrainPort up Ever- with multicolored plastic holds. Seated took to climbing after being introduced est—relying on fallible electronics in off to one side, with a slim gray plastic to it at a summer camp for the blind. such extreme conditions would be fool- band wrapped around his brow, Erik He learned to pat the rock face with hardy. But he has used it on challeng- Weihenmayer was warming up, too— his hands or tap it with an ice axe to ing outdoor climbs in Utah and around by reading flash cards. “I see an ‘E’ at find his next hold, following the sound Colorado, and he loves the way that it the end,” he said, sweeping his head of a small bell worn by a guide, who restores his lost hand-eye coördination. over the top card, from side to side and also described the terrain ahead. With “I can see the hold, I reach up, and I’m, up and down. “It’s definitely popping— this technique, he has summited the like, ‘Pow!’ ” he said. “It’s in space, and is it ‘please’?” he asked me. It was. Wei- tallest peaks on all seven continents. I just grabbed it in space. It sounds so henmayer moved triumphantly on to A decade ago, Weihenmayer began simple when you have eyes, but that’s the next card. using the BrainPort, a device that en- a really cool feeling.” Erik Weihenmayer is the only blind ables him to “see” the rock face using The BrainPort, which uses the sense person to have climbed Mt. Everest. his tongue. The BrainPort consists of of touch as a substitute for sight, is He was born with juvenile retinoschi- two parts: the band on his brow sup- one of a growing number of so-called

38 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY CHAD HAGEN sensory- substitution devices. Another, could he have recovered so much?” excellent transmitter of electrical en- the vOICe, turns visual information Bach-y-Rita marvelled. “If he could ergy, and it is as sensitive to two-point into sound. Others translate auditory recover, why didn’t others recover?” discrimination as a fingertip. information into tactile sensation for Bach-y-Rita had already begun tin- the deaf or use sounds to supply miss- kering with devices that substituted tac- n 1998, Bach-y-Rita founded a com- ing haptic information for burn victims tile sensation for vision, but, encour- I pany, Wicab, to commercialize his in- and leprosy patients. While these de- aged by this personal evidence of the vention. It is based in a small office park vices were designed with the goal of brain’s ability to adapt to loss, he com- in the suburbs of Madison, Wisconsin, restoring lost sensation, in the past de- pleted his first prototype in 1969. It was and shares an anonymous, two-story glass cade they have begun to revise our un- built from castoffs—a discarded den- building and a plant-filled atrium with derstanding of brain organization and tist’s chair, an old TV camera—and a family dentist. A couple of dozen em- development. The idea that underlies weighed four hundred pounds. A blind ployees sit at cubicles or in a small work- sensory substitution is a radical one: person could sit in the chair and scan shop where each of the devices is still that the brain is capable of processing the scene by using hand cranks to move built by hand. When I visited, Tricia perceptual information in much the the camera. The analog video stream Grant, Wicab’s director of clinical re- same way, no matter which organ de- was fed into an enormous computer, search, led me through the first steps of livers it. As the BrainPort’s inventor, which converted it into four hundred a ten-hour training program that she’s the neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita, gray-scale dots. These points of infor- developed to help new users get accus- put it, “You don’t see with the eyes. You mation were then transferred not to tomed to the device. see with the brain.” four hundred electrodes, as in the Brain- Grant spread a black cloth on a Port, but to a grid of vibrating, Teflon- conference- room table—it’s easier for ach-y-Rita, who died in 2006, is tipped pins mounted on the back of the beginners to start in a high-contrast en- B known as “the father of sensory sub- chair. The pins vibrated intensely for vironment—and blindfolded me. She stitution,” although, as he liked to point dark pixels and stayed still for light ones, put the band holding the camera over out, both Braille and white canes are enabling users to feel the picture puls- my ears and gave me the plastic lollipop essentially sensory-substitution systems, ing on their backs. After just a few hours’ to put into my mouth. As I wiggled my replacing information that is typically practice, Bach-y-Rita’s first six volun- fingers in front of my face, she explained visual—words on a page, objects at a teers, all blind from birth, could distin- how to increase the intensity of the elec- distance—with tactile sensation. He guish between straight lines and curved trical pulses on my tongue until I was even argued that writing ought to be ones, identify a telephone and a coffee able to feel them. (Smokers and the el- considered the original precursor, be- mug, and even recognize a picture of derly typically require more stimulation cause it enabled the previously auditory the supermodel Twiggy. than younger users.) Suddenly, there was experience of the spoken word to be Bach-y-Rita published his results in a slightly sour fizzing on my tongue, and presented visually. Nature, in 1969. During the following we were ready to begin. Bach-y-Rita began his medical ca- decade, he continued to refine the sys- Grant told me that she was putting reer in visual rehabilitation, gaining a tem, testing his blind subjects with more a plastic banana and a ball on the table. reputation as a specialist in the neu- and more complex tasks while trying to “This is how we always start,” she said. rophysiology of eye muscles. In 1959, shrink the enormous contraption into “See if you can tell which is on the left his father, Pedro Bach-y-Rita, a Cat- something more manageable. The bulk and which is on the right.” Lips clamped alan poet who had immigrated to the of cameras and computers at the time shut around the BrainPort cable, I swept Bronx and taught at City College, wasn’t the only challenge. He also ran my head slowly from side to side, as if I suffered a catastrophic stroke. Doctors up against a tactile constraint known as were stroking the table with my brow, said that he would never speak or walk “two-point discrimination”—our abil- emitting a startled “Mmm,” as I bumped again, but Paul’s brother, then a med- ity to tell that two things touching the into each effervescent object. Although ical student, designed a gruelling re- skin are indeed discrete objects, rather I couldn’t explain exactly how I knew, habilitation regimen: Pedro had to than a single large one. The skin’s spa- after scanning back and forth for a few crawl around on kneepads until he tial resolution varies widely; on the back, seconds I was pretty sure that the ball could walk, and to practice scooping the stimuli had to be quite far apart, and was on the left and the banana was on up coins until he had learned to feed Bach-y-Rita spent years looking for a the right, and I reached out to double- himself. After a year, Pedro went back better spot. Some of the most point- check. “You grabbed that ball like you to work as a teacher and, after two, he sensitive areas are on the hand, but if saw it!” Grant said. was able to live independently. When blind users had their hands stuck in a Half an hour later, I had successfully he eventually died—in 1965, of a heart device they wouldn’t be able to manip- navigated an obstacle course of office attack—he was hiking up a mountain ulate the objects they were newly capa- chairs, and identified the letter “O,” writ- in Colombia. And yet, as his autopsy ble of seeing. Bach-y-Rita’s colleagues ten on the whiteboard. (A capital “L” revealed, his brain was still severely scoffed when he settled on the tongue, proved a little trickier—I guessed “E” in- damaged; the areas responsible for mo- pointing out the difficulty of making stead.) “What else can I see?” I asked tion and involuntary muscle move- the device work in a wet environment. Grant. Just then, our lunch arrived. She ments had been all but destroyed. “How But the tongue’s moisture makes it an warned me to avoid hot peppers and

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 39 pickles, in order to spare my overstimu- BrainPort is, he said, “starting you back processing center in the mouse brains lated tongue. I barely heard her, slumped at square one again, and you have to build reconfigured itself to compensate for the in my chair and suddenly aware of how up an expertise and an understanding sensory damage. (Mice rely on their whis- hard I had been concentrating for the over time.” Not surprisingly, many blind kers to orient themselves.) As the con- past forty-five minutes. Stripped of sight, people, for whom getting from A to B cept of adult neuroplasticity encroached I’d had to squeeze every drop of infor- in a sighted world already poses a signifi- on the dogma of critical periods, a new mation I could about the world around cant daily challenge, don’t feel that it’s generation of neuroscientists seized on me from a plastic square tingling like worth the investment of time, money, sensory- substitution devices as a valu- Pop Rocks on my tongue. and energy to become proficient users able tool with which to probe human We completed only the first part of of a device that, at its best, offers limited brain development and organization. Grant’s course, but she told me that, after results. The BrainPort’s images are, after In 2007, the Israeli neurobiologist ten hours, I would have been able to use all, gray-scale and low-resolution, and its Ella Striem-Amit embarked on doc- the BrainPort to safely move around my auditory competitor, the vOICe, oper- toral research investigating whether peo- home. Achieving mastery takes much ates with a built-in time delay, so it can’t ple who are born blind could ever learn longer. “We recommend practicing for at even help you cross the street. to perceive visual information in the least twenty minutes a day,” she said. “It’s way that sighted people do. She joined like learning a foreign language.” n the late nineteen-fifties, in a win- the lab of Amir Amedi, a neurologist Wicab has been making the Brain- I dowless basement at Johns Hopkins, at Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, and Port for the better part of two decades, the neurophysiologists David Hubel and they set about training a small group and the device received F.D.A. approval Torsten Wiesel began a series of exper- of congenitally blind subjects to use as a vision aid in 2015. No more than iments that eventually won them a Nobel the vOICe. The vOICe translates a cam- two hundred have shipped, however, and Prize, for their contribution to our un- era feed into electronically produced in the blind community it remains little derstanding of the visual cortex. Some notes according to reasonably simple more than a curiosity. Eric Bridges, the of their most important work took place principles: brightness is mapped to vol- executive director of the American Coun- in the early sixties, when they investi- ume, and elevation to pitch. The cam- cil of the Blind, told me that he hadn’t gated the development of visual process- era scans a hundred and eighty degrees heard of it or of the various alternative ing. They sutured closed a single eye of and delivers a new snapshot every sec- devices, like the vOICe. He said wearily an eight-day-old kitten and unstitched ond, and the sound is heard in stereo, that he is constantly approached by peo- it three months later. Although the kit- enabling you to tell which side an ob- ple claiming to have invented the next ten now had two undamaged eyes, it re- ject is on. A staircase whose first step is big blindness aid, but that few of these mained blind in the eye that had been on your left and which has a sunlit win- ideas ever make it to commercial pro- visually deprived. Examining the kitten’s dow at the top would, for example, sound duction. Although 1.3 million Ameri- visual cortex, Hubel and Wiesel found like a musical scale, rising in volume as cans are blind, with another 8.7 million that the open eye had taken over the it ascends in pitch. qualifying as visually impaired, they neurons of the one that was closed, leav- Striem-Amit discovered that teach- still constitute a niche market. “And ing the kitten forever unable to process ing people to see using the vOICe re- guess what?” Bridges added. “The blind information from a second eye. quired more than simply helping them and visually impaired community has This finding became a central piece master the technology. “Congenitally a really low labor- participation rate. of evidence for the so-called “critical pe- blind people don’t know how vision We’re not exactly flush with cash.” Al- riods” doctrine of brain development. works,” she explained. “They don’t know though users of the vOICe need purchase The theory holds that, if sensory input principles of occlusion”—that one ob- only a smartphone and a pair of cheap is lacking during a crucial phase, the brain ject can block another—“or that things augmented- reality glasses—the software will fail to develop normally, remaining appear larger when they’re closer.” Yet, is free—the BrainPort is currently priced unable to process that kind of informa- after seventy hours of training, her sub- at ten thousand dollars. (Wicab is lob- tion even if sensory input is later restored. jects were able to grasp these concepts bying to have the device qualify for re- According to this theory, Paul Bach-y- and to identify shapes, objects, and even imbursement under Medicaid.) Rita’s sensory-substitution device should faces. In a video of one experiment, a But cost is not the only obstacle. not have worked for adults who had spent blind woman, shown a picture of a man Learn ing how to use a sensory-substi- their entire lives blind, because their spreading his arms and legs in the shape tution device is hard work. “I almost brains would never have developed the of a star, stands up and mimicks his po- think of it as giving you an opportunity ability to interpret visual information. sition. In another, a man using a simi- to see what sensory perception must have More recently, however, other neuro- lar device to identify a plaid shirt says, been like when you were an infant,” Mi- scientists have found clues indicating “It sounds a bit checkered.” chael Proulx, an experimental psychol- that the adult brain does retain some More remarkable were the results of ogist who studies sensory substitution, ability to adapt—a quality known as fMRI brain mapping of blind subjects. told me. “We can’t remember the first plasticity. In 2002, scientists installed a Although the initial processing of the year of life and how confusing all that tiny glass window in the skulls of adult vOICe’s soundscapes occurred in the au- visual information would have been.” mice and trimmed every other whisker; ditory cortex, subsequent tasks, such as Learning to see using the vOICe or the they were able to watch as the spatial- identifying objects, occurred in the same

40 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 regions of the brain as in sighted people. Striem-Amit and Amedi believe that the results directly contradict the critical- periods theory of brain development. “What we are claiming is that a lot of these brain regions didn’t depend on vi- sual experience to begin with,” Striem- Amit explained. Instead, they argue, the correct wiring is laid down in the brain regardless of whether it is ever used. Amedi, a former jazz saxophonist, has recently developed a device called Eye- Music, which replaces the soulless elec- tronic bleeping of the vOICe with in- strumental timbres that add color to the auditory translation of visual informa- tion: strings are shades of yellow, brass is blue, and so on. After training nine con- genitally blind subjects on the device for thirty hours, he showed them the shapes I, V, and X in three different colors, while mapping their brains. When asked to dis- ¥¥ criminate among the shapes as letters, the participants showed the greatest activa- genetics before Crick and Watson dis- the location of family members using tion in the area of the brain associated covered the structure of DNA. “Neuro- G.P.S. tracking technology. “The com- with reading; when the participants were science is so young that we hardly know munity of people that work in sensory asked to identify the shapes as Roman the first thing about the brain,” he told substitution is very small, and ninety- numerals, their brains lit up in a region me. Nonetheless, he leans toward a point nine per cent of them, including me, used associated with numbers and quantity; of view potentially even more radical than to be very focussed on restoration, reha- and, when the participants sorted the that of Striem-Amit and Amedi—that bilitation, and basic science,” Amedi told shapes by color, Amedi and his colleagues the adult brain may be flexible enough me. “Now, even just in the last year, the saw activity in the color centers of the to encompass entirely novel senses. pendulum has swung in the direction of brain, as well as in the auditory cortex. Eagleman, too, has developed a creating superabilities.” “If you open a neuroscience textbook sensory- substitution device, called the right now, it would still talk about the VEST (Versatile Extra-Sensory Trans- he science of sensory substitution visual cortex, the auditory cortex, and so ducer), which will become available in T has also begun to attract the atten- on,” Amedi said. “I would argue that that 2018. It is a waistcoat with thirty-two tion of philosophers and experimental labelling is wrong.” After all, if congen- embedded vibratory motors, connected psychologists, who hope that it will shed itally blind people are able to listen to to a smartphone app that translates sound light on the nature of perceptual expe- and then accurately identify the red apple frequencies into tactile stimuli. It is de- rience. What is seeing, after all, if your in a basket of Granny Smiths using the signed for deaf people, who, Eagleman tongue can do it? Is a person who per- same area of the brain as sighted people, claims, should, with adequate training, be ceives visual information via the audi- why should that area be considered vi- able to understand not just basic envi- tory system experiencing sight, sound, sual? Instead, Striem-Amit and Amedi ronmental sounds but also speech. “It’s or an unprecedented hybrid of the two? have begun to argue that the brain is or- simple,” he said. “We’re just putting the The philosopher Fiona McPherson told ganized along task-specific lines—and cochlea on the torso.” me that the field is divided on these ques- that the visual cortex seems to be linked But Eagleman’s ambitions do not stop tions, in part because there is no agree- to vision only because most of us use at sensory substitution: his larger goal is ment on what a sense actually is. Some sight in order to gather the type of in- sensory augmentation. He expects that argue that vision is defined by the organ formation that it processes. “This is not VEST users may, depending on the data that absorbs the information: anything just a semantic thing,” Amedi said. “By transmitted through their skin, be able that does not enter through the eye is looking at the brain this way, we can bet- to “feel” electromagnetic fields, stock- not vision, and thus Erik Weihenmayer ter understand what each area is really market data, or even space weather. “It is feeling, rather than seeing, the rock doing, and how it’s doing it.” may be the case that we can add one or wall in front of him. Striem-Amit, on “This is still controversial,” Striem- two or three or more senses and the brain the other hand, is one of many neuro- Amit acknowledged. “There’s a lot more has no problem,” he said. Amedi likewise scientists who favor a definition of vi- to be done.” Another neuroscientist, David imagines that sensory augmentation could sion that is determined by the source of Eagleman, compares the current state of enable us to “see” bodies through walls the stimulus: vision is any processing of neuroscientific knowledge to the field of using the infrared spectrum or to “hear” information that comes from reflected

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 41 rays of light. By this measure, Weihen- others immediately envision a photo- reaching out and trying to touch this mayer is seeing, period. “For the past realistic image. Eagleman, meanwhile, thing, and it was just rock,” he said. twenty years, there was a supremacy of believes that further experiments may “Whenever I moved my head, it moved, neuroscience,” the French experimental show that the subjective qualities of our too, and I eventually realized I was look- psychologist Malika Auvray told me, sensory experiences are really produced ing at myself. My head, my arms—and meaning that activation in the visual cor- by the structure of the incoming data they were so defined it was crazy. I hadn’t tex was sufficient proof that an experi- itself. In other words, the brain of some- seen myself since I was a dorky, pimply ence was visual. “But people have defined one feeling electromagnetic-field fluc- fourteen-year-old.” the visual brain area as the location in tuations through vibrations in his VEST “That’s so much of what the Brain- the brain where you get activation in re- will somehow recognize that this data Port is,” Weihenmayer explained. “You’re sponse to visual stimuli, so there’s a cer- stream contains patterns that aren’t re- just reaching out like a kid again, and tain circularity there.” lated to touch and that, instead, qualify you’re, like, What the hell is that?” The The final criterion typically invoked as something entirely new. experience shifts between decoding and in these debates is the lived experience I spoke to Jens Naumann, a German- seeing, between frustration and awe, fre- of the sense—what philosophers call the born Canadian who had lost the sight in quently within the same instant. Later “qualia.” This distinction has an intui- each eye in two separate accidents by the during that climb, as he neared the sum- tive logic: most people feel certain that age of twenty. He uses the vOICe, and mit, the sun had gone behind the tower. they would never confuse the sensation when I asked whether it felt like vision “The lighting was perfect,” Weihen- of seeing something with that of touch- to him he pointed out that even normal mayer said. “At that point, I wasn’t even ing or hearing it. But the experiences sight is the gateway to a range of expe- thinking about my tongue. I’m just think- that sensory-substitution users report are riences. “One is just functional,” he said. ing about the picture in my brain.” varied. Some blind people say that if they “And that’s where a sensory-substitution Weihenmayer doesn’t use the Brain- look at an apple using the BrainPort, or device means I can see things like the Port exclusively for climbing. When he’s vOICe, or EyeMusic, it feels like seeing: edge of the pavement or the entrance to travelling, it enables him to find light the knowledge that an apple is sitting a building. But another is beauty.” The switches and remote controls without on the table in front of them appears in vOICe can never successfully translate patting down entire hotel rooms. At their brain as a mental image. Indeed, the visual experience of looking at his home, he wanders around with it, “just some vOICe users are so strongly con- wife’s face or watching the sun set over kind of looking at things,” he said, or ditioned by its sound that they experi- the snow- covered mountains outside hangs out with his kids—kicking a soc- ence involuntary visual images: one re- Banff. But, he added, “vinyl siding makes cer ball, or playing rock, paper, scissors. ported seeing a light-gray arc in the sky a very nice sound, actually, like music On a phone, he showed me a short movie every time a police car passed with its almost. So there’s a beauty in that.” of him using the BrainPort to play tic- siren blaring. Others, however, define the tac-toe with his daughter, Emma. Wei- experience in more cognitive terms: they fter we finished climbing, Wei- henmayer carefully felt out the thick, decode the electrical stimuli they are feel- A henmayer and I went out for lunch— marker-drawn edges of each square be- ing, or the sounds they are hearing, in a curry at a local Nepali restaurant, in fore drawing his “O”s, while his daugh- order to arrive at the understanding that defiance of Tricia Grant’s recommen- ter confidently filled in her “X”s. After an apple is present. dation to avoid spicy foods after using drawing her third “X” in a row, Emma Malika Auvray and Amir Amedi the device. He told me that he had never jumped up and down shouting, “I won! have individually conducted experiments seen the world particularly well even I won again!” designed to explore the causes of this before he became totally blind. “With “Wait, I thought I had a circle on the variation. They found differences be- the BrainPort, it’s similar to what I used top left, the middle left, and the bottom tween people who were born blind and to be able to see like,” he said. “Shapes, left,” Weihenmayer said, scanning the those who lost their sight as adults, and shades of light and dark—where things sheet. “You stinker!” between those who had only just begun basically were, but not anything su- “Oh,” Emma said, caught cheating. to use a given device and those who per-vivid, you know?” “Maybe we both won?” were fully accustomed to it. Auvray has Skyler Williams, Weihenmayer’s “When you go blind, you get kicked shown that a single vOICe user may climbing partner, had joined us, and out of the club,” Weihenmayer told me. have a range of experiences, depending guided him along the buffet line, spoon- Using the BrainPort, he said, makes him on the task at hand: the process of iden- ing chicken tikka masala and sag aloo feel like part of the gang again. He can tifying an object often feels auditory, onto his plate. Weihenmayer used a cane, see what his family is doing, without while that of figuring out where it is “shorelining” against the edges of the anyone needing to tell him. And he can feels visual. Amedi speculates that much room to get back to his seat. As we ate, never forget seeing his son smile for the of this variation hinges on the vividness he told me about his experience climb- first time. “I could see his lips sort of of an individual’s mental imagery, which, ing with the BrainPort in the pinnacle- shimmering, moving,” Weihenmayer even among sighted people, is known studded landscape near Moab, Utah. As said. “And then I could see his mouth to vary enormously: if asked to picture he inched his way up Castleton Tower, just kind of go ‘Brrrrp’ and take over his an apple, some people (including Amedi) the sun was directly behind him, and whole face. And that was cool, because can barely conjure up outlines, whereas the shadows were confusing. “I kept I’d totally forgotten that smiles do that.” 

42 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 To have to disappoint those people seek- SHOUTS & MURMURS ing funding has been heartbreaking. I take their applications, so carefully prepared by well-funded grant-writing GOODBYE, MY FUNDING specialists, and tear the pages into tiny pieces before the would-be fundees’ eyes. BY IAN FRAZIER Then I watch them exhibit the same symptoms that came over me—death, basically, but the kind of death that keeps you looking outwardly the same while you’re all rotted inside. Fortunately, help is on the way. If you feel that you have been defunded, there’s a number you can call. Also, ex- citing new possibilities may exist in space. Today, a NASA satellite is travel- ling the outermost reaches of our gal- axy in search of additional funding. Ex- citement ran high last year, when funds were observed on a flyby over Mars, but they turned out to be only Mar- tian rocks. It is still highly probable that funding exists on one of the tril- lions of objects out there in space. was walking down the street one twentieth century by railway workers Promising schemes have been proposed I afternoon, when I suddenly lost fund- digging a tunnel in France. One of the to extract funding from cosmic rays ing. At first, I couldn’t identify what workmen’s shovels struck something using a technology that traps the rays the strange feeling was—a sort of light- huge and ineffable, and there it was. in a matrix of informal, low-key pri- ness in the right rear pocket, where I Scientists then required decades to iso- vate luncheons. However, such ideas kept my wallet, and a chest-tightening late it, describe it, and give it the name still remain at the event-planning stage. deficiency of balance, and a sensation it has today, which is based on the En- I know it’s too late for me. My own as if all the rubber bands around my glish word for money. Even now, many beloved funding will never come back. bankroll had been cut. Afterward, I of us may not realize that money and If your funding up and leaves the way learned that adult-onset funding loss funding share a common ancestry. Were mine did, nothing you can say or do often presents in this fashion, but at it not for funding, there would be no will change its mind. For a while, hop- the time I had no idea what was hap- life on Earth, or no life as we know it. ing against all reason, I held on to some pening, and I was concerned. Recently, some scientists who had been of the toiletries that my funding had Loss of funding (L.O.F.) afflicts funded to study single-cell life-forms left in the bathroom. Finally, that got more than ninety-two per cent of the in volcanic cracks in the Earth’s crust too sad, so I gave them to an organi- population. It can strike at any mo- at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean dis- zation that provides personal-care items ment, often with little warning. Re- covered that these bacteria themselves to lesser fundings that do not have searchers have recently unlocked some depend on funding. Tracing their wider them. What still tears me apart is think- of the biophysical secrets of this circulation throughout the planet’s sys- ing of my funding with someone else. scourge. Apparently, when funding tems, the scientists found that certain In March, I caught a glimpse of my loss occurs, a flow of electronic trans- ocean-vent bacteria make regular ap- funding in midtown, getting into a fers is interrupted, causing a lack of pearances in northwestern Canada, pre- black S.U.V. with a bearded man. My distribution to fund-sensitive recep- sumably to solicit Robert Smith. After- funding saw me, too—I could tell by tor cells in the brain. Within ninety ward, the stay-at-home worker bac teria the wistfulness of its expression, and seconds, these cells begin to suffer “reimburse” their travelling reps with its faint, fiscally poignant smile. My stresses; in another three minutes, the mitochondrial donations when they re- former funding is one classy amount cerebral cortex goes totally dead. If turn to the ocean bottom. Thus, the of funding, I’ll say that. And let’s not you do not get to a high-wealth pros- whole global ecosphere is connected by be coy. It’s some of the top funding pect or a ranking office bureaucrat in an intricate web of funding. available anywhere, by which I mean time, the damage can be irreversible. For me, loss of funding has been es- in the neighborhood of thirty-seven Many people who lose funding are pecially painful, because not only am G’s. Goodbye, my funding. May you never the same. Others are sometimes I accustomed to being funded, I also always be happy. May your new love able to return to normal lives. fund. In fact, many recipients have told never forget what a treasure he has. The invisible force we now know as me that no funder funds like I fund. I You still possess my never-to-be-

JOANA AVILLEZ JOANA funding was discovered in the early have even been called the Fundin’ Fool. funded-again heart. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 43 Russell, a forty-five-year-old with a PROFILES slight frame and boyish features, was dressed in an olive long-sleeved shirt, thick violet socks, and the kind of yarn TRACK RECORD bracelets that a sensitive high schooler might wear. As he slipped off a pair of Richard Russell’s XL Recordings is an empire built on the art of listening. tan Nikes and swivelled in his chair, Simionescu-Marin informed him that BY MATTHEW TRAMMELL she’d already played “New Gen” for others at XL. Some of them had sug- gested shortening it. Subtly, she asked Russell for permission to reject the ad- vice. “I don’t want to just pick the ten best songs,” she said. Such editing, she continued, would trivialize months of work. She was determined to capture the sounds of a diverse movement. “Everyone at the label is quite used to ‘Cut it down, cut it down—short, short, short,’ ” Russell said, after a mo- ment’s consideration. He spoke with a chirpy, welcoming intensity. “You can sprawl a bit,” he said. “Especially at the start of something.” Russell grew up in a northern sub- urb of London, and did some sprawl- ing himself. As a teen-ager, he spent weekends combing through record shops, launching pirate radio stations, and promoting his own parties—“put- ting on clubs,” as he called it. He col- lected imports of rap records from New York, and followed the “mongrel Brit- ish hybrid” sounds of garage, jungle, and drum ’n’ bass, seeing firsthand that local music scenes could have a global reach. In the studio, “New Gen” began play- ing, and it was filled with such sonic collisions: knotted slang from various Russell says that XL has a roster of musicians with “uncompromising vision.” Caribbean enclaves around London had been infused with the slow- rolling ichard Russell, the head of XL twenty-two-year-old, was dressed in a drums and sinuous bass of Atlanta hip- R Recordings, walked into a small black sweatsuit. A radio host and a hop. Whenever Russell heard some- recording studio in West London and concert promoter, she had spent much thing that he liked, he nodded thought- found a woman named Caroline of 2016 recording budding rappers fully. But as the tracks played he began Simionescu- Marin sitting, cross-legged, around London. XL executives were offering criticisms veiled as encourage- atop a rack of audio equipment. Rus- planning to release a compilation of ment: “The drums are pretty wrong— sell is known for signing distinctive the material, and, struck by her entre- in a good way”; “It takes some balls to and driven young artists, from M.I.A. preneurial spirit, they had offered her do that.” to Vampire Weekend to Adele, and an artists-and-repertoire job, which in- He was most impressed by the al- on this drizzly August morning he volves scouting for new talent. When bum’s pop instincts. “My Ways,” a twin- had come to hear some music that Russell first met her, he recalled to me, kling cut by a South London rapper Simionescu- Marin wanted to play for they “talked about the idea that you named AJ Tracey and a singer called him. They traded gossip about Zayn don’t want to sit around in music wait- J. Warner, sounded innocently commer- Malik’s departure from One Direction ing for permission—waiting for some- cial, recalling American R. & B. of the while a studio manager served egg sand- one to give you the right excuse.” He early aughts, which is still esteemed in wiches, and a sound engineer cued up was eager to hear the results of her for- London night clubs. Tracey’s lyrics were track files on a large console. aging. She had titled the compilation filled with quippy turns of phrase. “Now Simionescu-Marin, an energetic “New Gen,” after her radio show. I’m doing Plan A with the music,” he

44 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY CRAIG & KARL rapped. “I used to rave up in Plan B”— ride the Tube, every line you overhear ers have echoed his sound. XL’s dis- the name of a now shuttered club in people say, it all sounds original. Peo- coveries often slip into the mainstream South London. ple are naturally original.” without having hit singles: Vampire “Lyrics are such a fundamental part Weekend has never had a track in the of my listening,” Russell told me later. ust as major movie studios tend Billboard Top 100, but the band has “This is what you get from being a J to finance only films with strong sold nearly two million albums. Adele, teen-age rap fan. There’s other types projected box-office returns, major rec- who signed with XL at the age of eigh- of music people grab upon where you ord labels prefer to avoid risk, espe- teen, is the label’s sole megastar. Her don’t really need to listen to the lyrics. cially in an era when digital streaming most recent album, “25,” sold twenty But if your musical teen-age education has slashed profit margins. Executives million units, an almost unfathomable is Rakim you can’t not be listening to mine social-media data to identify the number in the era of digital streaming. the words.” next viral sensation, or pair unknown Russell has prospered along with his Russell took control of XL, which acts with established producers and artists: in 2015, the London Times es- started as a niche dance label, in 1994, songwriters to manufacture hits. Inde- timated that his stake in XL was worth and he remains its top executive. But he pendent labels, conversely, operate al- more than a hundred million dollars. no longer maintains daily oversight of most entirely on risk. They sign smaller Part of the label’s allure is how com- the company, and has begun devoting acts in genres for which commercial fortably a pair like Arca and Adele can himself almost entirely to producing expectations are modest, and rely on share space on its roster. For an aspiring music of his own. When I visited Lon- the occasional breakout success to keep musician, signing with XL confers le- don, he spent most of the week work- the operation afloat. On a major label, gitimacy. Jonathan Dickins, who man- ing on his début album. Russell didn’t fledgling artists may feel constrained ages Adele and the guitar antihero King consider this a radical shift: he’d always by the demands of a multinational cor- Krule, called a deal with the label “the seen himself as a creative person who poration—or neglected, as executives Holy Grail.” Zane Lowe, a host of Beats 1, had sidestepped into an executive role, cater to dozens of high-profile acts. On Apple’s radio station, described XL to letting artistic intuition drive corporate an indie label, artists enjoy more cre- me as “the most consistently tasteful decisions. He is proud that XL has a ative freedom, but they can feel lim- label,” and he praised Russell’s un- different ethos than the “Big Three” ited by smaller budgets, which don’t matched “ability to work with strong American labels—Universal, Sony, and allow for the marketing that attracts artists of strong opinions.” In 2008, Thom Warner—which often shape musical ca- large audiences. This creates a mad- Yorke, of Radiohead, released his first reers with the market foremost in mind. dening dichotomy: sign to a powerful solo album through XL, telling Pitch- Major-label executives, Russell likes to label without taste and sacrifice art- fork that he had partnered with the label say, are devoted to shareholders, not lis- istry, or sign to a tasteful label without because it was “very mellow” and had teners. As I observed him taking in “New power and sacrifice reach. “no corporate ethic.” Radiohead now Gen,” it was hard to tell whether he was XL, Russell told me, was a “hybrid.” distributes its music through XL as well. listening as a boss or as a fan. He explained, “As an artist, what you Last fall, Frank Ocean chose XL to re- “That’s quite a bit of work you’ve want is a record label with the musi- lease the vinyl and CD versions of his got there,” he said, as the last track cal integrity and the aesthetics of those lush, idiosyncratic new album, “Blonde.” faded away, indicating both that he small indies, but with the drive and Ocean’s previous label, Def Jam, had re- liked the album and that the album ambition of those big labels. They were portedly been perplexed by his music, did feel long. Simionescu-Marin, sens- not typically found in one place. You and had focussed on such superstars as ing his point, proposed recording com- were getting one thing or the other. Justin Bieber. ical skits, which are often used to break But, for the type of artist who was going Russell rejects the notion that record up the continuous flow of beats on a to be the best type of artist, you didn’t labels should be engineering highly con- rap album. really want to compromise on either sumable songs; instead, XL aims to Russell asked her if anyone had re- one of those things.” identify highly consumable artists who corded video footage during her stu- Russell allows such artists to de- have “uncompromising vision.” In this dio sessions. velop with minimal interference. XL sense, XL operates more like an art gal- “We’ve got loads,” she said. has unusual patience. This year, it has lery than like a record label, banking “You might already have skits there,” been shepherding a series of spare, eerie on a musician’s long-term potential Russell said. He suggested that she lis- releases from a Venezuelan electronic rather than on immediate returns. After ten to all the candid footage of her ex- producer named Arca, who has worked signing the indie-pop minimalists the peditions—“meaning, look away from closely with Björk and Kanye West. In xx, Russell explained to his staff, “Peo- the screen”—in the hope of finding February, Pitchfork heralded one Arca ple have tried things with their sound snatches of dialogue to insert between track, “Piel,” as “shockingly new,” ob- to flesh it out, but all they need is some- tracks. “People are just so bloody funny,” serving that its romantic melody “dis- one to record it.” He tapped Rodaidh he continued. “Unless you’re trying to solves into a puddle of oozing beats McDonald, a young producer, to build be funny. Then it’s not funny. When and jumbled clanks.” Arca’s sales have and manage a new in-house studio you try to write dialogue, you get lots been small, but he has begun to build where the band could work free of con- of clichés, don’t you? But, when you a devoted following, and other produc- straints. Jamie xx, one of the band’s

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 45 members, recalled in an e-mail, “The music is fundamentally original but of records here. I don’t want to be judged first time we rehearsed in there, it was also has “threads” of connection with on things that are beyond my control, literally just a garage, but just through past musicians he admires. This pre- because I only know how to make the the wall was the XL office, buzzing vents XL from becoming too random music that I make, and there’s a limit away and always playing great music, in its adventurousness. Ben Beards- to where that can go.” Beardsworth re- so it was an inspiring place even then. worth, the company’s managing direc- sponded, “We only need to worry about Gradually, it was soundproofed, and tor, shares this mission, but he told me making a cultural impact. In my expe- Richard put his mixing desk in there; that he also aims “to deliver commer- rience, once we’ve done that the finan- you could see the office through a win- cial success.” The two men comple- cial side tends to work itself out.” dow that was put in. It was still pretty ment each other: whereas Russell de- In 2006, Russell stopped in at bare bones, but that was perfect for us.” votes himself to aesthetics, Beardsworth Cherry Jam, a small West London club, The label is defiantly choosy, pass- has the financial pragmatism that en- to see a teen-ager named Adele Ad- ing on many performers with strong ables the label to take risks. kins perform. He’d heard a few self- music, large followings, well-connected In 2014, XL offered a contract to recorded demos that she’d posted on management, and success at other com- Powell, a British producer whose hard- her MySpace page. She performed an panies. Caius Pawson, an A. & R. ex- edged electronic music is not aimed at acoustic set, and he recalls getting “such ecutive who has worked at XL for ten mainstream audiences. (When staffers a feeling of confidence from her, and years, admitted, with a laugh, that he’d listened to his vinyl pressings, they about her.” Russell introduced himself, delivered only two acts to the label so couldn’t tell if the jagged scratching and she asked him what he thought far: the xx and the British singer FKA noises they kept hearing were inten- of her performance. He told her, “I Twigs, who takes a grisly electronic ap- tional or the result of manufacturing don’t think you could do a bad show, proach to R. & B. (He has also worked errors.) Powell told me that he was ini- because it’s just gonna be you.” She closely with Frank Ocean.) “And I think tially apprehensive about having to joined the label shortly afterward. I’ve got a pretty good track record!” keep up with the likes of Radiohead. By 2010, Adele was a star, and work- Pawson said. He recalls telling Beardsworth, “I hope ing on her second album, “21.” She Russell prioritizes artists whose you’re not expecting me to sell millions drafted several upbeat pop demos, but

46 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 felt uninspired by them. After she went projects, but Russell and Beardsworth, was both romantic and evasive. “I used through a breakup, she started from perhaps out of pride, insist that other to think everyone loved and under- scratch, reconceiving the album as factors have been more critical to their stood music, and had this deep feeling something far darker and more per- profit margins: among them, maintain- and deep passion for it,” he said. “And sonal. “My decision was potentially ing a markedly low number of signings then I realized, All right, not everyone dangerous territory, in terms of bud- and releases per year. Russell said, “Nor- has that. Some people just like the thing get and inner-circle expectation,” she mally, in business, there’s this growth they hear on the radio. They’re not lis- said, in an e-mail. “I nervously went to thing. This growth bullshit. Not every- tening to the words, they’re just into see Richard, and he truly treated me thing is meant to grow! ‘Gotta be big- it, and that’s fine. But when you have like an artist. There was zero record- ger, gotta be bigger, gotta be bigger.’ But that deep feeling for it, that’s a gift.” exec bullshit or hidden agendas, other there aren’t any shareholders at XL, so Most people, he suggested, eventually than that he trusted me to make the there’s no one there to say that. And it’s, lose the impulse to discover new music, right decision for myself.” She added, like, why should it grow? It shouldn’t “because of what’s going on in their “He builds the vessel, but we are the grow. It should be this size.” life.” He went on, “I suppose that doesn’t captains.” In conversation, Russell dodges cli- matter—you can listen to old shit. And Major labels increasingly drop art- ché in real time, pulling back from over- that’s O.K. as well. People get a lot ists after one flop, but record deals at statements and providing counter- from that. But they’re missing some- XL, Beardsworth said, allow an artist arguments to his own arguments. He thing. Because, whatever it is they’re to continue releasing material even “if told me that he didn’t agree with vil- into, that thread’s right there, in some- it’s not sticking commercially straight- lainous portrayals of major labels—“it’s thing being made now.” away.” He called XL deals “sensible,” too simplistic”—but added that he Russell’s own music is being released adding, “An economic equilibrium needs couldn’t imagine joining one, either. under the name Everything Is Recorded, to be maintained, or else everything’d “That wouldn’t have worked for me,” and it sews some of his favorite sonic start running off the rails.” The gigan- he said. “And it wouldn’t have worked threads into new songs. Instead of sing- tic success of Adele has surely helped for them.” When I asked him what, ing himself, he has recruited guest per- bankroll many of the label’s vanguard exactly, made an XL artist, his answer formers to contribute vocals. Not long

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 47 ago, he had a session with Sampha, a The first time I visited, a stream of and their art, and the art relates back quiet soul singer who had just released soft-thump hip-hop and jittery electronic to who they are, in essence, as people.” his first solo album with XL. Russell beats emanated from the house speak- Phil Lee, a creative director, was asked mentioned that Sampha’s voice reminded ers. Many of the desks were empty, the early in his tenure to design visual pack- him of Curtis Mayfield’s. “I haven’t lis- Macs on top of them asleep: employees aging for M.I.A. She lived near the tened to too much Curtis Mayfield,” were still shaking off five days at the office, and regularly popped in with Sampha admitted, but Russell insisted mammoth Glastonbury Festival, in Som- self-designed imagery that was jagged, that the two vocalists shared more than erset. A publicist was discussing Liss, a pixelated, and irregularly cropped. He a fine falsetto. “Curtis Mayfield, from four-piece band of skinny musicians from began preparing the files for produc- what I understand, was quite a gentle Denmark, who’d recently released some tion, following conventions that he’d soul, in an era where a lot of soul artists plucky soul-pop on XL. Liss had become learned in design school. “I spent hours were quite macho,” he said. He played a sensation in its homeland, but had barely and hours tidying this thing up, printed for Sampha “The Makings of You,” a registered in the U.S., despite a tour and it all out, and I was, like, ‘Yeah, it’s ready, Mayfield track from 1970, and they dis- good press: a headline in i-D had de- come on in,’ and she goes, ‘What have cussed a lyric in which Mayfield strug- scribed Liss as “the boy band for people you done? No, no, no, no, no—that is gles to find the language to express affec- who don’t like boy bands.” The publicist the aesthetic.’ ” In an e-mail, M.I.A. told tion: “These words I’ve tried to wondered aloud whether to discourage me that Russell’s presence had empow- recite / They are close, but not quite.” For or own the classification. What consti- ered her to give such mandates. “He one of the new songs, “Close but Not tuted a boy band today, anyway? The supported the way I worked,” she said. Quite,” Russell bent Sampha’s wispy har- group’s members performed for scream- “Things didn’t have to be perfect.” She monizing around a sample of Mayfield’s ing girls in Copenhagen, but they also loved the fact that he often pressed her line. The resulting song became a med- played their own instruments. “What- scrappy song drafts to vinyl without itation both on Sampha’s timidity—he ever,” she concluded. “Boy bands are cool.” proper mixing. “It was about energy and was originally an intern at XL, and it XL has twenty-six full-time em- excitement,” she noted. “I’d grown up had taken years for him to declare him- ployees, almost none of whom have on some early stuff he put out or made, self a performer—and on Russell’s be- previously worked at a record company. and so I knew as a teen-ager that what lated assertion of his artistic voice. With Instead, they are former d.j.s or jour- mattered was the urgency of creating a the track, Russell had created another nalists, promoters from the night-life new sound and what that made you feel. hybrid: a seventies-soul melody paired circuit, and visual designers just out of Not craftsmanship.” with modern percussion and angular college. The label often holds company- Russell guides his staff with a soft rhythms. Recently, he decided to make wide meetings in which any staffer touch. He stops by people’s desks and the song the title track of his first EP. can make a case for a potential signee, asks them which projects are on their “To do a record label well is so sim- playing tracks and presenting a vision docket. If they have a question, he’ll ilar to being an artist,” Russell told me. for an artist’s career. McDonald, the make a stray reference or offer a hint— “You have to be bloody-minded, and recording-studio manager, told me that “Did you read Moby’s book, by the you have to be awkward. You have to the feedback process is “sometimes way? Really good snapshot of New be, like, ‘I’m doing it like this.’ It doesn’t quite painful, but it’s very important.” York at that time”—and then wander matter what everyone’s saying it should He added, “Sometimes it’s, like, ‘Damn, off. Many staffers told me that they be like. Every artist you’ve ever loved I thought that was a great song!’ But learned the most by watching Russell has done that.” then, O.K., six people didn’t. And I interact with artists, and that they were trust their opinions, so maybe we’ll daunted by the scope of his cultural L’s offices are in Notting Hill, press Pause on that one.” knowledge. Since he emptied his office X in a mews a block and a half away Pawson, the executive who helped and began recording, the XL staff has from the colorful street markets of Por- discover FKA Twigs, started out host- approached day-to-day operations like tobello Road. The property is a barnlike ing illegal warehouse parties in East house sitters consulting the directions structure, and its exterior is painted with London. When he joined XL, in 2006, left on the kitchen island. Along a large images from XL albums: the swirling at the age of twenty, he had excellent white wall on the building’s main floor, black waves that appear on the cover of musical taste, but he quickly learned Russell has printed instructions, in vinyl Thom Yorke’s solo record “The Eraser”; to soften his club-sharpened manner. lettering, about how to listen to music: the oil-slicked “X” from the cover of the “I was always joking around—I thought There is a proper procedure for taking ad- xx’s “Coexist.” Inside, the walls are cov- part of my role was to always make ev- vantage of any investment. ered with album art, flyers, and photo- eryone laugh and be energetic,” he told Music, for example. Buying music is an graphs, including a signed publicity shot me. “An artist, like, referenced Picasso, investment. from M.I.A.’s 2009 Grammy appear- and I was, like, ‘Ha! You think you’re To get the maximum you must ance, in which she performed while nine fucking Picasso?’ I was thinking that he LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER months pregnant. Plaques commemo- was one of the boys, and that he would OPTIMUM CONDITIONS. rating gold and platinum records—often laugh. And he was just, like, face-dead. Not in your car or on a portable player found in corner offices at major labels— I realized that you’re working with all through a headset. hang in the bathroom. these people’s ambitions, and hopes, Take it home.

48 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017

Get rid of all distractions, (even her or him). U.K., where kids who had grown up Palmer, had recently launched an off- Turn off your cell phone. under Margaret Thatcher were search- shoot label that focussed on underground Turn off everything that rings or beeps or ing for subversion. Warehouse and rave singles; Halkes chose the name XL, rattles or whistles. Make yourself comfortable. open-field parties known as raves because it was “powerful and potent and Play your CD. sprouted throughout West London, big.” They began paying Russell fifty LISTEN all the way through. and the music blended elements of Eu- pounds a week to plug their releases to Think about what you got. ropean techno, Caribbean dancehall, d.j.s. The work began to mimic that of Think about who would appreciate this and American hip-hop. For the first an A. & R. executive. Rave labels didn’t investment. Decide if there is someone to share this time since the punk era, British youth give artists money to record; instead, they with. had a sound of their own, and a new searched for self-released singles from Turn it on again. class of bohemians hardly ever saw day- bedroom producers and financed the rec- Enjoy Yourself. light. Many raves were fuel led by Ec- ords’ wider release. To do the scouting stasy, but Russell experienced them job well, you had to be at the raves, lis- Russell began listening in this cer- without drugs. His wife, Esta Blech- tening and dancing, and have a tactical emonial way as a child. He grew up in man, was also a regular at the raves, but sense of what d.j.s would want to play. the predominantly Jewish London sub- they didn’t meet until years later, when In 1992, Russell and Halkes, embold- urb of Edgware, and playing music at she was the head of news and program- ened by their immersion in the scene, high volume was never a problem: there ming at MTV in the U.K. She recalled, produced a song together, “The Bouncer.” was a highway on one side of his house “He would be telling stories of raves Over wobbly bass and convulsive drums, and a deaf neighbor, Mrs. Margolis, on that we probably were both at, and I’d a sampled voice taunts, “Your name’s not the other. His mother, Rosalind, re- be, like, ‘What, you were sober?’ He was down, you’re not coming in. Not tonight.” cently told him, “We weren’t very sup- busy! For him, it was kind of work.” The track made it to British radio and portive of what you wanted to do. Ex- In 1989, Russell produced a rave track became a minor hit. Russell wasn’t sure cept you got to make so much more of his own, and he took a demo tape to what to do next, however. He had no noise than any of your friends, ’cause City Beat, one of many small London clear identity as an artist. But he real- we knew there was no one to bother labels that released twelve-inch singles ized that he had an ability to spot po- about.” Rosalind was a teacher, and his for d.j.s to play and fanatics to collect. tential in others, and he threw himself father, Stanley, was an insurance sales- An A. & R. person there, Nick Halkes, back into scouting for the label. man. They were, Russell told me, im- thought that the track sounded unpol- In the mid-nineties, XL had its first migrants with roots in Eastern Europe, ished, but the two struck up a friendship. major commercial success, with the Prod- and they ran a “conventional religious “Rich was making himself useful, bring- igy, a band that adapted the rave sound household.” Russell was the younger ing information and ideas through,” for the arena-rock stage. Liam Howlett, of their two children, and they hoped Halkes recalls. He and his boss, Tim the group’s brash front man, provided a that he would get a “proper job,” be- coming a doctor or a lawyer. “I thought I was growing up in such a bad place and boring place, and dealt such a bad card,” he recalls. But Edgware was the last stop on the Tube, and he could eas- ily ride into Soho to shop at Groove Records, a discerning store on Greek Street. “If you lived further out, you were screwed,” he told me. In 1984, Russell started high school in London, and his classes quickly be- came ancillary to his musical explora- tions. After attending the Notting Hill Carnival, an annual Caribbean street festival, he formed a d.j. crew named Housequake, after the Prince song. By the age of fifteen, he was getting booked in clubs, playing hip-hop and soul rec- ords. Around this time, a fascination with electronic dance music began to take hold across the city. The pulsing innovations known as techno and acid house had started with middle-class black teen-agers in Detroit and Chi- cago, but they found an audience in the “I hope you’re digging a hole big enough for everybody.” template for the kind of success XL cameras, alluded to incest, rapped about MRK-2, the first drum machine de- wanted to replicate. Howlett refused to rape, and drawn the ire of censors across ployed on a commercial album. Sly and appear on “Top of the Pops,” the most- the globe. Occasionally, Russell’s em- the Family Stone had used one in the watched music program on British tele- brace of provocateurs has backfired. In late sixties, he told me, “as a ‘fuck you’ vision, because he considered it “wack.” 2009, he signed the house-rap firebrand to their drummer.” In an interview with Spin, Howlett pro- Azealia Banks, but they clashed over her Russell was in the mixing phase of claimed, “We’re not Oasis. We don’t demos and she left the label without re- his project, tweaking the prominence of want everyone to like us.” leasing a song. Russell stressed to me various layers of sound. He played me During this period, Halkes quit XL that when he speaks of “uncompromis- two parts. One was a twenty-minute- to join a major label, and Palmer retired ing” talent he is “not talking about dys- long “movement”—a writhing compo- from the music scene. In 1994, XL was functionality.” He went on, “I’m talking sition of dubbed bass and tinny blips unceremoniously left in Russell’s hands. about someone who is intensely func- that forced rave drums under jazz chords. Three years later, the Prodigy’s third tional. When you have that vision, you’re It was the product of hours of recorded album, “The Fat of the Land,” became unlikely to waste time, because you’re free play by several session players and the first electronic album to reach No. 1 ruling everything out before it’s even a producers, followed by weeks of editing in the U.S. Russell had succeeded on his discussion.” and arranging by Russell, to give it shape. own terms, but felt pressure to sustain The moment Adele became famous, The second part was a collection of hip- the momentum. “It happens to a lot of she began receiving countless offers hop and R. & B. songs, created by var- labels—you get that one big act,” he told for festival performances. Until last ious combinations of collaborators. The me. “It often destroys independents.” He year, she declined them all, leaving mil- material struck me as a grand synthe- feels that XL became a “real” label when lions of pounds on the table. Russell sis of XL’s stylistic history: the eighties he renewed the Prodigy’s contract, which never questioned her choices. “He said hip-hop that is dear to Russell’s heart, had expired after the release of “The Fat that Adele was the punk-rock Barbra the racing rave breaks that gave him in- of the Land.” To meet the group’s finan- Streisand,” Jonathan Dickins, the sing- dustry footing. cial demands, the former record nerd er’s manager, told me. “And he said We ate fish and beans from a local found himself at a bank, taking out a that before she put a record out.” market as the tracks played, and I stud- loan. ied a chart that Russell had made, which At the same time, Russell was for- he Copper House, Russell’s per- mapped out the components of what mulating a different vision of how to T sonal recording studio, is a five- I’d heard: collaborators, time stamps, grow XL intelligently. He noticed that minute walk from the XL offices, be- samples. The final track list remained whenever he visited American labels he hind a bamboo gate that opens onto a undecided. Russell has said of the rec- was handed stacks of promo CDs from sunken courtyard. One sunny after- ord, “We made a huge mess, then set dozens of new artists whom they were noon, Russell welcomed me into the about tidying it all up.” developing; some of the records never large living room of the studio, which Russell told me, “I started off mak- even came out. XL, he decided, would he built in 2014. Pinned on a wall were ing records, but as the label took off I release only five or six albums a year. black-and-white candid photographs backed off of that. I think the reason His idols in the music industry—George of people who’d come to collaborate was ‘I’m building this thing.’ I needed Martin, Berry Gordy, Chris Blackwell— to be doing that. But I also think I was had all run in-house studios where music intent on building a team of people. was created from scratch. Russell de- Part of the reason for that was that, at cided that XL would have its own stu- the earliest opportunity, I was going to dio, with a full-time staff. (A label with- start making records again. I wasn’t out a recording studio, Russell likes to sure how, and I always knew that was say, is just a marketing company.) In going to be tricky, because you can’t order to stay focussed on artists, he del- just leap from one of these worlds to egated contractual negotiations, busi- the next.” ness management, and accounting to In 2010, Russell produced “I’m New Beggars Group, an independent Brit- with him on the Everything Is Re- Here,” the final album by the poet and ish music distributor, and split the own- corded project. Images of Brian Eno, singer Gil Scott-Heron. He paired ership of XL with the head of Beggars, Mark Ronson, and Peter Gabriel were Scott-Heron’s vocals with terse bass notes Martin Mills. alongside those of XL stars, such as and a seventies blues tone, a combina- Most important, Russell decided to Sampha. tion that harked back to Russell’s hit, move beyond the label’s rave roots, and Up a narrow set of stairs was Rus- “The Bouncer.” Russell began splitting commit to working with exceptional art- sell’s recording space, which has dark time between label duties in London and ists across genres. He leaned toward woodwork, wall-to-wall carpeting, a mi- recording in New York, and considers it “strong characters” who, like Liam crophone stand, and mounds of blink- a transformative period. Scott-Heron, Howlett, both courted and mocked the ing equipment arranged at its edges. he said, was “a barometer of truth.” The mainstream. XL artists have turned down Russell noted proudly that he owned process helped Russell shake off his fears ad campaigns, flipped off Super Bowl an original Maestro Rhythm King about music-making; soon afterward, he

50 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 produced albums by the soul singer Bobby of therapy. Today, he wears thick socks Womack and the Blur front man Damon to diminish occasional foot pain, but Albarn. A personal sound—heavy bass, he has otherwise had a full recovery. spartan arrangements, rave drums, soul Everything Is Recorded is signed to chords—began to take shape. Working XL, and Russell hopes to be handled with Scott-Heron taught him other use- like the label’s other artists. He shares ful lessons. In 2011, Scott-Heron, who management with Adele, and during had struggled with a cocaine addiction, my visit he was considering options died. Russell found out the next morn- for album art and promotional imagery. ing, and began keeping a journal. He still Kahlil Joseph, who directed Beyoncé’s regularly writes in it before bed, which, “Lemonade” video, had begun working he says, “is an incredibly effective way of on a visual treatment. It was a challenge, clearing the mind.” Russell realized, to fashion a public image On my second visit to the Copper for himself after spending two decades House, Russell greeted me by saying, standing outside the frame. One could “I want to start you off today with a read unease in his decision to make a bit of reading.” He handed me a lap- solo album with so many guest artists. top with an open document, then But his sound is indelibly tied to the headed upstairs to the studio. It was a ways in which he has nurtured the voices journal entry that described how, on of others, even as he cultivates his own. June 9, 2013, he’d lost the ability to Russell’s vision, it seems, is about the move, after developing a rare auto- power of collaboration. immune disorder, Guillain-Barré syn- Now that Russell has instilled XL drome, and two related conditions. He with a governing aesthetic, he said, the found himself in a hospital bed at Uni- label’s future lies in the hands of his versity College London, paralyzed and staff. That said, he’d like to see XL’s rec- in excruciating pain. He had lost most ords get more obscure, and its signings of the fat surrounding the nerves in his even more lean. “I suppose from the feet and shins, and even the slightest outside it’s, like, ‘Well, what are they touch was agonizing. In the journal, he going to do—what do they do after recounted this period, occasionally with Adele?’ ” he said. “Twelve-inch singles. dark humor: “When I mentioned to Electronic music. Shit that’s banging. the doctor that I wasn’t sleeping or for That’s what we do. And then? Then that matter going to the toilet, he said, stuff happens.” ‘Hospitals are like that, full of people As we left the Copper House, I men- not sleeping or shitting.’ God bless the tioned in passing that I couldn’t imag- National Health Service.” ine many label heads making a record, He was in intensive care for ten days as Russell had. He retorted, “Well, Kanye before doctors figured out what was West does, and he’s a label head.” (West wrong with him, then spent the next has an imprint at Universal.) This led us two months in bed. To pass the time, to the kind of spiralling conversation he and Esta watched “Breaking Bad” about pop history that he still loves to (she found it boring) and “Game of have. At one point, he compared Paul Thrones” (it put him to sleep). Only a McCartney and John Lennon to Jay Z few employees were told of the sever- and Beyoncé: “When you get two al- ity of Russell’s condition, but a proces- phas, if it works, the shit just goes mad.” sion of artists visited his bedside. “Adele Russell went on to suggest that Jay Z was very sweet,” Esta said. “She came hadn’t received “enough credit” for his in and cried a lot and then laughed and transformation into a mogul. The rap- said it was gonna be fine. Damon Al- per, I said, was an odd figure for a cham- barn came in and brought lamb stew— pion of underground, non-commercial it was lovely.” sounds to defend. If Russell told Jay Z When Russell’s condition improved, that record labels don’t have to grow, through medication and physical ther- Jay Z would probably laugh Russell out apy, he decided that he had run out of of the room. excuses not to put his own music first. He smiled in agreement. “He’d be, Every day, between breakfast and din- like, ‘You’re crazy!’ Well, one of the rea- ner with Esta and their three sons, he sons XL doesn’t have to grow is that it’s retired to the studio. It was its own form already quite big.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 51 DEPT. OF LABOR THE GIG IS UP

Many liberals have embraced the sharing economy. But can they survive it?

BY NATHAN HELLER

ot long ago, I moved apart- TaskRabbit, service platforms include itor at Genre, a now defunct gay mag- ments, and beneath the weight Thumbtack, for professional projects; azine, where he covered the entertain- N of work and lethargy a num- Postmates, for delivery; Handy, for ment industry. He liked magazine work, ber of small, nagging tasks remained housework; Dogvacay, for pets; and but was not a true believer. “I’m one of undone. Some art work had to be hung countless others. Home-sharing ser- those people, I think, who has to change from wall moldings, using wire. In the vices, such as Airbnb and its upmarket jobs frequently,” he told me. He got a bedroom, a round mirror needed cousin onefinestay, supplant hotels and master’s degree in education, and taught mounting beside the door. Just about agencies. Ride-hailing apps—Uber, fourth grade at Spence and at Brook- anything that called for careful mea- Lyft, Juno—replace taxis. Some on- lyn Friends. Fourteen years in, a health suring or stud-hammering I had failed demand workers are part-timers seek- condition flared up, leaving his calen- to get around to—which was why my ing survival work, akin to the come- dar checkered with days when it was office walls were bare, no pots yet dan- dian who waits tables on the side. For hard to work. He’d aways found pecu- gled from the dangly-pot thing in the growing numbers, though, gigging is liar joy in putting together IKEA furni- kitchen, and my bedside shelf was still not only a living but a life. Many ob- ture, so he hired himself out as an as- a doorstop. There are surely reasons servers see it as something more: the sembly wiz: easy labor that paid the that some of us resist being wholly set- future of American work. bills while he got better. He landed on tled, but when the ballast of incomple- Seth F.—the “F” stood for Flicker— TaskRabbit. tion grew too much for me I logged showed up at my apartment that Wednes- “There are so many clients, I rarely on to TaskRabbit to finish what I had day bearing a big backpack full of get bored,” he told me. He was feed- failed to start. tools. He was in his mid-forties, with ing cord through the molding hooks On its Web site, I described the tasks a broad mouth, brown hair, and ears to level my pictures. At first, he said, I needed done, and clicked ahead. A that stuck out like a terrier’s beneath a hourly rates at TaskRabbit were set list of fourteen TaskRabbits appeared, charcoal stocking cap. I poured him through bidding, but taskers now set each with a description of skills and a coffee and showed him around. their own rates, with the company photograph. Many of them wore ties. “I have molding hooks and wire,” I claiming thirty per cent. A constella- I examined one called Seth F., who had said, gesturing with unfelt confidence tion of data points—how quickly he done almost a thousand tasks. He wore at some coils of translucent cord. “I was answers messages, how many jobs he no tie, but he had a ninety-nine-per- thinking they could maybe hang . . .” declines—affect his ranking when users cent approval rating. “I’m a smart guy It struck me that I lacked a vocabulary search the site. He took as many jobs with tools. What more can you want?” to address even the basics of the job; I as he could, generating about eighty he’d written in his profile. He was listed swirled my hands around the middle paid hours each month. “The hardest as an Elite Tasker, and charged fifty- of the wall, as if blindfolded and turned part is not knowing what your next five dollars an hour. I booked him for loose in a strange room. paycheck is from,” he told me. a Wednesday afternoon. Seth F. seemed to gather that he Seth F. worked quickly. Within an TaskRabbit, which was founded in was dealing with a fool. He offered a hour, he had hung six frames from the 2008, is one of several companies that, decision tree pruned to its stump. “Do molding over my couches. Sometimes, in the past few years, have collectively you want them at eye level?” he asked. he confessed, his jobs seem silly: he was helped create a novel form of business. “Eye level sounds great,” I said. once booked to screw in a light bulb. The model goes by many names—the Seth F. had worked for TaskRabbit Other work is harder, and strange. Seth F. sharing economy; the gig economy; the for three years, he told me as he climbed has been hired to assemble five jigsaw on-demand, peer, or platform econ- onto my kitchen stool—“like twenty- puzzles for a movie set, to write articles omy—but the companies share certain one years in normal job time.” In col- for a newspaper in Alaska, and to com- premises. They typically have ratings- lege, he had sold a screenplay to Co- pose a best-man speech to be delivered based marketplaces and in-app pay- lumbia Pictures, and the film, though by the brother of the groom, whom ment systems. They give workers the never made, launched his career. He he had never met. (“The whole thing chance to earn money on their own wrote movies for nine years, and was was about, ‘In the future, we’re going to schedules, rather than through profes- well paid and sought after, but none of get to know each other better,’ ” he ex- sional accession. And they find toe- his credited work made it to the big plained.) Casper, the mattress company, holds in sclerotic industries. Beyond screen, so he took a job as a senior ed- booked him to put sheets on beds; Oscar,

52 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 “Sharing” boosters herald the virtues of autonomy and flexibility; skeptics warn about the rise of a new precariat.

ILLUSTRATION BY JANNE IIVONEN THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 53 skills as they wanted, and putting money in the pockets of peers who had done the same. The power to control one’s working life would return, grassroots style, to the people. The basis for such confidence was largely demographic. Though statis- tics about gigging work are few, and general at best, a Pew study last year found that seventy-two per cent of American adults had used one of eleven sharing or on-demand services, and that a third of people under forty-five had used four or more. “To ‘speak mil- lennial,’ you ought to be talking about the sharing economy, because it is core and central to their economic future,” Lehane declared, and many of his po- litical kin have agreed. No other com- mercial field has lately drawn as deeply from the Democratic brain trust. Yet what does democratized capitalism ac- tually promise a politically unsettled generation? Who are its beneficiaries? At a moment when the nation’s elec- toral future seems tied to the fate of its jobs, much more than next month’s paycheck depends on the answers.

“Well, there’s your problem right there—you need to sauté the ne Thursday evening in Febru- onions in white wine before adding the ginger.” O ary, Caitlin Connors texted me and said to meet her at a bar in Williams- burg called Donna. The place was large •• and crowded; I found her in the middle of a big group, in a corner bathed in light the health-insurance startup, had him reflects the endlessly personalizable val- the color of Darjeeling. Connors is small decorate its offices for Christmas. ues of our own era, but its social effects, and outgoing, with a brown Jackie O. As we talked, his tone warmed. I re- untried by time, remain uncertain. bob that looks windswept even indoors. alized that he probably visited strangers Support for the new work model has She had come to New York five years several times a day, meting out bits of come together swiftly, though, in sur- earlier, from Colorado, “to learn about himself, then moving on, often forever, prising quarters. On the second day of the Internet,” she said, and she worked and I considered what an odd path the most recent Democratic National Con- in marketing awhile. Agency life had through professional experience that vention, in July, members of a four- person not been her thing—“a lot of crazy must be. He told me that he approached panel suggested that gigging life was not bitches”—so she started her own brand- the work with gratitude but little hope. only sustainable but the embodiment of ing firm, the Fox Theory, which does “These are jobs that don’t lead to today’s progressive values. “It’s all about marketing for entrepreneurs, artists, au- anything,” he said, without looking up democratizing capitalism,” Chris Le- thors, and a sleight-of-hand magician. from his work. “It doesn’t feel”—he hane, a strategist in the Clinton Admin- She led me to the bar to sit. She wore a weighed the word—“sustainable to me.” istration and now Airbnb’s head of global black floral blouse and skinny navy pants. policy and public affairs, said during the “I think we’re just coming into the next he American workplace is both proceedings, in Philadelphia. David wave of human civilization,” she told T a seat of national identity and a site Plouffe, who had managed Barack me, and drained her cocktail with a straw. of chronic upheaval and shame. The in- Obama’s 2008 campaign before he joined “Humans can operate on a person-to- dustry that drove America’s rise in the Uber, explained, “Politically, you’re see- person basis, sharing ideas and sharing nineteenth century was often inhumane. ing a large contingent of the Obama co- business without intermediaries.” The twentieth-century corrective—a alition demanding the sharing economy.” When Connors first came to New corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, Instead of being pawns in the games of York, she lived with several roommates collective bargaining, triplicate forms— industry, the panelists thought, working in a huge, run-down place in Chelsea brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging Americans could thrive by hiring out she dubbed the Fox Den. When her

54 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 sister came to stay with her, they moved at a street scene. “Everyone drives old lations from the sixties. Casting an eye to a newer building, the Fox Den 2.0, cars.” She swiped. “These are their farms. across modern history, he traced a turn and that was where she discovered They plow their fields with oxen.” On from a world view that he called Con- Airbnb. She started to rent out an extra her next trip, she planned to help Cuban sciousness I (the outlook of local farm- room, and the income made them “less artists market themselves as American ers, self-directed workers, and small- pinched.” When she moved again, with millennials do: “I want to help the business people, reaching a crisis in the another roommate (she has had thirty- Cubans learn to make money off of exploitations of the Gilded Age) to what six roommates in total), they searched their art.” he called Consciousness II (the outlook for an optimally Airbnb-able place. They A friend of hers, Prescott Perez-Fox, of a society of systems, hierarchies, cor- ended up in Williamsburg, a neighbor- passed by us, on his way out. Connors porations, and gray flannel suits). He hood that seemed “trendy” to tourists. snagged him. “I don’t know what you thought that Consciousness II was giv- The Fox Den 3.0, as the new digs were do anymore!” she said. ing way to Consciousness III, the out- christened, was a three-bedroom duplex Perez-Fox fished some business cards look of a rising generation whose vir- by the Bedford Avenue subway station. from his pocket. “I’m a graphic designer tues included direct action, community It had sleek new appliances and a lovely and brand strategist, and I also run a power, and self-definition. “For most yard; through an ingenious configura- podcast, and a podcast meet-up. You Americans, work is mindless, exhaust- tion of beds and couches, it could sleep should come to our meet-up,” he said, ing, boring, servile, and hateful, some- up to twelve people. handing her a card. The card said, “NEW thing to be endured while ‘life’ is confined Connors tried to rent it out one week YORK CITY PODCAST MEETUP.” “That’s to ‘time off,’ ” Reich wrote. “Conscious- a month. Some swapping was often re- the group,” he said. “My show is on the ness III people simply do not imagine quired. If she and her roommate were in back side.” The back of the card said, a career along the old vertical lines.” His town during a rental, they decamped to “THE BUSY CREATOR PODCAST.” “It’s accessible theory of the baffling sixties make room for the guests. Sometimes about workflow and creative productivity carried the imprimatur of William they used an acquaintance’s pad in Man- and culture and habits for creative pros.” Shawn’s New Yorker, which published hattan, also on Airbnb. Sometimes Con- “Why have I not been”—Connors an excerpt of the book that stretched nors stayed at the home of an old friend. blinked hard—“learning from you more over nearly seventy pages. “The Green- “It’s the time we have to hang out and often?” ing of America” spent months on the chill and catch up,” she said. “He loves it. I “Girl, get after it!” Perez-Fox ex- Times best-seller list. love it.” The financial upsides were con- claimed. In addition to hosting his own Exponents of the futuristic tech econ- siderable. By Airbnb-ing out their apart- podcast, he had been a guest on nine omy frequently adopt this fifty-year-old ment one week a month, Connors and other podcasts, including “Freelance perspective. Like Reich, they eschew her roommate could clear their four- Transformation” and “Life in the Woods: the hedgehog grind of the forty-hour thousand- dollar rent. Sometimes they Hope for Independent Creatives.” “I’m week; they seek a freer way to work. were gone for longer. One golden month, finishing a project tomorrow,” he told This productivity-minded spirit of Airbnb-ing brought in five figures. “That’s her. “Then I’ll be more free.” defiance holds appeal for many children more than most people, smart people, Connors said that she was in New of the Consciousness III generation: make in their job,” Connors observed. York at least through next week, prob- the so-called millennials. For Connors, though, the real benefit ably, and then she was going back to “People are now, more than ever be- of Airbnb was that it allowed her to Cuba. “Want to come down?” she asked. fore, aware of the careers that they’re travel, which she still loves to do. She “Ah,” Perez-Fox said. “A little bit not pursuing,” says Kathryn Minshew, spent part of November in Mexico, and hasty.” the C.E.O. of the Muse, a job-search part of December in Jordan. She saw One of the best things about Cuba, and career-advice site, and a co-author the Fox Den as a tool for living a worldly Connors explained when Perez-Fox of “The New Rules of Work.” Minshew life without committing to a worldly ca- had darted out into the night, was that co-founded the Muse in her mid- reer. (“Otherwise, you’d have to be an- she greeted each day there without twenties, after working at the consult- other level of rich to make this work.”) anxiety. “Not waking up stressed every ing firm McKinsey and yearning for a She spent all of January in Cuba, which day, doing something super-reward- job that felt more distinctive. She didn’t gave her a new business concept. ing, and having time to write and make know what that was, and her peers “In Cuba—random little town— art and all that stuff—that’s what I seemed similarly stuck. Jennifer Fonstad, half the town wanted me to start their want,” she told me. Soon after we went a venture capitalist whose firm, Aspect Airbnb accounts for them,” she said. our separate ways, she left town, to fly Ventures, backed Minshew’s company, Connors found a population that des- south. told me that “the future of work” is now perately needed help with the mar- a promising investment field. keting of personal brands. Now she n 1970, Charles A. Reich, a law pro- Many dreamy young people, like Cait- got out her iPhone and started swip- I fessor who’d experienced a counter- lin Connors, see unrealized opportunity ing rapidly through photos, many of cultural conversion after hanging with wherever they go. Some, in their careers, which centered on azure shorelines and young people out West, published “The end up as what might be called hedg- shirtless men. “Cuba is preserved like Greening of America,” a cotton-candy ers. These are programmers also known a time capsule,” she said. She stopped cone that wound together wispy reve- as d.j.s, sculptors who excel as corporate

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 55 consultants; they are Instagram- backed New York, he met his girlfriend. “The overs costly. Happy Host sets future fashion mavens, with a TV pilot on the idea of being staffed in Cleveland and rates using a proprietary algorithm. middle burner. They are doing it for the doing another ‘delayering’—B.C.G.’s When deciding whether to work money, and the love, and, like the over- polite euphemism for layoffs—just with a host, Hinckley assesses the apart- laden students they probably once were, seemed catastrophic,” he said. Love, free- ment’s appearance (enlisting a designer because they are accustomed to a counter- dom, and a dream of fleeing corporate if necessary), amenities, and location. point of self. The hedged career is a kind America won out. Opening a laptop, he asked for my Zip of gigging career—custom-assembled, Hinckley and three roommates have Code and entered it into AirDNA, a financially diffuse, defiant of organiza- Airbnb-ed their apartment (“Glam third-party subscription database that tional constraint—and its Greenwich Village 4BR gathers Airbnb market information modishness is why part- Loft”). As part of its nationwide. time Lyft driving or week- service, Happy Host ar- “Forty-seven rentals in your neigh- end TaskRabbit-ing has ranges professional pho- borhood,” he said, peering at the laptop found easy cultural ac- tography, and the loft, a screen. “Seventy-one per cent are occu- ceptance. But hedging is former hat factory with pied at any time. Your median person is a luxury, available to those Eamesian kitchen stools making 31K there on a 22.8K two-bed- who have too many ap- and a fig tree by the win- room cost.” He frowned: weak margin. pealing options in life. It dow, stood ready for an “The neighborhoods we like are the ones gestures toward the awk- appraising gaze. In addi- that are really high on this trend line.” ward question of whom, in the long tion to taking photos, Happy Host He clicked to a new data set. “SoHo, run, the revolution-minded spirit of the writes text for Airbnb listings, screens Greenwich Village. There, you have peo- nineteen- sixties really let off the leash. reservation requests, coördinates check- ple making over fifty-five thousand dol- ins, greets guests, answers e-mails, and lars on their apartment, if it’s a full-time s Caitlin Connors’s apartment supplies soaps, towels, and wine. Hinck- rental.” He looked at me and opened up A became more popular, she faced ley’s people remain on call for emer- his eyes wide. “Which is wild.” unforeseen challenges. Cleaning had gencies, which can arise under improb- to be done rapidly, in between stays. able conditions. The company once had n promotional material, Airbnb Questions from guests required prompt a client who, in the space-saving fash- I refers to itself as “an economic life- responses, even when she was abroad, ion of New Yorkers, used the drawer line for the middle class.”A company- and had no Internet access. When under her oven as a storage area for sponsored analysis released in Decem- Airbnb logistics started to approach “a documents and mail. She nearly lost ber overlaid maps of Airbnb listings full-time job,” she hired a management the kitchen to a fire when a Bavarian and traditional hotels on maps of neigh- company, called Happy Host, to han- guest attempted to bake. borhoods where a majority of residents dle bookings, cleanings, and related The afternoon was waning, and the were ethnic minorities. In seven cities, chores. Happy Host normally charges “unrivaled natural light” in the apart- including New York, the percentage twenty-five per cent of earnings, but ment’s “West facing windows” had of Airbnb listings that fall in minority Connors found the cost worthwhile. turned tawny. Twin arrays of seven large, neighborhoods exceeds the percent- “I’m, like, They do everything for you?” gonglike bells, each mounted on a fac- age of hotel rooms that do. (Another she said. “Sign me the fuck up!” ing wall, shot off a pong. “The gamela- study, of user photos in seventy-two One day, I went to visit Happy Host’s tron!” Hinckley explained. “My room- majority-black neighborhoods, sug- founder, Blake Hinckley, at his loft apart- mate was at sea, and saw a gamelatron, gested that most Airbnb hosts there ment on Broadway, a block from the and had a religious experience.” were white, complicating the picture.) Strand bookstore. The elevator opened Hinckley told me that creative, Seniors were found to earn, on aver- into the living room, which was sparsely affluent professionals are the company’s age, nearly six thousand dollars a year but stylishly furnished with caramel- typical customers. “Startup founders, from Airbnb listings. “Ultimately, what colored leather couches and bright, ex- consultants, people in private equity we’re doing is driving wealth down to troverted art work. Hinckley, who is have been really drawn to this, because the people,” Chris Lehane, the strate- twenty-nine, had a blond cascade of hair, they’re so busy, they don’t have time to gist at Airbnb, says. round glasses, and a short, raffish beard. respond to a guest inquiry within the It is, of course, driving wealth down He had studied English and economics hour, or the inclination to wake up at unevenly. A study conducted by the New at Middlebury College, and worked for one in the morning because the guest York attorney general in 2014 found that the Boston Consulting Group, doing has had a couple of cocktails and is hav- nearly half of all money made by Airbnb efficiency assessments for big compa- ing trouble opening the door,” he said. hosts in the state was coming from three nies. While travelling three hundred days “Also, intellectually, the concept of pric- Manhattan neighborhoods: the Village- a year, he was also renting an apartment, ing really resonates.” If a property is con- SoHo corridor, the Lower East Side, and in Boston. He did the math and found stantly booked, its prices are too low; Chelsea. It is undeniably good to be earn- that, if he’d put the place on Airbnb, he frequent fallow periods mean the rate ing fifty-five hundred dollars a year by could have made tens of thousands of is high. Long stays are favored, because Airbnb-ing your home in deep Queens— dollars. Around that time, consulting in cleaning and coördinating make turn- so good, it may not bother you to learn

56 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 that your banker cousin earns ten times in remote neighborhoods—might pa- axes during the Gold Rush,” he said. that from his swank West Village pad, tronize businesses in the area. “What Others harbor similar ambitions. “Our or that he hires Happy Host to make his we do represents a different model of goal is to become a mega-behemoth,” lucrative Airbnb property even more lu- capitalism,” he told me. After hanging said Amiad Soto, who, with his twin crative. But now imagine that the guy up, he sent a six-hundred-word e-mail brother, co-founded Guesty, a Tel Aviv- who lives two doors down from you gets of elaboration, and another after that. based company that helps hosts man- ideas. His finances aren’t as tight as yours, He pointed out that, traditionally, age bookings (or arranges for a remote and he decides to reinvest part of his affluent people have accrued further operator to do so under their names). Airbnb income in new furniture and a wealth passively—from real estate, in- Guesty has seventy-five employees, and greeting service. His ratings go up. Per- vestments, inheritances, and the like. Soto spends much of his time hiring haps he nudges up his prices in response, Those with less charmed lives have had more. For physical work, most such com- or maybe he keeps them low, to get a to resort to work in exchange for money. panies rely on other apps—Handy, Post- high volume of patronage. Now your list- Airbnb makes passive earning available mates—or hire part-time workers them- ing is no longer competitive in your neigh- to anyone with a spare room. selves. Sharing is not only challenging borhood. How long before the market In a competitive market, though, an existing model; it is generating its leaves you behind? advantaged people still end up lever- own labor force. I put a version of this question to Le- aging their advantages: that is why One drizzly spring afternoon, I met hane on the phone one morning. In the Happy Host exists. Today, every major a MetroButler worker named Bobby White House, he was known as a “mas- Airbnb city (among them London, Allan while he prepared an apartment ter of disaster” for his strategic crisis Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chi- for guests. Allan is a conservatory- management. As Al Gore’s press secre- cago, and New Orleans) has multiple trained actor and singer in his mid- tary, in 2000, he led the double- black- Happy Host equivalents to help meet twenties. He came to MetroButler last diamond effort of making the Vice- rising market expectations. A two-year- summer, from a gig at Proprly; he also President seem loose and easygoing on old New York competitor, MetroButler, works as a cater-waiter and as a hype the campaign trail. He told me that even has twenty-two contractors and two man at children’s parties. At Metro- an arms race to the top of the market cleaners, and last year bought the cli- Butler, he is a part-time contractor, with- would benefit overlooked neighborhoods. entele of another competitor, Proprly. out benefits, but he doesn’t mind: gig “It has a ripple effect on the local econ- MetroButler’s co-founder Brandon work makes it possible to take time omy,” he explained. McKenzie had been using Airbnb to off for more exciting endeavors (for A competitive Airbnb host who hires pay down law-school debts when he instance, an appearance in Syfy’s “The a cleaner and a decorator in Queens realized that short-term rentals could Internet Ruined My Life”). Metro Butler creates work for locals. Guests—some support an entire service industry. pays him fifty dollars for each two-hour of whom, Lehane insisted, prefer to be “We’re sort of in the business of pick- cleaning—sixty if he greets the guests, too. “You meet so many crazy people,” he told me. The place he was cleaning, TIME, IN WHALES a small garden apartment with a child’s room at the back, was a regular for him. Our legs of yellow skin next to one another, He had put fresh company linens on calves spread, I think of beached whales, the arcs of their bellies, the queen-size bed, and had left hotel- clean and gleaming. A whale would lie in the shape size shampoo and conditioner bottles, of something cold, the body sipping on itself with the MetroButler logo, on the night- like a drain. Gravity sucks a whole whale onto sand. stand. He discovered that the bulb in You study Korean, whispering, Muroru˘da, muroru˘da, the desk lamp had burned out, so he meaning, literally, Water rises, but really meaning to improve or made a note to buy a replacement. to rise in sap, in springtime trees. Come spring, it will be your In the child’s room, Allan dressed birthday. the twin bed in crisp white sheets, We will have seaweed soup, supply our blood with oxygen. pulled the duvet cover over the duvet Do you know that Koreans do that, because, hundreds of years past, with impressive speed, and rolled a bath they saw whales eating seaweed after giving birth? towel and a hand towel into little logs, You cross your legs, their hair black and coarse like my father’s to be arranged in the center of the bed. and my grandfather’s across the ocean. And do you know that His first tax return as an independent whales have hair? worker had been a shock, he said. But Perhaps a sign of their past, when they walked the earth? the work had been instructive in many Summer of years past: your father across the same ocean to other ways, too. He consulted his phone. bring you Every task was annotated on a photo to America, where you would grow up speaking a language of the space in an app that let Metro- different from mine. Do you know that whales, too, detect where Butler watch his progress in real time; he checked off each detail and took a photo of the room when he was done. sign that the system was not helping year-round, but it served the broader in- He hummed the finale to “The Fire- those who most needed the work. terests of major hotel trade groups, such bird” while he swept the floor. Instead of simply driving wealth as the American Hotel and Lodging As- Normally, every efficiency has a win- down, it seemed, the gigging model was sociation and the Hotel and Motel Trades ner and a loser. A service like Uber helping divert traditional service-worker Council, which lobbied against Airbnb. benefits the rider, who’s saving on the earnings into more privileged pockets— At the hearing, hosts protested the rule’s taxi fare she might otherwise pay, but causing what Schor calls a “crowding breadth: why not limit each member’s makes drivers’ earnings less stable. Airbnb out” of people dependent on such work. listings, rather than banning them all? has made travel more affordable for peo- That distillation-coil effect, drawing Christian Klossner, the executive di- ple who wince at the bill of a decent wealth slowly upward, is largely invisi- rector of the Mayor’s Office of Special hotel, yet it also means that tourism ble. On the ground, the atmosphere Enforcement, sat behind a desk micro- spending doesn’t make its way directly grows so steamy with transaction that phone, wearing a patient expression as to the usual armies of full-time employ- it often seems to rain much needed cash. speakers gave testimony. Suzette Sun- ees: housekeepers, bellhops, cooks. dae, a musician wearing a fifties-style To advocates such as Lehane, that irbnb enabled me to go back swing dress and a white cardigan over labor-market swap is good. Instead of “A to school and become a full- her tattoos, said that she ran a vintage- scrubbing bathrooms at the Hilton, you time student and work as a part-time clothing store in Park Slope. When the can earn directly, how and when you want. photographer.” store’s traffic fell off, she had Airbnb-ed Such thinking, though, presumes that “Airbnb is necessary while my cousin her home. “It saved me from having to gigging people and the old working and is out of town to work.” declare bankruptcy, and it allowed me to service classes are the same, and this does “I am here as an individual, not rep- close my store without owing a dime,” not appear to be the case. A few years resenting some radical, self-serving or- she said. An East New York resident ago, Juliet B. Schor, a sociology profes- ganization. I am speaking to my own named Heather-Sky McField recalled sor at Boston College, interviewed forty- experience.” having to travel to Baltimore each week three mostly young people who were The streets near New York’s City Hall to care for her mother, who had breast earning money from Airbnb, Turo (like were ear-stinging and windy on the cancer. She had been unable to evict her Airbnb for car rentals), and TaskRabbit. morning of a big Airbnb hearing, but tenants, who’d stopped paying rent. “Had She found that they were disproportion- attendees clogged the doorway, and the it not been for Airbnb, I would have been ately white- collar and highly educated, air inside was thick with sour human foreclosed by now,” she told Klossner. like Seth F. A second, expanded study concern. A new law had made it illegal Given such testimony, it was easy showed that those who relied on gigging for many New Yorkers to advertise short- to see how the sharing economy be- to make a living were less satisfied than term rentals. The law ostensibly targeted came a liberal beacon—and easy to see those who had other jobs and benefits unregulated hoteliers, who snatch up the attendant paradoxes. A century and gigged for pocket money: another multiple apartments and Airbnb them ago, liberalism was a systems-building

58 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 want to get more involved? We have a team that includes field organizers who are responsible for different parts of one another comes from the country.” through song? That music I hear is yours and ours. Muroru˘da. If Uber has come to be known as Muroru˘da. Water rises. Whales die in this year’s hot winter. the Wicked Witch of the West, dark- Your father has told you of the summer, the dank heat. logoed, ubiquitous, and dragging a Your foster mother ran after you, you already asleep in your father’s arms, flaming broom of opportunism, Lyft wailing your name. You will not be called by that name the next day has sought to be the Glinda, upbeat, and years will pass by. But when you’re ten you will write pink, and conciliatory, and its organiz- about that story ing outreach has been key to this rep- and spell “wail” as the animal, whose breath is a distance, utation. Castor’s work was not accost- spouting steam, ing government but assembling users, the great animal that becomes crushed by air and sprayed with words building a network of ordinary people Man’s Fault. And yes, so perhaps the world will end in who wanted Lyft in their lives. water, taking with it “They’ll have dinners and other all loving things. And yes, in grace. Only song, only opportunities for people to learn more buoyancy. You rise now about what policy activities are hap- whispering, Murollida, murollida. Meaning, literally, to raise pening in their area,” she said. This water, often means turning out for commu- but really meaning to bring water to a boil. nity-style lobbying—like the hosts at the Airbnb hearing in New York. “We —Emily Jungmin Yoon get to know who has a powerful voice that would be helpful if shared with elected officials,” she explained. philosophy. Its revelation was that so- because traditional industry gets advan- Castor is a friendly woman with tidy ciety, left alone, tended toward entropy tages elsewhere. (President Trump, it blond hair who also started out in Dem- and extremes, not because people were has been pointed out, could not have ocratic politics. After college, she worked inherently awful but because they built his company without hundreds of in Washington as a legislative aide for thought locally. You wanted a decent millions of dollars in tax subsidies.) the California representative Susan life for your family and the families that Still, since their inception, and in- Davis. In 2008, before returning to school you knew. You did not—could not— creasingly during the past year, gigging to get a degree in public administration, make every personal choice with an eye companies have become the targets of she worked on an unsuccessful congres- to the fates of people in some unknown a journalistic genre that used to be sional campaign. She moved to San Fran- factory. But, even if individuals couldn’t called muckraking: admirable and as- cisco, and in 2011 worked as a munici- deal with the big picture, early-twenti- siduous investigative work that digs up pal finance consultant. It was an exciting eth-century liberals saw, a larger entity hypocrisies, deceptions, and malprac- time to be in the Bay Area. In the wake such as government could. This way of tices in an effort to cast doubt on a of economic collapse, young people with thinking brought us the New Deal and broader project. Some companies, such big ideas and an understanding of mo- “Ask not what your country can do for as Uber, seem to invite this kind of at- bile technology were thinking about how you.” Its ultimate rejection brought us tention with layered wrongdoing and work could be made cheaper, lighter, and customized life paths, heroic entrepre- years of secrecy. But they also invite it more accessible. Castor started renting neurship, and maybe even Instagram by their high-minded positioning. Like out her car on Getaround, an early shar- performance. We are now back to the traditional companies, gigging compa- ing-economy company, and then tried politics of the particular. nies maintain regiments of highly paid Zimride, Airbnb—any service she could For gigging companies, that shift lawyers and lobbyists. What sets them get her hands on. Their premise of shar- means a constant struggle against a leg- apart is a second lobbying effort, turned ing moved her. “It was like falling in acy of systemic control, with legal squab- toward the public. love,” she told me. “You ask yourself, Is bles like the one in New York. Regula- this love? Is this love? And, when you tion is government’s usual tool for blunt- e’re borrowing very heavily find the thing that’s right, you don’t have ing adverse consequences, but most “W from traditional community- to ask.” Early in 2012, she started an sharing platforms gain their competi- organizing models, and looking at the event series, Collaborative Chats, devoted tive edge by skirting its requirements. grass roots in each city,” Emily Castor, to the sharing economy. When Lyft Uber and Lyft avoid taxi rules that fix Lyft’s leader in the campaign against launched, in June, 2012, the founders rates and cap the supply on the road. regulatory constraint, told me a while hired her to be the company’s first “com- Handy saves on overtime and benefits back, when we spoke in the company’s munity manager.” She found that she by categorizing workers as contractors. San Francisco headquarters. “Who are could draw on her political training. “Col- Some gigging advocates suggest that the leaders? Who are people who dis- lective identity is one of those aspects this less regulated environment is fair, tinguish themselves as passionate, who that, in the theory of social movements,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 59 period when liberal democracy is sick.” In “The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream” (2006), Jacob Hacker, a political-science professor at Yale, described a decades-long off- loading of risk from insurance-type struc- tures—governments, corporations—to individuals. Economic insecurity has risen in the course of the past genera- tion, even as American wealth climbed. Hacker attributed this shift to what he called “the personal-responsibility cru- sade,” which grew out of a post-sixties fixation on moral hazard: the idea that you do riskier things if you’re insulated from the consequences. The conserva- tive version of the crusade is a common- place: the poor should try harder next time. But, although Hacker doesn’t note it explicitly, there’s a liberal version, too, having to do with doffing corporate structures, eschewing inhibiting social norms, and refusing a career in plastics. ¥¥ Reich called it Consciousness III. The slow passage from love beads to is so important,” she told me. “You’re worked on the Hill,” she recalled, “my Lyft through the performative assertion not just ‘taking rides.’ ” chief of staff used to say, ‘A political of self may be the least claimed legacy A key architect of that organizing campaign is a startup that is designed of the baby-boomer revolution—cer- strategy is Marshall Ganz. From the to go out of business.’ ” tainly, it’s the least celebrated. Yet the sixties through the early eighties, he place we find ourselves today is not worked under Cesar Chavez, leading uestions have emerged lately unique. In “Drift and Mastery,” a young the organizing efforts of the United Qabout the future of institutional Walter Lippmann, one of the founders Farm Workers. Now, at the Harvard liberalism. A Washington Post /ABC of modern progressivism, described the Kennedy School, he teaches what he News poll last month found that two- strange circumstances of public discus- calls “a story of self, a story of us, a thirds of Americans believe the Dem- sion in 1914, a similar time. “The little story of now”: the collective-identity ocratic Party is “out of touch,” more business men cried: We’re the natural movement-building method that Cas- than think the same of the Republican men, so let us alone,” he wrote. “And the tor invoked. In July, 2007, he led a boot Party or the current President. The gig public cried: We’re the most natural of camp to train Obama’s first battalion of economy has helped show how a shared all, so please do stop interfering with us. organizers for Iowa and South Caroli- political methodology—and a shared Muckraking gave an utterance to the na’s primary contests. He told me that language of virtue—can stand in for a small business men and to the larger he found the sharing companies’ use of unified program; contemporary liber- public, who dominated reform politics. grassroots methods “problematic.” alism sometimes seems a backpack of What did they do? They tried by all the “There’s a difference between ex- tools distributed among people who, machinery and power they could mus- change, which is what markets are all beyond their current stance of opposi- ter to restore a business world in which about, and discernment of common pur- tion, lack an agreed-upon blueprint. each man could again be left to his own pose, which is what politics is about,” Unsurprisingly, the commonweal proj- will—a world that needed no coöpera- he said. Ganz told me that he had been ects that used to be the pride of pro- tive intelligence.” Coming off a period distraught after Obama’s victory in 2008 gressivism are unravelling. Leaders have of liberalization and free enterprise, when the Democratic National Com- quietly let them go. At one point, I Lippmann’s America struggled with mittee seemed to abandon the Presi- asked Chris Lehane why he had thrown growing inequality, a frantic news cycle, dent’s grassroots network. What he had his support behind the sharing model a rising awareness of structural injustice, hoped would be a movement had been instead of working on traditional pol- and a cacophonous global society—in cast aside as an electoral tool that had icy solutions. He told me that, during other words, with an intensifying sense served its purpose. the recession, he had suffered a crisis of fragmentation. His idea, the big idea Castor, who is nearly four decades of faith. “The social safety net wasn’t of progressivism, was that national self- younger than Ganz, had a different he- providing the support that it had been,” government was a coöperative project roic ideal for social change. “When I he said. “I do think we’re in a time of putting the pieces together. “The

60 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 battle for us, in short, does not lie against Happy Host, said, use trivial problems encourage these companies to put in crusted prejudice,” he wrote, “but against to seek a refund.) And reputation gov- place voluntary measures,” Franken told the chaos of a new freedom.” ernance can’t pick up patterns of unjust me soon after dispatching the first let- Revolution or disruption is easy. exclusion. Research on Airbnb found ter. Some companies have taken preëmp- Spreading long-term social benefit is that identical profiles given different tive measures. Laura Copeland, the head hard. If one accepts Lehane’s premise ethnic names were treated differently of community at Lyft, describes having that the safety net is tattered and that by hosts, and that pricing on equivalent created an “advisory council” of seven gigging platforms are necessary to keep apartments ran lower for black hosts drivers to make sure that the people on people in cash, the model’s social ero- than for everybody else. (A couple of the street have a voice in the company. sions have to be curbed. How can the weeks ago, Airbnb agreed to let a reg- Other assessments suggest that em- gig economy be made sustainable at last? ulatory body, in California, test for dis- ployees, too, should get their houses in crimination; the company itself has in- order. “To succeed in the Gig Economy, uring the final days of the stituted an aggressive program to try to we need to create a financially flexible D Obama Administration, I went to curb such behavior.) Still, you cannot life of lower fixed costs, higher savings, see Tom Perez, at that time the Secre- regulate somebody’s house or car the and much less debt,” Diane Mulcahy, a tary of Labor and now—after a candi- way you regulate a hotel or a taxi. senior analyst at the Kauffman Foun- dacy fraught with inner-party conflict— “Someone who’s hosting on Airbnb dation and a lecturer at Babson College, the chair of the Democratic National might say, ‘Well, this is my space. I only writes in her book “The Gig Economy,” Committee. Perez, tieless in a white want a certain kind of guest in my spare which is part economic argument and shirt, greeted me from a couch. Beyond bedroom,’ ” Arun Sundararajan, an part how-to guide. Ideally, gig workers the stresses of leaving the Cabinet, he N.Y.U. business professor, says. Is that should plan not to retire. (Beyond Airbnb had just experienced a bad nosebleed unreasonably discriminatory? In a new hosting, Mulcahy sees prospects for and looked drained. book, “The Sharing Economy,” he pro- aging millennials in app-based dog- “If you’re looking for the five-point poses a halfway measure like Airbnb’s: sitting.) If they must retire, they should blueprint, I don’t have it,” he said, when self-regulation in collaboration with prepare. Mulcahy suggests bingeing on I asked about his vision for the gigging government. Many elected politicians benefits when they come. Fill your dance labor market. Last year, he pushed the like a long-leash approach, too. In No- card with doctors while you’re on em- Census Bureau to reinstate the Contin- vember, 2014, after an Uber employee ployee insurance. Go wild with 401(k) gent Worker Supplement to gather data. described tracking a journalist’s move- matching—it will come in handy. (The government currently has no in- ments, Senator Al Franken sent a list This ketchup-packet-hoarding ap- formation on a gigging sphere as such.) of privacy-policy queries to Uber’s proach sounds sensible, given the cur- He believed that any long-term labor C.E.O.; last fall, Franken pressed Uber rent lack of systemic support. Yet, as model should include input from work- and Lyft about apparent race-based dis- Mulcahy acknowledges, it’s a survival ers, but wasn’t sure what that should crepancies in wait times. “What I’m try- mechanism, not a solution. Turning look like. “Voice can take a lot of forms,” ing to do is help customers understand to deeper reform, she argues for elimi- Perez said. “I’m a big fan of collective what these companies are doing, and nating the current distinction between bargaining and the labor movement, but I recognize that there are other ways.” Perez champions what he calls “con- scious capitalism”—free-market liberal- ism, with an eye to workers’ rights—and he insisted to me that profit-seeking and benefits-giving are not at odds. “Shareholders are best served when all stakeholders are well served!” he explained. The mind-set was mainstream during the nineteen-nineties, and still runs strong in the tech community, with its doing- well-by-doing-good ethos. One popular idea is that app markets regulate them- selves with online ratings by and of ev- eryone involved in a transaction. The record here is mixed. Some earn- ers complain about the way rating sys- tems favor the judgment of customers (Seth F. told me that it is hard to chal- lenge a poor rating) and can be lever- aged for haggling purposes. (Some Airbnb customers, Blake Hinckley, of “Mom! You’re embarrassing me!” employees (people who receive a W-2 regulations around a more flexible ing collective bargaining, discrimina- tax form and benefits such as insur- model,” Jacob Hacker told me. He fa- tion protection, tax withholding, insur- ance and sick days) and contract work- vors some form of worker participation, ance pools) but not others (overtime ers (who get a 1099-MISC and no and, like Mulcahy, advocates creating a and the minimum wage). benefits). It’s a “kink” in the labor mar- single category of employment. “I think I put these possibilities to Tom Perez. ket, she says, and it invites abuse by if you work for someone else, you’re an He told me that he didn’t like the efficiency- seeking companies. employee,” he said. “Employees get cer- idea of eliminating work categories, Calls for structural change have tain protections. Benefits must be sep- or of adding a new one, as Harris and grown loud lately, in part because the arate from work.” Krueger suggest: you’d lose many of the problem goes far beyond gigging apps. In a much cited article in Democracy, hard-won benefits included with W-2 The precariat is everywhere. Compa- from 2015, Nick Hanauer, a venture employment, he said, either in the com- nies such as Nissan have begun man- capitalist, and David Rolf, a union pres- promise to a single category or because ning factories with temps; even the ident, proposed that workplace benefits current W-2 companies would find U.S. Postal Service has turned to them. be prorated (someone who works a ways to slide into the new classifica- Academic jobs are increasingly filled twenty- hour week gets half of the full- tion. He wanted to move slowly, to with relatively cheap, short-term teach- time benefits) and portable (insurance take time. “The heart and soul of the ing appointments. Historically, there or unused vacation days would carry twentieth- century social compact that is usually an uptick in 1099 work during from one job to the next, because em- emerged after the Great Depression tough economic times, and then W-2s ployers would pay into a worker’s life- was forty years in the making,” he said. resurge as jobs are added in recovery. long benefits account). Other people “How do we build the twenty-first- But W-2 jobs did not resurge as usual regard the gig economy as a case for century social compact?” during our recovery from the last re- universal basic income: a plan to give cession; instead, the growth has hap- every citizen a modest flat annuity from erez’s new perch, at the D.N.C., pened in the 1099 column. That shift the government, as a replacement for P has given him a broader platform, raises problems because the United all current welfare and unemployment and a couple of hours after the House States’ benefits structure has tradition- programs. Alternatively, there’s the pro- passed the American Health Care Act ally been attached to the corporation posal made by the economists Seth D. last week, he championed the old safety rather than to the state: the expecta- Harris and Alan B. Krueger: the cre- net in forceful language. “Scapegoating tion was that every employed person ation of an “independent worker” sta- worker protections is often a lazy cop- would have a W-2 job. tus that awards some of the structural out for some who want to change the “We should design the labor- market benefits of W-2 employment (includ- rules to benefit themselves at the ex- pense of working people,” he told me. “We shouldn’t have to choose between innovation and the most basic employee protections; it’s a false dichotomy.” The entanglement of the sharing economy and Democratic politics has contin- ued—Perez’s press secretary at the Department of Labor now works for Airbnb—but his approach had circum- spection. “Any changes you make to pol- icies or regulations have to be very care- ful and take all potential ripple effects into account and keep the best interest of the worker in mind.” His own effort to do that led him one day to New York, where he stopped by a company called Hello Alfred. “I just wanted to introduce us a little bit, explaining why we’re here,” Marcela Sapone, the company’s C.E.O. and co- founder, said. “I think the best way to do that is to show you what we do. I heard that you like Coke heavy”—that is, the opposite of Coca-Cola light— “so we went ahead . . . ” She handed him a miniature bottle. “The perfect size!” Perez exclaimed. “O Romeo, Romeo. Lurking outside my balcony is super creepy, Romeo.” He looked delighted and confused. “At Alfred,” Sapone went on, “we think that help should be built into your life.” Sapone and her co-founder, Jess Beck, had met at Harvard Business School after leaving McKinsey. “We were thinking about how we were going to balance a career, building a family, building a social life in the commu- nity—you’d have to be a superhero. So we asked for some help to become that superhero,” Sapone said. Unlike TaskRabbit, Hello Alfred is based on recurring service. When cus- tomers download the app and sign up, they’re assigned a single tasker, called a home manager, who comes once or twice a week, on a schedule. Alfred taskers often have keys and let themselves in; the idea is that, like traditional home help, they get to know their clients’ preferences and quirks. “It’s sort of a weird relationship you build with this person,” Leah Silver, a client who is an elementary-school teacher on the Upper West Side, told me. “They know so much about you.” The reason for Perez’s visit was an unusual feature of Hello Alfred’s model: although the taskers can work part time, on a schedule they determine, all are “Maybe you should worry less about kryptonite full W-2 employees. Perez considered and more about office doughnuts.” the company to be a model—creative, well-intentioned, and kind toward its employees—and praised it between pulls •• on his Coke heavy. “I appreciate that you’re understanding the high road is each other in Boston, and she convinced without gambling his future on it. He the smart road,” he said. “This is not an him that any honorable company owed had found some sense of workplace act of charity! This is an act of enlight- its workers employment benefits. comfort—of being valued and known. ened self-interest.” One afternoon, I accompanied a For many gig workers, as for Seth F., He would have been more correct to Hello Alfred tasker named Phillip that dream remains elusive. When Seth F. call it self-interest tamed. Sapone told Pineno as he went to service apartments had finished hanging art work in my liv- me later that it’s expensive to carry a staff in Kips Bay. A placid guy with tiny sil- ing room, I led him to the dining room. of W-2 workers on a gigging schedule. ver hoops in his ears and a hipster’s dusky He took a small electric drill and some The tax burden is greater for Hello Al- beard, Pineno does tasking four days a screws out of his backpack, and started fred than it would be on a 1099 model, week and, like Bobby Allan, works in driving them into the plaster. We were the hourly rate is high, and the required his remaining time as an actor. In the hanging a small print of a Sol LeWitt human-resources infrastructure drives lobby of a building facing Bellevue South drawing, squares in squares in squares. up the cost. Attrition is low, but W-2 Park, he gathered packages and ascended He extracted a laser level, and projected companies are also vulnerable to various to a client’s apartment—one of eleven it across the wall. “This is my favorite employee lawsuits from which 1099 em- he’d visit that day. A bag of Trader Joe’s tool,” he told me, with a moving tender- ployers are insulated. Veggie & Flaxseed Tortilla Chips went ness. He rarely met other taskers, he said; For now, however, companies such in a cupboard. A box of cereal was tucked there were no colleagues in his life with as Hello Alfred, going above and be- into position on the counter. Pineno whom he could share experiences and yond market demands out of principle, used to be a caterer, doing events at Lin- struggles. The flexibility was great, if you may be the gig economy’s best hope. coln Center and the Museum of Nat- had something to be flexible for. And, occasionally, the principles travel. ural History. The work was fine, he said, “The gig economy is such a lonely Blake Hinckley has already moved the but unpredictable, different from Hello economy,” he told me. He left his drill most senior three of his six Happy Host Alfred. “You get to feel more like a behind after he finished the work, but staff cleaners onto W-2 status. The rea- human,” he told me. He could take time I was out when he returned the next son, he told me, is Sapone: they knew every week to work toward his dream day to get it. I never saw him again. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 63 ANNALS OF LAW A RIGHTEOUS CASE

Zainab Ahmad’s mission to show that criminal prosecution is the best counterterrorism strategy.

BY WILLIAM FINNEGAN

ainab Ahmad had a small di- to face any consequences. Their plan and soon afterward the French Army saster in Saudi Arabia. “I always was suicide. Now they’re very vulnera- caught him in an Al Qaeda column in Z borrowed an abaya from the legat ble. Everybody’s human. You pull the northern Mali. in Riyadh,” she said. An abaya is the full- levers.” The main lever that prosecutors In Brooklyn, Cheibani’s lawyers, pub- length robe that is required dress for have with coöperators is a reduced sen- lic federal defenders, had requested a women and girls in Saudi Arabia. “Legat” tence. For naïve young men, disen- suppression hearing, hoping to quash is short for the legal-attaché office, the chanted with jihad and looking at forty some of the prosecution’s evidence on F.B.I. presence in an American Embassy. years to life, that can be a powerful in- constitutional grounds. Such hearings Ahmad is an Assistant United States centive to talk. Ahmad may ask them are a chance for the defense to get a Attorney with the Eastern District of to testify in court. She has prosecuted preview of the government’s case. The New York. “A button came undone thirteen people for terrorism since 2009, preview that Cheibani and his lawyers during a meeting, and suddenly it was and has not lost a case. got was discouraging. “They know Zain- like something out of ‘Showgirls.’ ” That week, in the courthouse across ab’s reputation,” a federal prosecutor Ahmad laughed. The Saudis were un- the street, she had finished a hearing in who has worked with Ahmad said. “They amused. “After that, I went and bought the case of a Malian man accused of know their chances are not good.” my own abaya on Atlantic Ave.” murdering an American diplomat in Ahmad had made numerous trips to We were sitting in a diner on Cad- Niger. In December, 2000, William West Africa, chasing leads, collecting man Plaza, across from the Brooklyn Bultemeier, a military attaché, was evidence, interviewing potential wit- federal courthouse. Ahmad, who is thirty- gunned down in a midnight carjacking nesses. For the hearing, she brought in seven, was looking litigation-ready, in a outside a restaurant in the capital. The seventeen witnesses from Niger and Mali, well-cut dark suit and a cream blouse. accused was Alhassane Ould Mohamed, few of whom were prepared for a New “That’s Judge Glasser,” she whispered, also known as Cheibani, who was famed York winter. “Half of them had only san- motioning with her eyes toward another around the Sahel as a smuggler. He was dals,” Ahmad said. “We were all franti- table. “He did the Gotti trial.” arrested, and the case seemed strong. cally scraping up coats, hats, shoes. We The Eastern District of New York Bultemeier’s vehicle, a Toyota Land came this close to putting a woman on has long been known for its work against Cruiser that belonged to the Embassy, the stand in a yellow hat with a pom- organized crime. Since the September 11th was recovered in Timbuktu, and Chei- pom.” At the hearing, in the marble and attacks, E.D.N.Y. has also become an bani’s fingerprints and DNA were found mahogany grandeur of a Brooklyn fed- aggressive prosecutor of terrorism, se- inside. A security guard at an Air Af- eral courtroom, Cheibani was presum- curing more convictions than any other rique office testified to seeing him com- ably astonished to see seventeen Afri- U.S. Attorney’s office. Ahmad’s specialty mit the shooting. cans ready to testify against him. On is counterterrorism, her subspecialty “ex- In 2002, though, Cheibani escaped March 24, 2016, he pleaded guilty to traterritorial” cases, which means that from jail, and reportedly went to work conspiracy to commit murder, and was she spends a great deal of time overseas, for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. subsequently given a sentence of twenty- negotiating with foreign officials, inter- A.Q.I.M. finances its campaigns by five years. “He’s not an ideological jihad- viewing witnesses, often in prison, and smuggling and by kidnapping Western- ist,” Ahmad said. “He’s in it for the combing the ground for evidence in ers, and Cheibani was said to have par- money. But a lot of people are in it for terror-related crimes against Americans. ticipated in the kidnapping of two Ca- the money, and his knowledge of the She spends time in American prisons as nadian diplomats in 2008. After a sub- Sahel has been very valuable to A.Q.I.M.” well, typically with convicted jihadists. sequent attack on a Saudi convoy in Knowledge is everything in counter- A former supervisor of Ahmad’s told me Niger left four dead, he was caught, terrorism. “Coöperators are the unsung that she has probably logged more hours tried, and sentenced to twenty years. heroes of this business,” Ahmad said. talking to “legitimate Al Qaeda mem- Then he escaped again, in a mass break- One of her former supervisors at bers, hardened terrorist killers,” than any out mounted by Boko Haram. E.D.N.Y., David Bitkower, told me, other prosecutor in America. In 2012, Ahmad got the Bultemeier “You coöperate some kid from Minne- “They’re treasure troves of informa- investigation, by then a very cold case, apolis in 2009, and a couple of years tion about the networks, once they de- reassigned to E.D.N.Y. The next year, later he’s going to help you prosecute cide to coöperate,” Ahmad told me. with Cheibani “in the wind,” as Ahmad an Al Shabaab commander, who is going “Some of them didn’t expect to be here, put it, she obtained an indictment, to help you pursue defendants farther

64 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 Ahmad has probably spent more hours with Al Qaeda members and other terrorists than any other American prosecutor.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 65 spending bill titled “No Miranda Warn- ings for Al Qaeda Terrorists.” Ahmad and her colleagues have been working meanwhile to develop, with considerable quiet success, a criminal- justice alternative to Guantánamo. It’s a high-wire act. The public has unique expectations of law enforcement with respect to terrorism. “When there’s a bank robbery, we try to solve the crime,” Ahmad said. “But nobody thinks our job is to stamp out bank robbery. Ter- rorism is different. People expect us to prevent it.” Many terror cases are diffi- cult to make, with the strongest evi- dence often classified or inadmissible. “And we can’t afford to lose,” Ahmad told me. “We can’t get anything wrong. If we lost a major extraterritorial case, there might never be another chance.”

hmad had a multifaceted upbring- A ing. She grew up in suburban Nas- sau County, Long Island, with her fa- ther and stepmother and two younger brothers, and she also lived part time with her mother, in Manhattan. Her parents had divorced, amicably, when ¥¥ she was an infant, and, as Zainab grew, according to her father, Naeem, “she up the chain.” Ahmad considers all her the National Security Council, in the would play Mom off against Dad, but time with ex-jihadists well spent. “They White House. The political opposition always for one thing—to buy more always know more than they think to such transfers has been entrenched books.” Her parents were part of the Pa- they know,” she told me. “Everything for years on Capitol Hill, and has only kistani diaspora, and Zainab spent sum- they remember helps fill in the picture.” intensified since the attempt to put Kha- mers in Pakistan and England. Visits to lid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mas- Pakistan were an adventure—she had rials are relatively easy, in Ah- termind of the 9/11 attacks, on trial in dashing, rowdy cousins—but England T mad’s view: “There’s a neutral ar- Manhattan federal court. That effort was often a shock. “You could feel the biter—a judge, a jury. You make your failed, in 2010, in the face of objections discrimination,” she told me. “My cous- best argument, and they decide.” Get- from Congress and local officials. ins, no matter how successful or well ed- ting an extraterritorial terrorism case In the Senate, the drive to oppose ucated, were never going to be accepted charged, on the other hand, requires es- and defund civilian trials for accused as British. People would ask me where tablishing facts to the satisfaction of an terrorists has long been led by the Re- I was from. I’d say I was American. Then American grand jury about events that publicans Lindsey Graham of South they’d say, ‘Yes, but where are you really occurred, often years ago, in faraway Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and from?’ I was always so glad to get home.” places. For Ahmad’s cases, those places Jeff Sessions of Alabama. “This is no “We felt comfortable here,” Naeem have included Afghanistan, Pakistan, way to fight a war,” the three senators told me, when I visited him and his Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Al- and a group of their colleagues wrote, wife, Nasrin, at their home, in East geria, Syria, Nigeria, Niger, Kenya, So- in a 2015 letter to Eric Holder, then the Meadow. “I felt comfortable with my malia, Trinidad, Guyana, Canada, and Attorney General. The letter referred, neighbors, and never told my children the United Kingdom. specifically, to several extraditions that to avoid kids because they’re Christian, But the hardest part of bringing a Ahmad was involved in. The senators Jewish—none of that.” (Most of Zain- terrorism suspect onto American soil, and their allies strongly prefer that for- ab’s friends as a child were Jewish.) she says, has usually been convincing eign terrorists who target Americans Naeem, a retired engineer, is an active the U.S. government that it’s safe. Spe- be detained in the military prison at member of a local mosque, and has cial approval must be obtained both Guantánamo Bay and, when possible, taught Sunday school since the nine- from Main Justice—as government law- tried by a military tribunal. In 2009, teen-eighties. “I am a very religious yers call Justice Department headquar- Sessions, who is now the Attorney Gen- man,” he said. “But not a religiosity ters, in Washington, D.C.—and from eral, added an amendment to a military man. I don’t care what other people do.”

66 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 Naeem and his first wife, Jamile, left where I did—I don’t know. Everything’s 2006, at the end of a major Mafia trial. Pakistan for Canada in the nineteen- changed.” She meant the level of mis- “Zainab was crying,” he said. “The de- seventies—for economic reasons, he said. trust that Muslims in America face. fendant had been convicted. She said, But his engineering degree, from the “When I was a kid, even though I had ‘I couldn’t take it when he took off his University of Peshawar, was not recog- a funny name, and didn’t look like ev- watch and his necklace and gave them nized in Canada, so he found work eryone else, it honestly took me a very to his family.’ She had got to know these investigating insurance claims. In 1977, long time to realize that. There was noth- people. So I said, ‘Which side would you the couple moved to New York, where ing that made me feel different. Substi- rather be on, the government or the de- Zainab was born three years later. Naeem tute teachers would come, and start to fense? You’re not after the person, you’re managed a restaurant in midtown and take attendance, and hesitate, because after the truth.’ ” later helped run a construction firm. His my name was at the top of the class list, When Ahmad joined the Eastern boss, who eventually became his part- Ahmad. They’d say, ‘I know I’m going District, in 2008, she first worked on ner, was a Hindu from India. “We’re to pronounce this wrong.’ And the whole Brooklyn and Staten Island gang cases, both from the Punjab,” Naeem said. “But class would be, like, ‘Zainab. Duh.’ but soon found herself drafted into a if there was a war between India and “Every year, in elementary school, terrorism investigation that centered on Pakistan we didn’t bring it home. We we’d have American Heritage Day. Ev- a plot to blow up fuel tanks and pipe- were the same, except he went to tem- erybody would say where their family lines at John F. Kennedy International ple and I went to mosque.” was from. Germany. Poland. I remem- Airport. The plotters, one of them a for- Zainab’s parents describe her as a ber, in second grade, saying, ‘My fami- mer baggage handler, were a motley quar- cheerful, precocious child. “She never ly’s from Pakistan.’ The teacher pulled tet from Guyana and Trinidad, and the walked, she always skipped,” Jamile, who down a map, and I didn’t know where case led to both Iran and Al Qaeda. “You now lives in Pakistan, told me. “Her sixth- Pakistan was, even though I’d been there. start following a disgruntled baggage grade teacher praised her respectfulness, I was totally embarrassed. But then I handler, a guy who’s mouthing off in and that meant a lot to me. A lot. It’s was relieved because the teacher didn’t Queens,” Ahmad said. “But he has the difficult to raise a respectful child in the know, either.” Ahmad laughed. “I’d potential to connect with serious net- U.S.” When Zainab was eight or nine, kind of like to go back to a time in Amer- works—and this guy did it.” Russell she and Naeem read the entire Quran ica when teachers didn’t know where Defreitas, the baggage handler, made together, which took about a year. She Pakistan is.” trips to Guyana, looking to contact a didn’t understand a word, she said. Later, Jamile told me, “When Zainab was senior Al Qaeda leader. When his search as an undergraduate at Cornell, major- little, she wanted to be a receptionist. failed, he settled instead for Abdul Kadir, ing in health policy, she studied Arabic. She loved answering the phone. Then a chemical engineer and former mem- “We talked every night,” Naeem said. she wanted to be a nurse. I mentioned ber of Guyana’s parliament, who had “She would give me the gist of the Ar- lawyer, because my dad was a lawyer, transferred his allegiance to Islamist abic. I would send her back to class with but I wasn’t serious.” Ahmad herself extremists in Iran. The investigators new ideas and questions.” Even as a law- is vague about how law happened. moved carefully, placing an informant yer, he said, “she sometimes uses me as a She had planned to be a hospital with Defreitas, but not, at first, asking bounce-off for ideas—to see what I say.” administrator, but things him to gather evidence Naeem served lunch and tea. A few went sideways after the with a tape recorder. “We days earlier—this was last spring—there September 11th attacks, weren’t sure about Guy- had been a Trump campaign rally in and she ended up at Co- ana law, or the Guyanese, Bethpage, a couple of miles to the east. lumbia Law School, on and you don’t want to blow “You could hear the roaring from here,” a full scholarship. One your informant,” Ahmad Naeem said. “Everything but the ‘Build judge she clerked for, Reena said. “We’re not the intel- the wall! ’s.” Like his daughter, Naeem Raggi, of the Second Cir- ligence community. We’re has a quick tongue and a ready laugh. cuit Court of Appeals, re- law enforcement. We have Nasrin, a tall, smiling woman in her calls her strong academic to declare we’re there. You fifties, is the town clerk of Hempstead, background in finance and have to figure out who which has a population of eight hun- economics. “She excelled in a variety of you can trust. Eventually, we worked dred thousand. She is the first elected areas,” Raggi told me. “Her ability to it out, and we got him recorded.” official of South Asian extraction in analogize. Her aptitude for solving Marshall Miller, the lead prosecu- New York State. While we talked, white problems. She has a deep critical mind. tor on the case, was struck by how guys in pickups parked in the driveway Zainab doesn’t come across as a hard- Ahmad took to the work. “Zainab was and came to the front door, where they boiled, aggressive prosecutor. She’s re- really good in Guyana with local law conferred with Nasrin over sheaves of served—that’s her upbringing. She would enforcement,” he told me. “She made documents—constituent service on a have been successful in any field. But, them feel respected. Ninety per cent of rainy Saturday afternoon. The Ameri- I must admit, I didn’t see this coming.” prosecutors, that doesn’t come naturally can Dream lives on Long Island. Naeem once got a call from his daugh- to them. They want to get shit done. And yet I remembered Zainab say- ter while she was clerking for U.S. Dis- But the best prosecutors are born dip- ing, “If I were fifteen now, growing up trict Judge Jack B. Weinstein. It was lomats, particularly in this field. You

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 67 need to be able to relate to people from tan. “Competition with S.D.N.Y. makes When Ahmad revived the case of all over the world.” you kind of entrepreneurial,” Marshall William Bultemeier’s murder, in West Miller’s team discovered links be- Miller told me. “We’re like the scrappy Africa, David Bitkower, her supervisor, tween Kadir and Mohsen Rabbani, an little brother. Immediately after 9/11, had doubts. “That region is not a five- Iranian diplomat believed to be the mas- we had, I think, zero terrorism cases. star destination at the best of times, and termind of the 1994 bombing of a Jew- The goal was to change the program. this was not the best of times,” he said. ish community center in Buenos Aires. You gotta go out there and make friends “Al Qaeda had just taken over the north- Kadir, they determined, was planning to with all the agents and legats. S.D.N.Y. ern part of Mali. Zainab was bound and engage the Iranian military and special was haughty. They let you know they’re determined, though. It was a righteous forces in his plot. When he tried to fly the best. We tried to be the guy you case.” In Niger, she interviewed police to Iran, they abruptly halted the inves- wanted to go out for a drink with. officers who had dealt with Cheibani, tigation and had the plotters arrested. Friendly.” Experienced agents noted the and the owner of a garage where he had “We had to take it down,” Ahmad said. hustle. Tara Bloesch, an F.B.I. special left his truck on the night of the mur- “If this were all happening in the U.S., agent, who has completed several tours der. She found another eyewitness, a one- you could afford to let it go and roll up in Pakistan and is now based in Phila- legged beggar called Toto, who was still more people. They didn’t have explo- delphia, told me, “If there’s a way to le- working outside La Cloche, the restau- sives yet. But if he goes to Iran he goes gally establish venue, the E.D.N.Y. will rant where Bultemeier had eaten his last totally dark. He already had the J.F.K. do it. Maybe it’s just the airport that re- meal. The original eyewitness, the secu- plans. We couldn’t let him get away.” turning fighters land in—anything.” rity guard, had long vanished and was At the trial of Kadir and Defreitas, When the F.B.I. has a promising in- presumed dead. Ahmad found him, too. in 2010, Miller assigned Ahmad to make vestigation, it becomes like a client shop- “He was petrified,” she said, but ulti- the closing argument. She knew the case ping for a lawyer. Which U.S. Attorney’s mately agreed to testify. For that, Ahmad thoroughly, and had shown poise and office would be most effective on this gave credit to her case agent, John Ross, fluency in court. In the summation, she case? As Ahmad began travelling in the a former New York City police officer: gave a bracing description of the plot- Middle East, Africa, and Europe, and “Ross has incredible people skills.” ters’ intent: “Their goal was to destroy began winning significant convictions, Ahmad and Ross went next to Al- the economy of the United States. They her stock at the F.B.I. rose. Judge Margo geria, looking for a woman who had knew that accomplishing that goal would Brodie, of the Eastern District, who was been engaged to a Cheibani associate. take lives, and they didn’t care. In their formerly the deputy chief of the Crim- Her house in Niger had been searched view, the innocent lives lost would be inal Division at E.D.N.Y., told me, in the initial investigation. “Maybe we mere collateral damage.” “Agents were bringing their cases to the can put Cheibani in Niger,” Ahmad Defreitas had testified that his tape- office, begging to have her take them. It said. “That would be huge. Because recorded plans to cause devastation were never dawned on her that the reason she we’ve only put him in the truck.” The just empty talk. “Ladies and gentlemen, had so much work was that she’s so good.” woman and her daughter were a pros- that is ridiculous,” Ahmad said. “It’s not Bloesch worked closely with Ahmad titute team, now living in the southern like you find your kid brother borrowed on a gruelling 2015 trial, providing in- Algerian city of Adrar. “We got a lot of your car and crashed it and you yell, ‘I’m formation about events in Pakistan. “I’ve pushback from the Embassy on that going to kill you!’ Everybody realizes never seen anybody work that many trip,” Ahmad said. “I felt strongly that you are not actually going to kill your hours,” she said. “Everybody else kind we should go, and not ask for the wit- brother. You’re just blowing off steam in of falls in line. We worked Saturdays, nesses to come to Algiers. We’re the the heat of the moment. That is not Sundays.” Celia Cohen, one of Ahmad’s supplicants here.” The daughter turned what we’re dealing with here. . . . Rus- co-counsels on that case, lives in New out to be helpful, and Ahmad put her sell Defreitas is doing everything he Jersey and has two young children, but on the list of witnesses to be flown to can to make his nightmare a reality.” she moved into Ahmad’s apartment in Brooklyn. “But the interview process The jury deliberated for five days. Then Manhattan for three weeks during the was so cumbersome there, so formal. they convicted Defreitas and Kadir on trial. “We hardly slept,” Cohen told me. We had to take an Algerian judge with multiple counts of conspiracy to com- “It was like college. We just discussed us to her house. The defense attorneys mit acts of terrorism. Both men were the case till we crashed and woke up don’t have to do that.” sentenced to life in prison. with new ideas.” But, in the view of Joshua Dratel, a Building an extraterritorial terror- New York attorney who has represented here are ninety-three U.S. Attor- ism case typically requires permission a number of high-profile terrorism de- T ney’s offices. Of these, fewer than from foreign governments to conduct fendants, it’s the government that ac- half a dozen are in a position to pursue investigations in their domains, and then tually enjoys an advantage in evidence- extraterritorial cases. Terrorism is only assistance in apprehending suspects and gathering. “Foreign governments won’t one area of transnational crime, but it transferring them to American custody. coöperate with us,” he said. “Foreign is easily the most high-profile. In re- This process can involve a great many witnesses even won’t coöperate with us. cent years, E.D.N.Y. has in some ways sign-offs—delicate, overlapping nego- They’re afraid that we’re really U.S. overtaken its traditional rival, the South- tiations prone to being buffeted by po- agents, or that they’ll get in trouble if ern District, which is based in Manhat- litical and bureaucratic winds. they talk to us.”

68 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 Ahmad, who really is a U.S. agent, than his photos, like he’d led a hard summer. She’s an elegant woman, who says that she also struggles to cultivate life. It was one of the most moving had worked as a computer programmer foreign witnesses. “We can’t just go moments I’ve felt doing this work.” at an insurance company in midtown knock on doors in Niger. Defense at- for many years. She loves New York, torneys can. I need permission from the had heard from several people that and steps lightly through the swelter Embassy, the State Department, the I Ahmad has a great rapport with ju- of an East Village sidewalk. “In Paki- Niger government. We’re a government ries. When I asked her about it, she stan, we grow up street-smart,” she engaged in sovereign relations with a seemed embarrassed. We were back at said. “In America, the children are so foreign government, and in deference the Cadman Plaza diner—which, I’d naïve. Zainab is naïve. Zainab would be to them.” learned, Brooklyn prosecutors call the shocked if I ever told a lie. ‘What?’ In Ahmad pursued the Cheibani case Perp Diner. “I don’t know,” she said. Pakistan, kids would never be fazed. But because, she said, it seemed both im- “Maybe it’s because I feel comfortable I think that’s important—to irk your portant and feasible. “It’s all triage,” she with them. The mosque I went to as a child. So I’m here.” said. “It’s not like we’re going around kid was in Queens, and it drew people Ahmad was briefly married, to a West Africa trying to charge everybody from all over Brooklyn, Long Island, lawyer from Jordan, but is now divorced. who supports A.Q.I.M. or Boko Haram. the Bronx—cabdrivers, truck drivers, Though she lives alone, and travels This was the murder of an American regular working-class people. My par- constantly, she manages a busy, even diplomat. I remember an official in Niger ents’ friends came from their mosque. glittering social life. “Zainab has a saying, ‘I really hope my country will When I look at these Brooklyn juries, wider range of people she’s close to do what you’re doing if something hap- I see the people I grew up around.” than the rest of us do,” a friend of pens to me.’ ” Ahmad lives downtown, in an apart- hers, a freelance writer, told me. “She’ll Cheibani’s home town of Gau was ment that looks out on East Fourteenth throw a party at her place, and it’s cops, out of reach; it lay in the part of north- Street. Her mother, Jamile, visits every actors, journalists, filmmakers, doctors, ern Mali that was being held by Al Qaeda and its affiliates. “The A.Q.I.M. flag was flying over Gau,” Ahmad said. But the Gau policemen who had orig- inally arrested Cheibani had fled south, and she found them outside the capi- tal, Bamako. They told her that Chei- bani had spoken freely about his crime, and that they had found parts of Bulte- meier’s vehicle—a bumper, a luggage rack—in a search of his house. She felt ready to charge. Ahmad arranged for the policemen to come to Brooklyn and appear be- fore a federal grand jury, and in June, 2013, the jury returned a sealed indict- ment. A few months later, when the French Army reported capturing Chei- bani, Ahmad was uncertain that it was really him. The Sahara is a big place. But, she said, “We had his biometrics, from his Bamako arrest. Turned out it was him.” The French handed Chei- bani to the Malians. As Ahmad worked toward an extradition, her diplomatic skills were at full stretch. Cheibani’s criminal networks were formidable, and any of the governments involved— France, Mali, and Niger—could have halted the process at any time. Finally, she told me, the Malians said, “Yes, come and get him.” Ahmad exhaled, shaking her head. F.B.I. agents retrieved Cheibani. “They Mirandized him on the plane,” she said. “I first saw him at his arraignment. He looked much older “Of course, the actual honey is all made overseas.” businesspeople, Pakistani lawyers, ac- ademics. She doesn’t cook, but there’s always a ton of food. She’s the sort of THE SOUL’S SOUNDTRACK person everybody wants to make food for. I first met her at a rooftop barbe- When they call him Old School cue in the Village. It was dark, but it he clears his throat, squares was like she was sunny—I can’t think his shoulders, & looks straight of a better word for it. You see that into their lit eyes, saying, light, and you want to get near it.” “I was born by the damn river After hours, Ahmad likes to sing & I’ve been running ever since.” karaoke at a joint on Avenue A. “She al- An echo of Sam Cooke hangs ways sings lighthearted, feisty-girl songs,” in bruised air, & for a minute her friend said. “I thought Taylor Swift was just trendy and beneath notice until the silence of fate reigns over I heard Zainab sing ‘Blank Space’ there day & night, a tilt of the earth with her cop friend Ed.” On cross- body & soul caught in a sway examination, Ahmad admitted that her going back to reed & goatskin, signature karaoke tune is “Manic Mon- back to trade winds locked day,” as interpreted by the Bangles. Her inside an “Amazing Grace” youngest brother likes country music, so that will never again sound they belt out Luke Bryan’s “That’s My the same after Charleston, Kind of Night” on drives out to see the folks on Long Island. On road trips with South Carolina, & yes, words her best friend from college, Shally follow the river through pine Madan, who lives in California, Ma- & oak, muscadine & redbud, donna, Rihanna, and the “Bend It Like & the extinct Lord God bird Beckham” soundtrack see heavy rotation. found in an inventory of green Ahmad seems barely to share her in- shadows longing for the scent tensity (or much else) about her work of woe & beatitude, taking root with her nonwork friends. “She’s so in the mossy air of some bayou. offhand about it,” the freelance writer said. “She doesn’t let her work hang over Now Old School can’t stop her like a pall. Last year, she had just going from a sad yes to gold, finished some very tricky case. Then we into a season’s bloomy creed, went out and sang karaoke.” & soon he only hears Martha There is, of course, much about her & the Vandellas, their dancing work that Ahmad can’t discuss with in the streets, through a before anyone lacking the relevant security & after. Mississippi John Hurt, clearance. When I asked her, at the Ma Rainey, Sleepy John Estes, Perp Diner, about how an American prosecutor “coöperates” a jihadist, she drummed her fingers, shook her head, military and the civilian criminal-jus- investigated, she was transported in mil- and finally came up empty. “Every- tice system. She works closely with the itary helicopters. In Mosul, she stayed body I’ve flipped is still under seal.” Pentagon, and defers to the military on a U.S. military base, and soldiers On certain mornings, when she’s in where it has jurisdiction. In one case, brought witnesses to the perimeter for town, her workday starts with a walk she was pursuing an Iraqi-Canadian interviews. “I think military investiga- across town to Chelsea, where the New charged in the murder of five Ameri- tors often see us as finishers,” she told York Joint Terrorism Task Force has its can soldiers, killed by suicide bombers me. “They may have a lot of evidence headquarters. One floor of the build- whom he had helped travel from Tuni- on somebody. We’ve got the machin- ing is a Sensitive Compartmented In- sia to join Al Qaeda in Iraq. The man ery, and the credibility, to charge and formation Facility, a secure area that was living in Edmonton, and Canada, try that person.” After four years, she blocks surveillance. Ahmad leaves her like most countries, will not consider persuaded Canada to extradite the man. phone outside. Inside, she can speak an extradition request from the U.S. Some of the indictments that Ahmad freely about cases by teleconference with military as long as Guantánamo remains has obtained remain sealed, usually be- intelligence operatives, diplomats, and open. To persuade the Canadians, she cause the suspect is still at large, and I military officers with top-secret clear- had to gather evidence in Iraq, which suspect—Ahmad says she disagrees— ance all over the world. was then unstable enough that Ahmad that this can produce conflicts of inter- In combatting terrorism, Ahmad and an F.B.I. colleague had to take cover est, if, say, the Pentagon and the C.I.A. says, there is no conflict between the from daily rocket attacks. As Ahmad are trying to kill the same individuals

70 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 neys need security clearances to see classified information. “They’re usually Son House, Skip James, Joe disappointed,” Ahmad said. “They want Turner, & Sweet Emma, to know where the real Super Secret & he goes till what he feels Squirrel stuff is. But there is no real wears out his work boots Super Secret Squirrel stuff. We wish.” along the sidewalks, his life Joshua Dratel, the New York attor- a fist of coins in a coat pocket ney, says that, in counterterrorism cases, to give to the recent homeless the government’s control of informa- up & down these city blocks. tion gives it another advantage. “By making juries anonymous, we’re telling He knows “We Shall Overcome” jurors that the defendant is really dan- & anthems of the flower children gerous,” he said. “I’ve had the govern- which came after Sister Rosetta, ment put an anonymous expert on the Big Mama Thornton, & Bo Diddley. stand. The standard of probable cause Now the years add up to a sharp for surveillance is diluted in national- pain in his left side on Broadway, security cases. They don’t even need a but the Five Blind Boys of Alabama warrant for overseas wiretaps. In the call down an evening mist to soothe. past decade, we see much less classi- fied information, and we have to get a He believes to harmonize is lot of it through the judge, who knows to reach, to ascend, to query nothing about the case.” ego & hold a note till there’s only a quiver of blue feathers e were a bit desperate before at dawn, & a voice goes out “W Zainab showed up here,” Mark to return as a litany of mock Smith, the head of covert policing for orange & sweat, as we are sewn the Greater Manchester Police, said. into what we came crying out of, British intelligence had caught wind of an Al Qaeda operation in 2008. About & when Old School declares, a dozen men from Pakistan had entered “You can’t doo-wop a cappella the country on student visas, registered & let your tongue touch an evil for classes, and immediately quit school. while fingering a slothful doubt Surveillance showed them to be scout- beside the Church of Coltrane,” ing a range of public venues, eventually he has traversed the lion’s den concentrating on the Arndale Centre, a as Eric Dolphy plays a fluted large shopping mall in Manchester that, solo of birds in the pepper trees. in 1996, was the target of an I.R.A. truck bomb that devastated much of the city’s —Yusef Komunyakaa retail district. Abid Naseer, a graduate student from Peshawar, with a B.A. in English literature, began to regularly she is trying to haul into court. This seems obvious reasons, be called as witnesses. e-mail an Al Qaeda handler in Paki- to have been the case with Mohanad “We discovered, as terrorism cases stan. He wrote that he was planning to Mahmoud al-Farekh, a Texan who be- ramped up, that we needed to put in a get married soon, but in his daily rounds came a high-ranking Al Qaeda leader. second informant,” Marshall Miller told there was no sign of a fiancée, or of mar- The Justice Department wanted to pros- me. “We had to have one who could riage preparations. This was a code that ecute him, but the Pentagon and the testify in court.” If Ahmad uses evidence the Brits had seen before. The wedding C.I.A. reportedly wanted to put him on gathered by intelligence agencies in a day would be the attack day. a kill list, arguing that he could not be public trial, she risks revealing sources “We devoted all of our counterter- captured. As it turned out, Farekh was and classified data. Prosecutors are rorism resources to this surveillance,” captured by Pakistani forces in 2014 and obliged to ask permission to use this Smith, who was then leading the region’s handed over to the U.S., where Ahmad evidence, and, as with extraditions, these terror-investigation force, told me. “We charged him, under seal, the following are not negotiations that can be con- had twenty-five, twenty-six teams try- year. He now awaits trial in Brooklyn. ducted by e-mail. “You have to go there, ing to watch nine guys. What if one of For Ahmad, the more complex col- whether it’s to Langley or Nigeria, and these guys goes off the radar? The risk laboration is with U.S. intelligence agen- meet with people, explain what you was high. When we saw the attack-dates cies. Spies and prosecutors investigat- want, gain their trust,” she said. e-mail, we had to strike.” ing terrorists are often after the same Any exculpatory evidence must be Law enforcement pounced too soon, information, but spooks cannot, for disclosed to the defense, though attor- though. From the intercepted e-mails,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 71 and from quantities of flour and oil and the United States. The would-be accomplice, Zarein Ahmedzay, also found in Naseer’s flat—Al Qaeda U.S. bombers were three young men pleaded guilty. Zazi and Ahmedzay are teaches operatives how to build bombs who had been classmates at Flushing still awaiting sentencing, as their coöper- starting with flour and oil—the author- High School, in Queens, and then, in ation with law enforcement continues ities inferred that the group had planned 2008, travelled together to Pakistan to to be useful. (The third member of their to make bombs with chemical detona- join the Taliban. They ended up instead plot, Adis Medunjanin, a Bosnian- tors and an organic charge, similar to with Al Qaeda, from whom they re- American, pleaded not guilty. He was those used by the bombers who struck ceived military training and, ultimately, convicted, in 2012, in Brooklyn federal three Tube trains and a London bus orders to return home and carry out court, and sentenced to life in prison.) in 2005, killing fifty-two. But no suicide bombings. They were of more Abid Naseer fought extradition from bomb-making chemicals were found, use to the cause, they were told, using the U.K. but lost, arriving in Brooklyn and the British press grew increasingly their local knowledge to attack New in early 2013. Ahmad, preparing to try dubious. The government, hoping to York City than they were in Muslim him, debriefed Zazi and Ahmedzay at make the whole thing go away (the ex- lands. After considering Grand Cen- length. They had been in Peshawar in change-student business in Britain is tral Terminal, Times Square, and other November, 2008, when Naseer was also large and lucrative, Smith pointed out), landmarks, they settled on bombing there. The same Al Qaeda “external- decided to deport the suspects rather subway trains at rush hour. By now, the operations” team that tasked Zazi and than prosecute. The detectives on the authorities were monitoring their his friends with a martyrdom opera- case were horrified when they heard phones, however, and reading their tion had commanded Naseer. Ahmad the news, at the prosecutor’s office. “I e-mails to Al Qaeda, which used much planned to call Zazi and Ahmedzay as couldn’t accept it,” Smith told me. “They of the same code that Naseer had used, witnesses. They could fill in the pic- nearly called security to remove us.” including an upcoming “wedding.” ture of Al Qaeda’s training operation Naseer fought his deportation, ar- One of the U.S. plotters, Najibullah in Pakistan from the inside. guing that a return to Pakistan would Zazi, an Afghan-American, was work- be unacceptably dangerous, and he won ing as an airport-shuttle driver in Den- he Naseer trial started in Feb- the right to stay. But by then the Amer- ver. Following instructions that he had T ruary, 2015. David Bitkower, who icans had become interested in his case, e-mailed to himself from Pakistan, he was Ahmad’s supervisor during the first particularly after British intelligence bought hydrogen peroxide and acetone phase, told me that it was a tough case. alerted the F.B.I. that the e-mail ac- from local beauty-supply outlets, rented “It was largely circumstantial,” he said. count that Naseer had been reporting a hotel suite in nearby Aurora, and used “There was no smoking gun. It was all to—the Al Qaeda handler in Pakistan, the kitchen to cook up triacetone triper- in the argument. You can easily lose.” e-mailing as sana_pakhtana@yahoo. oxide, a detonator explosive similar to But Ahmad had gathered significant com—had started receiving e-mails that used in the London attacks. He new evidence. Computer forensics had again, this time from a jihadist in the tested the mixture in the hotel parking deepened the analysis of Internet and United States who was asking for lot. It exploded, as he had hoped. Zazi phone records. Ahmad tied the plots, bomb-making instructions. “I nearly packed the detonator explosives in a furthermore, to Al Qaeda’s top leader- crashed the car when I heard that,” rental car and drove to New York. ship, through documents seized in Smith told me. Ahmad said, “It was As he crossed the George Washing- Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbot- really bad op sec”—operational secu- ton Bridge, police stopped him, at the tabad, Pakistan, which had not been rity—“on Al Qaeda’s part, to use the seen publicly before. In a letter to bin same Yahoo address. I mean, come on.” Laden, written in early 2009, Saleh The U.S. plotters were arrested. Ahmad al-Somali, Al Qaeda’s external-opera- headed to Manchester. tions chief, reported, “We had sent a “When Zainab walked in the room, number of brothers to Britain, Russia, we said, ‘Crikey, she looks awfully young. and Europe on condition that their Is this a junior sent here to fact-find?’ ” work will be completed and ready be- Smith said. “Within a few minutes, fore the end of the year.” When Mark though, it was, like, ‘Whoa, she knows request of the F.B.I., but they failed to Smith, the Manchester detective, heard what she’s doing.’ There was no com- find the jar of explosives in the car. Zazi those words, he said, “We knew imme- parison with U.K. prosecutors. Zainab was spooked. Then his rental car got diately they were talking about our guys.” stayed four days with us on that first towed in Queens, with his computer, Naseer represented himself, and did visit, and left us a big list of evidence containing all the bomb-making in- a credible job, though Judge Raymond J. she wanted, and exactly how she wanted structions and incriminating e-mails, Dearie warned him not to waste time it packaged up.” inside. Zazi flushed the explosives down arguing to the jury that the United Ahmad’s goal was to demonstrate a toilet and flew back to Colorado, where States lacked jurisdiction in his case. that Naseer’s plot was part of an inter- he was arrested almost immediately. His By Act of Congress, the U.S. has broad national conspiracy, allegedly organized accomplices were detained a few months jurisdiction to investigate and prose- by Al Qaeda in Pakistan, to bomb tar- later, and, in 2010, Zazi pleaded guilty cute terrorism offenses anywhere in the gets in the United Kingdom, Denmark, to multiple terrorism violations; one world. Foreign investigations require

72 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 the permission of the national author- ities, of course, but in this case Ahmad and her team had received extensive support from the British. She called Manchester police officers and MI5 agents as witnesses, and they gladly ap- peared, wearing “light disguise”—wigs, fake beards, makeup—because they were still working undercover. Security for the trial was heavy. Naseer was not al- lowed to rise from the defense table ex- cept when summoned by the Judge; Ahmad and her colleagues were bound by the same rule, lest the jury infer that the defendant was considered unusu- ally dangerous by the court. “He was a soldier,” Ahmad said later, of Naseer. “Totally controlled, ice-cold, well trained. He tried to be charming to witnesses, even smiled at the jury.” Naseer, who is powerfully built, had a bushy beard, and eyes that, at least in photographs, did not look capable of effectively supporting a smile. While acting as his own advocate, he spoke about himself in the third person. There was no “I,” only “Naseer.” ¥¥ It was a bizarre case, turning largely on the meaning of a handful of e-mails stood for hydrogen peroxide, a bomb ern England. Huma is not going to be between Naseer and the handler, who ingredient found in beauty products standing at a bus stop in a bikini where was code-named Sohaib. Naseer con- (the cosmetics shop) in a diluted, or you can count her ribs.” tended that the e-mails were innocent weak, form. Extracting it in sufficiently Using a precise breakdown of Na- banter with a stranger whom he had concentrated form is a challenge—it’s seer’s browsing history and phone rec- met in an Internet chat room. He was “difficult to convince.” Nadia, another ords, Ahmad showed that, on a trip to looking for a wife, discussing his pros- woman of interest, was more like it. Pakistan, ostensibly to visit his sick pects. The prosecution contended that “Nadia is crystal clear girl, and it won’t mother, he contacted two of his co- the e-mails were in code, and Ahmad take long to relate with her,” Naseer conspirators in Britain, men whom he subjected them to a probing read. In wrote to Sohaib. “Nadia” was nitrate, claimed he barely knew. He then “went e-mails, Naseer and Sohaib agreed that Ahmad explained. Ammonium nitrate, dark” for two weeks, during which, a car would be useful for married life; a high-order explosive found in some Ahmad suggested, he visited the Fed- that meant the plan called for a car bomb, artificial fertilizers, is a white crystal erally Administered Tribal Areas, the Ahmad said. Sixty-one photographs of solid in its pure form. (Timothy Mc- rugged hinterlands along the Afghan- a chain store called Next and its sur- Veigh used a fertilizer bomb to kill a istan border where Al Qaeda has its roundings had been saved to a draft hundred and sixty-eight people and in- training camps. Ahmad brought Na- e-mail file, which was available to his jure more than five hundred in Okla- jibullah Zazi to the witness stand to de- co-conspirators. This, she said, was where homa City, in 1995.) The ammonium-ni- scribe for the jury his own training in the bomb would be detonated. The pho- trate detonator that Naseer settled on the camps, where he learned how to tos suggested a second strike: panicked could be quickly assembled. “These are handle an AK-47 and how to build shoppers would stampede into the blast stilted descriptions of women, but they’re bombs. One design—the kind “the guys paths of backpack bombs set deeper in pretty good descriptions of bombs,” in London used” in 2005—was wired the Arndale Centre, which sees seventy Ahmad told the jury. through the pockets of a specially made thousand people on a busy day. Ahmad teased out the absurdity of shirt. Another, which he preferred, was Naseer’s e-mails to Sohaib described Naseer’s romances. Huma, he wrote, to be carried in a backpack and wrapped a meandering courtship. He wrote that seemed unwell. She had lost weight. in ball bearings for, as he put it, “the he met Huma, the first object of his This was two days after she first gave casualty purpose.” affections, at a bus stop, and that he him the cold shoulder at the bus stop. Ahmad never mentioned her own fa- found her “very weak and difficult to “How much weight can somebody pos- miliarity with Pakistan—that her father convince.” She worked in a cosmetics sibly lose in two days?” Ahmad asked. had gone to university, for instance, in shop. According to Ahmad, “Huma” “On top of that, it’s December in north- Naseer’s home town, Peshawar. But she

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 73 spoke with authority about how Peshawar the 15th and before the 20th of this In her closing remarks, Ahmad told had been changed by the American in- month . . . you should be ready be- the jury that Naseer’s demeanor alone vasion of Afghanistan, and of how many tween those dates.” A nikkah is a wed- during his testimony showed that he Pashtuns—the region’s dominant eth- ding ceremony. According to Ahmad’s knew Sohaib and also knew that So- nic group, to which Naseer belongs— minute-by- minute reconstruction of haib was Al Qaeda: “Ask yourself, did had felt humiliated by the occupation, the day, this e-mail was drafted, loaded anything he said or did, did any look inspiring some young men to join Al on a thumb drive, and carried to the that glanced over his face, suggest any Qaeda to seek revenge. Mark Smith, Internet café. At his usual terminal, shock or horror or surprise at the fact the Manchester detective, who watched Naseer began listening, on his phone, that his random Internet buddy Sohaib, the trial, said, “Just the way she pro- to a nasheed—a religious or spiritual who he thought was just a fun guy to nounced the names of the towns in Pa- chant. Ahmad played the nasheed for exaggerate his love life to, was actually kistan, you knew she wasn’t guessing.” the jury, and then read a translation a member of Al Qaeda? Did anything Naseer returned to England, still from the Arabic: “We are marching to- he said or did suggest that he hadn’t on a student visa. He never went to wards them. With turbans that will be- known that all along? No, I suggest to school. Instead, he spent much of his come their burial garments. They spilled you that it did not. He didn’t express time online, Instant Messaging and vis- their blood generously and with love. any shock, any regret, any upsetness, any iting Muslim dating sites. But he never Looking forward to death in large num- holy-crapness at the fact that he had e-mailed his Al Qaeda handler from bers.” Naseer copied the document from just found out in this courtroom that his personal e-mail address, or even from the thumb drive into an e-mail and he had been e-mailing Al Qaeda.” his own computer. For that, he went to pressed Send. The attack was on, and Ahmad’s summation was three and an Internet café, where he habitually Al Qaeda knew enough about its tim- a half hours long. She remembers look- used the same public computer, and ing and location to prepare to take credit. ing at her notes only once. James Mc- took care to use his operational accounts Naseer claimed that he didn’t real- Govern, who was the chief of the East- only to e-mail his handler. “This is Al ize Sohaib was a terrorist. But, while ern District’s Criminal Division until Qaeda tradecraft,” Ahmad said. Zazi was on the stand, Ahmad used last year, told me, “It was the summa- Naseer’s last e-mail to Sohaib, sent his testimony to establish that Na- tion of a lifetime.” Ahmad had called on April 3, 2009, announced that he seer’s pen pal was the same handler, former Al Qaeda operatives; British se- would soon be married. “I met with with the same Yahoo address, who cret agents; experts in explosives, com- Nadia family and we both parties have had directed the Zazi team’s efforts puter forensics, Arabic, Pashto, and Al agreed to conduct the Nikkah after to bomb New York subway trains. Qaeda’s structure; the F.B.I. agent who secured the bin Laden documents; even a Norwegian detective who could link, through shared e-mail accounts, the Manchester plot with a plot to bomb a Copenhagen newspaper office. Ahmad’s ability to connect with the jury was crit- ical. “You want to project: I am the most reasonable person in the room,” Mc- Govern said. “Zainab excels at that. Ju- rors believe that they would see eye to eye with her about things. People want to say, ‘That really impressive person, I want to be in agreement with that person.’ ” Ahmad’s proposition about Naseer was simple, in the end: “This man wanted to drive a car bomb into a crowded shopping center and watch people die.” After one day of delibera- tion, the jury agreed. Naseer was con- victed on all counts and, in November, 2015, he was sentenced to forty years.

ast spring, Loretta Lynch, as At- L torney General, asked Ahmad to come work at Main Justice. Ahmad took a leave from E.D.N.Y. and moved to Washington, where her brief in- cluded transnational organized crime and international affairs. She travelled frequently—not to dusty towns in the lowed extraditions that would not have The success of U.S. federal prosecu- Sahara or prisons in Saudi Arabia but occurred if Guantánamo and its mili- tors in rolling up terrorist networks is to foreign capitals. She briefed senators, tary commissions had remained an op- not widely appreciated. The leadership represented the Justice Department at tion. Abid Naseer and dozens of other of core Al Qaeda has, by all accounts, the White House, and led a delegation convicted terrorists now serving U.S. been decimated. Drone strikes have been to Trinidad to address the outsized flow prison sentences would instead be free— important to that progress, but their of fighters joining ISIS from there. Su- still on the battlefield, as it is said—be- success, and the fact that civilian casu- pervising about seventy prosecutors, she cause our main counterterrorism part- alties have not been even more exten- oversaw critical investigative, charging, ners, including the United Kingdom, sive, is entirely due to good intelligence, and litigation decisions. Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, most of it provided by informants. Soon after Sessions replaced Lynch, refuse to provide evidence or to coöper- Ahmad thinks that popular culture tends he demanded the immediate resigna- ate with extradition requests unless a to misunderstand the process, and the tions of all U.S. Attorneys who remained suspect is to be tried in a criminal court. limited utility of drone strikes. “‘Zero from the Obama years. Since U.S. At- But the Trump Administration seems Dark Thirty’ got a crucial point wrong,” torneys are the only political appointees less interested, so far, in parrying threats she told me. “It wasn’t stopping torture in their offices, the work of most career than in demonizing Muslims, particu- that stopped intel. It was stopping in- prosecutors went on. But Ahmad, watch- larly immigrants and refugees. Besides terrogation. It was going to droning, to ing the transition from up close, saw a everything else, this is a strategic mis- killing. You get no intel from corpses.” wholesale reorientation of Justice De- take. As Ahmad says, “America is the Currently, Ahmad has two terrorism partment priorities. Under Sessions, the most successful country in the world at defendants in custody awaiting trial. themes would be immigration enforce- integrating immigrants, and that helps One is the Iraqi-Canadian whom the ment, a revived federal war on drugs, keep us safe. Immigrant communities Canadians took four years to transfer and the abandonment of initiatives to in Europe are much more ghettoized, to the U.S. The other is Mohanad Mah- reduce civil-rights abuses in American much less warmly accepted. We do have moud al-Farekh, the Texan who was police departments. Certainly, extra- a problem with people trying to join captured in Pakistan while a debate raged territorial terrorism prosecutions would ISIS, but the number of people going in Washington over targeting him with be a nonstarter. from Belgium dwarfs the number going a drone strike. (This list does not in- Sessions has repeatedly expressed his from here, even in absolute terms, let clude, of course, suspects whose indict- desire to see accused terrorists dealt with alone relative to our populations.” ments are under seal, some of whom by military commissions rather than The “threat stream” emanating from may already be in custody and coöper- “try them in a normal criminal court.” Islamist extremism has not abated. Al ating.) Ahmad told me that she may President Trump has repeatedly de- Qaeda branches continue to wreak havoc hand over these two defendants to an- clared his enthusiasm for expanding the in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, other prosecutor. She wouldn’t do so if military prison at Guantánamo, which West Africa, and Syria. Boko Haram’s they were difficult cases to make—that has not received a new inmate in nine depredations ravage much of West Af- would be bad form—but the evidence years and presently holds only forty-one rica, Al Shabaab thrives in the Horn of in both is very strong. prisoners. “We’re gonna load it up with Africa, and the Taliban is steadily re- A federal prosecutor who has worked some bad dudes, believe me,” Trump gaining ground in Afghanistan. But, at with Ahmad, and who declined to be told a campaign rally last year. In Feb- the moment, none of these movements named, acknowledged the risk of ex- ruary, a draft executive order directing expend much energy on staging attacks tending the protections of the U.S. legal the Pentagon to send captured isis in the West. The Islamic State is another system to accused jihadists. “If you bring fighters to Guantánamo was leaked to story. Its online appeals to sympathizers a member of Al Qaeda here from Mali the Times. in the Dar Al-Kufr—the territory of dis- or Nigeria and that person is acquitted, It is not yet clear how all these belief—continue to find vulnerable, dis- they’ll probably file an asylum claim or new inmates will be captured. But it is turbed individuals prepared to act. “It’s a Convention Against Torture claim, clear that the military commissions at so hard to combat, especially with the saying Al Qaeda or the government Guantánamo have failed miserably. rise of encrypted communications,” back home is going to hurt them. And, Since the September 11th attacks, fed- Ahmad said. “We can take down net- the next thing you know, you’re stand- eral criminal courts have convicted more works, but only if there are networks.” ing next to that person in Starbucks.” than six hundred people on charges re- Ahmad returned to E.D.N.Y. in Ahmad pondered that image for a lated to international terrorism. The April. She and her colleagues remain long minute. Finally, she said, “I think Guantánamo commissions have con- deep in debate over what to do with ji- we’re safer even if the guy ends up next victed eight, with three of those con- hadists returning from the battlefields to you at Starbucks. I’ll take that as a victions vacated or overturned on ap- of Syria and Iraq. “When should we cost of doing business when we’re put- peal, and one partially overturned. More prosecute? Material support for ISIS is ting incredibly dangerous people in prisoners have died in the camp than a crime, but can we make good cases? jail from more successful cases. Also, if have been convicted there. Can these guys be rehabilitated? How he’s done time here and then is released Many successful terrorism prosecu- useful is their intel? If they’re not in and stays, he’ll be under surveillance. tions in recent years, moreover, have fol- custody, what level of surveillance?” But that has not happened. Not once.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 75 FICTION

76 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY MARTON PERLAKI T. sees him first. We’re on our the stress that comes with knowing If the guy jumps, that’ll be on my way to the park to play ball when that it’s all on you. conscience, too. Irena, the psychologist P. he suddenly says, “Daddy, look!” I have it a lot at work. With the at the clinic, will give me that after- His head is tilted back and he’s squint- family, too. Like what happened back you-I’m-going-home look of hers and ing hard to see something far above then, on the way to Lake Kinneret, say, “You’re not responsible for every- me, and before I can even begin to imag- when I tried to brake and the tires one. You have to get that into your head.” ine an alien spaceship or a piano about locked. The car started to skid along And I’ll nod, because I know that the to fall on our heads my gut tells me the road and I said to myself, “Either session will end in two minutes and she that something really bad is happen- you fix this or it’s all over.” Driving to has to pick her daughter up from day ing. But, when I turn to see what P.T. the Kinneret, I didn’t fix it, and Liat, care, but it won’t change anything, be- is looking at, all I notice is an ugly, four- who was the only one not buckled in, cause I’ll have to carry that half-deaf story building covered in plaster and died, and I was left alone with the kids. guy on my back, along with Liat and dotted with air-conditioners, as if it had P.T. was two and barely knew how to Amit’s glass eye. some kind of skin disease. The sun is speak, but Amit never stopped asking “Wait there for me!” I scream. “I’m hanging directly above it, blinding me, me, “When is Mommy coming back? coming up to talk to you!” and as I’m trying to get a better angle When is Mommy coming back?”— “I can’t go on without her. I can’t!” I hear P.T. say, “He wants to fly.” Now and I’m talking about after the funeral. he shouts back. I can see a guy in a white button-down He was eight then, an age when you’re “Wait a minute,” I yell, and I say to shirt standing on the roof railing look- supposed to understand what it means P.T., “Come on, sweetie, let’s go up to ing down at me, and, behind me, P.T. to die, but he kept asking. Even with- the roof.” whispers, “Is he a superhero?” out the constant, annoying questions, P.T. gives an adorable shake of his Instead of answering him, I shout I knew that everything was my fault head, the way he always does right be- at the guy, “Don’t do it!” and I wanted to end it all, just like the fore he sticks the knife in, and says, The guy just stares at me. guy on the roof. But here I am today, “If he flies, we can see better from I shout again, “Don’t do it, please! walking without crutches, living with here.” Whatever took you up there must seem Simona, being a good dad. “He won’t fly,” I say. “Not today. Let’s like something you’ll never get over, I want to tell the guy on the roof all go up there just for a minute. Daddy but, believe me, you will! If you jump this. I want to tell him that I know ex- has to tell the man something.” now, you’ll leave this world with that actly how he feels and that, if he doesn’t But P.T. persists, “So yell from here.” dead-end feeling. That’ll be your last flatten himself like a pizza on the side- His arm slips out of my grasp and he memory of life. Not family, not love, walk, it’ll pass. I know what I’m talking throws himself down on the ground, only defeat. If you stay, I swear to you about, because no one on this blue planet as he likes to do with Simona and me by everything I hold dear that your is as miserable as I was. He just has to at the mall. pain will start to fade and, in a few get down from there and give himself a “Let’s race to the roof,” I say. “If we years, the only thing left of it will be a week. A month. Even a year, if necessary. get there without stopping, P.T. and weird story you tell people over a beer. But how can you say all that to a half- Daddy get ice cream as a prize.” A story about how you once wanted deaf guy who’s four stories above you? “Ice cream now!” P.T. wails, rolling to jump off a roof and some guy stand- Meanwhile, P.T. pulls on my hand around on the sidewalk. “Ice cream ing below shouted at you . . .” and says, “He’s not going to fly today, now!” “What?” the guy on the roof yells Daddy. Let’s go to the park before it I have no time for this crap. I pick back at me, pointing at his ear. He prob- gets dark.” him up. He squirms and screams, but ably can’t hear me because of the noise But I stay where I am and shout as I ignore him and start running toward coming from the road. Or maybe it loudly as I can, “People die like flies all the door to the building. isn’t the noise, because I heard his the time, even without killing them- “What happened to the kid?” I hear “What?” perfectly well. Maybe he’s just selves. Don’t do it! Please don’t do it!” the guy shout from the roof. I don’t an- hard of hearing. The guy on the roof nods—it looks swer. Maybe his curiosity will keep him P.T., who’s hugging my thighs with- like he heard something this time— from jumping long enough for me to out being able to completely encircle and shouts at me, “How did you know? get up to the roof. them, as if I were some kind of giant How did you know she died?” baobab tree, yells at the guy, “Do you Someone always dies, I want to yell T. is heavy. It’s hard to climb all have super powers?” back. Always. If not her, then some- P. those stairs when you’re holding a But the guy points at his ear again, one else. But that won’t get him down five-and-a-half-year-old kid in your as if he were deaf, and shouts, “I’m sick from there, so instead I say, “There’s a arms, especially one who doesn’t want of it! Enough! How much can I take?” kid here,” and point at P.T. “He doesn’t to go up the stairs. By the third floor, P.T. shouts back at him, as if they need to see this!” I’m completely out of breath. A fat were having the most ordinary con- P.T. yells, “Yes, I do! Yes, I do! Come redheaded woman who must have versation in the world, “Come on, fly on and fly already, before it gets dark!” heard P.T.’s screams opens her door a already!” It’s December, and it really does get crack and asks who I’m looking for, but And I’m starting to feel that stress, dark early. I ignore her and keep climbing. Even

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 77 if I wanted to say something to her, I at her, mesmerized. “Look at me,” she don’t have enough air in my lungs. whispers. “Fat, alone. I had a child once, “No one lives upstairs,” she calls too. You know what it is to lose a child? after me. “It’s just the roof.” Do you have any idea what you’re about When she says “roof,” her shrill voice to do?” Still in my arms, P.T. hugs me breaks, and P.T. yells back at her in a tight. “Look at what a sweet child he tear-filled tone, “Ice cream now! Now!” is,” she says, already beside us, her thick I don’t have a free hand to push hand stroking P.T.’s hair. open the peeling door that should lead “There was a man here,” P.T. says, outside—my arms are full of P.T., who fixing his huge green eyes—Liat’s doesn’t stop flailing—so I kick it as eyes—on her. “There was a man here, hard as I can. The roof is empty. The but now he flew away. And, because guy who was on the railing a minute of Daddy, we didn’t get to see him.” ago isn’t there anymore. He didn’t wait The siren stops right below us and for us. Didn’t wait to see why the kid I take another step toward the railing, was screaming. but the redhead’s sweaty hand grabs “He flew,” P.T. sobs. “He flew and my arm. “Don’t do it,” she says. “Please, because of you we didn’t see anything!” don’t do it.” I start walking toward the railing. Maybe he changed his mind and went T. has a scoop of vanilla in a plas- back inside, I try to tell myself. But I P. tic cup. I order pistachio and choc- don’t believe it. I know he’s down there, olate chip in a cone. The redhead asks his body sprawled at an unnatural angle for a chocolate milkshake. All the ta- on the sidewalk. I know it, and I have bles in the ice-cream parlor are filthy, a kid in my arms who absolutely should so I clean one for us. P.T. insists on not see that, because it would trauma- tasting the milkshake and she lets him. tize him for the rest of his life, and She’s called Liat, too. It’s a common he’s already been through enough. But name. She doesn’t know about my Liat, my legs take me toward the edge of about the accident. She doesn’t know the roof. It’s like scratching a wound, anything about us. And I don’t know like ordering another shot of Chivas anything about her. Except that she when you know you’ve had too much lost a kid. to drink, like driving a car when you When we left the building, medics know you’re tired, so tired. were putting the guy’s body into the Now that we’re almost at the rail- ambulance. Luckily, it was covered ing, we start to feel the height. P.T. with a white sheet. One less image of stops crying, and I can hear both of a corpse in my mind. us panting and an ambulance siren in The ice cream is too sweet for me, the distance. It seems to be asking me, but P.T. and the redhead look happy. “Why? Why do you need to see it? With his cup in one hand, he reaches You think it’ll change anything? Make out for her milkshake with the other. anyone feel better?” I don’t know why he always does that. Suddenly, the redhead’s high- After all, he’s still eating his own ice pitched voice commands me from be- cream—why does he need more? I hind: “Put him down!” I turn around, open my mouth to say something to not really understanding what she him, but the redhead signals that it’s wants. O.K. and gives him her almost empty “Put me down!” P.T. shouts, too. It cup. Her child is dead, my wife is dead, always gets him going when a stranger the guy on the roof is dead. butts in. “He’s so cute,” she whispers, as “He’s just a kid,” the redhead is say- P.T. strains to suck up the last drop of ing, but her voice is suddenly soft. She’s milkshake in the paper cup. He really on the verge of tears. The sound of the is cute. ♦ siren is getting closer, and the redhead (Translated, from the Hebrew, starts walking toward me. “I know by Sondra Silverston.) you’re suffering,” she says. “I know that

everything is so hard. I know, believe NEWYORKER.COM me.” There’s so much pain in her voice Etgar Keret on the necessity of humor in the that even P.T. stops flailing and stares face of tragedy.

78 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 THE CRITICS

A CRITIC AT LARGE WE COULD ALL HAVE BEEN CANADIANS

Rethinking the American Revolution.

BY ADAM GOPNIK

nd what if it was a mistake from disruption and demagogy. Look north We could have ended with a social- A the start? The Declaration of In- to Canada, or south to Australia, and democratic commonwealth that dependence, the American Revolu- you will see different possibilities of stretched from north to south, a near- tion, the creation of the United States peaceful evolution away from Britain, continent-wide Canada. of America—what if all this was a toward sane and whole, more equita- The thought is taboo, the Revolu- terrible idea, and what if the injus- ble and less sanguinary countries. No tion being still sacred in its self-directed tices and madness of American life revolution, and slavery might have propaganda. One can grasp the scale since then have occurred not in spite ended, as it did elsewhere in the Brit- and strangeness of this sanctity only by of the virtues of the Founding Fa- ish Empire, more peacefully and leaving America for a country with a thers but because of them? The Rev- sooner. No “peculiar institution,” no different attitude toward its past and olution, this argument might run, was hideous Civil War and appalling af- its founding. As it happened, my own a needless and brutal bit of slavehold- termath. Instead, an orderly develop- childhood was neatly divided between ers’ panic mixed with Enlightenment ment of the interior—less violent, what I learned to call “the States” and argle-bargle, producing a country that and less inclined to celebrate the Canada. In my Philadelphia grade was always marked for violence and desperado over the peaceful peasant. school, we paraded with flags, singing

The Revolution is the last bulwark of national myth, but in sanctifying it we forget that it was more horrific than heroic.

ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 79 tlefield for two First World powers. Stirred into the larger pot of recent revisionism, these arguments leave us with a big question: was it really worth it, and are we better off for its hav- ing happened? In plain American, is Donald Trump a bug or a feature of the American heritage?

ustin du Rivage’s “Revolution J Against Empire” (Yale) re-situates the Revolution not as a colonial rebel- lion against the mother country but as one episode in a much larger political quarrel that swept the British Empire in the second half of the eighteenth ¥¥ century. Basically, du Rivage thinks that the American Revolution wasn’t Amer- ican. The quarrels that took place in “The Marines’ Hymn” and “Here The Revolution remains the last New York and Philadelphia went on Comes the Flag!” (“Fathers shall bless bulwark of national myth. Academ- with equal ferocity, and on much the it / Children caress it / All shall main- ics write on the growth of the Found- same terms, in India and England, and tain it / No one shall stain it.”) We were ing Father biographical genre in our though they got settled by force of arms taught that the brave Americans hid time; the rule for any new writer should and minds differently in each place, it behind trees to fight the redcoats— be that if you want a Pulitzer and a was the same struggle everywhere. though why this made them brave was best-seller you must find a Founding “Radicalism flourished in Boston, Bris- left unexplained. In Canada, ninth grade Father and fetishize him. While no tol, and Bengal, while fears of disorder disclosed a history of uneasy compro- longer reverential, these accounts are and licentiousness provoked rural elites mise duality, and the constant search always heroic in the core sense of in both the Hudson Valley and the En- for temporary nonviolent solutions to showing us men, and now, occasion- glish shires,” du Rivage writes. “As rad- intractable divides. The world wars, in ally, women, who transcend their flaws ical Whigs gained strength in North which Canadians had played a large with spirit (though these flaws may America, the political culture of the part, passed by mostly in solemn sad- include little things like holding other British Empire became increasingly ness. (That the Canadians had marched human beings as property, dividing Janus-faced.” beyond their beach on D Day with their families, and selling off their chil- On one side were what he calls aplomb while the Americans struggled dren). The phenomenon of “Hamil- “authoritarian reformers”; on the other, on Omaha was never boasted about.) ton,” the hip-hop musical that is, con- those radical Whigs. (Both were seek- Patriotic pageantry arose only from ac- trary to one’s expectations, wholly ing to sway or supplant the “estab- tual accomplishments: when Team Can- faithful to a heroic view of American lishment Whigs.”) This isn’t the fa- ada won its eight-game series against independence, reinforces the sanctity miliarly rendered divide between the Russians, in 1972, the entire nation of the American Revolution in Amer- Tories and Whigs; the authoritarian sang “O Canada”—but they sang it as ican life. reformers were less fusty country a hockey anthem as much as a nation- Academic histories of the Revo- squires attached to old English insti- alist hymn. lution, though, have been peeping tutions than an élite executive class Over the years, we have seen how over the parapets, joining scholarly of intellectuals and aristocrats com- hard it is to detach Americans from scruples to contemporary polemic. mitted to the Empire and to the re- even the obviously fallacious parts of One new take insists that we misun- form of institutions that were seen as that elementary-school saga—the ab- derstand the Revolution if we make preventing the Empire from being surd rendering of Reconstruction, what was an intramural and fratri- maximally efficient. It was a group of with its Northern carpetbaggers and cidal battle of ideas in the English- men who, in spirit and psychology, local scalawags descending on a de- speaking Empire look like a modern were not entirely unlike the “reform- fenseless South, was still taught in colonial rebellion. Another insists ers” in Communist China, open to the sixties. It was only in recent de- that the Revolution was a piece of change for the purpose of reinforc- cades that schools cautiously began great-power politics, fought in un- ing their own power in an intact hi- to relay the truth of the eighteen- imaginably brutal terms, and no more erarchy. The authoritarian reformers seventies—of gradual and shameful connected to ideas or principles than were “not a political party per se,” du Northern acquiescence in the terror- any other piece of great-power poli- Rivage writes. “They were, rather, an ist imposition of apartheid on a tics: America was essentially a Third ideological vanguard, a loosely orga- post-slavery population. World country that became the bat- nized group of politicians, publicists,

80 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 and theorists.” (Significantly, no fa- they feared that it created chaos; in in the quarrels could cross clan lines: mous names cling to the group; ca- part because easy credit undermined the radical Pitt’s brother-in-law, George reer politicians and businessmen like hierarchy). Grenville, himself a Prime Minister, William Murray, Matthew Decker, The radical Whigs were for democ- was the leader of the authoritarian re- and Viscount Bolingbroke were their ratization, the authoritarian reformers formers in Parliament. mostly interchangeable leaders.) They firmly against it. The radical Whigs This account cuts against the Amer- wanted a strong monarch surrounded were for responsible authority, the au- ican specificity of the Revolution— by a circle of aristocratic advisers; very thoritarian reformers for firm author- the sense that it was a rebellion against limited democracy; reform in the ity. And so on. This quarrel, du Rivage a king and a distant country. No one Army and Navy; and a tax-heavy sys- argues, swept across the Empire and, at the time, du Rivage suggests, saw tem of mercantile trade—all of it in- as much as it divided colony from home what was happening as pitting a dis- tended to make the Empire as profit- country, it united proponents of either tinct “American” nation against an able as it needed to be. view transnationally. Those we think alien British one. Participants largely Extended taxation within the Em- of as “loyalists” in the American con- saw the conflict in terms of two par- pire was central to their agenda. They text were simply authoritarian reform- ties fighting for dominance in the sincerely believed in “taxation without ers who lost their war; those we think English-speaking world. The scan- representation,” because they saw cit- of as “patriots” were simply radical dalous high-water mark of du Rivage’s izenship not in terms of sovereignty Whigs who won. iconography occurs in January of 1775, and equality but in terms of tribute re- when Pitt (now ennobled as the Earl ceived and protection offered. Pay up, ome of the force of du Rivage’s of Chatham) brought Franklin, then and the British Navy will keep the S account of the Revolution lies in living in London, into the House of Frenchmen, pirates, and aboriginals his dogged insistence that the great Lords to witness his speech on behalf away. Samuel Johnson, who was hired political quarrel of the time really was of the American radicals, in effect seal- by the authoritarian reformers to write a quarrel of principles. His book, he ing the unity of the single party across the 1775 pamphlet “Taxation No Tyr- tells us in the introduction, is ulti- the ocean. This scene—though no- anny,” captured the argument best: the mately about “how ideas and politics where captured in the familiar imag- men who settled America had chosen shape social and economic experi- ery of Franklin flying his kite and in- to leave a place where they had the vote ence.” This is a more radically Whig- venting bifocals—was, in its day, as but little property in order to live in a gish proposition than it sounds. For significant as that of the signing of place where they had no vote but much a long time, under the influence of the Declaration of Independence. property. With lucid authoritarian logic, the formidable Lewis Namier, the his- The transnational nature of the Johnson explained that even though torian of Britain’s eighteenth- century Revolution, du Rivage shows, has been the American citizen might not have Parliament, the pervasive ideas in blanked out. The promise of trans- a vote on how he was taxed, “he still is the political life of the period were atlantic unity in a move toward mo- governed by his own consent; because held to depend on clans and clan re- dernity was very real. Had the radical he has consented to throw his atom of lations, not systems of thought. Even Whigs secured their power in Brit- interest into the general mass of the Edmund Burke, we were told, was no ain, our Revolution might well have community.” more drawn to Rockingham by ide- taken on a look and feel far more The radical Whigs, though they, too, ology than Tom Hagen like those of the later were implanted within establishment was drawn to the Cor- Canadian and Austra- circles—grouped around William Pitt leone family because lian dissolutions from and the pro-American Marquess of he shared Vito’s views the Brits: a political Rockingham, with the devilish John on urban governance. break toward “home Wilkes representing their most radi- Though there is ob- rule” but without any cal popular presence—were sympa- viously truth in this ap- of the elaborate para- thetic to Enlightenment ideas, out of proach, then and now, phernalia of patriotism both principle and self- protection, as du Rivage deprecates it attached to it. We would analgesics to mollify “the mob.” They as much as it has ever probably still have had represented, albeit episodically, the been deprecated. (His evidence for the some piece of the British flag upon first stirrings of a party of the mer- power and specificity of this battle of our own, and Betsy Ross would have chant class. They thought that colo- ideas includes a number of political sewn in vain. nists should be seen as potential con- cartoons, drawn by the participants: it Du Rivage’s book began as a Yale sumers. Alexander Hamilton, back in is astonishing how often the political Ph.D. thesis, and has not lost all traces New York, was a model radical Whig— figures of the time, from Benjamin of its origins. He has the passion for trusting in bank credit and national Franklin to Paul Revere, communi- his labels that any inventor has for his debt as a prod toward prosperity, while cated in comic images.) Throughout, own mousetraps: scarcely a page in his the authoritarian reformers were con- he makes a convincing case for the view book goes by without at least one of vinced, as their successors are to this that people quarrelled not about clans the terms “radical Whigs” and “author- day, that debt was toxic (in part because but about concepts. In fact, participants itarian reformers” appearing on it. He

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 81 is so taken with his explanatory scheme that those Philadelphia school talks sary conflict. The horrors of the Civil that he asserts it even when the lines instilled in us kids. He details tortures War were still more horrific than those between the camps were a little blur- inflicted on both sides—the phrase of the Revolution, and yet few are sorry rier than the neat Ping-Pong division “tarred and feathered” persists as that it was fought; in any case, that war suggests. Although his sympathies are something vaguely folkloric but is re- has never been subject to the same am- with the radical Whigs, he sees that vealed as unimaginably cruel. The nesia, in part because, given the pres- many of the authoritarians’ claims were prison ships in which captured sol- ence of photography and wire-service not false. As Alan Taylor made clear diers were placed were themselves telegraphy, it was hard to hide those last year in his mind-opening “Amer- sites of horror: thousands of Ameri- horrors in neat packets of patriotism. ican Revolutions” (Norton), the vic- can captives were left to languish, Hoock’s book does raise another, tory of the rebels immediately led to starve, and often die, in British sloops unexpected question: why is it that, the loss of the protection of the Brit- kept just offshore. The reader gri- until now, the Civil War cast such a ish Navy, leaving American merchant maces at Hoock’s description of a Brit- long, bitter shadow, while the Revo- ships defenseless against the pirates of ish bayonet massacre, a kind of mini lution was mostly reimagined as a the Barbary Coast, a situation that pro- My Lai, of helpless patriots in rural tale of glory? One reason, too eas- duced a lot of imprisoned American New Jersey: ily overlooked, is that, while many of sailors and, eventually, the Marines The British started to bayonet their de- those who made the Civil War were hitting the shores of Tripoli, inspiring fenseless victims, crushing bones and leav- killed during it, including the Union the song we sang in that second-grade ing gashing wounds in the men’s stomachs, Commander- in-Chief, none of the class in Philadelphia. The imperial chests, backs, and limbs. Withdrawing the makers of the Revolution died fight- protection racket really did protect; blade, as much as plunging it in, tore muscles, ing in it. The Founding Fathers had arteries, and organs. When the British moved its withdrawal meant that we had to out, Julian King had sixteen wounds, includ- rolled the dice and put their heads on put together an enforcement squad of ing eleven in his breast, side, and belly; George the line, but theirs was the experience our own, which we did, and are still Willis had sustained between nine and twelve of eluding the bullet, and, as Churchill paying for. wounds, some in his back. At first, it seemed said, there is nothing so exhilarating that Thomas Talley would escape this wave of as being shot at without result. Of how the bloody assault; he was taken prisoner. Brit- olger Hoock, in his new book, ish soldiers had moved him outside and stripped many revolutions can it be said that H “Scars of Independence” (Crown), him of his breeches, when his captors received nearly all its makers died in their beds? has a somewhat simpler point to make. orders to kill him, too. They took Talley in- In the American Revolution, the peo- The Revolution, he shows, was far more side the barn and lethally jabbed him half a ple who suffered most were not the brutal than our usual memory of it al- dozen times. people who benefitted most, and the lows. (Mel Gibson’s Revolutionary War A seventeen-year-old British sol- lucky ones wrote most of the story. Like movie, “The Patriot,” made this point, dier, arriving on the scene, recalled everything in history, amnesia has its as his “The Passion of the Christ” did that “the shrieks and screams of the own causality. of Roman crucifixion; say what you hapless victims whom our savage fel- will about his politics, Gibson is good low soldiers were butchering, were u Rivage’s and Hoock’s accounts at reminding us of the core violence in sufficient to have melted into com- D are mostly about white guys quar- our favorite myths. Crosses and mus- passion the heart of a Turk or a Tar- relling with other white guys, and then kets really are lethal weapons.) Page tar”—as pointed a comparison in le- about white guys being unimaginably after page, the reader blanches while thal indifference to human suffering cruel to one another, stopping only to reading of massacres and counter- as an eighteenth-century British mind rape their enemy’s wives and daugh- massacres, of floggings and rapes, of could make. ters. What of the rest? Here again, both socket bayonets plunged into pitiful The narrow lesson here is that war new histories illuminate the role of the patriots and of competitive hangings is war, and that the moment the dogs African-American slave population, and murders. The effect is made all the of war are unleashed—anywhere, for and of the fight of the indigenous pop- more hallucinatory by the fact that any purpose—atrocity follows. In an ulation to find room for its own exis- these horrors took place not in Poland epilogue, Hoock makes the wise point tence. As Taylor showed, what we called or Algeria but in what are now, in effect, that, given what wars of national lib- the “Indian” population—in Canada, rest stops along I-95, in Connecticut eration are actually like, Americans the preferred name now is First Na- and New Jersey, in a time we still think should perhaps be disabused of our en- tions—struggled to find space, and land, of as all three-cornered hats and the thusiasm for nation-building and de- between the Americans and the Ca- clip-clop of Hollywood equipages on mocracy exportation. Yet what specific nadians, and mostly lost (though they cobblestoned streets. point about our political legacy does lost on the British side of the border Hoock is almost too delighted with Hoock want to make? Even just wars with less violence than on this side, the his discoveries; like the fat boy in are appalling; knowing how high the British being less hungrily murderous “Pickwick,” he wants to make your casualty rate was on Omaha Beach than the Americans). flesh creep. Certainly, no reader will and in the Normandy campaign after The experience of the African ab- ever be able to imagine the Revolu- D Day does not reduce our sense that ductees in the war was more tragic. tion again as the pop-gun pageantry the Second World War was a neces- Thousands of slaves ran to the British

82 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 lines, with the encouragement of the British Army, and though the Brits BRIEFLY NOTED mainly valued the slaves as an irritant to their masters, they did give them shelter and, sometimes, arms. At York- The Evangelicals, by Frances FitzGerald (Simon & Schuster). town, thousands of escaped slaves re- This incisive history of white evangelical movements in Amer- cruited as soldiers fought within the ica argues that their influence has been more pervasive and di- British lines; when the Americans com- verse than generally realized. Contending that media coverage pelled the British to surrender, many typically focusses on TV preachers and a loyal born-again con- of the slaves were returned to their mis- stituency dictating its socially conservative agenda to Repub- erable bondage—including slaves lican politicians, FitzGerald shows that debate within evangel- owned by Washington and Jefferson. ical denominations over slavery was part of the national schism “Jefferson retrieved five or six of his that led to the Civil War, and that the counterculture move- slaves; Washington recovered two young ments of the nineteen-sixties echoed the populist, anti-intel- black women but not a dozen other lectual tenor of evangelist discourse. The book concludes in the slaves who managed to slip away,” present, with eighty-one per cent of Evangelicals having voted Hoock recounts. for Donald Trump, despite his many unchristian qualities. Had the British won, we might now be taught about a fight between brave Climate Change and the Health of Nations, by Anthony J. British emancipators and indigenous McMichael (Oxford). Examining the ways in which climate slaveholders, with the black slaves who change has long disrupted human societies, this sober, force- defected to the British-loyalist side ful history anticipates the potential cataclysms to come, in a seen as self-emancipators, as the blacks world that, because of man-made emissions, is warming at an who defected to the Union Army are unprecedented rate. Examples ranging from the time of early now, and with Washington’s and Jeffer- man to that of the Romans, the Mayans, and the Anasazi son’s rhetoric of liberty shown the same demonstrate that even minor fluctuations in temperature have disdain we have for the not-very- resulted in “food shortages, famines, infectious disease out- different libertarian and individualist breaks, weather disasters, and conflicts over resources that fo- rhetoric of their heirs in the Confed- ment social disorder and topple regimes.” McMichael laments eracy. We would perhaps wonder, far that, although our society is the first to have the tools with more than we are now allowed to, how which to fashion a response, it lacks the will to do so. radical Whigs like Alexander Hamil- ton and Thomas Paine ever allowed The Crossing, by Andrew Miller (Europa). Set in England, this themselves to betray their own En- family drama opens out into an adventure story with existen- lightenment principles by making the tial overtones. Tim and Maud fall in love at a university boat tragic error of entering into a compact club, marry, and have a daughter. But they are pulled apart, with slaveholders. first by Tim’s upper-crust family, who disapprove of Maud’s That historical account would be upbringing and individualism, and then by a family tragedy. as self-serving and tendentious, in its Maud, awakened to her fascination with the uncharted, makes own way, as our current glorious for the open sea, and her hazardous solo voyage on the Atlan- one. Against the skeptical view of the tic is the book’s centerpiece, evoked by Miller with rich and achievement of the American Revolu- detailed specificity. Maud emerges as a memorable figure, a tion, one can easily posit a view more misunderstood woman who has yet to discover her own bril- radical than even the ideology of rad- liance and tenacity. ical Whigs quite suggests. Three de- cades ago, Gordon Wood, in “The Rad- Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf ). These poems, by icalism of the American Revolution,” a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, juxtapose tribal and asked us to see the Revolution in the personal history to address the U.S. government’s violence broadest historical scale, and to realize against Native Americans—including the execution, in 1862, that, whatever its failings and brutali- of thirty-eight Dakota men, who revolted as starvation rav- ties and hypocrisies, it represented a aged their people. Using elliptical prose, blank spaces, crossed- decisive break with doctrines of inher- out text, and Lakota words, Long Soldier articulates both her ited power and monarchical rule, and identity and her literary undertaking: “In this dual citizenship, a move toward democracy that had I must work, I must eat, I must art.” A central sequence re- scarcely been so dramatically accom- peats the “Whereas” of congressional documents to critique plished since very ancient times. Jona- the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Ameri- than Israel’s forthcoming book “The cans. Passed in 2009, it was never publicly read and was un- Expanding Blaze” promises to make a obtrusively “folded into a larger, unrelated piece of legislation similar case: that the revolution was the called the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act.”

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 83 great radical act of its day, responsible, This is literally the case; the United Revolution, perhaps it lies neither with directly and indirectly, for the onset of Empire Loyalists, as they were called, the frightened authoritarians nor with the modern age. Abolitionism rose from the “Tories” who fled from the States, the too easily inflamed radicals but the promise of the Revolution more did much to make Canada. More than with the new doctrines of compassion than the Revolution sustained slavery. that, Canada is the model liberal coun- that could run between them. Hoock Indeed, that abolitionism burned try because it did not have an American- tells the story of Captain Asgill, who, brighter in Britain than in the inde- style revolution, accepting instead the as late as 1782, was sentenced by Wash- pendent States, as historians have reformers’ values of a strong central- ington to be hanged in retaliation for argued, had at least something to do ized, if symbolic, monarchy (the Queen an unpunished loyalist atrocity. (A with America’s triumph: Britain could is still there, aging, on the Canadian group of British prisoners were forced demonstrate that it was better, more twenty-dollar bill); a largely faceless to draw lots—or, rather, had lots drawn honorable, than its former colonies at political class; a cautiously parliamen- for them by a small American boy— a time when such a demonstration was tary tradition; a professionalized and and poor Asgill was the loser.) urgently sought. Then, too, the sepa- noncharismatic military; a governing His mother, back home in London, ration of the Southern plantation own- élite—an establishment. wrote to the Count of Vergennes, the ers from the West Indian ones weak- The Canadian experience was not foreign minister of France, America’s ened a formidable lobbying force within free of sin—as the indefensible treat- ally and Britain’s adversary: “My son the Empire. Still, if history is not al- ment of the First Nations demon- (an only Son) and dear as he is brave, ways written by the winners, it shapes strates—and was, as well, not free of amiable as deserving to be so . . . is now itself to the slope of events: had the the “colonial cringe” that bedevils so confined in America, an object of re- episode arrived at a different outcome, many countries overattached to the taliation! Shall an innocent suffer for as it easily might have, the American motherland. (London and Paris, in this the guilty? Represent to yourself, Sir, rebellion could well have come to be view, meant too much for too long to the situation of a family under these seen as the French Revolution often too many ambitious Canadians.) Still, circumstances; surrounded as I am by is, if on a far smaller scale—a folly of there is something to be said, however Objects of distress; distracted with fear & Enlightenment utopianism unleash- small, for government by an efficient grief; no words can express my feelings ing senseless violence. elected élite devoted to compromise. or paint the scene.” Hoock sneers a lit- The logic of Whig radicalism, in what- tle at the letter (as “drenched in the n confrontations between empire ever form it takes, always allows char- language of sentimentalism”). But it I and rebels, though, our hearts are al- ismatic figures undue play; there’s a worked. Vergennes forwarded it to ways with the rebels. We take it for reason that the big Whigs remain Washington, and it became a cause granted that rebels are good and em- known today while the authoritarian célèbre in the new nation, exactly be- pires bad; our favorite mass entertain- reformers mostly sink into specialists’ cause of its call to a reciprocal human- ment depends entirely on the felt fa- memories of committees and cabinets. ity of suffering. “What must be the miliarity of this simple division. But The first modern charismatic poli- feelings of the many hundreds of . . . there is a case to be made that empires tician, John Wilkes, was among the tender American mothers”—reading can be something other than evil. Peo- greatest Whig heroes of the American that letter—“whose sons in the early ple mocked the beginning of the “Star radicals. Nor is it entirely accidental bloom of youth have perished in that Wars” cycle, turning as it did on a trade that he would give his name to the sink of misery, the prison ship at New dispute, but trade disputes are real, and charismatic actor who killed Lincoln. York?” one gazette writer wondered. begin wars, and whom would you re- The red thread of theatrical violence, Eventually, the affair produced a five- ally rather have running the govern- violence as show and spectacle and act play by Jean-Louis Le Barbier, dra- ment when a trade treaty has to be ne- self-definition, links the violence of our matizing Washington torn between gotiated on a galactic scale: Senator revolution with the violence implicit mercy and justice, and Hoock tells us Palpatine or Han Solo? in all cults of great men. Those who that, although Washington couldn’t The authoritarian reformers—the say “Thus always to tyrants!” can say it read French, “the retired general and empire, in other words—have some- only when they shoot somebody. A lifelong theater enthusiast thanked the thing to be said for them; and what government based on enthusiasm, author personally for his dramatic is to be said for them is, well, Canada. rather than on executive expertise, needs efforts.” Nations could escape the mu- Our northern neighbor’s relative lack many things to be enthusiastic about. tual cycle of massacre and reprisal of violence, its peaceful continuity, its Whig radicalism produces charismatic through the new “sentimental” cult of ability to allow double and triple iden- politics—popular politics in a positive sympathy. This third late-eighteenth- tities and to build a country success- sense, and then in a negative one, too. century ideology, still with us sporad- fully out of two languages and radi- This is the Achilles’ heel of radical ically, seems saner than either author- cally different national pasts: all these Whiggism, and we know that it is its itarian beliefs (however reforming) Canadian virtues are, counterintui- Achilles’ heel because one day it pro- or Whiggish ones (however radical). tively, far more the legacy of those duces an Achilles, and the next a heel. “The Patriot” is an instructive movie; eighteenth- century authoritarian re- If there’s a brighter light unifying “Saving Captain Asgill” might be an formers than of the radical Whigs. Britain and America at the time of the inspiring one. 

84 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 was simply a collection of “slang and BOOKS bad grammar”—not nearly enough to make a language. The TV talking head Tucker Carlson, in a typically nasty flour- YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ish, called Black English “a language where nobody knows how to conjugate John McWhorter makes his case for Black English. the verbs,” McWhorter recalls. The pun- gent reaction baffled linguists, who had BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM long appreciated—and begun to seri- ously study—the “languageness” of Black English and other informal speech vari- ants, such as Jamaican Patois, Swiss Ger- man, and Haitian Creole. McWhorter, who is black, was then teaching at nearby U.C. Berkeley, and he had a long-standing scholarly interest in black speech. He be- came—by dint of his race and his phys- ical proximity to the uproar—the most prominent authority on the validity of Black English as language. Since then, McWhorter has built a career outside the academy as a quirky populist, committed to defending lin- guistic novelties often derided as er- roneous or as harbingers of slackening standards. He sees in such innovations evidence of the only constant in language: its endless mutability, and its correspond- ing ability to surprise. He hosts Slate’s popular linguistics podcast, “Lexicon Val- ley,” and, in another recent book, “Words on the Move” (Henry Holt), writes ac- ceptingly of such trends as “uptalk” (the tendency to end declarative sentences Black English, McWhorter argues, has become an American lingua franca. with the upward lilt of the voice that usu- ally accompanies a question) and the pep- ne of my favorite sounds in the hilarious anger, like Jackie Gleason’s: “I pering of “like” throughout the speech of O world is the voice of the late come- ain’t scared of you motherfuckers.” The younger Americans. McWhorter brooks dian Bernie Mac. I often think of an early “r” in “scared” is barely audible, and the no condescension toward the Valley Girl. performance of his, on the nineties subsequent profanity is a fluid, tossed-off “Americans,” he laments in “Talking Back, standup showcase “Def Comedy Jam.” “muhfuckas.” Talking Black,” “have trouble compre- The routine, slightly less than six min- Bernie Mac is, in other words—and hending that any vernacular way of speak- utes long, is songlike in structure—after this is the source of my love—an expert ing is legitimate language.” each cluster of two or three jokes, Mac speaker of Black English, which is the “Talking Back, Talking Black,” then, yells “Kick it!” and a snippet of cheesy, subject of the recent book “Talking Back, is a kind of apologia. In five short essays, drum-heavy hip-hop plays. Between these Talking Black” (Bellevue), by the linguist, McWhorter demonstrates the “legiti- punctuations, he affects poses that would writer, and Columbia professor John macy” of Black English by uncovering fit as comfortably within a twelve-bar McWhorter. In the book, McWhorter its complexity and sophistication, as well blues as they do on the dimly lit Def Jam offers an explanation, a defense, and, most as the still unfolding journey that has led stage: sexual bravado, profane delight, sly heartening, a celebration of the dialect to its creation. He also gently chides his self-deprecation, dismay and gathering that has become, he argues, an Ameri- fellow-linguists for their inability to pre- confusion at a rapidly changing world. “I can lingua franca. sent convincing arguments in favor of ain’t come here for no foolishness,” he McWhorter’s début as a public intel- vernacular language. They have been mis- says toward the beginning of the set, his lectual came twenty years ago, when a taken, he believes, in emphasizing “sys- double negative signalling playfulness fracas erupted over a proposal to use tematicity”—the fact that a language’s and threat in equal measure. “You don’t Black English—then often called Ebon- particularities are “not just random, but understand,” he says again and again, ics—as a teaching tool in public schools based on rules.” An oft-cited instance sometimes stretching “understand” into in Oakland, California. The idea was of systematicity in Black English is the four or five syllables. Then, with swift, roundly ridiculed. Ebonics, people said, lastingly useful “habitual ‘be,’ ” whereby,

ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVER MUNDAY THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 85 Carlson’s quip notwithstanding, the for- glish’s “up,” and someone who studied lems, “inner city backgrounds do not pre- mulation “She be passin’ by” contains Black English as a foreign language would pare many children to be receptive to ed- much more than an unconjugated verb. have a hard time figuring out when, and ucation in school.” That naked “be,” McWhorter explains, how, to deploy it. McWhorter’s stance in “Losing the “is very specific; it means that something The passage on “up” is characteristic Race” won him fame as a commentator happens on a regular basis, rather than of McWhorter’s strengths as a writer. on race and society, and got him classified something going on right now.” He adds, In the years that he has spent popular- alongside an increasingly—but, in ret- “No black person would say ‘She be pas- izing ideas hatched in the halls of the rospect, fleetingly—visible cadre of black sin’ by right now,’ because that isn’t what academy, he has honed a friendly prose conservatives, including the economist be in that sentence is supposed to mean. style. Some of the sentences in “Talking Thomas Sowell and the writer Shelby Rather, it would be ‘She be passin’ by Back” seem designed to enact its au- Steele, with whom he frequently agreed every Tuesday when I’m about to leave.’ ” thor’s loose, democratic approach to En- on such matters. McWhorter, though, A mistake to untrained ears, the habit- glish, and to language more broadly: was an otherwise conventional, if slightly ual “be” is, “of all things, grammar.” sentence-ending prepositions sit hap- old-fashioned, liberal Democrat; he’d ar- However logical, examples like these pily together with uses of the singular rived at sociology’s doorstep with a bou- have failed to garner respect, because to “they.” This intelligent breeziness is the quet of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s ideas most Americans grammar does not in- source of the book’s considerable charm. just as they were beginning to wilt. He here in linguistic rule-following gener- It also helps McWhorter slide past the didn’t deny the persistence of racism— ally but in a set of specific rules that they aspects of Black English that cannot be he still inveighs against mass incarcera- have been taught to obey. McWhorter so cheerily explained. tion and the drug war—but insisted on offers a couple of typical directives: “Don’t the reality of post-sixties progress, and say less books, say fewer books,” and “Say cWhorter’s easygoing recount- implored his fellow black Americans to Billy and I went to the store, not Billy M ing of the Ebonics affair, with its reach out and grab their country’s newly and me went to the store.” This narrow emphasis on his ecumenical approach to extended hand. This thinking has slipped notion of grammar has amounted to a language, elides the way in which the ep- further out of fashion in recent years, as peculiar snobbery: the more obscure and isode served as an opportunity to broad- smartphones around the country have seemingly complex the grammatical rule, cast his somewhat stonier views on black delivered the bad old news about blacks the more we tend to assert its importance American life. McWhorter opposed the and the police. McWhorter’s response and to esteem those who have managed Oakland proposal—a fact that he scarcely to the radicalism of the younger gener- to master it. “People respect complexity,” makes clear in “Talking Back, Talking ation, notably embodied by the Black McWhorter writes. His smirking and Black.” He told the story more fully in Lives Matter movement, has been an ex- somewhat subversive accommodation to “Losing the Race,” a best-selling jere- asperated resignation. He writes about this Pharisaism is to emphasize the ways miad published in 2000, which argued race less regularly these days, and, when in which Black English is more complex that the familiar litany of black Ameri- he does, it is often to dismiss the new than Standard English. can troubles—low academic achievement, mood as a kind of cult, long on shibbo- One of these ways—the truest, I the absence of upward mobility, and so leths and pieties but woefully short should add, to my own experience of the on—were due more to cultural deficien- on methods for bettering the lives of language—is the use of the word “up” in black Americans. (A 2015 article that conjunction with a location. Hip-hop McWhorter wrote for the Daily Beast fans might recognize this construction was titled “Antiracism, Our Flawed New from the chorus of the rapper DMX’s Religion.”) hit song “Party Up (Up in Here)”: “Y’all Early in “Talking Back, Talking gon’ make me lose my mind / Up in Black,” McWhorter brings up the leg- here, up in here / Y’all gon’ make me go acy of racism, only to reject it as an ad- all out / Up in here, up in here,” etc. equate explanation for—or tool in argu- McWhorter, playing the tone poet’s pa- ing against—the derision levelled at Black tient exegete, scours several instances of English over the years. “Surely racism the usage, settling on the idea that in this cies like anti-intellectualism and a “cult plays a part in how Black English is context “up” conveys the intimacy of the of victimology” than to institutionalized heard,” he concedes in the book’s first setting it qualifies. The sentence “We racism. The support that some black lead- chapter, before claiming that “the speech was sittin’ up at Tony’s,” according to ers expressed for the Oakland proposal of Appalachian whites is condemned to McWhorter, “means that Tony is a friend was, in McWhorter’s view, evidence of an even greater degree.” He offers this of yours.” This is an artful and convinc- their misguided sense that “the main latter assertion—doubtful, by my admit- ing reading, and McWhorter carries it issue” was “not evaluating an educational tedly anecdotal lights—without a hint of out in an impishly forensic manner, prov- policy but defending black America from evidence. He is unimpressed by, and wary ing his thesis that, in some respects, Black racist abuse.” Black English is perfectly of, the “sociopolitically charged argu- English has “more going on” than Stan- legitimate as language, but its use in ment” that “to criticize a dialect is to crit- dard English. The latter lacks such a suc- schools wouldn’t help black students, he icize its speakers.” McWhorter fears that cinct “intimacy marker” as Black En- wrote in 1997, because, among other prob- its chief result is to make people—white

86 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 people—“clam up.” Better, with evange- listic hopes like McWhorter’s, to root around for the language’s exceptional qualities: “up” and all the rest. The most energetic but also the most frustrating section of “Talking Back” is a short treatise on the word “nigga.” McWhorter takes the customary care in distinguishing the word from its uglier, older cousin, “nigger,” but he pushes the distinction further than most: for McWhorter, these are not simply two separate English words, let alone two pronunciations of the same word; they are, rather, words that belong to two different dialects. “Nigger is Standard English and nigga is Black English,” he writes, matter-of-factly. “Nigga means ‘You’re one of us.’ Nigger doesn’t.” This interpretation helps to explain the odd power that “nigga” wields over blacks and whites alike when said aloud. Richard Pryor’s use of it in his standup “You’re beating him senseless, but what you really want is his approval.” act in the seventies was radical not sim- ply because street lingo had made its way onto the stage: Pryor had swung open •• the door between alternate cultural di- mensions. Blacks suddenly felt at home— verbal expressions of racism’s mind- ing a group of young black girls execute “up in the comedy club,” somebody might splitting crucible, what W. E. B. Du Bois a dance routine, he noticed something have said—and whites relished the brief called “double consciousness.” As Henry off—inarticulable, but off—in the moves peek into a room they rarely saw. Some- Louis Gates, Jr., has written, black ver- of the one girl who had grown up mostly thing similar happened, and keeps on nacular is a literary development as well around white people. Something beyond happening, with hip-hop, many of whose as a linguistic one. “The black tradition”— rhythm; something like style. practitioners use the N-word as a kind from ring shouts to Ralph Ellison—“is Whatever this quality may be, it op- of challenge to white enthusiasts. It’s be- double-voiced,” Gates writes, in the in- erates as well on Sunday morning as it come a familiar joke: when the music’s troduction to his seminal study, “The Sig- does on Saturday night. Consider the loud, and emotions are high, who dares nifying Monkey,” echoing Du Bois. The voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. His rich, recite, in full, the lyric that eventually humor associated with black language swooping Baptist cadences, almost mu- alights on “nigga”? play—with jokers like Pryor and Bernie sical in tone, have become part of the That “nigga” is not only one of our Mac—directly descends from this multi- American soundscape. His rhetoric was most controversial words but also one of vocal tradition, and from the trouble that a breakthrough by way of synthesis. He our funniest is revealing, and worth puz- made it necessary. had an unmistakably black sound, a sound zling over. McWhorter doesn’t allow him- that had been forged over centuries in self the pleasure. The word’s power—and his polarity—between a tragic the privacy of segregated worship, but he therefore its coherence, its licitness as lan- T sense of the world and the ability fitted it, often, over flawless Standard En- guage—is impossible to understand with- to make of it a kind of punch line— glish syntax that straddled in its rhythms out a glance at the history of race-rooted might help to unshroud, if only slightly, the Constitution and the Bible. He some- subjugation in America. The emergence an enigma at the heart of McWhorter’s times sounded like an Otis Redding cover of Black English is owed in part to book. In a chapter on what it means to of Abe Lincoln or the text of a Psalm. straightforwardly linguistic factors: “sound black,” he is able to isolate sev- Think of the concluding passages of McWhorter convincingly cites the phe- eral aspects of the “blaccent,” as he his most famous speeches: “I Have a nomenon of recently enslaved adults calls it—a tendency, for example, to Dream,” “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” straining to learn a new language, plus a clip certain vowel sounds and luxuri- Forget the words. King’s shudders and syncretistic importation of vocal gestures ate in others. But he concedes, in the vibratos, half-shouts and glottal stops picked up along the trail of forced mi- end, that elements of black speech re- have become a synecdoche for the on- gration. But it also developed as a covert, main mysterious. All of its facets come going struggle for American freedom. often defiant response to the surveillance together in a manner that can seem in- They remind us: black talk has—at high state of slavery. Grammatical nuance, new expressible, a point he illustrates with an cost, to often beautiful effect—become a vocabulary, subtleties of tone—these were essentially artistic analogy: once, watch- moral language, too. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 87 commentary. Here are the opening BOOKS stanzas of “Water Grave,” about a river crossing: We cross under FIRST LIGHT the midnight shield and learn that bullets Début poetry from Mai Der Vang and Airea D. Matthews. can curse the air. BY DAN CHIASSON A symposium of endangered stars

evicts itself to the water. Another convoy leaves the kiln. The line breaks here represent the fear of what we’ll encounter next along the poem’s low-lying, cramped hori- zontal axis, with bullets “cursing” the air overhead and stars reflected on the water below. Inside, where the mind makes comparisons and analogies, the dissociation inheres in malfunctioning metaphors: what is a “symposium / of endangered stars” and how would it evict itself? The illogic evokes, on the page, the damaged conditions for think- ing which burden these “creatures of the Mekong,” their “heads bobbing” like “ghosts without bodies” in a “river yard / of amputated hearts.” Vang’s poems are sometimes woven with Hmong phrases, which, to the reader who lacks the language, give the impression of chatter arriving by a re- mote, staticky broadcast. “Light from a Burning Citadel” counterpoints its eerie, ancestral first-person voice with a part-Hmong chorus: Now I am a Siamese rosewood on fire. I am a skin of sagging curtain. I am a bone of bullet hole. he Hmong-American poet Mai Americans born here and writing in I am locked in the ash oven of a forest. Der Vang’s début volume, “After- English. She has no firsthand memory T Peb yog and we will be. land” (Graywolf ), reminds us what a of the trauma that shaped her. These distinctive instrument the human imag- ironies, not a little bitter, sponsor her A note tells us that peb yog means ination is, no matter what tune it plays. work. “we are.” The English syntax seems to There is a story in this book, and an Vang writes strikingly, often chill- approximate Hmong phrasing: its important one: Vang’s family fled Laos ingly visual poems, their images pro- metamorphosis from another language, at the close of the Laotian “secret war,” jected one at a time, like slides in a lec- like the brutal self-transformations it when the C.I.A. armed the Hmong ture, or perhaps in a trial. A woman is expresses, is costly, ultimate, but also people to fight against the occupying dragged “bleeding / by her long black definitive. North Vietnamese. Laos fell, the C.I.A. hair,” her child’s “head in the rice / “Afterland” works its wonders with pulled up stakes, and many Hmong pounder, shell-crumbled.” The poems an intentionally rationed vocabulary, families, after languishing in refugee can feel like environments rather than its counters combined and recombined camps in Thailand and elsewhere, were narratives: they develop according to in poem after poem: stars, water, hair, resettled in places like Fresno, Califor- our wary movement through them, bones, fire. To invest this elemental nia, where Vang lives today. Vang is simultaneously registering both our grammar with such feeling is to play a among the first generation of Hmong- outward point of view and our inner game, mastered by poets from Du Fu to Louise Glück, that reminds us that In “Afterland,” Vang deploys a rationed vocabulary to wondrous effect. the contents of the world are finite, and

88 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLIE GENTLE that the imagination obtains, often, the rote tone of a language primer. nates (Baudrillard, Barthes, and others only in combination. The style creates “Afterland” is, I think, two books. make memorable cameos), the most im- an atmosphere of impending marvels, The one I have been describing, hold- portant is Anne Sexton, the American and many of Vang’s poems perform, in ing itself to its own stringent vision of confessional poet, who died, a suicide, words, the transformations that they verbal beauty, is among the most sat- in 1974. Hers is a story often under- describe: isfying débuts by an American poet in stood to be about corrosive and largely In the dove tree some time. The book inside this book, self-inflicted domestic ennui. Matthews Corrals of your hair, much shorter, is replete with poignant first plants this theme in a prose poem, snapshots of immigrant life; in these part David Lynch and part Brothers A scaffold ascends poems, Vang is looser, her language less Grimm, “The Mine Owner’s Wife.” A The perfumed winter monitored, the tension allayed by man comes home, opens his mouth, and Where frost has hewn humor and wisdom. I like these poems a canary flies out; soon he slices his You into azalea. slightly less. In “Matriarch,” a grand- tongue open and bleeds into his wife’s mother watches Sylvester Stallone on goblet. “And, this, every single night” is “Azalea” is a beautiful word in any TV and thinks of “a man omitted,” Matthews’s deadpan punch line. context, but in this stark verbal land- likely a casualty of war: A series of poems imagines text ex- scape it stands out like the garish shrub She points at the television as if she changes between Sexton and a variety it denotes, here reduced to its bare win- could translate of correspondents, in a range of bizarre ter interest. Rocky, make sense of Rambo. She is settings. They read like Virgilian ec- The restraint of these poems in part camphor blouse, logues in the age of autocorrect. All reflects Hmong languages’ resistance the disorientations of texting remain to script; many appear to have existed Grandmother, keeper of jars for flamed in place: we can’t be certain who’s say- for centuries without any written rec- cuppings. ing what, and messages sometimes ar- ord. The most common script among rive jumbled, rushed, and in the wrong Hmong speakers today was invented This kind of parallelism—a current order. Here are the final three messages in the nineteen-fifties, by Christian or slightly outré tic of M.F.A. work- in a poem about suburban anomie, missionaries. It uses the Roman alpha- shops—always puts more weight on “Quiet Desperation Texts Sexton on bet, but clumsily, and with many crit- the second verb, and “makes sense of ” Independence Day”: ical effects of sound lost on the page. is too weak to stand up to the pressure. FRI., AUG. 2, 6:41 AM Around the same time, a farmer named A poetry that has elsewhere excavated (2/2) around the block. Shong Lue Yang was said to have been its language from the communal un- Fewer asses not tweaked, taught a script, the Pahawh Hmong, conscious has a hard time adopting the twerked or fatted, yet by messengers from God. He attracted mode of personal anecdote. We miss all that holds back a soul? Chalkcage withering under many followers before he was killed, a the concentration, the narrowing and wrinkled corsets suspected insurgent, in 1971. Here are zooming attention to language, and, the crucial middle stanzas from a poem weirdly, the white space of her finest FRI., AUG. 2, 6:39 AM I believe will be read and taught widely, poems. A lot of silence goes into such Every here “Mother of People Without Script”: work, if you listen carefully for it. same cawing crows, same ruined perches. Paj is not pam is not pab. irea D. Matthews is this year’s FRI., AUG. 2, 6:38 AM Blossom is not blanket is not help. A winner of the Yale Younger Poets (1/2) Same old hoes in fresh loam and the bald cockold who drags Ntug is not ntuj is not ntub. Prize, judged by Carl Phillips. Her work his tucked wife’s fat dog Edge is not sky is not wet. is formalist, but she doesn’t write often while he jogs in the forms we associate with poetry. On sheet of bamboo Fugues, text messages to the dead, imag- The two columns form a harmo- with indigo branch. ined outtakes from Wittgenstein, tart nized lament between women that ex- To txiav is not the txias. mini-operas, fairy tales: Matthews is poses, even as it patches over, differ- To scissor is not the cold. virtuosic, frantic, and darkly, very darkly, ences in time, place, privilege, and race. funny. “Simulacra” (Yale), her first col- The out-of-order texting suggests the When Vang reads the Hmong words lection, doesn’t feel like an anthology ways that poets disobey temporal rules, aloud (you can hear her do so on the of distractions or novelties. When a treating their long-dead predecessors Poetry Foundation’s Web site), they fine poet moves through such a vari- as collaborators. Matthews is reimag- sound, to me, nearly identical; and yet ety of forms, she becomes, with every ining poetry’s ancient function to con- when you see them the distinctions are new obstacle, more herself, more aligned nect the living to the dead, to engage clear. Every poem is different, by a little against accident. “We need change of with the past as an active, boisterous or by a lot, when it is read aloud. Here objects,” Emerson wrote. With prow- presence. “It avails not, time nor place— that gap, and all the clashes of cul- ess of this magnitude, relaxing the in- distance avails not,” Whitman wrote. ture and power it embodies, is in fact genuity would mean ruin. Poets, after all, have always known how the subject of the poem, which adopts Of the book’s several lares and pe- to trick death with irresistible texts. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 89 Carrie spent more than twenty years THE ART WORLD fashioning a doll-house mansion, now in the Museum of the City of New York, which contains miniature works THE ROARING STETTIES by artist friends. (Duchamp contrib- uted a bitsy “Nude Descending a Stair- A Florine Stettheimer retrospective. case.”) Ettie, the most effervescent of the sisters, wrote novels of female in- BY PETER SCHJELDAHL dependence and romantic disillusion- ment, under the bemusing pseudonym Henrie Waste. In Florine’s 1923 por- trait of her, she appears as a flapper goddess on a chaise adrift in a starry sky, next to a combined Mosaic burn- ing bush and Christmas tree. That ec- umenical gesture is characteristic of the Stetties’ cosmopolitan fervor, which extended to an active interest in the Harlem Renaissance, through their friend the critic, photographer, and patron Carl Van Vechten. Shut out of New York high society, on account of their being Jewish, the sisters made the most of their ostracism by becom- ing doyennes of liberty. Stettheimer’s passion for art started early. Having attended the Art Stu- dents League—figure studies in the show affirm her skills—she sojourned for several years with her sisters and Doyenne of liberty: Stettheimer’s “A Model (Nude Self-Portrait),” from 1915. her mother in Europe, studying art in Germany, attending lectures by his is a good time to take Flo- outsized cut flowers that barge in on Henri Bergson in Paris, and immers- T rine Stettheimer seriously. The her indoor scenes. She painted grass ing herself in museums. The women occasion is a retrospective of the New yellow. She seemed an eccentric out- returned to New York at the outbreak York artist, poet, designer, and Jazz lier to American modernism, and ap- of the First World War. To say that Age saloniste, at the Jewish Museum, preciations of her often run to the Stettheimer was, at that point, so- titled “Florine Stettheimer: Painting camp—it was likely in that spirit that phisticated is like calling water wet. Poetry.” The impetus is an itch to re- Andy Warhol called her his favorite She had a Symbolist bent, with affini- think old orders of merit in art his- artist. But what happens if, clearing ties for Gauguin, Bonnard, Ensor, tory. It’s not that Stettheimer, who our minds and looking afresh, we re- and Klimt, and inflections of Sergei died in 1944, at the age of seventy- cast the leading men she pictured, no- Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1912, three, needs rediscovering. She is se- tably Marcel Duchamp, in support- thrilled by “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune,” curely esteemed—or adored, more ing roles? What’s the drama when in Paris, she composed a sort of like it—for her ebulliently faux-naïve Stettheimer stars? fan-fiction ballet, “Orphée of the paintings of party scenes and of her Born in 1871, in Rochester, New Quat-z-Arts,” in which a girl, sepa- famous friends, and for her four sa- York, Stettheimer was the fourth of rated from her father during a festive tirical allegories of Manhattan, which five children of a banker, who ran out procession of art students, finds her- she called “Cathedrals”: symbol- on the family when she was still a child, self at a bacchanal with gods, god- packed phantasmagorias of Fifth Av- although they remained well off finan- desses, and Apache dancers. She enue, Broadway, Wall Street, and Art, cially. The two oldest offspring mar- dances with Orpheus until Mars in- at the Metropolitan Museum. ried. Florine and her sisters Carrie and trudes. The conception might have She painted in blazing primary col- Ettie—“the Stetties,” as they were worked, based on her terrific designs ors, plus white and some accenting known—never did. They lived with for it, which are included in the ret- black, with the odd insinuating pur- their mother, Rosetta, first on the rospective, but the show was never ple. Even her blues smolder. Greens Upper West Side and, later, near Car- produced. are less frequent; zealously urbane, negie Hall. Florine also maintained Further evidence that Stettheimer Stettheimer wasn’t much for nature, large and lavishly decorated rooms on could have been a major theatre de-

except, surreally, for the glories of the Bryant Park, as a studio and salon. signer is provided by the sets and UNIVERSITY OF ETTIEAND COLUMBIA STETTHEIMER ESTATE COURTESY

90 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 costumes that she made, using cello- They have individualized faces but phane, feathers, and sequins, for Ger- might almost be clones beneath the trude Stein’s buoyantly befuddling cloth—they’re not so much gender- opera, “Four Saints in Three Acts.” bending as gender-averaged. She made The production caused a sensation Van Vechten, who was gay but mar- on Broadway, in 1934, with music by ried twice, appear both epicene and he- Virgil Thomson, choreography by roic in a painting of him in his apart- Frederic Ashton, and an all-African- ment, amid symbols of his myriad American cast. It seems clear that vocations. She rendered the leading art Stettheimer might also have succeeded critic Henry McBride as the judge of at some of the other careers then open a tennis match. To finish a portrait to women: couture, perhaps. But, after of a sun-loving friend who was vaca- a solo exhibition at the Knoedler tioning on Nantucket, she sent a card Gallery, in 1916, brought no sales and daubed with seven shades of tan, for only tepid reviews, she swore off any him to select the one that pertained at public career, despite pleadings from the moment. friends such as Georgia O’Keeffe, who But Duchamp brings out more com- wrote to her, “I wish you would be- plex feelings in her work, whether she come ordinary like the rest of us and shows him helping to serve lobster at show your paintings this year!” She a picnic; operating a crank-and-spring did contribute something every now gizmo, to conjure an apparition of his and then to group shows, but the au- female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy; or ap- dience for her work was otherwise by pearing as a disembodied, mystic face, invitation only. in the manner of Christ on Veronica’s In 1915, Stettheimer painted per- Veil. Like Stettheimer, Duchamp came haps history’s first full-length nude from a well-to-do family, and shunned self-portrait by a woman, revealing a standard career in favor of a lifelong herself to be a true redhead. The pose vocation of entertaining himself. They is taken from “Olympia,” by Manet, were soul mates of a sort, you can tell. who had borrowed it from Titian’s Two years after her death, he collab- “Venus of Urbino,” but Stettheimer’s orated with McBride on a retrospec- left hand, instead of resting on her pu- tive of her work at the Museum of dendum, brandishes a bouquet of flow- Modern Art. ers. Appearing contentedly amused, Rich kids seldom become commit- she is short-haired, long-waisted, long- ted artists, though the Dada genera- legged, and small-breasted: a period tion featured another, Francis Picabia, knockout, at the age of forty-four. No who also attended Stettheimer’s salon. details of her love life are reported, She overcame what the card sharp though she liked men, if gingerly. (Ettie played by Charles Coburn, in Preston cut many pages out of Florine’s dia- Sturges’s “The Lady Eve,” diagnoses ries after her death—but, blessedly, she as the tragedy of the rich—“They don’t defied her command to destroy the need anything”—by making it her sub- works that remained in her studio.) In ject. Life as a serving of whipped cream one of her deft poems, “Occasionally,” on top of whipped cream functions as she writes of a type who “Rushed in / Got a master theme of her visions of de- singed / Got scared / Rushed out.” Ar- terminedly languid and deluxe but also mored “Against wear / And tears,” the intense conviviality. In one way, this speaker dismisses “The Always-to- jibed with the glamour of the Gatsby- be-Stranger,” whereupon “I turn on esque twenties in New York. But in my light / And become myself.” Van another, hugely consequential way, it Vechten described her as a “completely focussed the consolidation of a world- self-centered and dedicated person.” changing avant-garde. He wrote, “She did not inspire love, In her paintings, as in her homes, or affection, or even warm friendship, Stettheimer gathered the best and the but she did elicit interest, respect, ad- quirkiest spirits and energies—the col- miration, and enthusiasm.” lective genius—of her epoch, gave them Stettheimer peopled her pictures a whirl, and sent them spinning into with willowy figures—women in slinky the future. See the show. Become her gowns and men in close-fitting suits. latest interesting guest. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 91 been to give an organic logic to the ex- MUSICAL EVENTS plosive aesthetics of the avant-garde. She often associates her scores with natural phenomena—water, wind, snow, crystal C ATAC LYS M structures, vegetative growth—and the resultant music feels like the outcome of Chaya Czernowin’s new opera, “Infinite Now,” in Ghent. irreversible physical processes. Her 2010 orchestral piece “The Quiet,” recently BY ALEX ROSS recorded on the Wergo label, is typical. It begins in near-silence, with faint bass- drum rolls, a tremor of gong, fingernail scratches on drumskins, and breathy noises from the strings. Emanating from a large orchestra, such sounds create a sense of depopulated vastness. In the final few minutes, a quadruple-forte av- alanche of brass and percussion is un- leashed—a musical equivalent of the but- terfly effect, in which slight changes trigger cataclysms. Such momentous shifts occur through- out “Infinite Now,” which unfolds in a continuous two-and-a-half-hour span, the aural equivalent of an almost limit- less landscape. Its plot consists of two seemingly unrelated stories that become interwoven. One strand is based on Luk Perceval’s multilingual theatre piece “Front,” which had its première in Ham- burg, in 2014, in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War. That text incorporates excerpts from “All Quiet on the West- ern Front” and from another war novel, Henri Barbusse’s “Under Fire,” alongside soldiers’ letters and eyewitness testimo- nies, in English, Flemish, French, and German. The other strand is “Home- Czernowin often associates her scores with natural phenomena—water, wind, snow. coming,” a cryptic tale by the contempo- rary Chinese writer Can Xue, in which he days stand like angels in blue genre in modern opera. Episodes of un- a woman returns to a house she has known “T and gold, incomprehensible, above earthly beauty hint at Remarque’s angelic since childhood and finds it strangely the ring of annihilation.” Those words, presence, which seems to arise whenever transformed; the present owner insists from Erich Maria Remarque’s great war man-made horror collides with nature. that it is now poised at the edge of an novel of 1929, “All Quiet on the West- Czernowin was born in Haifa in 1957, abyss, and when the woman tries to leave ern Front,” are at the heart of “Infinite a child of Polish Holocaust survivors. she encounters inexplicable obstacles. The Now,” a harrowing and darkly majestic She has lived variously in Germany, Japan, common thread is entrapment: the sol- opera by the Israeli-born composer Chaya and Austria, and since 2009 she has been diers cannot escape the trenches, the Czernowin. The work had its première based at Harvard, where she has taught woman cannot escape the house. last month, at the Flemish Opera, in some of the most vibrant composers of When the Flemish Opera approached Ghent, not far from some of the blood- the rising generation. Her work is rooted Czernowin about making an opera of iest battlefields of the First World War. in the radical musical languages that sur- “Front,” she initially resisted, feeling that Czernowin’s score includes eruptions of faced after the Second World War: the she had spent enough time in the realm orchestral, vocal, and electronic pande- frenzied gestures of Iannis Xenakis, the of war. Her first theatrical work, the 2000 monium that evoke with unnerving im- visceral timbres of Helmut Lachenmann, opera “Pnima,” is an oblique study in the mediacy the chaos of battle and its af- the elemental textures of Giacinto Scelsi, incommunicability of trauma: an elderly termath. She has achieved, however, and the hyper-dense polyphony of Brian Holocaust survivor tries to convey his ex- something more than a sombre memo- Ferneyhough, who was one of Czernow- perience to his grandson, who struggles rial to death and destruction—a crowded in’s teachers. Her signal achievement has to grasp what he hears—the opera has

92 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY IRINA ROZOVSKY no words, only vocalizations—but who thing hard and moving” under her feet. is overwhelmed nonetheless. Czernowin, Pieces of Paul Bäumer’s narrative are jux- who had been seeking a way to bring taposed with that nightmare scenario, “Homecoming” to the stage, hit upon with the nurse’s tale following soon af- the notion of combining the story with terward. The musical textures then thin “Front,” realizing that she could amplify out, as if the proximity of horror had the resonance of both. In a commentary brought clarity. At times, the harmo- on “Infinite Now,” she writes that the nies brush against traditional tonality: a texts embody, from male and female per- D- minor triad on a guitar here, an E-flat- spectives alike, “an existential state of na- major triad in the voices there. kedness where the ordinary sense of con- In the fifth act, the cataclysm arrives. trol and reason is stripped away.” Wind howls on the soundtrack. The “Infinite Now” is divided into six acts, strings bow so hard that pitch disappears. each of which begins with a recording of Vocalists let out strangulated cries. Huge metal gates clanging shut. (Czernowin cluster chords accumulate. It all builds to and her collaborator, Carlo Laurenzi, a sonic hurricane—one of the most awe- from ircam, the Paris center for sonic some storms in musical history. A wrench- research, took the sound from YouTube ing scene from Remarque ensues, in which videos about prison life.) Then a com- Bäumer watches an enemy soldier die. plex electronic fabric kicks in: we hear, “Comrade, I did not want to kill you,” he at one time or another, voices talking; a says. “Forgive me.” In the final act, the woman reading “Homecoming” in Man- action seems to slide into the present, as darin; crowds and demonstrations; in- voices are altered to sound as though they dustrial hums and drones; train sounds; were coming from radios or speaker- the flutter of bird wings; cracking ice; phones. (“As in Skype with problems,” wind and water; news broadcasts; bits of the score notes.) The entire rampaging popular song; and high-pitched sine tones. force of Czernowin’s orchestra is fun- From this enveloping texture, voices and nelled into isolated tones—at one point, instruments emerge, sometimes assert- a three-minute brass drone on G. In the ively and sometimes almost impercepti- closing section, industrial noises give way bly. Two trios of singers deliver passages to natural ones: cicadas, steps in dry leaves, from “Front” and “Homecoming.” Six wind in trees, rushing water. The last speaking actors flesh out the wartime words belong to Can Xue’s heroine: “In characters, of whom the most striking the darkness I put on my clothes.” are Paul Bäumer, Remarque’s doomed The forces in Ghent, under the baton protagonist, and Nurse Elisabeth, who is of Titus Engel, made a heroic effort with based on Ellen La Motte, the author of a score that imposes unrelenting demands a brutal memoir of nursing on the West- on its performers. Terry Wey delivered ern Front. When a deserter tries to kill haunting countertenor lines, and four ex- himself, Elisabeth bitterly observes, “We pert Czernowin collaborators—the gui- must try to save his life, help him recover tarists Nico Couck and Yaron Deutsch until he is well enough to be stood up and the cellists Séverine Ballon and Chris- against a wall and shot.” tina Meissner—were featured in solo in- Those lacerating words occur in the strumental parts. Perceval directed the fourth act, in which the two halves of production, in austere fashion; the sets “Infinite Now” begin to merge. Up to were minimal and abstract, with actors this point, a characteristic Czernowin and singers inching about the stage in the mood of tense expectancy has prevailed, Robert Wilson fashion. Although the se- with stretches of rustling and whisper- verity befitted the subject, I wondered ing interrupted by spasms of orchestral whether Perceval might have done more fury. The tone shifts, though, when the to differentiate the opera’s two worlds, so protagonist of “Homecoming” tries and that the audience could better register the fails to leave the house. In an extrava- epiphany of their becoming one. Then gant, register-leaping aria for contralto again, an atmosphere of engulfing mys- voice—delivered spectacularly in Ghent tery, of the uncanny, is integral to the by Noa Frenkel, a regular Czernowin power of Czernowin’s conception. “In- collaborator—the woman sings of crawl- finite Now” captures the terror, and the ing outside the gate, in search of famil- wonder, of discovering that the world you iar grasslands, and encountering “some- thought you knew has forever changed. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 93 ever told on film have sprung from THE CURRENT CINEMA near-nothings. “Easy Living” (1937) de- pended on a fur coat being thrown from a penthouse roof and landing on the WE ARE FAMILY head of Jean Arthur, who was sitting on the top deck of a bus. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and “Chuck.” “Easy Living,” however, was written by Preston Sturges and directed by BY ANTHONY LANE Mitchell Leisen, both of whom knew how to keep a mood aloft, and how much fun could be had from Fifth Avenue alone, whereas poor James Gunn, who wrote and directed “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” has the whole of space to play with, or to get stranded in. The Guardians crash-land in an alien forest, followed shortly by another craft, which resembles a hard-boiled egg. From this steps a figure of authority, played with magisterial hairiness by Kurt Russell, who utters a line, to Quill, that is pretty much designed to sink the soul: “My name is Ego, and I’m your dad.” And so the curse of the backstory strikes again. Anything Darth Vader can do, Ego can do better. Any old fool in a cape can run a Death Star, but Ego has built his own planet, apparently after consulting the covers of Yes albums. Yet a world is not enough. “I wanted more. I desired meaning,” Ego admits. It is at this point that the movie, which has Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana return to the galaxy in James Gunn’s new movie. been motoring along nicely, fuelled by silliness and pep, begins to splutter. Gunn ear the end of “Guardians of the have a thing going, except that they don’t, decides to treat the quest for meaning N Galaxy” (2014), the hero, Peter Quill not really. Then, there is Drax (Dave seriously—a lethal move that not only (Chris Pratt), distracted the villain, who Bautista), with pecs of iron and no irony; leads to the noisy palaver of the climax had evil designs upon all of creation, by Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), who but also undermines Chris Pratt, who dancing at him. This was a moment to used to be an indestructible tree until likes to hold these movies at arm’s length, be thankful for. At last, you felt, some- he was destroyed, leaving nothing but a as it were, and to probe them for pom- one at Marvel was starting to heed the twig; and Rocket (voiced by Bradley posity. The Quill of the first film, if in- wise words of Vladimir Nabokov: “The Cooper), a raccoon-like pest who— formed that his long-lost dad was named difference between the comic side of no offense—should long since have been Ego, would have smirked like a ten-year- things, and their cosmic side, depends turned into a hat. old and asked to meet Uncle Id. upon one sibilant.” For the makers of The initial task of the team, who Media historians to come, gazing at superhero films, it’s not enough to toss can be hired to clean up any inter- the franchises that kicked off this cen- in a few sprinkles of light relief. The true galactic mess, is to slay a slobbering tury, will be struck by the desperation challenge is to remind your audience beast on behalf of the Sovereign, a re- with which most of them—the Aveng- that the very idea of saving the world— fulgent race whose clothes, complex- ers, the Guardians, and the road-bound or an infinity of worlds, or whatever— ions, hardware, and soft furnishings are mortals in the “Fast and the Furious” se- is in itself a joke, and that its puffy gran- deeply infused with gold. Imagine ries—ram home the theme of the fam- deur is begging to be popped. Let’s face dwelling full time in the elevators at ily, or, at least, of the ersatz clan that is the maniac and dance. Trump Tower, and you’ll have some made up of fellow-combatants. Could Quill now returns, in “Guardians of grasp of an average Sovereign day. As this be how pop culture responds to the the Galaxy Vol. 2,” with his cluster of the Guardians depart, job done, Rocket dissolution of old domestic norms? In companions intact. Gamora (Zoe Sal- steals some batteries, and his casual Gunn’s new film, almost everyone joins dana) is unsentimental, unafraid, and theft, believe it or not, is the root of the party. Quill and Ego agonize over green, as if a Spartan warrior had been the plot. Not that we should com- the missing years of their relationship; blended with an avocado. She and Quill plain. Half of the most enjoyable tales Gamora keeps fighting her cyborg sister,

94 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY DIEGO PATI„O Nebula (Karen Gillan, who is genuinely with the passengers stuttering along then was, whose punches we see—or freaky to behold), so brazenly that you in unison to the “B-b-b-baby” bit. barely see—flying toward the lens. Later come to dread their eventual reconcili- Liev Schreiber plays a real-life boxer, comes “Rocky,” which, in Wepner’s proud ation; Drax refers with unembarrassed Chuck Wepner, famed for going fifteen eyes, is based on his own defiant expe- Oedipal glee to his parents having sex; rounds with Muhammad Ali, in 1975. rience with Ali. When that film wins and even Yondu (Michael Rooker), a Or, to be accurate, almost fifteen; the the Oscar for Best Picture, Wepner says, blue-skinned mercenary with a magic fight was stopped with less than twenty “We won.” He introduces himself to Mohawk, starts yakking on about his seconds to go, not that that made any Stallone (played by Morgan Spector) in dissatisfying past. (To be fair, he does difference to Wepner’s raucous support- a restaurant, and even, with Stallone’s get a splendid sequence near the end, ers, especially in Bayonne, New Jersey. encouragement, auditions for a small descending slowly to the core of a vol- The movie shows him living there with role in “Rocky 2,” only to flame out, atile planet, to be greeted with the words his wife, Phyliss (Elisabeth Moss), and stoked on cocaine. “You look like Mary Poppins!” to their daughter, Kimberly (Melo Lud- Movies coiled up in other movies which Yondu replies, “Is he cool?”) We wig), delivering liquor and trusting that have a habit of becoming either cos- are reassured, in the credits, that the his coach, Al Braverman (Ron Perlman), tive or cute, but somehow Falardeau Guardians will return. Let’s hope that will get him the occasional bout. avoids the traps. This is partly a mat- Vol. 3 recaptures the fizz of the original, If “Chuck” grows bloody, that’s be- ter of texture—Chuck wears a thick instead of slumping into the most ex- cause Wepner, who could take any pun- plaid coat that could double as a pic- pensive group-therapy session in the ishment and seldom hit the canvas, was nic blanket—and partly because the universe. Stop looking over your shoul- known for leaking gore; he was some- performances feel no less lived-in. The ders, guys. Get back to the future. times, to his chagrin, called the Bleeder, cast could knock the Guardians of the which was the original title of the film. Galaxy on their backsides, any night iven the vast musical resources Yet the only gruesome sight here is Ron of the week. Schreiber moves with G available to Hollywood, how come Perlman eating a sandwich, and the ac- bearish stolidity, even when boxing, the choice of songs, in major films, is tion in the ring—including the match and nothing is more poignantly de- often so conservative and so cramped? with Ali, whom Braverman refers to as layed than Chuck’s realization that Imagine harassed producers rooting Mahatma, and an early encounter with most of his wounds were self-inflicted. around in their desk drawers and pull- Terry Hinke, known as the Stormin’ Moss is sharper on the uptake; watch ing out a double CD, in a cracked case, Mormon—totals less than ten minutes. her console Chuck on the eve of the entitled “Hits of the ’70s.” That would In truth, this isn’t a boxing movie at all. Ali fight, drawing him to her breast explain why “Guardians of the Galaxy It’s a movie about the kinds of existence but rolling her eyes to the heavens. Vol. 2,” needing something for Baby in which boxing, or the swagger of box- She knows how this will end. As her Groot to groove to, opts for “Mr. Blue ing movies, can feel like a big deal. successor, a redhead named Linda, Sky,” previously heard in “Paul Blart: Look at Chuck, for instance, cud- Naomi Watts is in tough and unkid- Mall Cop.” Later, in case we’ve forgot- dling up to Phyliss, as they watch An- dable form, and her verdict on the ten that the film is about fathers and thony Quinn in “Requiem for a Heavy- Bleeder is at once harsh, precise, and sons, we get “Father and Son,” by Cat weight” (1962) and recite the lines from touched with affectionate hope. Stevens. Not to be outdone, Philippe memory. That film began as a televi- “There’s more to you than meets the Falardeau’s new movie, “Chuck,” which sion drama, starring Jack Palance. (There eye, Chuck Wepner,” she says, adding, is squarely set in the seventies, shows was also a version, now lost, on British “Not much, just enough.”  one ugly car being driven to “You TV, with a pre-007 Sean Connery.) And Sexy Thing,” and another being driven whom does Quinn battle at the begin- NEWYORKER.COM to “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” ning of “Requiem”? Cassius Clay, as he Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, MAY 15, 2017 95 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 Drew Dernavich, must be received by Sunday, May 14th. The finalists in the May 1st contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the May 29th 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

“And where was the outrage over Alan’s standing desk?” Hannah Roberts, Los Angeles, Calif.

“Like I’m the first person who’s tried sleeping their way to the top.” “Your insurance company got back to us.” Glen Donaldson, Brisbane, Australia Laurie Blayney, Louisville, Ky.

“Don’t just stand there. Tuck me in.” Nick Gaudio, Austin, Texas