PRICE $8.99 OCT. 3, 2016

OCTOBER 3, 2016

5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 23 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Steve Coll on terrorism and the election; Staten Islander for Trump; surfing scholar; sued by David Irving; Slate turns twenty. ANNALS OF L AW Jeffrey Toobin 28 In the Balance What will the next Supreme Court bring? SHOUTS & MURMURS Paul Rudnick 35 Ask Dr. Jellowitz-Kessler ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE A RTS Ariel Levy 36 Lady Bits Ali Wong’s radical standup. A REPORTER AT LARGE Jon Lee Anderson 42 The Cuba Play How transformative will Obama’s effort prove? PROFILES Thomas Meaney 54 Germany’s New Nationalists The far right’s surprising leader. FICTION Etgar Keret 62 “To the Moon and Back” THE CRITICS A CRITIC AT LARGE Akash Kapur 66 The return of utopia. BOOKS 71 Briefly Noted Laura Miller 72 Tana French’s “The Trespasser.” THERT A WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 76 “Jerusalem, 1000-1400.” POP MUSIC Hua Hsu 78 Bon Iver’s “22, A Million.” THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 80 “The Magnificent Seven,” “Goat.” POEMS Philip Levine 48 “South” Nyla Matuk 65 “Resolve” COVER Chris Ware “Shift”

DRAWINGS Drew Panckeri, Roz Chast, Corey Pandolph, Matthew Diffee, Tom Toro, Sara Lautman, Joe Dator, Ken Krimstein, Frank Cotham, Amy Hwang, Tom Chitty, Benjamin Schwartz, John McNamee, Charlie Hankin, Edward Steed, P. C. Vey SPOTS Christoph Abbrederis

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Jeffrey Toobin (“In the Balance,” p. 28) Jon Lee Anderson (“The Cuba Play,” has written two books about the Su- p. 42), the author of “Che Guevara: A preme Court: “The Nine” and “The Revolutionary Life,” has written exten- Oath.” His latest book, “American Heir- sively about Cuba since he lived there, ess: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, in the early nineteen-nineties. His next Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst,” came book is about the Cuban Revolution out in August. and Fidel Castro.

Steve Coll (Comment, p. 23) is the dean Ariel Levy (“Lady Bits,” p. 36), a staff of the Graduate School of Journalism writer, is at work on a book, coming out at Columbia. next spring, based on her New Yorker article “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” Akash Kapur (A Critic at Large, p. 66), the author of “India Becoming,” is writ- Laura Miller (Books, p. 72), a books and ing a book set in the intentional com- culture columnist for Salon, is the au- munity of Auroville, in India, where he thor of “The Magician’s Book: A Skep- grew up. tic’s Adventures in Narnia.”

Nyla Matuk (Poem, p. 65) will publish Thomas Meaney (“Germany’s New Na- “Stranger,” her second book of poems, tionalists,” p. 54), a writer and a histo- in the fall. rian, is working on a book about Amer- ican thinkers and decolonization. Next Etgar Keret (Fiction, p. 62) is an Israeli year, he will be the Einstein Fellow in writer. “The Seven Good Years” is his Potsdam, Germany. most recent book. Chris Ware (Cover) is the author of Paul Rudnick (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 35) “Building Stories.” A solo exhibition is the author of “It’s All Your Fault,” of his work opens in Bologna, Italy, in which was published earlier this year. November.

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

SCREENING ROOM TRUMP AND THE TRUTH In the documentary short “Joe’s A series of reported essays examines Violin,” a Holocaust survivor’s the untruths that have fuelled Donald instrument finds a new home. Trump’s Presidential campaign.

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.) MUNDAY OLIVER RICHMAN; BOB

2 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 THE MAIL

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD kindly whites assisting people to free- dom but, rather, of the ingenuity and Kathryn Schulz’s article on the exagger- bravery of black slaves, who trusted that ated importance of the Underground Rail- unknown white people might be less road to the abolition movement is mis- dangerous than those who had claimed guided (“Derailed,” August 22nd). Schulz ownership of them. Schulz writes that argues that both blacks and whites have “we, as a nation,” kept people in bond- laid claim to heroic tales of the Railroad age and that “we” are drawn to these sto- as a way to avoid the shame of either en- ries because they illustrate our finest slavement or complicity. But, for most moral selves. I would point out that the participants, the Railroad was a danger- nation of “we” in this formulation still ous enterprise, and its history is full of seems largely to mean white people. stories of setbacks, as slaveholders de- Dorothy J. Berry ployed the entire repressive machinery of Minneapolis, Minn. the state to foil escape attempts. Nor was the steady stream of runaways to the North Schulz’s focus on European-American insignificant. The numbers may not have conductors of the Underground Railroad been as great as we like to think, but they overlooks some of the most important fed into a burgeoning abolitionist move- people in this process: Maroons, the ment. Schulz writes that “slavery was in- African- Americans who, against all odds stitutional” and the Railroad merely the and legal barriers, extricated themselves “personal” acts of individual citizens. How- from enslavement and formed self-reliant ever, the Railroad was part of a radical, resistance communities. Schulz mentions interracial social movement that thrived the Maroons just once, and distinguishes in areas with free-black populations and them as separate from the Underground antislavery organizations. To minimize Railroad. In fact, they were a crucial and its part in the history of abolition is to under-recognized part of it. In my re- miss the central role of African-Americans, search on Maroon communities, I have free and enslaved, in defining their tradi- found that, at the time the Railroad func- tions of protest. tioned, there were tens of thousands of Manisha Sinha Maroons living outside the geographic Draper Chair in American History reach of slavery—in Northern states, Can- University of Connecticut ada, and Mexico—and even within its Storrs, Conn. boundaries. “Runaways” of the Under- ground Railroad became Maroons, and As someone who has dedicated her life a part of this powerful network of peo- to working in African-American cultural- ple that challenged the racism and vio- heritage repositories, I am saddened to lence of the wider society. I agree that we read an article that works so hard to make need to let go of the Eurocentric notion the white experience central to the dis- of the Underground Railroad, but we cussion of slavery, while claiming to do can’t recast the Underground Railroad otherwise. I appreciate that Schulz points as a minor part of the resistance among out the statistical anomaly of a person African-Americans, either. gaining freedom by extraordinary meth- Daniel O. Sayers ods, such as shipping himself in a box, Chair, Department of Anthropology but her interpretation—that highlight- American University ing these stories serves primarily to bol- Washington, D.C. ster white people’s opinions of them- selves—still puts the focus on white • lives. I grew up on picture books like Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to “Many Thousand Gone,” by the African- [email protected]. Letters may be edited American author Virginia Hamilton, for length and clarity, and may be published in and since childhood I have envisaged the any medium. We regret that owing to the volume Underground Railroad as a tale not of of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 3

SEPTEMBER 28 – OCTOBER 4, 2016 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The American artist Spencer Finch is an eco-conceptualist, distilling the essence of landscape (light, water, air) into eye-catching ruminations on memory and the passage of time. In “Lost Man Creek,” his new piece for the Public Art Fund, Finch turns his attention to trees. Starting Oct. 1, four thousand saplings will grow in the MetroTech Commons, in downtown Brooklyn, in a 1:100-scale re-creation of seven hundred and ninety acres of California’s Redwood National Park, giving old growth a fresh start.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM KREMER but, for all the theatricality, his absence, a void that allows our own thoughts about gender, and about sport as ritual, to creep into the space, too. A RT It’s an essential show not only for anyone inter- ested in American sculpture but also for any- 1 one reflecting on trans identity. (Gladstone, 515 and endured a long period of statelessness before W. 24th St. 212-206-9300.) MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES emigrating to New York, where they’re seen on a ferry, looking anxious next to a windblown Amer- Jeff Elrod Museum of Modern Art ican flag. Touching on issues of displacement and The California-born Brooklynite’s big, largely “Kai Althoff: and then leave me to the immigration, the work also hints at the vagaries computer-generated and drawing-intensive paint- common swifts (und dann überlasst mich den of memory, in images that have been fragmented, ings, which are mostly grisaille, speak a patois of Mauerseglern)” cropped, or all but obscured by reflected light. adventurous abstraction with a German accent. This mid-career retrospective of the fifty-year-old Vintage how-to photography books—“Dealing Elrod has absorbed lessons from, chiefly, Albert German artist, best known for his ephebic strain with Difficult Situations,” “Total Picture Con- Oehlen, in how to jujitsu the challenge to paint- of expressionism, transforms part of the muse- trol”—are stacked on the floor like totems, sou- ing of digital media and combat the prevalent um’s sixth floor into a gauze-lined attic, strewn venirs of an oblivious parallel world. Through Oct. palls of zombie jadedness. He complicates mat- with objects including (but not limited to) paint- 22. (Hauser & Wirth, 32 E. 69th St. 212-794-4970.) ters with crepuscular textures, eccentric stretcher ings, childhood drawings, glazed ceramics, bal- shapes, and flurries of taped white lines. No two let slippers, couches, dolls, effigies, and a stack Marcia Resnick works are much alike. Collectively, they suggest of art works wrapped in brown paper. Althoff Resnick photographed New York’s downtown a dozing subject (painting?) being slapped wide emerged from the hothouse of nineteen-nineties scene in the eighties, after studying with the Cal- awake. Through Oct. 22. (Luhring Augustine, 531 Cologne, and the sardonic figurative painting Arts guru John Baldessari. Whether her work hon- W. 24th St. 212-206-9100.) that was in fashion there influenced his images ors or spoofs conceptual art, it’s reliably clever of triangle-nosed miscreants and lovers lost in and handsome. Three identical pictures of a man Os Gêmeos space; several later paintings (made after the artist gazing over the Grand Canyon are painted with The Brazilian artists (and identical twins) Gus- moved to Brooklyn) depict Hasidic Jews, among gouache, imitating the sky or turning the figure tavo and Otávio Pandolfo have festooned every them two jocular men with payot and tzitzit. Alt- into a silhouette. (Fun fact: the model was the wall of the gallery with their signature colorful hoff has always flitted between mediums, and artist James Welling.) The most playful sequence images of taggers and break-dancers with flat, yel- alongside his sensitive drawings of grandes dames in the exhibition pairs black-and-white images low faces. The brothers pay homage to New York; and tender boys (indebted to the Symbolist tra- taken out in the world with deliberately crude one painting stars a sequin-clad heroine riding on dition of Munch and Puvis de Chavannes) are miniature re-creations constructed in Resnick’s the back of a 6 train. But even viewers with a soft papier-mâché ghouls passed out at a dinner table, loft: crumpled paper becomes a mountain range, spot for street art—or visitors seduced by the d.j. an instrumental audio track, and the pumped-in a puff of cotton stands in for a cloud, chocolate booth outfitted with Victrola horns—are unlikely aroma of oud. What unites Althoff’s works is candies echo a row of tires. Through Nov. 5. (Bell, to be swayed by the artists’ puerile sculptures. A a quality of evanescence, down to the artist- 16 E. 71st St. 212-249-9400.) rotating, round-shouldered hominid on a flower- designed catalogue (whose lead essay is written bedecked turntable would seem more appropriate by a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi), which is wrapped Karin Schneider at F.A.O. Schwarz than on the streets of São Paulo, in delicate vellum. This is a Gesamtkunstwerk on The Brazilian artist reboots historical modern- and an anthropomorphized crescent moon seems the cusp of collapse, and it’s that fragility, more ism without any apparent anxiety of influence designed to generate hashtags. Through Oct. 22. than Althoff’s often wearying sentimentality, that (no small feat) in this rigorous, elegant show. (Lehmann Maupin, 536 W. 22nd St. 212-255-2923.) makes the exhibition so moving. Through Jan. 22. Sixteen square monochrome paintings, all nearly black, are mounted on a steel armature; Schnei- Robert Polidori Asia Society der’s copy of a 1928 painting by Tarsila do Ama- Three huge color images of India are each “No Limits: Zao Wou-ki” ral intones the Brazilian avant-garde just as the stitched together from multiple photographs— The Chinese-born French artist, who died in monochromes channel Ad Reinhardt. The paint- a “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” version of 2013, was a significant figure of postwar Euro- ings are subject to yet another intertextual wrin- NASA’s maps of the moon. The biggest, at forty pean painting, but this is the first U.S. museum kle: they are sold with the understanding that an- feet long, tracks a row of tenements in Mumbai, retrospective of Zao’s saturated, calligraphic, and other artist must be allowed to paint over them its residents eying the camera warily from across at times bombastic abstractions. Trained in both in the future. For Schneider, quotation and adap- a trash-clogged canal. The backs of brick build- oil and Chinese ink painting at Hangzhou’s pro- tation are not ends in themselves but, rather, ef- ings are covered in a patchwork of corrugated gressive National Academy of Fine Arts, Zao forts to dismantle the tyranny of style—a neces- sheet metal, faded billboards, rags, and laundry moved to Paris in 1948 and enjoyed quick suc- sary step to insure that art is valued as more than lines, like a readymade Rauschenbergian com- cess for such works as “Lune Noire,” a cloudy riff an asset. Through Oct. 20. (Lévy, 909 Madison Ave., bine. Another piece surveys a hillside slum from on Paul Klee, featuring a crenellated fortress and at 73rd St. 212-772-2004.) above, a maze of flat-roofed houses—some col- what look like six Eiffel Towers. Hazy fields of 1 lapsed, others painted bright colors—sprawl- color, sprinkled with runes adapted from Shang- ing like a single organism. What elevates Po- era oracle-bone script, are wonderful specimens GALLERIES—CHELSEA lidori’s images above poverty porn is his balance of fifties informel abstraction. Later in his career, of specificity and spectacle, which grounds the however, Zao’s paintings became overblown. Per- Matthew Barney work in the rich history of landscape photogra- haps the most impressive works here are the small- When Barney made his début, in 1991, at the Glad- phy. Through Oct. 15. (Kasmin, 293 Tenth Ave., at est: archaized lithographs of fish and wolves, cre- stone gallery, the then twenty-four-year-old’s sub- 27th St. 212-563-4474.) ated to accompany poems by his close friend, versive, subterranean universe felt sui generis. At Henri Michaux. Through Jan. 8. its core was a performance, enacted before the Carol Rama 1 show opened: Barney strapped himself in a har- The self-taught Italian artist faced censorship for ness and drew on the gallery’s ceilings and walls. her early work: rowdy, racy watercolors, includ- GALLERIES—UPTOWN In the exhibition, through video, sculpture, and ing one here, made sometime between 1938 and photography, the artist described the power and 1940, depicting a goggle-eyed figure pleasuring Zoe Leonard the limitations of male strength, male anxiety, a quantity of appendages. Rama later turned to Working with a cache of rediscovered family snap- and male self-interest—all the while examining assemblage; her compact, light-absorbing com- shots, the brilliant New York conceptualist probes gender fluidity. Spectators lined up around the positions of rubber tires allude to the bicycle both photographic truth and personal history. The block. What is most striking about this mini-ret- factory owned by her father, who killed himself original images have been rephotographed, often rospective of that early work is the elegance of when it went bankrupt. In her seventies, the art- several times, and arranged in pairs and groups Barney’s line, seen in carefully executed wres- ist returned to works on paper, furiously original that suggest shifting points of view. The primary tling mats, lockers, weights, and a bench press ink drawings in which the erotic collides with a subjects are Leonard’s grandmother and mother, made of Vaseline (and refrigerated to retain its mechanical world of pistons and shafts. Through who survived the Second World War in Warsaw shape). They emphasize not only the artist’s hand Oct. 22. (McCaffrey, 514 W. 26th St. 212-988-2200.)

6 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016

othy, Blanche, and Rose. (DR2, at 103 E. 15th St. 212-727-2737. In previews. Opens Oct. 3.) THE THEATRE Tick, Tick . . . Boom! Keen Company revives this autobiographical musi- 1 cal by Jonathan Larson (“Rent”), about a composer in astrological charts. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 on the verge of turning thirty. Jonathan Silverstein OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin Sept. 30.) directs. (Acorn, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. Pre- views begin Oct. 4.) Battlefield Love, Love, Love Three decades after his epic version of “The Ma- The Roundabout stages a new play by Mike Bart- Vietgone habharata,” Peter Brook stages this hour-long piece lett (“King Charles III”), in which a London cou- Manhattan Theatre Club stages a play by Qui (co-directed with Marie-Hélène Estienne) drawn ple (Amy Ryan and Richard Armitage) meet in Nguyen, directed by May Adrales, about two Viet- from the Sanskrit poem. (BAM’s Harvey Theatre, 651 the sixties and weather the next four decades to- nam War refugees (based on the playwright’s par- Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Sept. 28-Oct. 9.) gether. Michael Mayer directs. (Laura Pels, 111 ents) in a relocation camp in Arkansas. (City Cen- W. 46th St. 212-719-1300. In previews.) ter Stage I, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Previews The Cherry Orchard begin Oct. 4.) The Roundabout presents a new adaptation of the Oh, Hello on Broadway 1 Chekhov play by Stephen Karam (“The Humans”), An evening with Gil Faizon and George St. Geeg- directed by Simon Godwin and starring Diane land, two Alan Alda-obsessed Upper West Side NOW PLAYING Lane, Tavi Gevinson, Joel Grey, Chuck Cooper, geezers played by the comedians Nick Kroll and and John Glover. (American Airlines Theatre, 227 John Mulaney. Alex Timbers directs. (Lyceum, 149 Aubergine W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. In previews.) W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) Ray (Tim Kang), a shambolic young chef, has a knack for connecting with people through meals—except The Encounter Plenty his father, whose inaccessibility is pushed to the ex- Simon McBurney conceived, directs, and performs In David Leveaux’s revival of the David Hare treme when he falls terminally ill. The playwright this theatrical event, in which the audience mem- drama, last seen at the Public in 1982, Rachel Weisz Julia Cho mines her themes of food and death for as bers wear headphones as three- dimensional sound- plays a British secret agent adjusting to everyday many convergences and epiphanies as she can fit into scapes re-create a 1969 journey into the Brazilian life after working in Nazi-occupied France. (Public, two hours, though her sharpest insights tend to ar- rain forest. (Golden, 252 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. Previews begin Oct. 4.) rive via tossed-off jokes rather than from the heavily In previews. Opens Sept. 29.) underlined profundities that the play is structured Public Enemy around. She is particularly skilled at introducing Falsettos Hal Brooks directs David Harrower’s adaptation of characters: Sue Jean Kim, as Ray’s girlfriend, and James Lapine directs a revival of the 1992 mu- Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” in which a doc- Stephen Park, as Ray’s father, both make their en- sical, with a score by William Finn, in which an tor discovers that his town’s main tourist attrac- trances in fast, funny, angry scenes that instantly re- unconventional family navigates gay life, AIDS, tion is toxic. (Pearl, 555 W. 42nd St. 212-563-9261. veal their personalities at their most heightened. But and bar mitzvahs in Koch-era Manhattan. With Previews begin Sept. 29.) her ending is less sure; the last scenes feel like one Christian Borle, Andrew Rannells, and Stepha - finale after another, extending well past the play’s nie J. Block. (Walter Kerr, 219 W. 48th St. 212-239- The Roads to Home natural life span. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd 6200. Previews begin Sept. 29.) Primary Stages presents Horton Foote’s 1982 play St. 212-279-4200. Through Oct. 2.) about three women in Houston in the nineteen- Fit for a Queen twenties, directed by Michael Wilson and featur- Bears in Space The Classical Theatre of Harlem presents a new ing the playwright’s daughter Hallie Foote. (Cherry Four adorable young Irishmen, posing moodily play by Betty Shamieh (“The Black Eyed”), in- Lane, 38 Commerce St. 866-811-4111. In previews.) like the galaxy’s most absurdist boy band before spired by the life of Hatshepsut, a woman who an array of intentionally cruddy props and poorly ruled as pharaoh in ancient Egypt. (3LD Art & Sell / Buy / Date constructed puppets, want to take you on a jour- Technology Center, 80 Greenwich St. cthnyc.org. Pre- Sarah Jones (“Bridge & Tunnel”) performs a new ney through space and time with two very mangy views begin Oct. 4.) multicharacter solo show exploring the commer- bears. One bear has the hots for the dying cap- cial sex industry, directed by Carolyn Cantor for tain; the other thinks he’d make a pretty good cap- The Front Page Manhattan Theatre Club. (City Center Stage II, tain himself. Together, they must face a captain- Nathan Lane, John Slattery, John Goodman, Jef- 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. In previews.) despising despot, played by Jack Gleeson, whom you ferson Mays, Sherie Rene Scott, Holland Taylor, might recall in the role of King Joffrey on “Game of and Robert Morse star in Jack O’Brien’s revival of She Stoops to Conquer Thrones”; in Eoghan Quinn’s play, happily, he turns the 1928 comedy, about Chicago newspapermen on The Actors Company Theatre revives the his talent for callow megalomania to the service of the crime beat. (Broadhurst, 235 W. 44th St. 212-239- eighteenth- century comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, silliness. Despite their youth, these Irishmen and 6200. In previews.) in which a young lady poses as a barmaid to ap- their bears have mastered the strange alchemy of peal to a shy suitor. Scott Alan Evans directs. transforming misshapen jokes and awkward repar- Heisenberg (Clurman, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. Previews tee into contagious hilarity, and underneath their Mary-Louise Parker and Denis Arndt reprise their begin Oct. 4.) endless sarcasm they are really very sweet. (59E59, roles in Simon Stephens’s drama, about two strang- at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. Through Oct. 2.) ers who cross paths at a London train station. Mark Songs of Lear Brokaw directs the Manhattan Theatre Club pro- At the Next Wave Festival, Poland’s Song of the The Black Crook duction. (Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212- Goat Theatre performs this song cycle, derived After the Civil War, playgoers didn’t want serious 239-6200. In previews.) from “King Lear” and polyphonic Corsican chant- drama: they wanted glitz, girls, and fireworks. Enter ing. (BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 718-636- “The Black Crook,” from 1866, sometimes cited as Holiday Inn 4100. Sept. 28-Oct. 1.) the first American musical. A melodrama in the A new musical from the Roundabout, featuring European tradition, though weirder and more vul- the songs of Irving Berlin and based on the clas- Stuffed gar, it concerns an impoverished painter and an evil sic 1942 film; Bryce Pinkham and Corbin Bleu The comedian Lisa Lampanelli wrote and stars sorcerer who makes deals with devils. The director fill in, respectively, for Bing Crosby and Fred As- in a play that braids together the stories of four Joshua William Gelb probably hasn’t struck any such taire. (Studio 54, at 254 W. 54th St. 212-719-1300. women with food issues. Jackson Gay directs Faustian bargains. His modest, small-cast adapta- In previews.) WP Theatre’s production. (McGinn/Cazale, 2162 tion (minimal chorus girls, no pyrotechnics) is part Broadway, at 76th St. 212-246-4422. In previews.) revival, part homage, and part deconstruction, in the A Life mode of recent shows like “Indecent” and “Shuffle In Adam Bock’s play, directed by Anne Kauff- That Golden Girls Show! Along.” Gelb’s version never makes the case for the man, David Hyde Pierce plays a man who re- A parody of the beloved Miami-set sitcom, with enduring worth of the original—leaden jokes, in- covers from a breakup by looking for answers puppets re-creating the adventures of Sophia, Dor- comprehensible plot, a fairy queen named Stalacta.

8 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 THE THEATRE

But, in also telling the story of its writer, Charles M. kitchen chopping vegetables and talking—about Barras, who fell or threw himself from a train fol- debts, about Herman Melville, about the new In- lowing the spectacle’s success, Gelb locates quiet dian place in town, and, often, about the deceased tragedy amid the spangle showers and the baby bal- patriarch, Thomas, who left a hole in the middle let. (Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. 212-352-3101.) of their lives. That’s how the election makes them feel, too: adrift and bewildered. “Everyone I know Hamlet is scared,” one of them says. Nelson avoids the over- Stripped down, in the round, and back home after blown tropes of family drama, giving us a carefully a tour around town, this production, by the Public’s calibrated slice of life: after a while, your senses ad- Mobile Unit, just completed a three-week itinerary just, as if in a darkened room. Under Nelson’s direc- of community centers, prisons, and shelters in all tion, the play is a marvel of ensemble acting, with five boroughs, and has now settled in at headquar- six performers (Maryann Plunkett, Roberta Max- ters for another three weeks. Rather than apply a well, Jay O. Sanders, Lynn Hawley, Amy Warren, single modernizing concept, the director Patricia and Meg Gibson) as attuned to one another as art- McGregor smartly opts for a disparate selection of ists can be. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) mostly subtle resonances: Hamlet (a spellbinding Chukwudi Iwuji) sulks in his cardigan sweater and Where Did We Sit on the Bus? seethes with sarcasm and pain, like a reanimated Hip-hop musical meets one-man band in Brian Kurt Cobain; his father’s ghost (Timothy D. Stick- Quijada’s autobiographical show, framed as the ney, who also makes a mean Claudius) haunts dou- life story he’ll one day tell his child. Born to Sal- bly, stalking the castle in a karakul hat in a way that vadoran parents in the suburbs of Chicago, Qui- evokes the ill-slain Patrice Lumumba. The compa- jada wants to wrestle with heavy themes of legacy ny’s time out in the world seems to have energized and assimilation, but his analysis is disappoint- it with uncommon urgency and verve. (Public, 425 ingly lightweight, and his narrative keeps tilting Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) toward an all-too-familiar memoir of his strug- gles to break into show biz. Much of the tale is Marie and Rosetta told in rhyme, and Quijada accompanies himself It is so rare for a play about the inner lives of black with the aid of a sequencer, making live loops (in women to center on their intimacy and not world the style of the comedian Reggie Watts) of his politics or degradation that the very fact of George own beatboxing, singing, harmonica-playing, and Brant’s loving two-character script, strongly and miniature-guitar strumming. His looks recall the sensitively directed by Neil Pepe, is refreshing. The young Jerry Lewis, and the resemblance extends ninety-minute work follows the growing closeness to his meaty physicality, his self-mocking cocki- between the gospel powerhouse Sister Rosetta ness, his little-boy vulnerability, his unabashed Tharpe (Kecia Lewis) and her young protégée, the silliness, and his weakness for sentimentality. (En- sweet-faced Marie Knight (Rebecca Naomi Jones). semble Studio Theatre, 549 W. 52nd St. 866-811-4111.) As the two women exchange licks on piano and gui- tar (Elvis learned a lot from Tharpe’s strong strum- The Wolves ming), it becomes clear that Tharpe is drawn to When a show can brag about both fancy footwork the young woman’s gentleness—but how to love a and deft wordplay, it’s usually a musical. But, woman, given the strictures of the black church? aside from a team cheer—and even that’s more of Lewis not only inhabits Tharpe’s bones and muscle; a howl—Sarah DeLappe’s new play, produced by she raises the roof with her own voice, one that comes the Playwrights Realm, is music-free. Rather, she from the soul of a great theatre artist who’s finally turns her attention to an indoor soccer team made been given a chance to show what she can do. (At- up of girls in junior high. We never see the Wolves lantic Theatre Company, 336 W. 20th St. 866-811-4111.) compete; they stretch, warm up, and run drills on the Astroturfed set, all while gabbing about ev- A 24-Decade History of Popular Music erything from menstruation to the Khmer Rouge. Act I: 1776-1806, the first in a series of three-hour DeLappe has an uncanny ear for the lightning-fast concerts from the playwright and performer Taylor way that teen girls ricochet among seemingly un- Mac, begins with Mac entering the theatre dressed related subjects, offense and defense, as they try like an illegal firework. The assless costume, cour- to figure out how and where they fit: with them- tesy of the designer Machine Dazzle, shimmers selves, with family and friends, or with commu- with glitter, panniers made from L.E.D. lights, nity. Under Lila Neugebauer’s assured direction, and a tinsel-strewn headpiece. It’s hardly the most the ensemble cast is sensational, suggesting the coruscating element of this project, which refracts sisterhood of a genuine team while letting each America’s history through two hundred and for- individual player shine. (The Duke on 42nd Street, ty-six songs popularized between 1776 and 2016, 229 W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010. Through Sept. 29.) from “Yankee Doodle” to Patti Smith’s “Birdland” 1 and beyond. (Credit the pianist Matt Ray with the gorgeous arrangements for an orchestra that begins ALSO NOTABLE with twenty-four members and dwindles to just one.) Yes, the audience participation is sometimes All the Ways to Say I Love You Lucille Lortel. • An unhygienic, and Mac’s patter, wry and frantic, oc- American in Paris Palace. • The Birds 59E59. Through casionally wears. But the show’s sense of adven- Oct. 1. • Cats Neil Simon. • The Color Purple Ja- ture and event, of beauty and ruin, of sheer the- cobs. • A Day by the Sea Beckett. • Empathitrax atrical audacity is overpowering. On Oct. 8, Mac HERE. Through Oct. 1. • Fiddler on the Roof Broad- will combine all eight of the concerts into one ec- way Theatre. • Fiorello! East 13th Street The- static, intermissionless, unrepeatable twenty-four- atre. • Hamilton Richard Rodgers. • Hit the Body hour marathon. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., Alarm Performing Garage. Through Oct. 2. • The Hu- Brooklyn. 718-254-8779.) mans Schoenfeld. • Maestro 59E59. • Nat Turner in Jerusalem New York Theatre Workshop. • School of What Did You Expect? Rock Winter Garden. • Sense & Sensibility Gym at In the second installment of Richard Nelson’s Judson. • Small Mouth Sounds Pershing Square Sig- delicate trilogy, which follows a Rhinebeck fam- nature Center. • Something Rotten! St. James. • A ily called the Gabriels through the current elec- Taste of Honey Pearl. • Underground Railroad tion year, the women of the household are in the Game Ars Nova. • Waitress Brooks Atkinson.

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 9 broad range, offers its second annual festival, with four concerts, each curated by a differ- ent member of the ensemble. Among the di- CLASSICAL MUSIC verse offerings are a new string-quartet opera by Tony Prabowo (with the soprano Tony Ar- 1 nold); a work by Wang Lu, inspired by Piero soprano Blythe Gaissert, respectively) in the della Francesca’s “Madonna del Parto”; and OPERA grand environs of the Harmonie Club, a private classics by Cage, Takemitsu, Dutilleux, Bee- Upper East Side social club that, suitably enough thoven, and Grieg. (Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A Metropolitan Opera for the jilted Miss Havisham, also hosts wed- W. 13th St. brownpapertickets.com. Sept. 28-29 Christmas comes early this year, as the Met pre- dings; Geoffrey McDonald conducts. (4 E. 60th and Oct. 1-2 at 8.) sents the first of three runs of a holiday favorite— St. osopera.org. Sept. 29 at 7 and Sept. 30 at 7:30.) Franco Zeffirelli’s snow-kissed staging of Pucci- Cantata Profana: “Serenade” ni’s evergreen romance “La Bohème.” Carlo Rizzi BAM: “The Hunger” Schoenberg’s “Serenade” is simultaneously a conducts Ailyn Pérez, Susanna Phillips, Dmy- Opera’s definitions keep getting broader. Donna- nineteen-twenties atonal masterwork and a trib- tro Popov, and David Bizic in the leading roles. cha Dennehy, a leading Irish composer and a fa- ute to the cabaret music—a genre the composer (Sept. 28 at 7:30 and Oct. 1 at 8.) • The season’s first vorite of the transatlantic avant-garde, expands himself contributed to—that surrounded him new production is Mariusz Treliński’s staging of it further in this work, based on Asenath Nich- in Vienna and Berlin. Among its seven move- “Tristan und Isolde”—which may well be an aus- olson’s personal account of the Great Famine of ments (which include a setting of a Petrarch picious event, since the director’s double-bill pro- 1845-52. Dennehy combines new sounds with old sonnet intoned by the baritone Joshua Jere- duction of “Iolanta” and “Bluebeard’s Castle,” in Irish songs, and mixes musical performances with miah), this intriguing collective of young mu- 2015, was a critical triumph at the house. Con- video teach-ins from the likes of Noam Chomsky sicians will interpolate pieces by Krenek, Tosti, sidered the foundational work of Wagner’s ca- and Paul Krugman; among the musicians on hand Debussy, Mozart, and Brad Cox (“Three Lulla- reer, the opera depicts an illicit love affair in wave are the soprano Katherine Manley, the folk singer bies”). (Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hud- after wave of ravishing sound as the composer toys Iarla Ó Lionáird, and the ever-ready Alarm Will son St. universe.com. Sept. 29-30 at 8.) with the limits of tonality for nearly four hours. Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson. (Brooklyn Acad- Nina Stemme, today’s most in-demand Wagne- emy of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave. bam.org. Sept. 30 and House of Time: rian soprano, and Stuart Skelton headline a first- Oct. 1 at 7:30.) “Four Seasons / Three Graces” rate cast that also includes Ekaterina Gubanova 1 This Baroque band, anchored by the impres- and René Pape; Simon Rattle, who’s made a spe- sive talents of such Juilliard faculty musicians cialty of coaxing glamorous sounds from an or- ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES as the oboist Gonzalo X. Ruiz and the keyboard- chestra in this repertoire, conducts. (Sept. 30 and ist Avi Stein, begins the season with a program Oct. 3 at 6:30.) • Michael Grandage’s strangely New York Philharmonic that indulges in a bit of counterfactual history, inert production of “Don Giovanni” is, at the very Overtures seem to be dropping out of Philhar- reimagining Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” as if it least, an unobtrusive showcase for talented sing- monic programs lately. The orchestra’s next had been originally written for a mixed cham- ers, and there is one in particular who New York twofer is certainly inviting, though. It features ber ensemble instead of for a string orches- audiences are eager to hear: the incisive British the overdue Philharmonic début of the mezzo- tra. “Three Graces,” a contemporary work by baritone Simon Keenlyside, who returns to the soprano Magdalena Kožená, who will bring her the composer Carolyn Yarnell, inspired by her Met stage after a long absence. He’ll be joined by light yet seductive timbre to bear on Berlioz’s in- childhood in the Sierra Nevada, completes the Hibla Gerzmava, Malin Byström, Serena Malfi, timate song cycle “Summer Nights”; after inter- program. (Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Cen- Paul Appleby, and Adam Plachetka; Fabio Luisi. mission, Alan Gilbert and the orchestra will have tral Park W. at 65th St. brownpapertickets.com. (Oct. 1 at 1.) • It took Marilyn Horne’s bravura the stage to themselves for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sept. 30 at 7:30.) singing, in the nineteen-seventies, for Rossini’s “Scheherazade,” a sonic spectacular of a more fun and fizzy comic opera “L’Italiana in Algeri” extroverted type. (David Geffen Hall. 212-875- National Sawdust Opening Night to find a permanent place in the Met’s repertory, 5656. Sept. 29 at 7:30 and Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 at 8.) Genres bend at the brash Williamsburg per- and now the talented Elizabeth DeShong joins the formance space, which hosts two dynamic short list of mezzo-sopranos—Jennifer Larmore Sacred Music in a Sacred Space: composer- vocalists on its season-opening pro- and Olga Borodina among them—whom the com- “Choral Elements” gram. Sophia Brous, collaborating with the pany has entrusted with the title role. The bass The up-and-coming composer Julia Adolphe is British musicians David Coulter and Leo Abra- Ildar Abdrazakov and the tenor René Barbera, in in the spotlight for the environment-themed hams, introduces “Lullaby Movement,” a piece his company début, join her for Jean-Pierre Pon- season-opening concert of this longtime series that explores the good-night ritual by way of nelle’s traditional production, from 1973; James at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, under the twenty-four languages learned among refugees Levine, now the company’s music director emeri- command of its choirmaster, K. Scott Warren. in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East; Helga tus, conducts. (Oct. 4 at 7:30.) (Metropolitan Opera Pieces for chorus, string quartet, and harp are Davis, known for her work in operas by Philip House. 212-362-6000.) featured on the program, including the New Glass and Paola Prestini, joins the bass-baritone York première of Adolphe’s “Sea Dream Ele- Davóne Tines, the PUBLIQuartet, and other Opera America: “Creators in Concert” gies” as well as other works by Mozart, Holst, performers to present “Requiem for a Tuesday,” The young composer, conductor, and poet Mat- Frank Ferko, Frank Ticheli, and John Kennedy. a multi-dimensional “ceremony” that includes thew Aucoin, of late a darling of the music press, (Park Ave. at 84th St. 212-288-2520. Sept. 28 at 7.) music by Davis, Caroline Shaw, Shara Nova, takes to the piano to play an hour’s worth of new and Lou Reed, with choreography by Reg- vocal works, with help from the countertenor TENET: “The New Art” gie (Regg Roc) Gray. (80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. Anthony Roth Costanzo and the bass-baritone Gotham’s stellar early-music choir celebrates nationalsawdust.org. Oct. 1 at 7.) Davóne Tines. The prolific twentysomething, things French this season, specifically the ge- whose pieces pair shimmery, whirring textures nius of Guillaume de Machaut, the fourteenth- Issue Project Room: “After 9 Evenings” with tricky time signatures, has new operas in century polyphonic master. This opening gambit I.P.R.’s latest mini-festival honors a concert the offing for both Los Angeles Opera and the pairs Machaut’s music with pieces by his prede- series that took place fifty years ago at the 69th Met. (National Opera Center, 330 Seventh Ave. cessors from the time of the ars nova movement, Regiment Armory, which brought engineers operaamerica.org. Sept. 29 at 7.) Phillipe de Vitry, Adam de la Halle, and Jehan from Bell Labs together with a pioneering group de Lescurel. (Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A W. 13th of artists, dancers, and musicians. The final On Site Opera St. tenet.nyc. Sept. 30 at 7 and 9.) concert is under the command of Ed Bear, a The company’s season-opening double bill fea- 1 performance artist and electrical engineer, who tures two monodramas about women awaiting will, with his team, use a collection of live sound the return of a lover who never arrives: Domi- RECITALS sources (including heartbeats, brainwaves, nick Argento’s elegiac “Miss Havisham’s Wedding radio broadcasts, and photocells) to realize Night” and Hector Berlioz’s visceral “La Mort de Momenta Festival II “Variations VII,” a seminal nineteen-sixties Cléopâtre.” Eric Einhorn stages the works (sung The Momenta Quartet, an outstanding stochastic piece by John Cage. (22 Boerum Pl., by the soprano Leah Partridge and the mezzo- young string quartet with an exceptionally Brooklyn. issueprojectroom.org. Oct. 1 at 8.)

10 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 Ron Carter Carter, the top bassist of his era, has never been shy about training the spotlight on his virtu- NIGHT LIFE osic abilities, even when he’s playing with the fully stocked big band that he occasionally leads. 1 Grounded by the imperturbable pulse of this this week, her fourth long-player under her ever-in-demand craftsman (Carter has been ROCK AND POP own name. About halfway through, in a snippet heard on more than two thousand recordings), from a home recording, a friend asks her what the band swings mightily. (Birdland, 315 W. 44th Musicians and night-club proprietors lead the record is about. “It’s about vampires,” she St. 212-581-3080. Sept. 27-Oct. 1.) complicated lives; it’s advisable to check laughs. “It’s about blood!” Through a sonic col- in advance to confirm engagements. lage of ambient noise, spoken word, and tran- Ibrahim Maalouf scendent synth-pop, Hval investigates her per- Maalouf’s latest recording, “Kalthoum,” pays Bad Religion sonal relationship with vampirism, femininity, tribute to the legendary Egyptian vocalist Oum Near the end of the Carter Administration, a and menstruation. The result is one of the brav- Kalthoum, although Maalouf does his singing with fifteen- year-old Los Angeleno named Brett est and best albums of the year, and Hval’s mak- an atypical quarter-tone trumpet. Maalouf’s ex- Gurewitz was trying to come up with a logo for ing a stop in the Village this week to celebrate pressive bent notes swirl about a judiciously ap- his high-school punk band. He scrawled a Latin its release on the modish Brooklyn label Sacred plied jazz setting that honors Kalthoum through cross on a piece of paper, then added a red circle Bones Records. (Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker an unexpected and highly personal musical prism. and a diagonal line to form the universal symbol St. 212-505-3474. Sept. 30.) (Appel Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at for “NO.” The logo has come to be known as the 1 60th St. 212-721-6500. Sept. 30-Oct. 1.) “Crossbuster,” and the band became Bad Reli- gion, one of the longest-running groups in punk JAZZ AND STANDARDS John Scofield history. A prime mover in the eighties pop-punk For his latest project, “Country for Old Men,” scene, the band is known for elevated three-part Laura Benanti the guitarist didn’t exactly run down to Nashville harmonies and smartly acerbic lyrics, penned Her spot-on impression of Melania Trump on and start cutting duets with the likes of Kenny by the vocalist Greg Graffin, who has a Ph.D. “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was one Chesney. What he did do was transform some in zoology and often lectures on evolution and of the highlights of this nearly surrealist cam- favorite country songs into jazz excursions for a paleontology. (Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. 212-777- paign season, but Benanti possesses other tal- crack ensemble featuring longtime collaborators, 6800. Oct. 3-4.) ents besides a deadly sense of humor. A skill- including the celebrated electric bassist Steve ful actress and singer, she recently grabbed a Swallow and the keyboardist Larry Goldings. Brujeria Tony nomination, her fifth, for her turn in the The result is a clever genre mashup; it’s not Masked nu-metal bands have given way to Broadway revival of “She Loves Me.” (Café Car- every day that you hear Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” masked electronic producers, but that doesn’t lyle, Carlyle Hotel, Madison Ave. at 76th St. 212- transformed into a stirring jazz-waltz jam. (Blue mean that Brujeria is quite done yet. The con- 744-1600. Oct. 4-8.) Note, 131 W. 3rd St. 212-475-8592. Sept. 27-Oct. 2.) troversial Mexican-American band from Los Angeles is the brainchild of Fear Factory’s Dino Cazeras. Over nearly three decades, he has ro- tated many of metal’s treasured lifers into the lineup, at various points featuring members of Faith No More, Cradle of Filth, and Carcass; Brujeria’s new record, “Pocho Aztlan,” is its first release in sixteen years. The band débuted its first LP in 1993, with a title translating to “Kill- ing White People,” and the record was widely banned. Today, its harsh message is finding side doors into political discourse: metalheads on Web forums were amused to discover that Walmart listed Brujeria’s graphic anti-Trump T-shirt on its Web site, via a third-party vender. The group is supported by Cattle Decapitation, an environmental deathgrind outfit that de- nounces animal cruelty. (Gramercy Theatre, 127 E. 23rd St. 212-614-6932. Oct. 3.)

Diarrhea Planet This Nashville-based sextet understands the joys of maximalism and willful stupidity. Look past its name to the stage: four guitar play- ers assemble front and center during perfor- mances, each with their own mic. The result is near-perfect garage rock that sounds like a Trans-Am parked out front—which is to say, the songs shred. Effervescent college- radio hits like “Ghost with a Boner” have given way to a more honed sound, best captured in cuts like “Announcement” and “Bob Dylan’s Grandma,” from the band’s June album, “Turn to Gold.” The group recently performed a new single, “Ain’t a Sin to Win,” on “The Late Show with Seth Myers.” (Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 718-486- 5400. Oct. 4.)

Jenny Hval This fascinating Norwegian experimental chan- teuse and songwriter released “Blood Bitch”

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 11 MOVIES

A drug dealer (Mahershala Ali) mentors a neglected boy (Alex R. Hibbert) in Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight,” screening in the New York Film Festival.

Harvest Time ters’ lives and minds with a granular ployment opportunities for black women precision, conjured with urgent perfor- and built a sort of freestyle artistic salon. The long and short of new masterworks. mances, frank dialogue, and a repertory Interviews with Morgan’s great musical The Main Slate of the New York Film of tense closeups and hyperkinetic cohorts, such as Wayne Shorter and Al- Festival, at Lincoln Center Sept. 30- swoops, scalding light and deep darkness, bert (Tootie) Heath, reveal the jazz cir- Oct. 16, is the city’s leading showcase for that render Chiron’s world with as much cuit’s high-risk behind-the-scenes ener- international and Hollywood art films. psychological as geographical specificity. gies, involving fast cars, sexual adventures, This year, programs for documentaries Chiron and all of the film’s characters are and—in Morgan’s case—drugs. From and shorts—in which established film- black—even the title is no mere nature the story of one complex relationship, makers try out bold new ideas—also reference but an evocation of skin color. Collin builds a resonant portrait of an present works that offer high artistic Subtly alluding to wider societal conflicts, enduringly influential scene and era. quality and probing social perspectives. Jenkins looks closely at the passionate Jia Zhangke’s twenty-five-minute “Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’s second and crystalline intimacies of people whose “The Hedonists” is a featurette—a large- feature, depicts a young man’s coming of very identities are forged under pressure. scale, wildly derisive, Chaplinesque vision age while facing the possibility of being Modern music was scarred by the of China’s economic and political woes. gay, a classic story told in new ways that death, at thirty- three, of the trumpeter It’s about three middle-ag ed laborers do more than avoid clichés—they shatter Lee Morgan, who was shot in a Lower who lose their jobs in a desolate industrial cinematic stereotypes. The film, adapted East Side jazz club in 1972 by his zone. With blithe hopefulness, they team from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, shows common- law wife, Helen Morgan. The up to pursue a series of hopeless employ- three episodes in the life of the Miami- Swedish director Kasper Collin’s docu- ment prospects. Their humiliations at born Chiron, starting when the bullied mentary “I Called Him Morgan” is an- the hands of a brazen plutocrat, sardon- schoolboy (Alex R. Hibbert), neglected chored by the sole recorded interview ically filmed with soaring camera work, by his mother (Naomie Harris), is shel- that she granted, in 1996, shortly before are matched by their riotous efforts to tered by a Cuban-born drug dealer (Ma- her death. Collin reveals the vast histor- work in the entertainment business—at hershala Ali) and his girlfriend ( Janelle ical range of her story, starting with her a folkloric theme park. There, Jia daringly Monáe), while his friendship with a class- move, in the nineteen-f orties, from her links China’s current regime to the coun- mate named Kevin deepens. native North Carolina to New York, try’s harsh feudal dynasties. Jenkins burrows deep into his charac- where she confronted the limited em- —Richard Brody BORNFRIEND/A24 DAVID COURTESY

12 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 1 MOVIES

OPENING of technology, the very experience of playing live Though the drama is repellent, Murphy is brilliant had coarsened into a chore, and the joyous crowds even when doing nothing, and the movie’s only re- American Honey This drama, directed by An- were verging on a mob. Not that one should rue deeming moments capture his preternatural grace drea Arnold, stars Sasha Lane as a door-to-door the retreat; after all, “Sgt. Pepper” was waiting in in the simplest actions.—R.B. (In limited release.) magazine seller working in the Midwest. Open­ the wings.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of ing Sept. 30. (In limited release.) • Deepwater Hori- 9/26/16.) (In limited release.) Don’t Breathe zon A thriller, based on the true story of the 2010 In this taut and claustrophobic thriller by the di- explosion of an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana. Bridget Jones’s Baby rector Fede Alvarez, a home invasion by three at- Directed by Peter Berg; starring Mark Wahlberg. Will she, won’t she, and with whom? And will she tractive twentysomething criminals goes horribly Opening Sept. 30. (In wide release.) • Masterminds fall over in the attempt? These and other breath- wrong. An aging blind veteran (played with gusto Jared Hess directed this comedy, about a night less questions attend the return of Bridget Jones by Stephen Lang) is the would-be victim of the watchman (Zach Galifianakis) who is lured into (Renée Zellweger), who, for the third time, strives heist, but, using his unusually keen remaining a plot to rob a bank. Co-starring Owen Wilson to break the habits of loneliness and, by way of a senses, he turns the tables on the thieves, and a and Kristen Wiig. Opening Sept. 30. (In wide re­ bonus, to find love. She has a grownup career in TV, tightly choreographed game of track-and-attack lease.) • Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Chil- but the movie treats her job as little more than a begins. The suspense is built as carefully as it is dren Tim Burton directed this adaptation of the joke, cleaving to romantic satisfaction as the one in a good John Carpenter movie; Alvarez uses novel by Ransom Riggs, about a boy who discovers sure thing. Hence the perpetual need for Mr. Darcy the camera like a stealth weapon, exploring dark an abandoned orphanage. Starring Asa Butterfield (Colin Firth), who emerges from a failed marriage corners and hidden areas of the house with dev- and Eva Green. Opening Sept. 30. (In wide release.) and pays court, yet again, to the dithering heroine. ilish glee. The film is violent and disturbing, as 1 He also becomes one of two suspects in the matter if Rambo had been let loose in a confined space, of her unexpected pregnancy, the other contender and the scares build to a frightening conclusion. NOW PLAYING being an American billionaire (Patrick Dempsey). The wonderfully expressionistic cinematography Even addicts of the franchise will struggle to main- is by Pedro Luque.—Bruce Diones (In wide release.) Author: The JT LeRoy Story tain that the new film, directed by Sharon Maguire , In 2005 and 2006, journalists discovered that the flows smoothly along; rather, it lurches from one Don’t Think Twice acclaimed novelist JT LeRoy was not, as billed, a awkward set piece to the next, gamely sustained The comedian Mike Birbiglia wrote, directed, and gender-fluid, H.I.V.-afflicted adolescent hustler by Zellweger and, in the role of a wry obstetrician, co-stars in this amiable, lovingly detailed comedy from the South but, rather, the fictitious persona Emma Thompson.—A.L. (9/26/16) (In wide release.) about comedy—specifically, about the life and pos- of Laura Albert, then a forty-year-old San Fran- sible death of an admired but struggling New York cisco woman originally from New York. This docu- Cameraperson improv troupe called the Commune. Birbiglia mentary, by Jeff Feuerzeig, relying heavily on inter- The documentary cinematographer Kirsten John- plays Miles, who founded the troupe a decade views with Albert, unravels the twisty, suspenseful, son’s cinematic memoir—a compilation of se- ago but is struggling to find a place in the busi- pain-filled, and sometimes beautiful story of Le- quences from films that she shot over the past ness at large. He and the five other members hold Roy’s creation. Albert details the emotional emer- twenty-five years—is somewhat less than the sum down day jobs (one’s a waitress, another works in gency that gave rise to the persona, which she of its parts, yet those parts are, in themselves, trans- a store, and Miles teaches improv) while awaiting transformed into an outlet for her long-stifled fixing. Johnson avoids voice-over commentaries, their big break. When a producer invites several of literary energies. The film also delves into Al- using only the sound recorded on location, yet the the members to audition for “Weekend Live,” the bert’s severely troubled childhood, which was effect is often deeply personal. The most extended Saturday-night broadcast that makes comedians defined by feats of creative disguise. To maintain sequences were shot in a village in Bosnia, where instantly famous, the resulting turmoil of resent- the fiction of LeRoy, Albert prompted her part- Johnson worked on a movie about the systematic ments and frustrations turns the Commune into ner’s half sister to play the author in public (with rape of women during the civil war in the nineteen- a buzzing hive of individualists and threatens to Albert and her partner portraying faux members nineties. Her warm relations with the town’s resi- pull it apart. Birbiglia films what he knows, offer- of the entourage) and among such unwitting par- dents—and her appreciation of their rustic way of ing ample and intricate scenes of improvisations ticipants as Gus Van Sant, Mary Karr, Courtney life—poignantly balance, as she tells her hosts, the performed onstage, along with an insider’s view of Love, Asia Argento, and a host of publishers, edi- horrific accounts that she documented. Among the the industry, and he pushes his colleagues to the tors, and critics, who ended up feeling duped. The other memorable characters here are a prosecutor fore—especially Keegan-Michael Key, who has a film includes Albert’s tape recordings of conver- in the Texas murder of James Byrd, a doctor who drolly ambiguous turn as a self-anointed star, and sations, including ones made without the partici- delivers babies in a woefully underequipped clinic Gillian Jacobs, playing a powerhouse performer pants’ knowledge—yet the film doesn’t make clear in Nigeria, and Johnson’s mother, Catherine, who tormented by self-doubt, who is the film’s mov- whether these recordings are archival or reënact- suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Johnson’s brief ingly dramatic center.—R.B. (In limited release.) ments. Feuerzeig’s flashy narrative antics reduce discussions with directors about the choices and a serious and substantial story to mere snippets ruses that go into the making of images suggest a Florence Foster Jenkins of information.—Richard Brody (In limited release.) depth of knowledge and an artistic morality that The new Stephen Frears film tells the tale of Flor- the movie only hints at.—R.B. (In limited release.) ence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep), and seeks to The Beatles: Eight Days a Week explain why, in 1944, a sellout crowd came to hear This new documentary, covering the Beatles’ Mr. Church her sing at Carnegie Hall, in spite—or precisely years on tour, is reportedly crammed with fresh Bruce Beresford, the director of “Driving Miss because—of the fact that she could not sing. She material, including previously unseen amateur Daisy,” returns with another film about a benev- herself did not know this, and what Streep cap- footage, gathered from fans around the world. olent and infinitely patient black man who brings tures best, without a quaver of condescension, Sound recordings from live shows have also been sweetness and light to the lives of white people. is not just the depth of Florence’s innocence but cleansed and restored, with voices and instru- Eddie Murphy plays the title role, that of a cook the peculiar strain of courage that arose from it ments unearthed from below layers of uncontain- who is dispatched to the home of Marie Brooks and struck a chord with the wartime audience. able screams. Anybody seeking scandal should (Natascha McElhone), a cancer victim and single There is not much of a plot here. We watch Flor- look elsewhere, but then this is a Ron Howard mother who’s raising her ten-year-old daughter, ence rehearsing (as if practice were ever going to film, and the tone is remorselessly upbeat—rightly Charlie (Natalie Coughlin), alone. The action is help), performing for a select—and mostly aged— so, when you see and hear the band in its early set in Los Angeles in the nineteen-seventies. Mr. few, and then girding herself for the main event. prime. There are interviews with Paul McCart- Church, a fine cook, is also an excellent artist, a Nor is there much social snap, as Frears inspects ney and Ringo Starr, and with a peculiar selec- literary connoisseur, and an accomplished jazz pi- the follies of the rich with a surprisingly kindly tion of celebrities, not all of whom have much to anist; he’s at the Brooks home from early morn- eye. What lends the film its emotional twist is report—an exception being the historian Kitty ing until late at night, and his cherished private the presence of Hugh Grant, finally finding his Oliver, who speaks movingly of being part of an time hardly leaves a moment for sleep. Mr. Church ideal role as Florence’s husband, St. Clair Bay- unsegregated audience. (The Beatles, as we see sees the teen-age Charlie (Britt Robertson) off field, whose anxious and adoring love for his from their contract, would not perform to a seg- to college; she returns home pregnant, and Mr. wife saved her, time after time, from humilia- regated one.) The group’s withdrawal into the Church takes her in. The sentimental vision of tion. Simon Helberg enjoys himself as Cosmé studio, after a final concert in San Francisco, now improvised families is based on the total commit- McMoon, the loyal pianist who accompanied feels, in the helpful light of this movie, inevitable; ment and total dependence of a black man whose Florence in her happy musical massacres.—A.L. not only were the foursome pushing the confines deferential manner reeks of subjugation and fear. (8/22/16) (In wide release.)

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 13 MOVIES

Hell or High Water Miss Stevens making, including grand set pieces in enormous se- The Howard brothers, of West Texas—Toby The title character of Julia Hart’s first feature is cret facilities, can’t conceal his flat, thin, psychology- (Chris Pine), who’s divorced and unemployed, and a young English teacher in a suburban California free depiction of a modest and self-sacrificing hero Tanner (Ben Foster), who’s fresh out of prison— high school, Rachel Stevens (Lily Rabe), whose who single-handedly changed the politics of our time. are in mourning for their late mother. They’re taut composure is punctured by her piercing gazes, —R.B. (In wide release.) also pissed off at the Texas Midlands Bank, which which suggest that she cares too much. When Ra- will foreclose on her ranch unless they can fork chel chaperones three of her class’s actors on a trip Sully over forty-three thousand dollars by the end of to a drama competition, the hothouse isolation both Clint Eastwood transforms the events, in 2009, the week. The brothers set out to raise the money deepens and roils her relationships with them. The of Flight 1549—which Captain Chesley Sullen- by robbing a bunch of the bank’s branches, and script, by Hart and Jordan Horowitz, defines the stu- berger and First Officer Jeff Skiles safely landed Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), a marshal on the dents schematically: the brusquely efficient Margot in the Hudson River after losing both jets in a verge of retirement, sets out to stop them. The (Lili Reinhart); the sassy and flirtatious Sam (An- bird strike—into a fierce, stark, haunted drama of script, by Taylor Sheridan, piles a load of snappy thony Quintal), who’s gay; and the challengingly tal- horror narrowly avoided. Eastwood’s depiction of incidents and tangy dialogue on this neo-West- ented but tormented Billy (Timothée Chalamet), Sully (played, with terse gravity, by Tom Hanks) ern, neo-noir setup; the action is as schematic and whose crush on his teacher is all too evident from begins with a shock: the captain’s 9/11-esque vi- artificial as a chess game, and the characters have the start. Rachel is a lonely woman in mourning for sion of his plane crashing into New York buildings. as much identity as its pieces. The director, David her mother, with a fragile veneer of quiet yearning The action of the film involves another shock: fed- Mackenzie, gives each of his actors time to shine and awkward energy; when that veneer cracks, the eral officials question Sully’s judgment and sub- and fills the film with picturesque details, but the effect is powerful despite its air of calculation. Ra- ject him and Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) to an inves- movie might as well be a table read set before a chel’s scenes with Billy have little drama other than tigation that could cost him his job and even his green screen. Only Bridges emerges whole; with her resolve not to cross any lines, but her tense dis- pension. Eastwood films the doomed flight with his typical brilliance, he leaps from the laconic cussions with Walter (Rob Huebel), another teacher a terrifyingly intimate sense of danger, focussing to the rhetorical, making even the shady brim at the conference, offer substance to ponder beyond on its existential center, the little red button under of his hat speak volumes.—R.B. (In wide release.) the story’s narrow limits.—R.B. (In limited release.) the pilot’s thumb. The film movingly depicts Sul- ly’s modest insistence that he was just doing his The Light Between Oceans Pete’s Dragon job and the collective courage of flight attendants, Derek Cianfrance’s new film is plainer in construc- The director David Lowery brings natural sweet- air-traffic controllers, police officers, and the pas- tion than his previous ones, “Blue Valentine” (2010) ness and heartfelt wonder to this remake of the sengers themselves. But, throughout, Eastwood and “The Place Beyond the Pines” (2012), and far 1977 fantasy. Young Pete’s parents are killed in a car boldly thrusts attention toward the aftermath of more secluded in its setting. Michael Fassbender accident in the rural Pacific Northwest, and Pete, the flight: the nerve-jangling media distortion of plays Tom, an ex-soldier who finds refuge, after who survived, heads for the woods, where he’s res- events and personalities, plus the investigators’ ul- the First World War, as a lighthouse keeper. He cued by a furry green dragon—more like a gigan- timate weapon, a computer simulation of the land- is the sole resident of an island off the Australian tic, winged, fire-breathing dog—which he calls El- ing, a movie on which Sully’s honor depends. The coast, until he is joined by his new bride, Isabel liot. Five years later, Pete (Oakes Fegley), a wild result is Eastwood’s dedicated vision of moviemak- (Alicia Vikander), and then, some time later, by child whom Elliot raises, shelters, and entertains, ing itself.—R.B. (In wide release.) a baby daughter. There is only one problem: she is spotted by a local girl named Natalie (Oona Lau- is not their child but a foundling, washed ashore rence), who informs adults, who drag him into so- They Drive by Night in a boat, and their wrongful claim on her sweeps ciety. Elliot, something of a rural myth, comes out Raoul Walsh’s rowdy and romantic 1940 drama them to the shores of disaster. Although this pe- of hiding to search for the boy, and the chase is on. about California truckers could serve as a primer culiar plot, adapted from a novel by M. L. Sted- Meanwhile, Pete becomes attached to Natalie’s fam- for entrepreneurship. George Raft and Humphrey man, bears traces of Shakespearean romance, Cian- ily circle, which includes an outdoorsman (Robert Bogart star as the brothers Fabrini, drivers who france grounds the action firmly in the emotional Redford) who’s the only villager to have seen Elliot dream of owning their own firm but, for now, are wranglings of his central couple. Theirs is a love for himself. Lowery lovingly crafts a neorealist fan- struggling with the payments on their decrepit story, and the irony is that both actors—Vikander, tasy, in which Elliot’s vast powers—including flight truck. Joe (Raft) is the ambitious one; single and on with the alarmingly free flow of her tears, and Fass- and evanescence—have practical limits. The director the prowl, he falls for Cassie Hartley (Ann Sheri- bender, in his injured stillness—seem more suited revels in the freewheeling frolics of Pete and Elliot, dan), a sharp-tongued, sharp-witted waitress on the to the agony of loss and separation than to mari- and resolves their conflicts with a hard-earned senti- run from a sexual harasser. Paul (Bogart), who is tal delight. Rachel Weisz, as the girl’s real mother, mentality. It’s as if Disney were launching a new ar- married, wants a steady job but feels bound to help does fine work, making the most implausible de- tisanal line; if so, this finely crafted and keenly felt Joe realize his plan. However, when night driving cisions feel stirring and true.—A.L. (9/12/16) (In drama inaugurates it in style.—R.B. (In wide release.) takes its toll (sleep deprivation is a key plot point wide release.) throughout), Joe goes to work for another former Snowden driver who is now on his own, the glad-handing Mia Madre Oliver Stone’s fast-paced and large-scale but Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale), whose scheming, social- A pall of sadness hangs over Nanni Moretti’s narrow- focus bio-pic of Edward Snowden covers climbing wife, Lana (Ida Lupino), lusts after Joe. new work, as it did over “The Son’s Room,” his the near- decade from 2004, when Snowden (played, The hearty camaraderie of Walsh’s working men grief-mantled drama from 2001. Margherita Buy or, rather, impersonated, by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and women—a force for predatory bosses to reckon plays a movie director, also named Margherita, dropped out of Army training because of an injury, with—conceals the physical danger and emotional who is meant to be concentrating on her latest to 2013, when he left the United States and then got stress of manual labor. The pugnacity of Walsh’s project—the story of an Italian company that is stuck in Russia. A computer whiz as well as a con- comic direction infuses turbulently free enterprise bought by an American entrepreneur. (Like most servative from a military family, Snowden, as de- with tragedy.—R.B. (MOMA; Sept. 29.) films-within-films, it’s not something you would picted here, joins the C.I.A. and is tapped for great 1 rush to watch.) Her professional poise is begin- things by his Mephistophelian supervisor, Corbin ning to crack, however, because of worries about O’Brian (Rhys Ifans), though a frustrated tech ge- REVIVALS AND FESTIVALS her aging mother (Giulia Lazzarini), a much-loved nius (Nicolas Cage) dims his enthusiasm from the teacher whose end is nigh; Margherita’s brother, start. Snowden is disillusioned by his discovery of Titles with a dagger are reviewed. played by Moretti, is relatively sanguine in the face a vast and illegal surveillance network and its real- of this impending loss, yet she herself seems al- world effects, including drone strikes that kill inno- Film Society of Lincoln Center New York Film Fes- ready bereft. Set against that gloom is the effron- cent people, but the tipping point is his realization tival. Sept. 30 at 6, 6:30, 9, and 9:30: “13th” (2016, tery of her loudmouthed leading man, played— that he and his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills (Shailene Ava DuVernay). • Oct. 1 at 4:15 and Oct. 2 at 9: “I more ripely, perhaps, than the movie requires—by Woodley), are also under surveillance. Stone, who Am Not Your Negro” (2016, Raoul Peck). • Oct. 1 John Turturro. The result is slender but piercing, wrote the script with Kieran Fitzgerald, sticks to at 6 and Oct. 2 at 11:30 A.M.: “Manchester by the and there is no mistaking the economy of Moret- Snowden’s point of view throughout, framing the ac- Sea” (2016, Kenneth Lonergan). • Oct. 1 at 6:45 and ti’s narrative skills; he will cut a scene short rather tion with scenes of Snowden’s high-pre ssure meet- Oct. 2 at 8:45: “Shorts Program 2: International than have it outstay its welcome, or step in and ings in a Hong Kong hotel room with the filmmaker Auteurs,” including “The Hedonists” (2016, Jia out of a dream sequence with such aplomb that Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) and the journalists Zhangke). • Oct. 2 at 6 and Oct 3 at 8:45: “I Called we instinctively greet it as real. In Italian.—A.L. Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen Him Morgan” (2016, Kasper Collin). • Oct. 2 at 6:15 (8/29/16) (In limited release.) MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson). Stone’s flashy film- and Oct. 3 at 9: “Moonlight” (2016, Barry Jenkins).

14 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 exciting choreographers to use it. First up in a two-week series of overlapping programs is Pam Tanowitz, whose latest heady, step-rich creation DANCE is called “Sequenzas in Quadrilles” and features live music by Members of the Knights. The in- tense and esoteric RoseAnne Spradlin follows, New York City Ballet includes the London-based Richard Alston with a new trio named “X.” Next week: Tere In 1967, George Balanchine created “Jewels,” a com- Dance Company, a modern-dance group known O’Connor and the young Loni Landon. (175 pendium of his ideas about the French, American, for its affable stage demeanor and highly mu- Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Sept. 27- and Russian Imperial schools of ballet. (Gemstones sical choreography. The Canadian Aszure Bar- Oct. 2 and Oct. 4. Through Oct. 9.) provided the color scheme.) Accordingly, the three- ton, who tends toward quirky, slithery move- part, evening-length ballet is set to misty Fauré, ment, brings her water-inspired “Awáa.” The “Pandaemonium” jazzy Stravinsky, and regal Tchaikovsky. “Emer- stylish tapper Ayodele Casel performs a solo Directed by Lars Jan, this dance-theatre- cinema alds,” part one, is the most mysterious; it’s a ballet on Program 3; that evening also includes the work is about disconnection. The choreogra- of shadows and fogs. “Rubies” is all Jazz Age angles Melbourne-based Bangarra Dance Theatre, pher Nichole Canuso and the physical-theatre and sass; “Diamonds” is steeped in longing for a which specializes in works based on the myths performer Geoff Sobelle remain mostly apart, lost world—particularly the rather melancholy pas of the Australian Aborigines. Program 4 fea- on opposite sides of the stage, but their images de deux. The ballet returns this week for four per- tures more ballet: a new dance by Jessica Lang come together in footage, filmed in the Mojave formances, alongside a program of Stravinsky bal- and a performance of Frederick Ashton’s “Mar- Desert, à la “Zabriskie Point,” and projected lets, one of new works, and an all-American bill. • guerite and Armand.” The latter, based on “The on a screen. The musician Xander Duell scores Sept. 28 at 7:30, Sept. 30 at 8, Oct. 1 at 2, and Oct. 2 Lady of the Camellias,” will star Alina Cojocaru the combination live. (New York Live Arts, 219 at 3: “Jewels.” • Sept. 29 at 7:30: “Stravinsky Violin (formerly of the Royal Ballet) and Friedemann W. 19th St. 212-924-0077. Sept. 28-Oct. 1.) Concerto,” “Monumentum pro Gesualdo,” “Move- Vogel, a star at the Stuttgart Ballet. (City Cen- ments for Piano and Orchestra,” “Duo Concertant,” ter, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Sept. 26-Oct. 1 Caleb Teicher & Company and “Symphony in Three Movements.” • Oct. 1 at and Oct. 4. Through Oct. 8.) Mixing super-charged energy with tossed-off 8: “For Clara,” “The Dreamers,” “ten in seven,” charm, Teicher is among the more promising fig- and “Unframed.” • Oct. 4 at 7:30: “Glass Pieces,” NY Quadrille ures in tap dance. His choreography shows po- “Thou Swell,” and “Stars and Stripes.” (David H. The concept is peculiar: the Joyce Theatre will tential, too. In “Variations,” he’s joined by three Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-496-0600. Through Oct. 16.) cover part of its raked seating and install risers talented colleagues, whose attempts to keep up on the stage so that a rectangular platform can with Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of Bach’s “Fall for Dance” be viewed from four sides. The idea for this in- “Goldberg Variations” are amusing and impres- There are three mixed bills this week, each shared the-round arena came from the choreographer sive. (Kupferberg Center for the Arts, 65-30 Kissena by four companies. Program 2 (Sept. 28-29) Lar Lubovitch, who has generously invited four Blvd., Queens. 718-793-8080. Sept. 29.)

ABOVE & BEYOND

Lit Crawl Ruscha, and his late brother, the photographer and dable names in journalism and media share ex- These pub readings have aimed to bring “litera- eccentric Dash Snow. (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212- cerpts from their latest works. This week includes ture to the streets” of the Lower East Side, the 606-7000.) • On Sept. 29, Christie’s holds a sale readings from the novelist Porochista Khakpour , East Village, and Williamsburg since 2008. Lit- of ninety-seven prints and works on paper by the the author of “Sons and Other Flammable Ob- erary debauchery may be a worthy pursuit, bring- ninety-five-year-old Wayne Thiebaud, selected in jects” and “The Last Illusion”; Alex Mar, a con- ing to mind Hemingway’s brooding, boozy prose conjunction with the artist. The images include tributing editor at Oxford American; Autumn and Haight-Ashbury’s flighty scribblings. Thank- several of his enticing images of cakes and sweets, Whitefield-Madrano, whose book, “Face Value,” fully, the organizers of Lit Crawl have less anar- aptly collected under the title “Delights.” An eve- examines positive aspects of American beauty cul- chic ambitions: events like Literary Pictionary ning sale of photographs follows on Oct. 4. (20 ture; and Esther Wang, a former BuzzFeed edito- and Nerd Jeopardy welcome regulars to flex their Rockefeller Plaza, at 49th St. 212-636-2000.) • Swann, rial fellow and an Open City creative-nonfiction bookish chops; Tarot readings, flash portraiture, which specializes in books and prints, is holding fellow. (112 Avenue A. 212-420-9517. Oct. 3 at 7:45.) and mobile photo booths extend an arm toward a sale of illustrations on Sept. 29; among the lots casual readers. (Various locations. pen.org. Oct. 1.) are several original cartoons and covers from this French Comics Framed 1 magazine, including a full-page illustration from This month-long festival and talk series highlights 1951 by Charles Addams (“Noisy Neighbor,” in the varied works of Francophone graphic novel- AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES which an elderly gent pounds on the ceiling while ists. More than fifty French graphic novels are cur- his upstairs neighbor, bound and gagged, strug- rently on display at Cooper Union’s Fourth Avenue Mid-priced contemporary art and photographs gles to break free). (104 E. 25th St. 212-254-4710.) Colonnade, for the first time in the U.S., tracing are the week’s themes. Sotheby’s holds one of its 1 the history of the medium. In this week’s talk, at “Contemporary Curated” sales, in which a taste- the Society of Illustrators, the twin brothers Asaf maker (usually someone in fashion, finance, or READINGS AND TALKS and Tomer Hanuka discuss the contrasting story- pop culture) puts his or her seal of approval on telling styles they brought to “The Divine,” their the selected lots (Sept. 29). This time around, it’s Miss Manhattan 2015 graphic novel, in which supernatural twin chil- the mixed-media photographer Maxwell Snow’s On the first Monday of the month, Niagara Bar dren lead a coup in a war-torn Asian country. (128

ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION turn; he has selected works by Joseph Cornell, Ed hosts this nonfiction reading series, where formi- E. 63rd St. frenchcomicsassociation.com. Oct. 4 at 7.)

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 15 FßD & DRINK

1 ORTABLES F TWO to exclaim, “I can pound this all night!” BAR TAB Ladybird Of some two dozen tapas, the most successful were the least expected and the 127 Macdougal St. (212-475-2246) most unassuming. The olives and corni- The logo of this new West Village chons—perfectly pert, coated in seasoned restaurant features a bird perched atop a rice flour and gently fried in chili oil— cornucopia of vegetal delights, which itself proved to be the kind of addictive nibblers sits atop a woman’s head. The bird holds, that make you forget the etiquette of com- Tracks Raw Bar and Grill in its beak, a single sphere—perhaps it’s a munal dining. The cauliflower, nestled in Penn Station, lower level (212-244-6350) cherry tomato, or a tiny beet. The image a bed of robust chive pesto, lemon ricotta, One nice thing about the drab crypt of Penn Station might evoke twin scenarios for a modern and chia, was both flavorful and masterfully is the lack of pretension within the subterranean sprawl. There’s none in the dingy Amtrak concourse, herbivore, both likely and neither ideal: subtle. Charred eggplant, topped with feta nor further below, in the long fluorescent hallway one in which she is judged for her abste- and apricot-jalapeño jam, had the zestiness flanked with bright shops, at the end of which sits mious virtue amid carnivorous abundance, of Sichuan-style eggplant without a slick an oyster bar marked by the word “TRACKS,” in glowing indigo. Inside, exuberance unfurls like a and one in which she finds scarcely more of grease. Other formulations, however, hallucination in black-and-white tiles, mahogany, than a side dish of beets on a menu that is felt overwrought. A caramelized artichoke and twinkling fairy lights. The space is fiercely ded- overwhelmingly a temple to meat. heart was so besieged by the marcona- icated to its theme: there’s a map of the Long Island Rail Road painted on the ceiling, laminated photo- Neither happens at Ladybird, where almond-and-crème-fraîche glaze that its graphs of subway depots and Northeastern engines the city’s “sophisticated and conscious” (in natural freshness was buried. Mushroom serve as placemats, and the plates are painted with the words of Ravi DeRossi, its proprietor pâté was paired inventively with fig com- train tracks. The bar bustles with cheerful regulars in dark suits, on their way home to Long Island or and a vegan for more than a decade) pote and black vinegar, but tasted almost New Jersey; it also provides an unlikely refuge for might seek “escape from the drinking nothing like either mushroom or pâté. anyone stranded below Madison Square Garden. Its crowd of Macdougal.” The aesthetic— One night, a vegan and three omnivores hospitality is evident in the vast drinks list. There is champagne by the glass and a terrific LIRR Iced Tea gilded stucco ceilings, tiered chandeliers, reflected on the romantic travails of the (“No round trip,” the menu warns). Even the Piña faux-silk floor-length curtains in aqua- urban plant eater over a majestic spread of Coladas are very good. On a recent Thursday evening, marine—summons the sumptuous dining vegetable charcuterie that included roasted a pair of women in gowns and pearl necklaces shared oysters and Martinis in the back room, also known room of a marchioness who has renounced grapes, beet “chorizo,” and cashew-milk as “The Dining Car.” At the next table, well-biceped mutton and chicken fricassee in favor of brie. “The worst part is the first date,” the young men in snug T-shirts downed burgers and the harvest from her garden, and who has vegan said. “If you suggest a vegan place, beers. Moody paintings depict mid- twentieth- century train passengers during cocktail hour—elegant men seriously stepped up her cocktail game. it’s like you are making them suffer.” Just and women in fedoras and pillbox hats. “Personally, As modern aperitifs, the Golden Peasant then, the chocolate fondue arrived, halting I don’t like them,” one bartender said about the pic- (Pineau des Charentes, ginger, lemon) and the conversation with its exhalation of cin- tures, shaking her head. They do feel incongruous amid such earnest homage, the austere subjects at the Bleeding Heart (blood orange, hibis- namon and coconut. One friend dipped a odds with the bar’s welcoming spirit. There is a cus, champagne) are splendidly arboreal; strawberry into the bubbling dark velvet. grander train-station oyster bar ten blocks north, the virgin Birds of Paradise (tangerine, “I’m not suffering,” he said. (Dishes $6-$32.) good for airs and sophistication—the beauty of Tracks lavender, lime) caused a pregnant patron —Jiayang Fan lies in its democracy.—Wei Tchou SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR ERIC HELGAS BY PHOTOGRAPH

16 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT THE FEAR FACTOR

n mid-September, Rafia Zakaria, a Pakistani-Ameri- Secretary of State had “emboldened terrorists all over the can lawyer and writer, flew to Denver, to attend the an- world.” President Obama noted more measuredly that violent Inual conference of the Online News Association, where she radicals “are trying to hurt innocent people, but they also want was to present a paper on hate directed at American Mus- to inspire fear in all of us.” He added, “We all have a role to lims. She carried “Black Flags,” Joby Warrick’s account of play as citizens in making sure we don’t succumb to that fear.” the rise of isis, to read on the plane. Worried that passen- We might not be up to it. In May, Guido Menzio, an Ital- gers might be alarmed if they saw a South Asian woman ian economist on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, engrossed in that book, she’d wrapped it in the floral cover was removed from a flight out of Philadelphia and questioned of “Georgia,” Dawn Tripp’s novel about Georgia O’Keeffe. because a passenger thought that his work on a differential That is the sort of “passing,” Zakaria says, that many Amer- equation looked like Arabic. Last month, in Queens, a man ap- ican Muslims engage in “to appear to be unthreatening” in proached an imam and his assistant and shot them in the back this season of terror and Donald Trump. of the head. Police charged Oscar Morel, who is thirty-six, with After Paris, Brussels, Orlando, and Nice, it seemed likely double murder but have not explained his motive. According that reactions to terrorism inspired by ISIS and its ilk would to Zakaria, online searches for “Islamophobia,” the neologism influence the Presidential election, not least because of Trump’s for exaggerated fears of the Muslim faith, often surge after ter- inflammatory efforts to elevate the subject. Then came last rorist incidents; so do searches for “Kill Muslims.” week’s attacks. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, Dahir Adan, a twenty- Trump’s mainstreaming of bigotry has already damaged the year-old Somali-American, knifed ten people at a shopping country lastingly by ripping at its social bonds and populariz- mall before an off-duty police officer shot him dead; isis ing a phony war on “political correctness” as an alternative to claimed responsibility, but Adan’s motivations remain un- the ideals of tolerance and pluralism. Of course, Trump and clear. A day later, Ahmad Khan Rahami, a twenty-eight-year- his fellow-travellers aim vitriol and threats not just at Mus- old naturalized citizen of Afghan origin, who possessed lims. The wide-ranging ugliness at his rallies is there for all to jihadist literature, allegedly planted several bombs, including see and hear; on Facebook and Twitter, trolls supporting him one that went off in Chelsea, wound- spread racist and anti-Semitic poison. ing a couple of dozen people. It was Yet America’s three million or so Mus- the first successful terrorist bombing lims make up about one per cent of in New York City since 9/11. the population, a small, often isolated As this dystopian Presidential cam- minority, whose intensifying anxieties paign enters its final phase, the inter- this autumn are at least as easy to mingling of persistent terrorism and appreciate as those of New York sub- resilient Trumpism is painful to con- way riders. (Asked about the intern- template. The candidates interpreted ment of Japanese-Americans during the latest attacks as an invitation to the Second World War, Trump mused rehearse pugilistic rhetoric for the that such measures are sometimes high-stakes debates. Hillary Clinton necessary.) called Trump a “recruiting sergeant Social-science studies show that for the terrorists,” because of his race fear of terrorism does affect voting. It baiting and his denigration of Mus- tends to lift the electoral prospects of lims, while Trump told his Twitter trusted, “strong” incumbents, but it ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS legions that Clinton’s “weakness” as isn’t obvious how that pattern will play

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 23 out this time. Obama enjoys high approval ratings, but he isn’t experience them as a pretense for surveillance or sting operations. on the ballot. Trump sells toughness, but he seems to frighten Identifying effective ways to intervene when an isolated some voters as much as isis does. Clinton has an incumbent’s individual drifts toward violent extremism, or to detect com- qualifications, but she hasn’t won broad trust, and lately, as her mitted singleton terrorists before they act, has proved to be campaign’s momentum has slackened, she has struggled to one of the most challenging fields of counterterrorism. In Ra- counter Trump’s fearmongering. After last week, her task won’t hami’s case, border agents reportedly referred his name to the be any easier. As Trump’s Republican-primary opponents dis- F.B.I., but, amid thousands of such preliminary reviews and covered, debating him successfully on security issues requires in the absence of any evidence of a concrete threat, the inves- sidestepping his wild insults while indicting him with his own tigation lapsed. When police look at a possibly radicalized but aggression. Clinton is an experienced, effective debater, but law-abiding American, their options can be constrained, and Trump has a fix on the public’s fears: during the past two years, properly so; the First Amendment is meant to prevent the casualties in the U.S. and Europe from attacks inspired by isis criminalization of thought, reading, or speech, even when the have gone up, and homegrown radicalization connected to ideas at issue are reprehensible or touch on violence. that group is likely to persist for a long time. In “Anxious Politics,” a study of fear and public opinion Trump offers no plausible solutions to this threat, and, as published last year, the political scientists Bethany Albert- Clinton’s “recruiting sergeant” remark sought to highlight, son and Shana Kushner Gadarian report that when citizens stigmatizing minorities or calling for a ban on immigration are on edge they pay closer attention and read up on issues, by members of an entire faith group is more likely to stim- to clarify the source of their anxiety. America’s history of the ulate violence than to prevent it. Her policy proposals are exploitation of domestic terrorism by political opportunists more comprehensive, and are supported by evidence. They is replete with case studies, from the Red Scare of the nine- include terrorism-prevention programs similar to those teen-twenties through the abuses following 9/11. The les- in Britain and other European countries. The best of these sons are repetitive: the most dangerous enemy within has promote social integration and community policing, typically been fear itself. but such efforts can be difficult, particularly if Muslims —Steve Coll

STATEN ISLAND POSTCARD though the charges are usually dismissed. ‘Don’t tread on me’ snake. Graffiti doesn’t DON’T TREAD ON ME Last month, a large letter “T” that he bother me. But I was surprised when my had built out of insulation board and ‘T’ got torched. I expected some reac- painted with a flag motif and erected on tion to the ‘T,’ like maybe graffiti or eggs a Staten Island lawn went up in flames being thrown at it. But, I mean, you’re in the middle of the night. The police gonna burn my ‘T’? Disagree with it, and the fire department investigated the sure. Yell at it, say it’s lousy art. But why fire as arson. A political motive was sus- would you burn it? The fire scared the cott LoBaido, an artist who paints pected. The “T” stands for Trump, among hell out of Sam, the guy whose lawn it American flags, is perhaps the most other things; LoBaido and the home- is. He lost that house to an electrical fire Sfamous living Staten Islander. His flag owner, Sam Pirozzolo, a local political eight years ago. It took him three years paintings can be found in outdoor spaces figure and optician, both support the to build it back. Why would you use vi- all over Staten Island and in each of the candidate. Trump himself called them olence? I never use violence. Throwing fifty states. Most of the paintings are big; the day after the fire to make sure Piroz- horseshit at the Brooklyn Museum is some are gigantic. A flag he painted for zolo’s family was safe, and to tell them, not violence. What is horseshit? Basi- a gasket company in Houston, Texas, to “You guys on Staten Island have my back.” cally just wet straw.” welcome returning soldiers as their planes At Da Noi, an Italian restaurant on A white-haired man at the bar came approach the airport, covers three and a Fingerboard Road, LoBaido always sits over and told LoBaido that he wanted half acres of factory roof. at a table by the wall under his large to shake his hand. LoBaido thanked him. LoBaido is a slim, compact man of glass-enclosed work consisting of thirty- “So after the fire, of course, I rebuilt fifty-one who drinks Martinis, smokes five hundred toy army men painted differ- the ‘T’ bigger,” he continued. “On the Marlboro Lights, and is often spattered ent colors and arranged to depict an phone, I even told Trump, ‘I’m gonna with paint—“My second skin,” he says. American flag. The army men are all make it yuuuge! ’ He got a chuckle out of He appears occasionally in the news for American-made, and it took him a that. It used to be twelve feet high by his acts of public disruption, such as long time to find American-made army eight feet wide, and now it’s sixteen feet throwing horse manure at the Brook- men, he told a visitor who joined him high by twelve feet wide. It’s beauti- lyn Museum when it displayed a paint- there recently. In conversation, LoBaido fully lit up by spotlights, looks gorgeous ing of the Virgin Mary stained with effervesces like a Roman candle. “Peo- at night. Security cameras, the works. elephant dung, or illegally painting ple write graffiti on my work,” he said. Rebuild it bigger! That’s my one com- an American flag on a school whose “It happens. So what? I paint it out. plaint with the Freedom Tower. It’s fine, principal had discontinued the recita- Someone wrote ‘Patriotism makes me but we should’ve rebuilt the original tow- tion of the Pledge of Allegiance. He sick’ on a flag I did in Brooklyn. I painted ers just as they were, or even bigger— has been arrested about a dozen times, a rattlesnake over the writing, like the like, ‘Fuck me? Uh-uh. No, no, fuck you! ’ ”

24 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 He ordered a decaf espresso and asked this, and from his own experience as a of witnessing his own physical decline the waiter to top it off with Sambuca. California beach rat, middling pro surfer, in the water. “After forty years, I let it A smell of licorice rose. “It’s decaf be- and surfing writer, he composed the id- go,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. Now I’m cause I don’t need the caffeine,” LoBaido iosyncratic yet authoritative “Encyclo- a walker. I count steps on my Fitbit.” explained. “I got so many ideas for paint- pedia of Surfing,” which was published, His family tree is thick with fancy ings, sculptures, projects, I can never get to wide acclaim, in 2003. “I decided to degrees. “Of course I’m insecure,” he said. to sleep as it is. I believe the American rule this domain that no one gives a shit “I went to El Camino Junior College, flag is the greatest work of art ever cre- about,” he said the other day. In the past what we used to call ‘thirteenth grade,’ ated by mankind, and I’m always think- half-dozen years, he’s been transferring directly out of high school. Fit my surfing ing of more I can do with it. I’m a pa- the encyclopedia’s fifteen hundred-odd schedule.” Just after he turned thirty, he riah in the New York art world. Just entries to the Web, and adding many quit his job as the editor of the maga- today, a guy I’ve known a long time un- new ones, along with a wealth of pho- zine Surfer and talked his way into U.C. friended me on Facebook for being a tographs and videos. He has likened this Berkeley. (To commemorate the occa- Trump supporter.” migration to Dorothy’s arrival in Oz. sion, his father, a Rand Corporation phys- Before he stepped out for a cigarette, Within a day of the request from Ox- he said, “Sometimes people tell me, ‘Scott, ford, Warshaw came across, in his stacks, New York is not the place for you—you a mention of “tandem surfing” from 1935. better move to a red state.’ My answer You can now find, in the O.E.D.’s Web always is: No fuckin’ way. I’m a fourth- edition, the following citation: “T. Blake generation Staten Islander. My dad Hawaiian Surfboard (front material, verso worked for the Sanitation Department of fifth leaf )(caption): ‘A tourist, with- for thirty-five years. New York is my city. out surfboard experience, can enjoy . . . I love the excitement and the conflict tandem surfing. The boy in most cases and the sexiness of it. It’s democracy, you does most of the work, his partner en- know what I mean? I ain’t movin’ to no joys the rides.’ ” red state. I’m stayin’ here, and you’re just The O.E.D. sent Warshaw a few more gonna have to deal with me.” terms, and before long hired him to be 1—Ian Frazier its first-ever Surf Consultant (total pay: four hundred pounds). The O.E.D. has DEPT.F O LINGO some three hundred consultants, who DICTIONARY DUDE provide an extra layer of expert scrutiny Matt Warshaw in such areas of arcana as falconry and wine. It has always tried to keep up with icist, bought him a two-volume edition American slang; noted recent additions of the O.E.D., which he still keeps at are “Masshole” and “vape.” “Clearly, they his desk. His O.E.D. surf consultancy, felt they needed to up their surf game,” he says, is the accomplishment of his that Warshaw said. He speculated that there has most impressed his parents.) He luxury of peace and prosperity: was a closet surfer on staff. graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with a de- Last year, editors at the Oxford En- The dictionary people sent him about gree in history, but still has trouble tell- glishA Dictionary, in the midst of a long seventy terms, among them “barrel,” “reef ing nouns from verbs. “I’m like a musi- march toward a third edition, set out to rash,” “board sock,” “grom,” “close out,” cian who can’t read music,” he says. add an entry on “tandem surfing.” (“The “dawn patrol,” “doggy door,” “green “There’s a built-in sense of irony in practice of two people riding a single room,” “shaper,” and “swallowtail.” His surfers’ use of language,” he said. “When surfboard at the same time.”) They were database, unfortunately, didn’t contain we say ‘dude,’ it’s a riff on you thinking seeking an earlier citation; the best they most of these, so he soon found himself we’re stupid.” He was relieved not to have had was from 1961, in the Los Angeles scouring old magazines and manu- been asked about “sick,” as in “excel- Times. A researcher contacted a surf als—“like a fucking intern.” Days turned lent”—“I hate that word”—but, alas, it’s museum in San Clemente, California, into weeks. “I got obsessed,” he said. “I already in there: “Sick, unbelievably good: and eventually wound up in touch with didn’t want to let them down.” Often, The Fleetwood Mac concert was sick.” an autodidact in Seattle named Matt he succeeded in finding an earlier men- The O.E.D.’s closet surfer, it turns Warshaw. tion. Now and then—maybe every third out, is Warshaw’s handler, the senior Warshaw is the world’s leading entry—he found something to tweak in editor David Martin, whose phone man- surfing scholar, the Linnaeus of the the definition, or a bit of illuminating ner, at least, is low on stoke. “We take lineup. Over the years, he has assem- context. the long view,” he said last week. “We bled a research library, in his home, of Warshaw is fifty-six. Moving to Se- track things.” hundreds of books, thousands of peri- attle from San Francisco, several years He went on, “A surf word that we are odicals, and some three hundred and ago (his wife works for Amazon), forced currently tracking is the verb ‘chande- fifty movies, and created a database: him to give up his habit of surfing more lier.’ It seems to be used with reference logged, indexed, searchable. From all or less every day. Also, he’d grown weary to the lip at the opening of a barrelling

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 25 wave closing in on or falling on top of The two women met for breakfast “I’ve tried to adapt, but it doesn’t work,” a surfer.” (One can understand War- recently at Café Mogador, in the East Lipstadt said. “My lawyers sent me Rich- shaw’s noun-verb confusion.) Tracking Village. Lipstadt, a sixty-nine-year-old ard Evans’s expert report—he’s a Cam- consists of keeping an eye on a term’s redhead, wore a flowery silk scarf that bridge historian, hoity-toity, intimidat- usage in books and magazines, and per- she’d loaned to Weisz for the film. She ing. The report devastated Irving. But I haps paying closer attention in the waves said, “The first thing Rachel said to didn’t want to gush, among all these Can- off the coast of Wales. Martin also con- me was ‘David Irving said you have a tabrigians with their secret language, fessed to watching live Webcasts of Brooklyn accent, as a put-down, but their subtext. So I wrote and said, ‘It’s the World Surf League. “I will note, I’ve been listening and it’s Queens.’ ” really quite good.’ Ten seconds later comes not when I work,” he said. “It’s a great She put her hand on the arm of Weisz, back an e-mail: ‘What didn’t you like?’ ” way to get through a cold and dark forty-six, who’d arrived in a tweed “In England, ‘quite good’ means ‘you’ve English winter.” jacket. “My family is annoyed because messed up,’ ” Weisz said. 1—Nick Paumgarten I didn’t correct you. It was the Upper Lipstadt asked for skim milk with her West Side.” coffee, but the waitress shook her head, THE PICTURES Weisz laughed. “Is it more aspira- explaining that they were Israeli. DOPPELGÄNGERS tional, the Upper West Side?” Weisz said, “I thought the café was “It’s more intellectually interesting.” Moroccan-Jewish.” “That’s what English snobbery is “Moroccan lineage,” the waitress said. about, too,” Weisz said. She explained “But the family moved to Tel Aviv, and that she had invited Lipstadt for tea at so now we are serving only whole milk.” her Manhattan apartment, then bom- She strode off. barded her with phone calls, trying “I’m English,” Weisz said, after a mo- achel Weisz and Deborah Lip- to extract— She made a squeezy ges- ment, “so it was quite delicious, playing stadt’s friendship turns on the ques- ture. “We were re-creating everything Deborah, to pretend to be confused by Rtion of who speaks for whom. In the fastidiously, using the exact testimony all the politesse, by the Oxbridge way of new film “Denial,” Weisz plays Lipstadt, from the trial, filming Auschwitz for playing with words in a double game.” the Emory University professor who Auschwitz—I can’t believe I’m saying She mimed patting her head while rub- was sued for libel by the British histo- that—and so I wanted to pay tribute to bing her belly. rian David Irving after she called him what is true of Deborah. Maybe this is “I exude this take-no-prisoners thing,” a Holocaust denier. The trial, which wrong . . .” She looked over. Lipstadt said, “but at the trial I felt like took place in London, in 2000, struck “Go, go, go, go, go!” a cipher.” Lipstadt as another form of denial, “But I felt that you’ve never adapted “Yeah,” Weisz said. “It was an inter- because her lawyers would not allow your Jewishness, your Upper West esting challenge to be silent. It wasn’t the her and survivors of the concentration Side-ness”—they both laughed—“to usual movie story of a woman finding camps to testify, and because it seemed make other people more comfortable. her voice and becoming empowered, like to let a bewigged British judge deter- I felt you carried your home on your ‘Erin Brockovich.’ This was a powerful mine whether the Holocaust was real. back, like a shell.” woman who must suppress herself, so that Irving would be the one on trial— and so the truth could come out.” “It took me a long time to accept that,” Lipstadt said. “I was brought up on the beginnings of feminism, and my first re- sponse was always ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’ ” “I was brought up on the Holocaust,” Weisz said. “My mum got out of Vienna two weeks before the Anschluss, and my dad got out of Budapest in ’38.” “Tell the James Parkes story,” Lip- stadt said. “My mum’s dad had a friend, the Rev- erend James Parkes. He was the one who sent the invitation to my mum’s fam- ily—which you needed in those days, to leave—so they could get out of Vienna and go live on charity in the English vil- lage of Barley. He saved their lives, ba- sically. I told Deborah this—” “Oh, great, the fundamentalists are back.” “And my mouth dropped open,” Lipstadt recalled. “I said, ‘James Parkes Times noted, in a report that appeared The editors surveyed the magazine’s the theologian I studied in graduate below the fold on page D1 of its issue of contributions to what are now conven- school? Who wrote about the Church’s Monday, April 29, 1996, two months be- tions of online media: links in stories, role in anti-Semitism?’ So, fast-forward, fore the launch of Slate. aggregation, crowdsourcing. “I think we I’m packing up scarves for Rachel to Recently, Kinsley, who was the edi- invented the slide show,” Weisberg said, wear and photos for her house, and on tor-in-chief of Slate from 1996 until with a note of regret. There was an anal- impulse I put in my copy of James Park- 2002, and his three successors—Jacob ysis of what Plotz, the editor from 2008 Weisberg, David Plotz, and Julia until 2014, called “Slateyness,” a tone of Turner—gathered in Washington, D.C., contrarian inquiry. One story was re- to record a podcast: a five-way conver- called with glee: “How Complicated Was sation with Josh Levin, the magazine’s the Byzantine Empire?,” by Brian Palmer, executive editor. It was a nostalgic and scrutinized the political structures of me- forgivably self-regarding celebration of dieval Constantinople and found them what Turner characterized as Slate’s to be substantially less complex than “smarty-pants, curious journalism, opin- those of modern governments. ion, and analysis.” The editors posed, After an hour or so, the recording grinning, for a group photo. stopped and the headphones came off. “We probably need to airplane mode,” The chat continued. There was fond Turner said, fiddling with her phone. recollection of company retreats during “I turned off any signalling for text, which the staff divided into teams for because my kids just text all the time,” softball: Christians versus Jews. Plotz Weisberg said. “Nate was, like, ‘You mentioned Matt Drudge, whom the can’t do that—how can I get in touch magazine had once tried to enlist to write with you?’ ” “Today’s Papers,” a daily survey of the Rachel Weisz and Deborah Lipstadt Everyone but Kinsley wore head- news, which was discontinued in 2009. phones. Turner said, “I would feel weird “That, actually, was my bad idea,” es’s book. She called me from her house— podcasting without headphones.” As Weisberg said. my house—” virtual tape rolled, they recalled Slate’s “That was a great idea!” Plotz said. “Our house. We’ve become one.” début. The first issues had page num- “History would have taken a different Lipstadt grew misty-eyed. Weisz bers; Kinsley expected that readers would turn.” kissed the crown of her head and said, print them. For the most part, the site “The thing I forgot to ask was, How “That secret message—it helped me, updated only once a week. There was a close were we to publishing the Lewin- emotionally. Deborah was very liberat- button that a reader could click on to sky tapes?” Levin said. ing to me, as a Brit.” hear a song by Fats Waller. There were “Ahh! ”s all around. “Sure, you were liberated,” Lipstadt “Was the idea that you would have “Jonah had them in a drawer in the said. She mimicked the actress: “I don’t nice music to accompany you while you office,” Kinsley said. Plotz launched want you on the set today!” were printing it out?” Turner, who has into a scattered account: Slate once “Because you’re very distracting!” been the editor since 2014, asked. shared office space with a production Weisz said. “You’re not a wallflower! “The idea was that we had this new company where a young television pro- You can’t blend in!” Snuffling, Lipstadt technology, and we ought to do any- ducer named Jonah Goldberg worked. accepted the compliment. thing that we could to exploit it, to His mother, Lucianne Goldberg, a lit- 1—Tad Friend counteract the disadvantage of having erary agent, was the conduit through to read it on the computer,” Kinsley which the world learned of Monica BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT. said. He praised colleagues who were Lewinsky’s confessions of intimacy SMARTY PANTS bold enough to forgo traditional print with President Clinton, secretly re- careers in order to pursue what to many corded by Linda Tripp, Lewinsky’s one- observers at the time seemed a quix- time friend. otic endeavor. “Jacob took more risk A producer entered the room: “You than anyone at Slate, because you were sure you don’t want to put the head- the political correspondent of New York phones back on and do this for real? This magazine,” he said, to Weisberg. “And is good.” t’s been twenty years since Mi- you traded that in for this mysterious Everyone except Kinsley restored chael Kinsley, the former editor of The thing.” the headphones. They reënacted the INew Republic, undertook a novel adven- “For a job at Microsoft, with stock conversation—adding details for the ture: the creation of a magazine, under- options,” Weisberg averred. He was the benefit of those many listeners who written by Microsoft, that was to exist editor from 2002 until 2008, and is might not remember the nineteen- primarily in what was then known as now Slate’s C.E.O., having orchestrated nineties, and how things worked all “cyberspace.” “There will be efforts to its purchase by the Washington Post those long years ago. update it, perhaps on a daily basis,” the Company, in 2005. —Rebecca Mead

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 27 rest of the country, where crossover ANNALS OF LAW voting rarely takes place anymore. There are only four Republican appointees on the Court: Chief Justice John G. IN THE BALANCE Roberts, Jr. (nominated by George W. Bush), Kennedy (Ronald Reagan), Clar- The Supreme Court has leaned right for decades. Is that about to change? ence Thomas (George H. W. Bush), and Samuel Alito (George W. Bush). BY JEFFREY TOOBIN They are matched by four Democratic appointees: Ginsburg (Bill Clinton), Breyer (Clinton), Sonia Sotomayor (Barack Obama), and Elena Kagan (Obama). “There has not been a defini- tively liberal majority on the Supreme Court since Nixon was President,” Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, said. “Ever since then, liberals have sometimes managed to cobble to- gether majorities to avoid losing— on issues like affirmative action and abortion—but the energy and the ini- tiative have been on the conservative side. That stopped, at least for now, this year.” Scalia’s final vote as a Justice pro- vided an apt symbol for the state of the Court at that moment. The case combined several of the conservatives’ pet peeves, which include environmen- tal protection, unilateral executive ac- tion, and, especially, Obama himself. “Judicial conservatives for a long time believed in a very powerful executive branch, but in more recent years there has been sharp skepticism toward Pres- idential power,” Justin Driver, a pro- fessor at the University of Chicago Law School, told me. “A skeptic might President Obama’s judicial appointments have already transformed the lower courts. say the real issue is who is the occu- pant of the Oval Office. Certainly, there istory, as a rule, unfolds slowly pally on the outcome of Presidential has been a noticeable amount of hos- at the Supreme Court. The Jus- elections; this year’s race will have a tility to President Obama’s executive Htices serve for decades. The cases take nearly immediate impact on the fate authority on the right.” In the sum- years. The Court’s languorous work of the Court. But the changes may only mer of 2015, the Environmental Pro- schedule includes three months of begin with a replacement for Scalia. tection Agency issued a long-awaited downtime every summer. But the death Stephen Breyer is seventy-eight, An- regulation aimed at combatting cli- of Antonin Scalia, earlier this year, thony Kennedy is eighty, and Ruth mate change, requiring electric power jolted the institution and affirmed, once Bader Ginsburg is eighty-three. If all plants to sharply reduce their emis- again, a venerable truism, attributed to of them have to be replaced in the com- sions. “It was probably the most im- the late Justice Byron White: “When ing four years, the next President will portant environmental regulation in you change one Justice, you change the have a Supreme Court legacy compa- history, since power plants account for whole Court.” For the first time in two rable to that of Richard Nixon, who about half of the carbon-dioxide emis- generations, the Court’s liberals were filled four vacancies in a little more sions in the country,” Richard Revesz, ascendant. After many years of liberal than two years, or Ronald Reagan, who a professor at New York University Justices struggling to win big cases, filled four vacancies in seven years, or School of Law, said. suddenly they couldn’t lose them. But Dwight Eisenhower, who filled five va- Twenty-nine states sued to block the this, too, might represent only a brief cancies in five years. regulation. In the United States Court interregnum. The future of the Su- The membership of the Court now of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, an ideo- preme Court always depends princi- reflects the partisan divisions in the logically diverse panel of three judges

28 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY MATT CHASE unanimously declined to stay the regula- courtroom; he used his queries to make tion while the case proceeded. Never- arguments to his colleagues, and, just theless, the five Republican appointees as often, to the broader public. He was on the Supreme Court blocked the reg- best known for championing original- ulation from going into effect. “It was ism—the theory that calls for inter- totally unprecedented for the Supreme preting the Constitution as its words Court to step in and grant a stay when were understood to mean at the time the D.C. Circuit had denied the stay of its ratification. He was never able and was still looking at the merits of to bring a majority of his fellow- Justices the case,” Revesz said. “It reflected an around to this approach, but he was attitude of hostility toward the Obama still on the winning side in all the Administration.” Even though the rec- great conservative victories of his era, ord of the case consisted of thousands including Bush v. Gore, which gave of pages, the Supreme Court imposed the Presidency to George W. Bush; the stay in just a few days. The last briefs Citizens United v. Federal Election in the case were filed with the Justices Commission, which hastened a dereg- on Friday, February 5th, and they im- ulation of American political-campaign posed the stay, by a vote of five to four, funding; and District of Columbia v. on Tuesday, February 9th. Scalia then Heller, for which Scalia wrote the left for a hunting trip in Texas. He was majority opinion, recognizing for the found dead in his room, of natural causes, first time an individual’s right, under four days later. the Second Amendment, to own fire- arms. Almost everyone at the Court ne person who correctly gauged missed Scalia’s voice, but it was con- the significance of Scalia’s absence servatives who missed his vote. On Ofrom the Court was Mitch McCon- February 29th, Clarence Thomas, Sca- nell, the Senate Majority Leader. An lia’s frequent ideological ally, asked his hour after the death was confirmed, first question in more than a decade when other politicians were offering at an oral argument. He then resumed condolences to the Scalia family, Mc- his customary silence for the remain- Connell issued a statement announc- der of the term. ing that the Senate would not allow a The effect of Scalia’s absence could vote on any nominee whom President be seen in the first major case argued Obama might put forward for the seat. after his death. Scalia’s place—to the “The American people should have a immediate right of the Chief Justice, voice in the selection of their next Su- where the senior Associate Justice al- preme Court Justice,” McConnell said. ways sits—was still draped in black “Therefore, this vacancy should not be crêpe on March 2nd, when the Court filled until we have a new President.” heard Whole Woman’s Health v. Hel- Such premeditated obstruction by a lerstedt. In recent years, especially after Senate leader, aimed at a President the Republican landslides in the mid- with nearly a full year remaining in his term elections of 2010, many states had term, was without precedent, but Mc- begun to restrict access to abortion. Connell has shown no sign of waver- Texas imposed especially onerous new ing. (He has also said repeatedly that requirements on abortion clinics, in- he will not allow a confirmation vote sisting that they install hospital-level in the lame-duck period, after Elec- equipment and that their doctors have tion Day.) admitting privileges at nearby hospi- The remaining Justices, too, imme- tals. These rules, which Texas law- diately saw the significance of Scalia’s makers said were designed to protect departure. Partly, this had to do with women’s health, led to the closure of his outsized personality and his long twenty-three of the forty-two clinics tenure on the Court. He died at the in the state. The plaintiffs in the case age of seventy-nine, having served since argued that the new rules had nothing 1986, which made him the senior As- to do with women’s health, and were a sociate Justice. His energetic presence transparent attempt to limit women’s and provocative questions dominated access to abortion. the Court’s public proceedings. Scalia Since Scalia’s death, one rule of Su- never played devil’s advocate in the preme Court practice has dominated

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 29 the deliberations of the eight remaining women by the Court in Roe v. Wade. the arguments and decides when the Justices. When the Court splits four But Scalia’s death reversed the odds. questioning of lawyers must cease. John to four, the lower-court decision is Texas’s abortion restrictions had been Roberts is less of a stickler for proto- affirmed, but the Justices don’t write upheld by the Court of Appeals for col than his predecessor, William Rehn- an opinion and the ruling does not rep- the Fifth Circuit, the most conserva- quist, but in the Texas case Sotomayor resent a national precedent. This meant tive circuit in the country, and a tie talked over him when he tried to stop that if the four Democratic appointees would affirm the ruling—but only in Stephanie Toti, the lawyer represent- voted in lockstep—as they already that region. ing the Texas clinics. And, when Toti tended to do in controversial cases— So when the liberal Justices entered wanted to elaborate on an answer after they would not necessarily win every the courtroom on March 2nd they did her time had expired, it was Ginsburg case, but they couldn’t lose, either. The so confidently. Scott Keller, the Texas who suggested that she be allowed to liberals could always prevent the es- solicitor general, opened his remarks continue. Roberts meekly acceded. In tablishment of a new Court precedent by pointing out that most of the state’s tone and in substance, the liberals were not to their liking. big cities still had abortion clinics. Gins- sending the message that they were in As Carrie Severino, the chief coun- burg pounced, asking, “Well, how many charge. sel of the right-leaning Judicial Crisis women are located over a hundred miles The legal world took note. Just after Network, put it, “Losing Justice Sca- from the nearest clinic?” About a quar- Scalia’s death, Dow Chemical an- lia on the Court created a one-way ter of the women in the state, Keller nounced that it would settle an anti- ratchet, making it so much easier to said, adding that clinics in New Mex- trust case against the company for move in a liberal direction. Every time ico were also available to Texas women. eight hundred million dollars. Liber- Kennedy joined the conservatives, there “That’s odd that you point to the New als are known to be sympathetic to anti- was just a tie, and no real precedent Mexico facility,” Ginsburg replied. New trust plaintiffs, so Dow decided not to was made. But when Kennedy joined Mexico imposed none of the require- chance an appeal before the Justices. the liberals they could set binding ments that Texas had established. “If On March 4th, the Justices met in their precedent.” that’s all right for the women in the El regular Friday conference to cast their Because Kennedy in recent years Paso area, why isn’t it right for the rest preliminary votes in the Texas abortion had appeared to weaken in his support of the women in Texas?” she asked. case. The result would not be released for abortion rights, the case had ini- The Justices often ask lawyers chal- until the end of the term, in June, but tially seemed like a possible vehicle for lenging questions, but the liberals, in the Court gave a clear hint where it the conservatives to impose severe lim- a rare departure, took control of the was heading. It overruled the Fifth Cir- its on the rights guaranteed to all courtroom. The Chief Justice manages cuit in a different case and blocked the implementation of a Louisiana law that would have forced all but one of the state’s abortion clinics to close. In an- other ruling issued that week, the Court rejected a request from Michigan and other mostly Republican-led states to stay a new E.P.A. regulation that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants. The legal issue was not identi- cal to the one in the climate-change regulation, which the Court had just stopped, but the cases were close enough to highlight the contrast. With five votes, the conservatives could block the Obama E.P.A.; with just four, less than a month later, they couldn’t.

nder ordinary circumstances, President Obama’s nomination of UMerrick Garland to replace Scalia, which the President announced on March 16th, might have aroused little controversy. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Garland served as a law clerk for William J. Bren- nan, Jr., the liberal lion of the Supreme Court, but Garland’s trajectory has reflected technocratic excellence rather than ideological passion. He worked in the Supreme Court, fifty­five on the that would spare them from deporta­ private practice and as a prosecutor, and, courts of appeals, two hundred and tion and provide them with work per­ as a Justice Department official in the sixty­eight on the district courts, and mits. Texas and other states challenged Clinton Administration, he supervised four on the Court of International Obama’s action as an abuse of his pow­ the prosecution of the Oklahoma City Trade. (Obama’s totals are roughly in ers under the Constitution, and a panel bombers. In 1997, Bill Clinton nomi­ line with those of his predecessors: of the Fifth Circuit, by a vote of two nated him to the D.C. Circuit, where George W. Bush appointed three hun­ to one, sided with the challengers. As he earned a reputation as moderately dred and twenty­four judges, and Bill is customary with tie votes, the Court’s left of center but hardly controversial. Clinton appointed three hundred and opinion was just nine words: “The As a Democratic President’s choice seventy­two.) More to the point, Dem­ judgment is affirmed by an equally di­ for the Supreme Court, Garland had ocratic appointees now vided Court.” The mil­ much to commend him to Republi­ dominate most of the lions who might have cans. In nearly two decades on a gen­ courts of appeals. When benefitted from Obama’s erally conservative court, he had rarely Obama took office, only order returned to a state protested his colleagues’ rulings, writ­ three of the thirteen ap­ of legal limbo. ing, on average, less than one dissent­ pellate courts had more ing opinion a year. And Garland was Democrat­appointed s the term came to already sixty­three, meaning that his judges than Republican­ a close, two signifi­ career was likely to be shorter than appointed judges. Now cantA cases, both of which those of most Justices on the Supreme nine do. This means that originated in Texas, re­ Court. more cases come to the mained unresolved. The It was possible to see Obama’s nom­ Supreme Court after liberals have pre­ first was Hellerstedt, the challenge to ination of Garland as a kind of peace vailed in the courts of appeals. the state’s restrictive abortion law, and offering to McConnell. If that was the That’s what happened with Fried­ the other was Fisher v. University of theory, the gambit failed. Some Re­ richs v. California Teachers Associa­ Texas at Austin, which represented publicans agreed to conduct the tradi­ tion, which concerned the efforts of the Court’s latest chance to address tional courtesy meetings with the nom­ public­employee labor unions to col­ affirmative action in college admis­ inee, but none suggested that Garland lect fees from non­members. Under­ sions. In that case, which the Court deserved a confirmation hearing, much mining the financial viability of unions, was hearing for the second time, a less an up­or­down vote. Because the which generally support Democratic white student was challenging her re­ majority party controls the agenda in candidates, has long been a conserva­ jection by the state’s flagship univer­ the Senate, the President was power­ tive cause; on the Supreme Court, it is sity, which used race as a factor in less to do more than protest. most closely associated with Samuel weighing whether to admit a student. Still, it became apparent in the spring Alito. The Friedrichs case was argued Both cases illustrated that, for the time that Obama, and the liberal quartet on in January, while Scalia was still on being, at least, Anthony Kennedy re­ the Supreme Court, would begin to the Court, and the five conservatives mained the swing vote, and thus the reap the benefits of seven years of seemed poised to deliver a victory. But, pivotal figure on the Court. Obama’s lower­court appointments. with Scalia gone, the Court split, and, On both abortion and affirmative This success owed as much to Harry because liberal judges had prevailed action, Kennedy had appeared to drift Reid, the Democratic leader in the Sen­ in the Ninth Circuit, the status quo fa­ right in recent years. In 1992, he was a ate, as to the President. While Reid voring union rights remained intact. co­author of the decision, in Planned was Majority Leader, especially in the As Noah Feldman observed, “There Parenthood v. Casey, that reaffirmed period before the 2014 midterm elec­ has been a sense of empowerment the core holding of Roe v. Wade and tions, he put judicial confirmations at among liberals on a whole bunch of held that states could not impose an the top of his agenda. Faced with Re­ appellate courts, in which Obama has “undue burden” on a woman’s right to publican filibusters, he and his fellow­ appointed a majority of the judges. choose abortion. But in 2007, in the Democrats deployed the so­called “nu­ They know that if their cases go to the Court’s last major abortion case, Ken­ clear option,” rewriting the Senate rules Supreme Court they will be protected nedy had written the opinion uphold­ so that lower­court judges could be by four­to­four votes.” ing the federal law banning so­called confirmed by a simple majority vote. The one big liberal disappointment partial­birth abortions. On affirmative Once McConnell took over as Major­ of the post­Scalia era also involved a action, Kennedy had always been a ity Leader, he all but ceased allowing four­four vote. After Congress failed skeptic. He dissented from Sandra Day votes on Obama’s judicial nominees to pass comprehensive immigration O’Connor’s opinion in Grutter v. (not just for the Supreme Court), but reform, early in Obama’s second term, Bollinger, a case decided in 2003, which by that point Reid had enabled Obama the President issued an executive order sanctioned race­based admissions to to remake the federal judiciary. Obama to allow nearly four million unautho­ foster diversity at the University of has appointed three hundred and twen­ rized immigrants who were the par­ Michigan Law School. Indeed, Ken­ ty­nine federal judges, more than a ents of citizens or of lawful perma­ nedy had always voted to reject affir­ third of the total. They include two on nent residents to apply for a program mative­action programs, regarding

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 31 Circuit, who has called Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.” Carrie Severino, of the Judicial Crisis Network, said of Trump, “I thought his list of judges was excellent. He had obviously consulted with people from the Federalist Soci- ety and Heritage Foundation and found people who would be consistent con- stitutionalists.” The confirmation of any of the judges on Trump’s list would essentially return the Court to where it was before Scalia’s death—with five Republican appointees, including Ken- nedy, who would sometimes cross sides to join the liberals. If Trump were then to replace Ginsburg or Breyer with a judge from his list, the transformation of the Court would be dramatic. The frustrated hopes of conservatives during the Rehnquist and Roberts years—for •• restrictions on abortion and affirmative action, for the removal of the barriers them as violations of the equal-protec- twenty-five years for the use of race in between church and state, for the elim- tion clause of the Fourteenth Amend- admissions. In Fisher, Kennedy im- ination of the last vestiges of political- ment. The fate of affirmative action in posed no such limit, saying that “con- campaign regulation—would likely be the Fisher case looked even more per- siderable deference is owed to a uni- realized. ilous, because Elena Kagan recused versity in defining those intangible The calculus would be somewhat herself from participating. characteristics, like student body diver- more complex for Hillary Clinton. She Yet, in the final week of the term, sity, that are central to its identity and has declined to say whether she would Kennedy sided with the liberals in both educational mission.” As has often been reappoint Garland, telling reporters cases. Thanks to his vote, the Court the case with Kennedy, outsiders were earlier this year, “When I am Presi- rejected Texas’s restrictions on abor- left to speculate about his motives. “It’s dent, I will take stock of where we are tion clinics and upheld the affirmative- possible that Kennedy saw the writing and move from there.” A senior Clin- action plan at the university. Roberts, on the wall about a liberal future for ton campaign aide told me, “She thinks along with Thomas and Alito, dissented, the Court,” Ilya Somin, a professor of the Senate should do its job and confirm so Kennedy, as the senior member of law at George Mason University, said. Garland in 2016. She wants to keep the majority, had the privilege of as- “If he reached a conservative outcome, the pressure on the Republicans now, signing the opinion in Hellerstedt. He it might be quickly reversed when Kagan and doesn’t want to give anyone the gave it to Breyer, who provided the would be back and there was another excuse to put the issue off until next Court’s clearest defense of abortion Democratic appointee on the Court.” year.” Furthermore, if Clinton wins, she rights in more than two decades. will want to move quickly on all judi- Breyer said that neither the hospital- n the light of the Senate’s con- cial appointments. “The Secretary, as level- equipment requirement nor the tinuing refusal to consider the Gar- a former senator, is very attuned to the admitting- privileges rule “offers med- Iland nomination, it seems clear that appointments process, and she knows ical benefits sufficient to justify the bur- one of the first acts of the new Presi- you have to get your ducks in a row dens upon access that each imposes.” dent will be to nominate a replacement and you have to move fast to get your He went on, “Each places a substan- for Scalia. In an unusual move, in May, people confirmed,” the aide said. “When tial obstacle in the path of women seek- Donald Trump provided a list of eleven it comes to judicial appointments, if ing a previability abortion, each con- judges whom he would consider nom- she wins, we’ll be looking at where the stitutes an undue burden on abortion inating to the Court. (He added ten vacancies are, where the Obama nom- access, and each violates the Federal more candidates last week.) The group inees are in the pipeline, and looking Constitution.” includes state and federal judges, as well to sit down with the Democrats and Kennedy assigned himself the affir- as a senator, Mike Lee, of Utah, all the Republicans in the Senate to make mative-action opinion, and seemingly strongly conservative in outlook; many a plan to get it done as soon as possi- went even farther in endorsing the uni- of the names would surely appear on ble.” The political calendar affects the versity’s interest in attracting a diverse any Republican President’s list of pos- process, too. Even if the Democrats re- student body than O’Connor did in sible nominees. Among them is Wil- take the Senate in 2016, the Party’s Grutter. O’Connor suggested a limit of liam Pryor, Jr., a judge on the Eleventh odds of holding on to it in 2018 are

32 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 daunting. Clinton may have to put her Clinton nominee, might affect future has made clear that he enjoys the job stamp on the judiciary right away. If retirements from the Court. Many peo- less than his colleagues seem to, but he the Senate remains in Republican ple expect Ginsburg to retire during a is unlikely to leave a seat to be filled hands, which is a distinct possibility, Clinton Presidency. But, if there is a by a Democratic President.) the nomination of a moderate like Gar- fifth Democratic appointee on the A liberal majority on the Court land might represent Clinton’s only Court, Ginsburg will be the senior would present a particular dilemma for chance to fill Scalia’s seat. member of a likely majority in some the Chief Justice. Roberts’s voting pat- Some liberal advocacy groups, such important cases; she will thus enjoy the tern suggests that he would be a fre- as Democracy for America, have ex- corresponding opportunity to assign quent dissenter—which no Chief Jus- pressed hope that Clinton would nom- the opinions. In more than two de- tice has ever been. Feldman said, “Rob - inate a judge more liberal than Gar- cades on the Court, Ginsburg has never erts might have thirty more years in land. During the primary campaign, assigned an opinion. (Neither has Breyer.) that job, and he might have it with a Bernie Sanders said that, if elected, he The chance to control the opinion- liberal majority. Because his only real would put forward a more progressive writing might present a significant dis- power is to assign opinions when he is nominee. But conversations with sev- incentive for Ginsburg to retire. “You in the majority, he could actually wind eral senators suggest that Democrats can imagine that it galled Ginsburg up with no power.” At this point, it ap- in the Senate support a renomination that Kennedy, who was the senior Jus- pears that Sotomayor, the author of a of Garland by a newly inaugurated tice in the Texas abortion case, assigned best-selling memoir and a frequent President Clinton. “What we’ve seen that opinion to Breyer, instead of her,” presence on the lecture circuit, has cho- from McConnell and the Republicans Noah Feldman told me. “The assign- sen an outsider’s role on the Court, is the most irresponsible thing I’ve seen ing power is very meaningful.” Thus, while Kagan is trying to become the since I’ve been in the Senate,” Patrick it might be Breyer, who has many internal playmaker, building coalitions Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, said. non-judicial interests, such as serving that might achieve majorities. “In fu- (Leahy formerly chaired the Judiciary on the board that awards the Pritzker ture years, if Ginsburg and Breyer are Committee, and is currently the lon- Architecture Prize, who retires first. replaced by Democratic appointees, gest-tenured member of the Senate.) (The retirement plans of Kennedy are Roberts could turn into the Chief Jus- “If the President had picked Garland unknown. Thomas, who is sixty-eight, tice in name while Kagan becomes the for the seats that went to Sotomayor and Kagan, he would have been con- firmed by ninety to ten.” Leahy would not comment publicly on whether Clinton should renomi- nate Garland, but others were less ret- icent. In the past, Senate Republicans, including Orrin Hatch, of Utah, who is also a former chair of the Judiciary Committee, had praised Garland. Be- fore the Scalia vacancy, Hatch said that Garland would be a “consensus nom- inee” and that there was “no question” he would be confirmed. Given these sentiments, many senators appear to believe that Clinton should go for a swift Garland confirmation and use the extra time to try to push more con- troversial matters through Congress. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, who once clerked for Jus- tice Harry Blackmun, told me, “If you have a time manager for the President of the United States and you have sev- eral significant and politically sensitive issues that you want to get done, you should not expend the time and take the heat of fighting day after day for another nominee when Garland will be on the right side of all the major is- sues, like choice, right from the start.” A confirmation of Garland, or any “Roger, I think it’s time we had a little talk about the birds and the bees.” de-facto Chief Justice,” Feldman said. don’t generally support individual can- ity on the Supreme Court could put “But, if Roberts wants to stay the real didates. They spend their money on the teeth back into the Voting Rights Chief Justice, he might have to mod- lobbying,” Karlan said. “Citizens Act,” Karlan said. erate his views and join more often United has nothing to do with the The liberal wish list expands rap- with the liberals. But would he want huge amount of money, the dark idly from there—limited only by the to do that?” money, that is being spent by rich in- imaginations of law professors, advo- dividuals to influence campaigns and cates, and the Justices themselves. One iberals on the Court have spent public opinion. In our system, there’s possibility is that the Court might rec- decades in a defensive crouch, try- basically nothing you can do to stop ognize a constitutional right to coun- Ling to fend off challenges to treasured the Koch brothers from independent sel in civil cases. (Currently, only crim- precedents in areas such as abortion spending in elections. That’s their right inal defendants are guaranteed legal rights and affirmative action. But if under the First Amendment.” Even representation.) In criminal law, the they were a majority they would have Clinton’s proposed constitutional Court might adopt the idea, which So- the chance to go after some conserva- amendment (which, like all proposed tomayor has suggested, that the Con- tive landmarks. What new crusades amendments, would have virtually no stitution forbids incarcerating individ- might the liberals begin? chance of adoption) would make lit- uals who are too poor to pay fines. Democrats in the political arena tle difference. According to Karlan, a Several scholars have proposed a con- have a clear target: the Court’s deci- more liberal Court would probably stitutional right to education, which sion in Citizens United, in 2010. In allow some state-based experiments might force increased funding for poor July, Hillary Clinton released a cam- in public funding of campaigns, but districts, or, even more speculatively, a paign video in which she said, “Today, the Court certainly would not take a right to a living wage. I’m announcing that in my first thirty leading role in limiting the influence The Court invariably responds to days as President I will propose a con- of money in politics. the political priorities of the moment— stitutional amendment to overturn Cit- Moreover, it’s largely up to Con- and to those of the President making izens United and give the American gress, not the courts, to take the first the nominations. In the New Deal years, people, all of us, the chance to reclaim steps toward greater regulation of cam- Franklin Roosevelt’s appointees vali- our democracy. I will also appoint Su- paigns. “You can erase Citizens United, dated many of his aggressive steps to preme Court Justices who understand and nothing will change until Con- address the crisis of the Great Depres- that this decision was a disaster for our gress decides to regulate the super PACs sion. If elected Democrats succeed in democracy.” This might sound good to and political nonprofits,” Heather tackling income inequality, judges may the Democratic base, but overruling Gerken, a professor at Yale Law School, follow suit. Joseph Fishkin and Willy Citizens United would probably not said. “Of course, those groups are of Forbath, who teach at the University accomplish what the politicians imag- great value to many members of Con- of Texas Law School, have proposed ine it would. gress, so the chances of Congress pass- that the Court enforce what they call “People use ‘Citizens United’ as ing a law against them are remote.” “the Constitution of opportunity.” They shorthand for all the problems of A liberal Court would, however, write, “As structures of opportunity money in politics, but in fact the de- make a difference on the issue of vot- grow more narrow and brittle, and class cision itself had little to do with money ing rights. In 2013, in Shelby County v. inequalities mount, our nation is be- in politics, and reversing it would do Holder, the five conservatives on the coming what reformers throughout the little or nothing to remove money in Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, nineteenth and early-twentieth cen- politics,” Pamela Karlan, a professor effectively eliminating the provi- tury meant when they talked about a at Stanford Law School who also sion of the law which allowed the Jus- society with a ‘moneyed aristocracy’ or worked in the Obama Justice Depart- tice Department to monitor changes a ‘ruling class’—an oligarchy, not a re- ment, told me. Justice Kennedy’s de- in state and local laws to protect the public.” And it is the duty of the Su- cision for the Court in Citizens United, rights of minorities. Many Republi- preme Court, they assert, to prevent though now symbolically important, can-dominated states responded by this system from persisting. Of course, held that the First Amendment pro- imposing photo-identification require- the immediate prospects for any such hibited the government from penal- ments, limiting early voting and ab- decisions remain remote. izing a nonprofit corporation that was sentee voting, and closing polling places For the first time in decades, there distributing a political film during an in minority neighborhoods. In the past is now a realistic chance that the Su- election year. The notion that corpo- year or so, federal judges have begun preme Court will become an engine of rations have First Amendment rights, using other provisions of the Voting progressive change rather than an ob- which is central to the decision, has Rights Act to strike down these changes. stacle to it. “Liberals in the academy had little to do with the role of money In a current North Carolina case out are now devising constitutional theo- in political campaigns. Subsequent de- of the Fourth Circuit, a liberal panel ries with an eye on the composition of cisions that limited the government’s voided the state’s newly passed restric- the Court,” Justin Driver said. The power to regulate campaign financing tions on voting. The decision was al- hopes for a liberal Court will begin— also had modest practical impacts. lowed to stand by the Supreme Court or, just as certainly, end—with the re- “Google, Ford, and other companies in a four-to-four tie. “A liberal major- sults on Election Day. 

34 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 vulnerable juncture, so he might be SHOUTS & MURMURS willing to drunkenly stumble into a Starbucks, take one look at you, and mumble, “Are you out of your mind?,” ASK DR. JELLOWITZ-KESSLER which would be a beginning, and most likely something you’ve heard before. BY PAUL RUDNICK Q: If I happen to run into Ange- lina at, say, the United Nations or on the Academy Awards red carpet, what would be an appropriate and helpful greeting? A: You might just say, “Hi there!,” in a cheerful manner, and then mime a teardrop rolling down your cheek, or use both hands to form the heart shape that Taylor Swift often uses during her concerts. You could also suggest a fa- vorite tea blend or a machete.

Q: Is it ever possible to forgive in- fidelity? A: Yes. Except in men.

Q: Was the Jolie-Pitt marriage doomed owing to the onslaught of media attention and online scrutiny? Susan Jellowitz-Kessler, am per- pect?” I concluded that, for celebrities, A: Perhaps. But, as the Kardashian haps the world’s most noted and marriage should be considered neither family has proved, constant selfies, Icompassionate, authority on marital re- a holy sacrament nor a legally binding reality television, and the exposure lations. Thanks to the impending di- contract but, rather, a hobby, like ori- of visible thongs beneath crocheted vorce of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, gami or running for President. jumpsuits can also solidify a marriage. my in-box and my Web site have been (Although instead of using the word overwhelmed with queries. In a selfless Q: A tabloid recently filled its front “marriage,” Kim Kardashian prefers the attempt to satisfy all those who are page with a photograph of Jennifer phrases “limited series,” “branding op- suffering, I am posting the most fre- Aniston laughing. Do you think this portunity,” and “this afternoon.”) quently asked questions, along with my was actually Jen’s response to the news expert and helpful responses. about her former husband? Q: Will Brad and Angelina ever get A: Never. Jennifer, from everything married again, perhaps to other movie Q: With everything that’s going on I’ve heard, is a kind and openhearted stars? between Brad and Angelina, does my person who harbors no resentment to- A: It’s possible, especially if either own marriage have a prayer? ward her ex or toward the woman who of them hits a career lull or needs to A: Yes. Since you and your spouse broke up their marriage. Jennifer moved promote a documentary. When a pa- are undoubtedly far less wealthy and on with her life a long time ago, and has tient of mine recently experienced the less physically attractive than the Jo- continued acting and also endorsing both premature cancellation of a network lie-Pitts, your problems will never be a bottled-water brand and a line of skin- spinoff, I suggested, “Have you thought anywhere near as upsetting or as inter- care products. I’m told that Jennifer has, about dating Ben Affleck?” esting as theirs. as a healing gesture, just shipped a crate of these products to Angelina. Q: I feel bad for Brad and Ange- Q: Should two movie stars ever lina, and I wish them only the best. marry each other? Q: It’s rumored that Brad has been But I wonder: If such a gifted couple A: That’s an excellent point of in- undergoing a midlife crisis. Is such a can’t make things work, is love possi- terest, which I explored in my doctoral phenomenon treatable? ble for anyone? thesis, entitled “Excuse Me, He Has a A: It can be. Except in men. A: Of course it is. The real expla- Soulpatch and Highlighted Bangs, nation for the Jolie-Pitt split is that, He Wears a Little Porkpie Hat, and Q: Would this be a good time for unlike the rest of us married people, He’s Been Married Once Already, Not me to contact Brad, perhaps on Twit- when they made love they were unable Counting the Broken Engagement to ter, and suggest that we meet for coffee? to shut their eyes and imagine either VICTOR KERLOW VICTOR Gwyneth Paltrow, What Did You Ex- A: Of course. Brad is at an intensely Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 35 the baby comes out, you know what else ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS exits? Her house.” It is possible that female excretion is relatively untouched comedic terrain be- LADY BITS cause the most noteworthy things that women expel are children—and few fe- Ali Wong’s radical comedy. male standups have any. Performing in clubs is not a career that fosters an ideal BY ARIEL LEVY work-life balance. “It’s almost impossible to be on the road as a female comic,” Amy Schumer said, “even without having to keep something other than yourself alive.” Wong, who is thirty-four, filmed her recent Netflix special, “Baby Cobra,” when she was seven and a half months preg- nant. “It’s very rare and unusual to see a female comic perform pregnant,” Wong announced from the stage. “Because fe- male comics . . . don’t get pregnant.” (As with many rules, Joan Rivers presents an exception: in the late sixties, she per- formed on “The Ed Sullivan Show” while pregnant—though she didn’t mention it in her set.) “Once they do get pregnant, they disappear.” The opposite has been true for Wong. Not long before she taped “Baby Cobra,” tickets for a show that she headlined—at Cobb’s Comedy Club, in her home town, San Francisco—sold so poorly that the proprietors put a block of them up for sale on Groupon. Recently, the club, which has four hundred seats, sold out five of her shows in minutes. She is juggling a job as a writer on ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat” (the first prime-time series about an Asian-American family on network television since Margaret Cho’s “All-Amer- ican Girl,” which aired for one season in the nineties) with acting in a new sitcom, also for ABC. Earlier this month, the clothing label Opening Ceremony invited Wong to walk the runway during Fash- ion Week. She is beloved by mothers, who have started coming up to her on the street. The Web site scarymommy.com announced, “She is your new queen, Wong’s standup explores the last taboo of female sexuality: women are animals. pregnant ladies.” “Baby Cobra” is an hour of often ex- t is not unusual for a female come- “Squirting out of like fifteen holes in tremely filthy material delivered by a tiny, dian to talk about her body. It is a lit- each titty. Like a Bellagio fountain.” Or foxy, Vietnamese-Chinese-American Itle less conventional for her to talk about her mucus. “I’m addicted to picking my wearing a short, tight, black-and-white what comes out of it. Her breast milk, nose,” she declared later that night, at a dress that hugs the balloon of her belly. for instance. “Local, organic, free-range, second gig. “In a world of red tape and There is a bracing thrill to watching a farm-to-mouth milk,” Ali Wong recently bureaucracy, where it takes forever to buy woman so manifestly gravid being irrev- told an audience at the Comedy Store a house or get a cell-phone plan going, erent and lewd. She describes meeting in West Hollywood. “Squirting out of it’s so instant to just stick your finger up her husband at a wedding six years ear- my titties,” she continued, circling her there and go for something your own lier like so: “I knew that he was a catch, index fingers in front of her breasts. body produces.” Or her afterbirth: “After so I was, like, ‘All right, Ali, you gotta

36 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHANIE GONOT make this dude believe that your body is Asian or female or a mother, she tells His father, Ken, introduced the United is a secret garden.’ ” She makes a sexy them not to think of these things as ob- States to the sticky, wall-walking toy oc- face and thrusts her big belly forward. stacles. “You just shift your perspective topuses that were a hit in the eighties, “When really it’s a public park,” she con- and think, Wait a minute: I’m a woman!” then became the host of a children’s tinues, hand on stomach, “that has hosted she told me. “And most standup comics television program called “The Dr. Fad many reggae fests, and has even acciden- are male. You know what male comics Show,” and now manages the estate of tally let . . .” she trails off and counts, “two can’t do? They can’t get pregnant. They his uncle, the Fluxus artist Nam June homeless people inside. I thought they can’t perform pregnant. So my attitude Paik. “Of course,” Wong said, “my mom, were hipsters.” is, just use all those differences. Don’t she’s always, like, ‘What’s gonna happen? Wong’s impending motherhood is think of it as you’re oppressed.” She Oh, my God, it’s the end of the world!’ ” “Baby Cobra” ’s most striking element, switched from her normal voice to one In the kitchen, Wong’s mother, Tammy, but it is not the one that has impressed of indeterminate ethnic origin—Chi- a retired social worker, and her uncle, other comics. “Everybody is making a nese? Chola?—that she often uses on- Long Nguyen, were making dinner: the big fucking deal that she was pregnant,” stage: “You special.” two had come to Los Angeles from San Bill Burr said on his podcast, when what Francisco for a visit. Wong said that when really mattered was that “she was fuck- hen Wong is not performing, she told her mother she was filming a ing original.” Margaret Cho said, about her speech is slower, and she has Netflix special Tammy said, “They show “Baby Cobra,” “I’ve never seen anything noneW of the coiled intensity she puts into ‘Cheers’ reruns on there. So what?” like that before.” Schumer told me that her show. “People are always very sur- Wong, who has been performing she considers Wong “a revolutionary in prised by how offstage with my husband standup for a dozen years, had been ap- comedy.” I’m a completely different person . . . very proached several times about recording In many ways, though, the things soft and nurturing,” Wong says in “Baby a special, and had always said that she that Wong describes onstage are unre- Cobra.” She boasts that she has been wasn’t ready. “But I thought that if I did markable—the typical concerns of a per- packing his lunch every day for five years. it when I was pregnant then I would al- son in her mid-thirties who grew up “a “I did that so he would become depen- ways associate the baby with a break if total private-school Asian.” She is cop- dent on me,” she continues, “because he I got it,” she told me. “A couple of fe- ing with the demands of her career and graduated from Harvard Business School. male standup comics I know refer to motherhood. (Her standup now includes And I don’t want to work anymore.” their kids as their Little Career Killers,” a bit about how expensive her nanny Wong is her family’s primary bread- she continued. “I was, like, I really do not is: “My husband and I, we gotta work winner at the moment. Her husband, Jus- want to feel that way. It sounds crazy, very hard—to not take care of our child tin Hakuta, who had a mild goatee and but if it wasn’t for Mari and doing that ourselves.”) She used to be promiscu- was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt special when I was pregnant with her I ous and wild, but now she’s too tired for when I visited their house in Culver City could see how very easily I would have sex. She wants her husband, a graduate one evening this summer, is a product slowed down, and stopped.” of Harvard Business School, to be suc- manager for Internet companies, but he Wong and Hakuta’s house is a wacky cessful. She is concerned about her aging was between jobs. Neither he nor Wong one-story with several outbuildings and mother. She eats gluten-free. seemed particularly con- lots of mosaic tile, installed by the pre- What is radical about cerned. “I don’t worry about vious owner, which depicts sailboats, Wong is that her discussion that, ever,” Wong said. She bright flowers, clouds, and happy peo- of quotidian domesticity is was sitting on the living- ple with red and yellow hair. “We’re think- interwoven with commen- room floor, playing with her ing of redoing the hair in black, so they tary on what may be the last daughter, Mari, who was all look Asian,” Wong said. She showed taboo of female sexuality: nine months old: intent, cu- me the low-ceilinged room where she women are animals. It’s old rious, peaceful, dressed in a does yoga, and then the shed where Ha- news that women can be as white onesie that Randall kuta meditates, the walls hung with paint- raunchy and libidinous as Park, the star of “Fresh Off ings of nature scenes. Before the baby, men. Wong addresses some- the Boat,” had hand-lettered they liked to take ayahuasca and go on thing else, which has re- with the Louis Vuitton silent meditation retreats together. mained virtually unexplored, not just in monogram. “A lot of people in those “Sometimes,” Wong says onstage, “all comedy but in pop culture at large: the product-manag er positions fall into a trap this hippie-dippy shit we do makes me terrifically hard-core female experience of getting into a startup that’s like a night- feel like we are white people doing an of reproduction—the part that comes mare: crazy hours, totally disorganized, impression of Asian people.” after the sex that so many women have toxic environment,” Wong continued. Wong’s mother and her uncle Long already publicly declared they want. Wong “And I don’t want him doing that.” had set out a meal of bánh tráng: rice noo- describes nursing, for instance, as a “sav- Hakuta—who is half Japanese and dles, stir-fried shrimp, greens, and rice- age ritual that reminds you that you ain’t half Filipino but looks, Wong thinks, paper wrappers that they dipped, one by nothing but a mammal.” “Asian with Aztec undertones”—said one, in a half-moon-shaped vessel of water When aspiring comics ask Wong how that he’d grown up comfortable with the to soften them. Tammy immigrated to she has dealt with being a standup who idea of a varied and fluctuating career. the United States from Hue, Vietnam,

38 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 when she was eighteen, and went to school in Nebraska. “I thought, What is this?” she remembered. “It was like ‘Green Acres.’ ” As she served noodles, she said, “We came from eleven children.” “That number is always changing,” Wong said, feeding Mari spoonfuls of mashed taro root. “Well, there were fourteen births all told,” her uncle clarified; several of the siblings died as infants or children. In “Baby Cobra,” Wong talks about hav- ing a miscarriage eleven weeks into her first pregnancy: “My mom, she’s from a Third World country, and when I told her I had one she was, like, ‘Uh, yeah, where I’m from that’s like losing a pair of shoes.’ ” After college, Tammy married Adol- phus Wong, a Chinese-American anes- thesiologist, and they raised four children in Pacific Heights, a picturesque neigh- “The arms wouldn’t be so noticeable if he’d stop playing air guitar.” borhood in San Francisco. Ali is the youngest by a decade: her two sisters are stay-at-home moms; her brother is an •• acupuncturist whom she describes as a “Chinese George Costanza—he’s always tlebells?” Wong asked them from the responding to the material and not to got some side hustle going.” I asked stage. She was wearing a brown jump- her crackling energy. More often, she is Tammy if her youngest daughter had al- suit that she had put on earlier because almost screaming at the audience—mix- ways been funny. “I don’t know,” she re- it was convenient for breast-feeding. ing enthusiasm and outrage in a kind of plied. “I had four kids. So I was busy.” “Did you guys all see each other and say, delighted tantrum. ‘We should hang out, because our arms At Pancho’s, Wong began question- n addition to shooting the new sit- look the same’?” ing one of the muscular friends, who was com—“American Housewife,” about They laughed at everything she said, Asian, about his romantic life. “I bet white Ia stay-at-home mother trying to adjust which was striking, because so much of chicks love you,” she said. “You’re like an to life in Westport, Connecticut—and it had to do with things that supposedly exotic . . . fish. You’re like a buff bird.” writing for “Fresh Off the Boat” and get- make men squeamish. Like giving birth: He said he was out looking to meet some- ting up at five-thirty to breast-feed, Wong “They put up this curtain so your hus- one, and asked for her number. “I have goes out most nights, after she and Ha- band can only see your human side and a C-section scar, bro!” Wong howled. “I kuta put Mari to sleep by singing “Baby not your cadaver side.” And rage. “My haven’t showered in like a week! If you Beluga” in unison, to perform at local husband occasionally changes diapers think that’s hot—and you got money clubs. She doesn’t announce these gigs and people can’t believe it—‘What a dot- and you know how to commit and you’re to her fans, because, for her purposes, the ing father!’ ” Wong shouted. “I was doing good with children—maybe!” fewer spectators there are at these shows skin-on-skin contact with my baby girl In the car on the way to her next ap- the better. “If the audience is really shitty, to bond with her: she shit on my chest. pearance, Wong told me that, in fact, she you feel free to just blurt things out,” she Where’s my trophy at?” had not had time to shower in five days, told me. “That’s the only way I write: Wong can get away with a consider- since she stayed overnight at a hotel in onstage.” She estimated that out of every able amount of vulgarity—and holler- Dallas for a gig and was fleetingly free ten gigs maybe one yields a new nugget ing—because she is funny, but it also of maternal responsibility. “The telltale that she can use. “I’m always chasing helps that she uses her differences, as she giveaway is when I have my hair like that,” she said. put it, to destabilize her audience’s ex- this.” It was in two French braids that After the bánh tráng, Wong drove half pectations. “The archetype that gets pro- graduated into pigtails. She looked sur- an hour from her house to Pancho’s, a jected onto us as Asian women of being prisingly clean. “It’s an art,” she said. place in Manhattan Beach that is part silent—she really does go against that,” We were in Wong’s new RAV4, her Mexican restaurant and part music- and- Margaret Cho told me. Sometimes, when only splurge after her recent success. She comedy club. There were about a dozen Wong wants to find out if a riff is good, was giving her mother her old Toyota people in the audience, mostly male, in- she’ll deliver it in a soft voice, a kind of Corolla, which, as she said in “Baby cluding a table of four very buff guys in monotonic stage whisper, because then Cobra,” has a “huge bear-claw scratch tight T-shirts. “You all into gel and ket- if people laugh she knows that they are on the side from this aggressive brick

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 39 wall that came out of nowhere.” Accord- stayed on Wong’s couch when he per- Then he landed the lead in “Fresh Off ing to Wong’s routine, there are two formed in San Francisco. “Before I knew the Boat” and recommended Wong for stereotypes of Asian women that are it—like half a year into dedicating her- a job, even though she had no experience fair: they live forever, and they drive self to standup—she had a following,” he writing for sitcoms. “There was all this poorly—“You know why we’re such bad told me. speculation and paranoia that it wasn’t drivers? Because we’re trying to die.” Wong said that her parents used to going to be good,” Wong told me. “I think As we hurtled down the freeway, Wong go see her sets, and that they were proud people think that Asian-Americans are came very close to smashing her new of her ambition. She describes her fa- really good at hive-mentality stuff—you car when she changed lanes. “Hoo-wee!” ther as “highly non-stereotypical”—open- know, like, in entertainment maybe they’re she shrieked. “Hoo-wee.” minded and quirky. “He was born and good at ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown,” dancing, or, like, tennis—but not at being oing multiple shows every night Wong told me. “Poor. Like fishing- truly innovative and having something is Wong’s long-standing habit: be- vegetables-out-of-a-garbage-can-with- to say that will create a cultural Zeitgeist. Dtween 2009 and 2011, when she lived in his-mom poor. Like no-running-water- What hurts is when I feel like Asian peo- New York City, she did as many as nine in-his-apartment poor. And they invested ple believe that about ourselves.” a night. Nahnatchka Khan, the show- everything in my dad. I can’t believe he For Park, part of Wong’s appeal was runner of “Fresh Off the Boat,” told me, didn’t cave under all that pressure, and the specificity of her voice. “For a lot of “I don’t think that she considers perform- just did what he was supposed to do and Asian-American—a lot of minority— ing working, necessarily—it’s so much a became a doctor.” When he came home comedians, myself included, the crutch part of her. Like, I can’t imagine a world from the emergency room, he told Wong when you first start out is to do hacky where Ali is not performing.” about everything he saw; after a man ethnic jokes,” he said. “It’s in a lot of ways Wong’s standup career began when came in one night with, “like, fifty Bar- an easier laugh. She never really relied she moved back home to San Francisco bie heads in his butt,” she remembered, on that.” Wong uses her ethnicity in her in 2005, after majoring in Asian- American her father drew her a diagram that comedy—“I have some useful advice for studies at U.C.L.A., and then complet- showed the path of the doll parts through all of my Asian-American brothers and ing a Fulbright program studying lan- his large intestine. Adolphus died in 2011, sisters: never go paintballing with a Viet- guage in Vietnam. In college, she was in after battling cancer. “He had an attrac- nam veteran”—but not more than her a comedy-and-theatre group that Ran- tion toward the arts. But, because of his sexuality or her eating habits or her dall Park had co-founded. After she grad- duty, he couldn’t,” Wong said. “My sis- finances. “A lesson that I keep learning uated, standup seemed like the simplest ter has this painting of his—it’s, like, this from her is: do you,” Park continued. “Her way to get back onstage. “You don’t need great painting, by anybody’s standards. I voice is just so . . . it’s Ali. If it’s happened much,” Wong said. “You do whatever you really love that painting.” to her and if it’s affected her, it’s going want—you don’t depend on anybody else. During the decade that Wong was to come out.” So I started going to open mics when I focussed on standup, Randall Park’s act- One of the characters that she writes was twenty-three and living with my par- ing career took off: he played Kim Jong-un for “Fresh Off the Boat” bursts into nose- ents. I’ve been doing it pretty much every in “The Interview,” and appeared in “Curb bleeds whenever he gets worked up. “I re- night, or every other night, ever since.” Your Enthusiasm” and in “The Office,” ally do have chronic bloody noses,” Wong Park, who had also started doing standup, as a character called Asian Jim Halpert. told me. “This is disgusting, but it gets triggered either by me picking my nose or by me getting really excited.” During the shooting of the first episode that Wong wrote, Nahnatchka Khan came on set and called out a greeting. “I turned to her, and I had tissues in my nose with blood streaming in them,” Wong told me. “And I was like, ‘I’m just so excited!’ ”

ong did not tell her family when she was hired on “Fresh Off the Boat.”W “They found out because I had a framed picture of me and Justin at the finale party dressed up, and then there was a little ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ icon in the corner,” she said. She still hasn’t told them about “American Housewife.” Be- fore “Baby Cobra,” Wong explained, she had been in at least six pilots, as well as “Yes, you’ve mentioned this ‘Facebook’ in the past—tell me, a medical-pr ocedural drama with Va- is ‘Facebook’ saying anything right now?” nessa Redgrave and a sitcom with Laura Prepon, and none of them amounted to Christmas lights. She was wearing her much. “My mom doesn’t understand that brown jumpsuit again, and a small back- I have no control if a project dies,” Wong pack that she kept on as she got onstage. said. “She’ll be, like, ‘Why didn’t you say She did her usual C-section and Bella- something about the writing not being gio-fountain material, but then she good?’ Or, ‘Why didn’t you tell the main brought in something new. As her fa- actress to be more funny?’ And then it ther reached the end of his life, she said, makes me super upset. And then it’s bad he “just didn’t give a shit anymore.” She for our relationship.” had been talking in the car about his She would tell her mother about the painting, and he seemed resurrected in new show only once it had aired. “I mean, her mind. “He couldn’t hold his bladder it’s absurd,” Wong continued. “If Mari very well,” she continued. “And when didn’t tell me what she was working on, T-Mobile would tell him, ‘Sir, we don’t it would drive me crazy.” She sighed. “If have a bathroom for customers,’ he would I didn’t have to make money, I would be pull a jar out of his backpack and go, happy just staying home with her all day ‘You do now.’ ” He would hide the con- and doing these shows at night.” When tainer under his coat and then discreetly she arrives at clubs with time to kill be- urinate, “like a pee ninja!” fore her set, she watches videos of the Earlier that evening, one of the com- baby, and sometimes it makes her ache ics sharing the bill with Wong had done to go home. a bit about receiving a “blowie” from a For the average fan, it is probably woman named Bambi. Another had less surprising to hear a hugely preg- talked about how he’d like to receive a nant woman describe herself as a “per- “ho fax” on each prospective sexual part- vert—a gross, filthy animal,” as Wong ner. Wong’s jokes about sex had a decid- does in “Baby Cobra,” than to hear any edly different tone. She started by talking successful woman admit, “I don’t want about how little of it she wanted since to lean in: I want to lie down.” Wong she gave birth. “I cannot be bothered to says in her routine that she “trapped” put a towel on the bed afterward to ab- her husband for his earning potential, sorb that post-sex wet spot—you know and declares, “Feminism is the worst that perfectly round-ass wet spot on the thing to ever happen to women: our job bed that gets all cold in wintertime? It’s used to be…no job.” like an ice-fishing hole, because it smells She was kidding about feminism. “I like penguins.” The crowd was loosening think people who don’t get that are, like, up, getting more pliant; people moved not so smart,” she said. “It’s a comedy their bodies more as they laughed. “The show, not a TED talk.” But she was seri- faster we let a fresh new penis inside us, ous about wanting to work less. “I really the less we think of the person attached just want more money for less effort,” to it as marriage material,” Wong said, she told me. “Don’t you want that, too?” and then assumed the pose she often The problem, though, is that Wong takes onstage after she drops an insight: also wants to make a romantic comedy lips flexed forward, eyebrows up, one arm that she and Randall Park have been slung over the mic stand, her body lan- talking about for years—“our version of guage announcing, This is how it is. “If a ‘When Harry Met Sally.’ ” And she is al- woman sleeps with a man on the first ready planning a follow-up special to date, it doesn’t mean we don’t respect our- “Baby Cobra,” trying to improve things selves.” There were some encouraging that she could have done better. In the hoots from the audience. “It means we car one night, on the way from one show don’t respect . . . you.” to another, she reworked the joke about The reaction was intense: there was trying to convince her husband that her clapping, there was laughing, and there body was a secret garden: “What I should was a certain amount of yelling. As Wong have said somewhere in there is ‘When took in the response, I noticed a darken- a woman sleeps with a man right away, ing by her nostrils. “Shit—I just got re- it’s not because we don’t respect our- ally excited,” she said, and clamped her selves—it’s because we don’t respect you.’ ” fingers on her nose to stem the bleeding. Wong’s gig was at the Lab at the Hol- Then she pulled a pack of Kleenex from lywood Improv: a small room with bur- her bag and stuffed a little plug of tissue gundy walls, decorated with rainbow up each nostril and kept on going. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 41 A REPORTER AT LARGE THE CUBA PLAY

President Obama’s plan normalized relations. Can it also transform the nation? BY JON LEE ANDERSON

ne afternoon last spring, who had an idea and acted on it. And in since 2008, when he handed over his du- President Obama sat on a stage this global economy it can take off.” ties to his brother Raúl, who is eighty- at La Cervecería, a high- ceilinged Obama said that if Cubans wanted five. But he has remained the elder states- Obeer hall on Havana Harbor, where he to improve their standing in the global man of Cuba’s revolution and, from the had been invited to preside over a gath- economy their government needed to beginning of the diplomatic reëngage- ering billed as “an entrepreneurship and free things up. “Cuba should take ideas, ment with the United States, has let it opportunity event.” Just a few hundred steal ideas from wherever you see some- be known that he distrusts America’s in- feet down the harbor wall was the spot thing working,” he said. “Now, my ad- tentions. Soon after Obama’s visit, he where, in 1960, a French cargo ship full vice would be: don’t steal ideas from wrote an open letter in Granma, the “offi- of munitions exploded, in a lethal blast places where it’s not working.” Obama cial organ” of the Cuban Communist for which Fidel Castro blamed the C.I.A. paused for a laugh from the audience. Party: “Nobody should be under the il- But no one at La Cervecería was in the “There are some economic models that lusion that the people of this dignified mood to dwell on history. Obama’s visit just don’t work. And that’s not an ideo- and selfless country will renounce the was the culmination of fifteen months logical opinion on my part. That’s just glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth of diplomatic engagement, which began the objective reality.” they have gained.” Despite years of finan- when the U.S. and Cuba restored rela- The exchange at La Cervecería, which cial privation, he insisted that isolation tions, on December 17, 2014, bringing would have been uncontroversial at any was better than engaging with his old an end to the United States’ longest- Chamber of Commerce meeting in the enemy. “We do not need the empire to lasting hostile standoff with another na- United States, was without precedent in give us anything,” he said. tion: fifty-six years of bad blood and Communist Cuba: an American Presi- broken ties. An audience had gath- dent had been allowed to speak directly few weeks later, in the Oval ered—a handpicked group of Cuban and to the Cuban people about the virtues Office, I asked Obama about the American entrepreneurs, government of capitalism. It was as if the 1959 Kitchen reactioA n. “I actually thought that the push- officials, and journalists. Brian Chesky, Debate had been replayed, with Nixon back was milder than I expected,” he said. the co-founder of Airbnb, one of the allowed to show off the American model But he suggested that he had done his first American companies to receive a home in Sokolniki Park and Khrushchev best not to offend Cuban national pride. license to do business on the island, rose forbidden to talk back. “The American “I hope that what I conveyed . . . was that to speak with barely restrained wonder people are not interested in Cuba fail- the policy I put forward was designed about the possibilities of Cuban com- ing,” Obama said. “We’re interested in not to take America out of the equation merce: Airbnb was in more than a Cuba being a partner with us.” but to remove it as an excuse for Cuba hundred countries, and Cuba was its During Obama’s visit, security men feeling trapped in its past,” he said. “Now, fastest-growing market. cordoned off the streets, mostly keeping Fidel’s response, in part, was: ‘I don’t want When Chesky finished, Obama spoke. ordinary Cubans at a distance. But when to escape the past.’ Which, if you’re ninety “I just want to brag on Brian just for one they did get close the reception was ec- years old and you were an iconic figure second,” he said. “How long ago did you static. As Obama strolled through the of the twentieth century, I completely un- guys start, Brian?” Plaza Vieja with his family, Cubans shouted derstand.” Obama laughed. “But I think “Eight years,” Chesky said. his name, hoping to attract his attention. the Cuban people heard me say, ‘This is “Eight years,” Obama repeated. “And The backlash, though, began swiftly after in your hands.’ And I suspect that made what’s the valuation now?” he and his entourage left town. An ac- it more difficult for some of the hard- “Twenty-five—” quaintance who works for Cuba’s secu- liners on the island to try to character- “Don’t be shy.” rity services told me that one of his col- ize anything that I said as yet another “Twenty-five billion,” Chesky said. leagues had called Obama’s appearance gesture of Yankee imperialism.” “Twenty-five billion?” Obama asked. at La Cervecería “as subversive as the Bay The entrepreneurship event, how- “With a ‘B’?” Smiling, he looked around of Pigs.” I found the sentiment echoed by ever, seemed to have been devised to at the audience. No one needed remind- other Cubans, most of them Communist bypass the Cuban state in order to ad- ing that this figure was equal to almost Party loyalists, who share the conservative vertise the possibilities of commerce a third of Cuba’s G.D.P. “I use Brian views of former President Fidel Castro, freed of political constraint. “That was as an example,” he went on. “He’s one of who is now ninety years old and fragile. very intentional,” Obama said. “And our outstanding young entrepreneurs Fidel has been officially out of power that’s consistent with the theory that

42 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 L’AGENCE À PARIS L’AGENCE Obama’s idea isn’t “to take America out of the equation but to remove it as an excuse for Cuba feeling trapped in its past.” PHOTOGRAPH BY NICOLA LO CALZO THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 43 we have been operating under since this ple—who now have their own little shop and said, “I do not want people to back whole project began.” and have a little bit of savings can start off one inch from this position.” The project, according to Obama and expecting more.” Obama’s stance on Cuba was the re- a number of his key advisers, started with sult of a long evolution. “I was definitely the modest goal of tweaking a few reg- he origins of Obama’s Cuba proj- left of center by the time I had any aware- ulations, but it evolved into an ambi- ect can be found in an intemperate ness of politics,” he told me. “And in col- tious bid to open up Cuba’s closed sys- remarkT made during his initial run for lege in the early eighties . . . you’re read- tem, by using seduction instead of force. the White House, setting off what he ing development theory and biographies For a generation brought up with the described as “one of the first big hub- of Che.” But, he said, “perhaps because terror of the Cuban missile crisis, this bubs in my Presidential campaign.” In I had grown up for a time in an under- meant abandoning a half-century-long July, 2007, CNN and YouTube held a developed country, in Indonesia, I was crusade. Over the years, the United States debate for the Democratic contenders never star-struck by revolution. I think had tried to dislodge the Castro regime in South Carolina. As Obama stood on- I understood Cuba as a revolution that by a variety of methods, including inva- stage with Joe Biden, John Edwards, Hil- had started with recognizable motives, a sion, attempted assassination, funding lary Clinton, and a handful of other as- desire for poor people in an oppressive dissidents, and a baroque plot to create pirants, they were asked if they would and corrupt society to make things bet- a fake Twitter service that was intended be willing to meet with the leaders of ter. But I was never persuaded that they to aid an antigovernment uprising. When America’s most vociferous enemies: Iran, had taken the right course of action.” Obama announced the opening with Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea. In 2004, on a cigarette break out- Cuba, John Boehner, then the Repub- “I would,” Obama replied. “The no- side a political fund-raiser in Chicago, lican Speaker of the House, said, “There tion that somehow not talking to coun- Obama met a Miami businessman is no ‘new course’ here, only another in tries is punishment to them—which has named Joe Arriola, who began inviting a long line of mindless concessions to been the guiding diplomatic principle of him down for listening tours. For de- a dictatorship that brutalizes its people this Administration—is ridiculous.” He cades, the Cuban-American community, and schemes with our enemies.” For a waited out a round of applause, then con- composed largely of staunch Republi- younger generation, though, it seemed tinued, “Now, Ronald Reagan and Dem- cans, had lobbied insistently to uphold obvious that commerce would triumph ocratic Presidents like J.F.K. constantly the U.S. trade embargo—a complex, ever- over politics. “We just don’t believe that spoke to the Soviet Union at a time when growing suite of regulations intended to rhetoric about changing the Cuban Ronald Reagan called them an evil em- isolate Cuba from the rest of the West- political system is constructive,” one of pire. And the reason is because they un- ern Hemisphere. But Florida was chang- Obama’s aides told me. “And we don’t derstood that we may not trust them and ing. As Puerto Rican immigrants surged think it resonates broadly with the Cuban they may pose an extraordinary danger into the state, Cuban-Americans found people, who are more focussed on their to this country, but we had the obliga- for the first time that they were not the economic well-being.” tion to find areas where we can poten- majority of Hispanic voters there. The Obama said that his operating the- tially move forward.” Cuban históricos—the most recalcitrant ory was based on three premises. “No. 1 Dan Restrepo, who had just joined exiles of Fidel’s generation—were begin- was, Cuba is a tiny, poor country that Obama’s campaign as a Latin America ning to die off, replaced by their children poses no genuine threat to the United and by more recent immigrants. States. No. 2, in this era of the Internet Alfredo Mesa, a Cuban-American who and global capital movements, is that is a vice-president of the Miami Marlins, openness is a more powerful change agent told me that Obama’s visits helped him than isolation. That’s not always the case. understand something important: “To the There are unique circumstances, like rest of the world, it is a battle between North Korea, which is such a closed sys- Cuba and the United States. For Cuban- tem that all you do there is reward those Americans, this is an issue between Cu- who are in power, and there’s no capac- bans.” The new generation, born in Amer- ity to reach people. adviser, recalled that this response sent ica, was less concerned with ideology than “No. 3 was the belief that, if you are a jolt: “Some of his entourage said, ‘Oh, with practicality. By U.S. law, Americans interested in promoting freedom, inde- shit, did he just say that?’ ” It was a po- of Cuban origin—there are about two pendence, civic space inside of Cuba, litical truism that any candidate who million of them—could visit the island then the power of things like remittances wanted to win Florida had to be tough only once every three years, and could to give individual Cubans some cash, on Cuba. Obama’s opponents moved send no more than three hundred dollars even if the government was taking a cut, quickly to characterize the answer as a a year to relatives there. In August, 2007, that then allowed them to start a bar- gaffe: Mitt Romney said that he had Obama published an op-ed in the Miami bershop, or a cab service, was going to “demonstrated a dangerous naïveté.” The Herald, announcing his intention to ease be the engine whereby individual Cu- publicity forced his aides to quickly define those policies. bans—not directed by the United States, a Cuba policy. In the car driving back The following May, Obama appeared not directed by the C.I.A., not through from the debate, Obama recalled, he held at a gathering in Miami, organized by some grand conspiracy, but Cuban peo- a conference call with his campaign team the ultraconservative Cuban American

44 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 National Foundation. In a finely cali- brated speech, he promised again to open the flow of money and visitors to Cuba, but he was careful to avoid any appear- ance that he was capitulating. “Don’t be confused about this,” he said. “I will main- tain the embargo. It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing rela- tions.” If he had to sit down with Raúl Castro, he said, he would do so, “at a time and place of my choosing.” On Election Day, Obama narrowly won Florida—a state that had largely voted Republican since the early fifties. In the 2000 election, twenty-five per cent of Florida’s Cuban-Americans had voted Democratic; now Obama won thirty-five per cent. “Things in Miami had already begun to change,” Restrepo said. “So this stuff—family travel and remittances—made good policy. And the politics of it worked, too.” “Anytime I’ve ever been asked ‘What do you want, a medal?’ I’ve said yes.”

n a recent afternoon, Carlos Sa- ladrigas, one of the most influ- •• Oential of the new Miami Cubans, sat sipping a Bloody Mary at his table at ing. In November, 1999, a five-year-old in which I asked, ‘Why do we have to Miami’s Riviera Country Club, as he Cuban boy named Elián González set swing the bat every time Fidel Castro explained how he and a few fellow Cuban off from Cuba, with his mother and a pitches a ball?’ We began soul-searching, exiles—all lifelong Republicans and group of others, on a clandestine boat and we started polling the community.” anticastristas—had changed their minds, journey. The engine failed, and a storm The younger Cuban-Americans, he and then worked to win over the White sank the boat, killing twelve of the pas- found, “were not as willing to subjugate House. “This was not a journey that hap- sengers, including his mother. Elián was their emotions and sacrifice their rela- pened overnight,” he said. rescued by fishermen and handed over tives on the island to politics.” Saladrigas, a burly, hale man of sixty- to relatives in Miami, but his father, still Saladrigas and his friends—includ- eight, is a wealthy businessman and a in Cuba, insisted that he be sent home. ing Andrés Fanjul, a sugar and real-es- founding member of the Cuba Study The relatives refused, and American pol- tate mogul—formed the Study Group, Group, a nonprofit organization de- iticians took up their cause. In Havana, and began to contend with Florida’s voted to restoring relations with Cuba. Fidel Castro led huge demonstrations Cuban- American hard-liners. The in- He was born into an affluent Havana demanding Elián’s return, while Miami fighting was intense, almost fratricidal. family a decade before the Cuban Rev- Cubans defended his relatives’ right to One of the most intractable opponents olution. At the age of twelve, he was keep him in the United States. Finally, of the Cuban regime, a Republican con- evacuated by Operation Peter Pan, a after a six-month standoff, Attorney gressman in Florida named Lincoln two-year airlift run by the Catholic General Janet Reno ordered Elián’s re- Díaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro’s nephew Church to “rescue” children from Com- turn to Cuba, and armed American bor- by his first marriage. munism. By the time it ended, in Oc- der agents came to retrieve him. Those A few days after Fidel resigned, in tober, 1962, when the airspace was who had argued that he should be kept February, 2008, he noted in Granma that closed down by the Cuban missile cri- in the U.S. felt betrayed. Saladrigas had heralded his resignation sis, Peter Pan had flown out fourteen The Cuban-Americans, Saladrigas as an opportunity for the U.S. to accel- thousand children, to be looked after said, “got their revenge on the Demo- erate political change in Cuba. Castro by relatives or by charitable organiza- cratic Party by voting for Bush over Gore quoted him with the glee of a prosecu- tions in the United States. in 2000.” But he and a few of his wealthy tor locking up a case: “ ‘In Florida, there The event that started to change Sa- friends were unhappy. “We concluded are a million Cubans with sufficient re- ladrigas’s thinking was another disas- that we had reacted too much with our sources to revitalize the economic ma- trous and well-publicized ocean cross- hearts, not our heads. I wrote a column chinery of the island in a short period,’ ”

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 45 if the U.S. allowed its citizens to invest Guantánamo. But in mid-April—be- back, and handed him a copy of Edu- in Cuba and the Cuban government le- fore heading to the Summit of the ardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin galized private property. Fidel went on, Americas, a meeting of regional heads America: Five Centuries of the Pillage “ ‘Once these conditions are created,’ in of state that was being held that year in of a Continent,” an anticapitalist history Saladrigas’s opinion, ‘the political re- Trinidad and Tobago—he made good with a cultish following. Obama accepted forms will be automatic’ ” and “ ‘the ex- on his campaign promise to eliminate it, smiled, and shook Chávez’s hand. The iles can become the greatest aid fund of the restrictions on family travel and re- book, first published in 1971, soared to any political tradition in history.’ ” Not- mittances to Cuba. Soon afterward, Raúl sixth place on Amazon’s best-seller list. ing that Saladrigas shared a name with Castro made an unprecedented an- Still, Obama said, the Bolivarians a prime minister in the regime of the nouncement: “We have sent word to subjected him to tendentious lectures late dictator Fulgencio Batista, Fidel the U.S. government in private and in during meetings: “Ortega, Chávez, Mo- wrote,“How cheaply the new Carlos public that we are willing to discuss ev- rales, Correa . . . went on these long Saladrigas wants to buy us!” erything—human rights, freedom of rants against the United States. And I Saladrigas didn’t deny his intentions. the press, political prisoners, everything.” just sat there, and I smiled and I lis- “We understood that change must be Even so, Obama told me, the sce- tened. And people noticed that I didn’t gradual but that it was also inevitable,” nario in Trinidad was daunting. “Re- walk out, and that I let them have their he said. “The important thing was not member, when I came into office Hugo say.” Obama told the assembled lead- to isolate Cuba but to open it up. So we Chávez was the dominant political figure ers that he was seeking a new relation- looked at our policy”—the relentless en- in Latin America,” he said. A few years ship: “I’m prepared to have my Ad- forcement of the embargo—“and saw earlier, when George W. Bush came to ministration engage with the Cuban that it hasn’t accomplished anything. Our the summit to propose a regional free- government on a wide range of issues— previous policy was based on squeezing trade agreement, Chávez proclaimed from drugs, migration, and economic people on the island, forcing an uprising. that he had brought a “gravedigger’s issues to human rights, free speech, and This, we decided, was unethical.” During shovel” to bury it, inspiring protest ral- democratic reform.” He added, “Let the Bush Administration, he said, he and lies that drew thousands of people. In me be clear: I’m not interested in talking his peers had argued against tightening the years since, he and his allies in the for the sake of talking. But I do be- sanctions. “But we didn’t have much luck. “Bolivarian” alliance—including the lead- lieve that we can move U.S.-Cuban re- It was very much a ‘You’re either with us ers of Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia— lations in a new direction.” or against us’ situation. So then Barack had kept up the anti-American rheto- Obama came in, and we decided to focus ric. But, Obama recalled, “rather than ight months later, on Decem- our efforts on the new Administration.” building these guys up as arch-villains ber 4th, Ricardo Zúñiga, the acting who threaten America, [which] made Edirector of Cuban Affairs at the State hen Obama entered the White them stronger and covered up all their Department, was working alone in his House, in January, 2009, his foibles, my view consistently was: let’s office when he got an alarming phone foreign-W policy priorities were to end the shrink the problem.” call. “It was a senior official at the Cuban wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, at At the 2009 summit, Chávez ap- program of U.S.A.I.D.,” he told me. “She least ostensibly, to close the prison at proached Obama, clapped him on the said, ‘I think we may have a problem. We have a contractor who was picked up by Cuban authorities. It’s been a couple of days, and they’re still holding him.’ ” Zúñiga had spent two years at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana—the American government’s only presence there since 1961, when the Embassy was closed. He had seen many visitors to the island detained after meeting with dissidents, but typically they were re- leased after a few hours. “I hoped it was like the others,” he said. “But something about this one made me think, This isn’t good. In response to an inquiry we made, the Cubans let us know they were hold- ing someone. Then they went quiet.” The detainee was a sixty-year-old U.S.A.I.D. contractor named Alan Gross; he had been arrested on suspi- cion of espionage. Gross, who worked in international development, had gone to Cuba disguised as a tourist, and had been caught distributing illegal com- office, he had eased some of the more to me. In the coming months, he relayed munications equipment to Jewish com- onerous restrictions on Cuban citizens, discreet messages between the two lead- munity groups. Gross insisted that he giving them the right to own comput- ers, much as García Márquez had done was a humanitarian, not a spy; his mis- ers and cell phones. At first, his fixes two decades before. sion was part of a government-funded seemed diffident and largely cosmetic. In November, Obama won a second “democracy promotion” program, au- Then, in 2010, he rolled out a series of term, and, soon afterward, the political thorized by the Helms-Burton Act. major initiatives, allowing hundreds of balance in Latin America began turning The act had exacerbated the conflicts thousands of new cuentapropistas— in his favor. In December, Chávez an- between Cuba and the U.S. for two de- self-employed workers, such as restau- nounced that his cancer had returned, cades. In the mid-nineties, before it was rateurs, barbers, and cabdriv- and prepared to fly to Cuba passed, Castro and President Bill Clin- ers—to sell their services to receive treatment. By ton had exchanged exploratory messages, directly to customers. More March, he was dead. using the Colombian novelist Gabriel controversially, he laid off half García Márquez as an envoy. Then, in a million state employees and etween Election Day 1996, the Cuban Air Force shot down scheduled a Communist and his second inaugu- two small U.S. aircraft off the Havana Party Congress, Cuba’s first Bration, Obama asked his coast. The planes, flown by a Miami-based in fourteen years; the coun- national-security team to exile organization called Brothers to the try, he said, needed to discuss draw up priorities for his Rescue, were on a mission to drop anti- “erroneous and unsustainable second term. Ben Rhodes, Castro leaflets; the four men on board, concepts about socialism,” the President’s chief foreign- all Cuban-Americans, were killed. In an stemming from “the excessively pater- policy aide, recalls, “We had a series of atmosphere of outrage, Clinton signed nalistic, idealistic, and egalitarian ap- meetings in which you basically go Helms-Burton, which was ostensibly proach instituted by the revolution in the through the whole world, and Cuba meant to enable “a peaceful transition to interest of social justice.” In 2011, Cubans was sitting there as an area where we a representative democracy and a mar- were given the right to buy and sell their had to make a decision.” Rhodes, a la- ket economy in Cuba”—but which pro- own homes and cars, to start an expanded conic, watchful thirty-five-year-old who hibited dealing with any government range of businesses, and to travel freely— aspired to be a novelist before Obama that included the Castro brothers. all of which had been allowed only with hired him, asked for the portfolio; de- Under George W. Bush, the law’s the permission of the government. spite his inexperience, he got it. “There provisions were applied with increas- For longtime supporters of Cuba’s was a feeling that—unlikely as it would ing alacrity, and funding for democracy- revolution, Raúl’s moves seemed almost be for someone like me to do Cuba, promotion programs, like the one that heretically bold. In fact, they had nearly because I am not a Latin-A mericanist— Gross had been hired for, grew almost come too late. That July, Hugo Chávez what the Cubans would care about was without restraint. A Government Ac- announced that he was undergoing treat- my proximity to the President,” he said. countability Office report, released in ment for an unusually aggressive cancer. With Cuba in mind, Obama brought 2006, pointed out that U.S.A.I.D. had For a decade, Chávez had been giving Ricardo Zúñiga, the State Department devoted seventy- four million dollars Cuba generous subsidies, bartering oil official, to the N.S.C., where he could to pro-democracy projects in the pre- for doctors in a deal that had kept the work closely with Rhodes. Zúñiga, then vious decade, with little oversight of island’s economy afloat. Without his pa- in his early forties, was boyish, genial, how the money was spent. “Nobody tronage, the socialist experiment might and, after a decade working in Latin- could say where it was going,” a senior be unable to continue. American affairs, deeply versed in the U.S. official told me. “They were just When the next year’s Summit of the intricacies of regional policy. Rhodes said, sending money to people with P.O. Americas was held, in Cartagena, Co- “Everybody thought he was the best boxes in Miami.” lombia, Chávez, visibly swollen from Cuba hand in Washington.” The two Eventually, Gross was formally ac- his medical treatments, stayed home. men resolved to keep the “Cuba play,” as cused of working for U.S. intelligence But he put on a rowdy performance in they referred to it, secret from almost ev- and sentenced to fifteen years in a Cuban Caracas, in which he rallied his fellow- eryone else in the government, trying prison. As Saladrigas saw it, the extrem- leaders to denounce the Americans for to preserve what Zúñiga called “flexibil- ists on both sides had once again spoiled stalling on Cuba and said, “The empire ity and political space.” If the news of the opportunity to move forward. “His- should go elsewhere.” In Colombia, the negotiations leaked to opponents of torically, every time an American Pres- President, Juan Manuel Santos, declared reconciliation in Congress, they could ident tried to make an overture to Cuba, that this summit would be the last one easily be scuttled. Fidel did something to stop it,” he said. without Cuba present. Zúñiga recalled, “All the N.S.C. di- When I pointed out that Raúl, not Fidel, Obama felt stung by the criticism, rectors had been told to come up with was President at the time, he said sourly, and afterward, in a private meeting at their big objectives, so I proposed a “Fidel doesn’t govern, but he doesn’t let Casa de Huéspedes, the Presidential thing on Brazil—also Mexico and Cen- anybody else govern, either.” guesthouse, he asked Santos for help in tral America, which the President was In fact, Raúl Castro had been slowly opening up communication with Cas- going to visit soon.” Tom Donilon, the bringing about change. After taking tro. “I told him, ‘Of course,’ ” Santos said national- security adviser, called Rhodes

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 47 to his office and remarked that he didn’t see Cuba on the proposal. “I said, ‘Let’s not put this on paper,’ ” Rhodes re- SOUTH called. “I told him that we were strik- ing out on our own.” In the cold, clear winter air Obama met with Rhodes and Zúñiga of Andalusia, I walked and approved the secret project. “Ricardo a trail up through pig grass and I basically designed a play in which toward a distant abandoned we would send a message to the Cubans farmhouse. No one could live here, through a discreet channel, not through I said aloud, the land is baked clay, the State Department, indicating that the long summers are withering. the White House was prepared to have Yet someone did. The one wall a dialogue with them and that the dia- left intact bore the handprint logue would be initially on issues relat- of a child, the fingers splayed ing to counterterrorism and prisoners,” out to form half a message Rhodes said. “Which, in our view, if this in the lost language of childhood. went nowhere and it got out, was un- It said, “You won’t find me!” objectionable: Who wouldn’t want to Then the wind woke from its nesting talk about counterterrorism and getting in the weeds and the tall grass Alan Gross home?” In turn, the Cubans to blow the childish words away. agreed to reveal the talks to only a few trusted people in their own government. “It was a very small circle,” Zúñiga said. They needed a secure place to meet, were sending people who were in a po- The spies became the focus of protest and, in June, 2013, the Canadian gov- sition to speak for Raúl Castro and for marches; in speeches, Fidel demanded ernment provided a site, in Ottawa. the top leadership.” Several reliable the return of the “Five Heroes,” insist- “The Canadians were very helpful, in sources have confirmed that the leader ing that they had been sent to protect an underappreciated role,” Rhodes said. of the Cuban team was Alejandro Cas- Cuba from violence being plotted by “They came up with a very nice facil- tro Espín, Raúl’s only son, a colonel in anti- Castro groups. ity that hosts diplomatic meetings. They the Interior Ministry who reputedly also The meetings in Ottawa continued, didn’t ask to be debriefed after the meet- leads the counterintelligence services. every six weeks or so, through the sum- ings—they just picked us up at the air- Castro Espín is a garrulous, formidable mer and the autumn. “We kept having port, took us to our meeting site, and negotiator. Known as One Eye ever since the same meeting, basically,” Rhodes said. then took us back to the airport.” he injured an eye during military service “We tried to see if they were interested The Cubans did not greet the Amer- in Angola, he has degrees in engineer- in freeing Alan Gross in exchange for icans warmly. “They didn’t really trust ing and international relations, and is the things we wanted to do anyway”—mostly us,” Rhodes recalled. Zúñiga had been author of “The Empire of Terror,” a changes in provisions of the embar- the human-rights officer at the U.S. In- book about the rise of American power go—“but they would not move off of a terests Section, “so they had a file on him, through corporate interests. linkage of Gross and Gerardo.” There I am sure, that was a mile long.” At one The first meeting began, Rhodes said, were long discussions about the nature point, Granma had described him as “a as “a throat-clearing exercise”: an ex- of espionage: the Americans explained travelling salesman, distributing the most change of basic security concerns. “But that the U.S. could not swap Gross for backward, anti-Cuban ideas wherever he then it quickly moved into discussions Hernández because Gross “wasn’t a spy,” lands,” and noted that he was the grand- around Alan Gross, and from the very while the Cubans insisted that the work son of a former official in a conservative beginning the one thing that was clear he had been doing in their country Honduran government (“a rabid anti- was that they wanted Gerardo Hernán- amounted to espionage. Communist and a great friend of United dez released from prison.” Hernández, Since the sixties, when the C.I.A. Fruit”). Rhodes, with his shorter tenure a senior Cuban spy, was partly respon- trained thousands of anti-Castro oper- in public service, seemed to inspire lit- sible for the downing of the Brothers to atives at stations in Florida, the two coun- tle more confidence. “I was just this guy the Rescue planes; he had infiltrated the tries had carried out a series of clandes- who I think they thought was a little group and tipped off Cuban authorities tine operations that lurched between different, but they didn’t know where to the flight plans. In 1998, U.S. author- bloodshed and farce. In Canada, the Cu- that was going to lead,” he said. ities broke up a Cuban espionage ring bans focussed intently on Luis Posada In the initial meetings, there were based in Florida and arrested Hernán- Carriles, an exiled operative whom, ac- three Americans—Zúñiga, Rhodes, and dez and four other men. After a trial in cording to Rhodes, they saw as “the an “American counterterrorism expert”— Florida, the five were found guilty of a Osama bin Laden of Cuba, basically.” and four Cubans. Both Zúñiga and range of offenses and given harsh sen- An ex-C.I.A. agent with the nickname Rhodes declined to identify their Cuban tences, with Hernández receiving two Bambi, Carriles was widely believed counterparts. Rhodes said only, “They consecutive life terms. Cuba erupted. to be responsible for masterminding

48 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 added, “These gestures were important for building confidence—but also be- Almost noon, the distant sun cause they showed we could reach into rode straight above us like a god our systems and get something done.” aware of everything and like In the autumn, Rhodes and Zúñiga a god utterly silent. What felt ready to broaden the negotiations. could ever grow from this ground “We decided to put everything on the to feed anyone? And who bore table,” Rhodes said. “Normalization, dip- the mysterious child who spoke lomatic relations, regulatory changes— in riddles? If we climbed all the way through to elections: ‘Here’s the hill’s crest we’d find the relationship that we see, and Presi- a higher hill and then another dent Obama would like to do as much hill until we reached an ocean of this as he can.’ ” or gave up and turned back to where the land descends step hroughout Obama’s first term, by slow step to bring us exactly critics described him as naïve, par- here, where we began, stunned ticularlyT in the area of foreign relations— by raw sunlight yet in the dark. so ignorant of practical realities that he didn’t even understand the symbolic pro- —Philip Levine tocols of a state visit. In 2009, when he (1928-2015) bowed to Emperor Akihito, on a trip to Tokyo, he was referred to on the far right as “treasonous.” When he bowed to King the bombing, in 1976, of a Cuban air- bans “were always complaining about Abdullah, of Saudi Arabia, the Wash- liner, which killed all seventy-three peo- them.” Advocates of reconciliation ington Times said that he had “belittled ple on board. He was also alleged to pressed the Administration to act. The the power and independence of the have carried out a series of anti-Castro Cuba Study Group and its allies spon- United States.” bombings in Cuba in the nineties—one sored events, released white papers, and In December, 2013, Nelson Mandela of which he admitted to in an interview lobbied politicians. Senator Patrick died. At his funeral, in South Africa, in the Times. After the Bush Adminis- Leahy, of Vermont, who had been in- Obama encountered Raúl Castro, tration refused to extradite him, he was volved with Cuba policy for more than greeted him, and shook his hand—the tried and acquitted by an American jury, a decade, brought a team of concerned first public handshake between leaders and so he was living in Miami, where he congressmen to meet with Obama. The of their two countries since 1959, when sometimes attended fund-raisers for President reassured them in vague Nixon posed dourly with Fidel at the right-wing groups. terms—“We’re working on it”—and White House. Castro wore an expres- As the meetings continued, Rhodes the senators left frustrated. sion of flustered delight, and news pho- recalled, the Cubans seemed determined That spring, Leahy visited Gross in tographers’ snapshots of the moment to address “the whole bill of goods from prison and lobbied the Cubans for his immediately made the international the Bay of Pigs on,” working through release. As a good-will gesture, he helped wires. Obama claimed that the gesture the tangled history of the two countries. arrange for Hernández’s wife—who was wasn’t premeditated. It was “purely just “It was actually very useful for me to in her forties and childless—to become a human response,” he said. “I’m not take my disadvantages of being young pregnant via artificial insemination, using even sure I’d been briefed that he was and not very experienced on Cuba and a vial of Gerardo’s sperm that was fer- going to be onstage. And certainly there just say, ‘Well, I wasn’t born when half ried from the U.S. to a fertility clinic in wasn’t some lengthy discussion within the things you’re describing happened, Panama. The Cubans made a gesture the State Department about whether and President Obama was born around of their own, quietly improving Alan or not I should do that.” the time of the revolution, and he doesn’t Gross’s medical treatment and his liv- At the next meeting in Ottawa, the want to be trapped by that.’ We had that ing conditions in prison. Cubans were considerably warmer. “You conversation probably for three meet- Then, in June, 2013, the former in- had the President of the United States ings; but at each meeting there was less telligence agent Edward Snowden ar- shaking Raúl Castro’s hand in front of and less of the history.” rived in Moscow, and it seemed possi- the entire world at Nelson Mandela’s Because the meetings were kept se- ble that he would continue on to Cuba. funeral—which was for them kind of cret, the Administration could do lit- Rhodes recalled telling the Cubans, “ ‘I’m a home game,” Rhodes recalled. “It was tle to change U.S. laws on Cuba. “There worried that would derail the things the first discussion we had about his- wasn’t a change in our relationship, so we’re talking about here.’ With the Cu- tory that wasn’t contentious. We then you couldn’t do a shift in policy,” Zúñiga bans, you’re always looking for smoke had a whole discussion about Africa, explained. The pro-democracy pro- signals, and I took it as a signal that they and Angola, apartheid, and Obama’s grams sponsored by Helms-Burton didn’t take Snowden. I think they were history in the anti-apartheid move- continued, and, Zúñiga said, the Cu- trying to leave themselves a space.” He ment. They had read ‘Dreams from My

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 49 Father,’ and had studied his role in the certain whether to proceed, and the Vat- is a fair word, when we indicated to them disinvestment movement. They had ican diplomacy helped them decide. “I that we were going to normalize and es- done their homework.” think what it comes down to is that they tablish diplomatic relations.” He added, Around that time, the C.I.A. told wanted to roll the dice,” Zúñiga told “There was something pretty powerful Zúñiga that one of its agents, Rolando me. In Ottawa, they announced that about it being in a religious venue, be- Sarraff Trujillo, was imprisoned in Cuba, “they’d be interested in working with cause they blessed this process literally and it wanted him back; Sarraff, a senior us on the economy, social development, and spiritually. We’d had this laborious, Cuban Interior Ministry official, had and the Internet,” Rhodes said. “Sud- tedious series of discussions for a year provided valuable intelligence to the denly, we were dealing with questions and a half, then you have people of spir- agency before he was caught, in 1995. like ‘What are we going to announce?’ itual stature speaking in very soaring Now that Zúñiga and Rhodes had a We went to them and said, ‘We want words about what this would mean to confirmed spy, they could propose a to announce a process of normalization people around the world, and how it direct exchange: Sarraff for Gerardo that would include the establishment would be a hopeful sign in the darkness. Hernández. The Cubans indicated that of diplomatic relations.’ And we ex- Some of the people on the Vatican side they would consult in Havana, but, at plained that from a public-relations were emotional to the point of tears.” the next meeting, in January, 2014, they standpoint, when the U.S. and Cuba After the Vatican meeting, all that re- refused the offer. “They said they weren’t announced something, they should make mained was coördination and logistics. prepared to let him go,” Zúñiga said. “So it as big as possible to create a political As Zúñiga and Rhodes finalized details, at that point we made a much bigger space for these changes.” they were obliged to let a few more peo- play.” The Americans offered to release They began meeting every month, ple in the U.S. government know what Hernández and several other intelligence varying the location, Rhodes said, “so as they were doing, and they were “terrified,” agents, in a swap that would also allow not to abuse the hospitality of the Ca- Zúñiga said, that the news would leak Gross to be freed. “They didn’t bite,” nadians.” They met once in a Toronto at the last minute. “It seemed too big to Zúñiga told me. “We decided we’d wait hotel, and another time “in a Caribbean keep under wraps,” he told me. “And we for them to come back with a better an- country.” As they began to hone the de- had people’s lives at stake.” To their as- swer.” The wait lasted half a year. tails of an agreement, they asked the tonishment, the secret held. Vatican to act as a guarantor. “It was a n August, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, way of making it real,” Rhodes said. “By n December 17th, Raúl Castro and of Havana—a small, round-bellied, agreeing to go to the Vatican and make Obama appeared simultaneously on Icheerful man who has warned against the commitments, you’re sort of on the Olive television to announce the normal- the excesses of both capitalism and hook. We also both insisted on register- ization of relations, the release of pris- Communism—flew to Washington, D.C. ing our differences in the presence of oners, and the swapping of spies. Cu- He was there ostensibly to accept an the Vatican. It was important for the bans hearing the news burst into tears invitation from his Washington coun- Cubans to be able to say, ‘There’s not and celebrated in the streets. In coördi- terpart, Cardinal Theodore McCar- full normalization until Guantánamo is nated efforts, the remaining members of rick, to speak at Georgetown Univer- returned and the embargo is lifted,’ and the Five Heroes were flown home, and sity. In fact, he was carrying a covert it was important for us to say, ‘We will Sarraff and Gross were returned to the letter from Pope Francis to continue to support human U.S.; Cuba released fifty-three political Obama. A few months ear- rights and free elections.’ ” prisoners, whose names Zúñiga had lier, Obama had visited the On the night of Octo- culled from reports by human-rights Vatican and discussed his ber 28, 2014, the American groups. Almost immediately, Cuban and efforts in Cuba. The Pope and Cuban delegations gath- American diplomats drew up an intense offered his support, and ered at the Vatican, for a schedule of bilateral talks, and Obama designated Ortega as a cou- meeting watched over by the began unbundling the embargo with a rier, carrying letters be- Pope’s secretary of state, Car- series of executive orders. tween the two capitals and dinal Pietro Parolin, and a Fidel withheld comment for six weeks. the Vatican. group of senior prelates. The Then, in January, he released a letter that After Ortega arrived in Americans were led through said, “I do not trust the politics of the Washington, Rhodes ar- winding passages to an or- United States. I have not exchanged a ranged for him to be “brought in the nate chamber near Parolin’s office: a lofty, word with them.” He added that this back door of the White House,” and into dimly lit room with heavy tapestries and did not signify “a rejection by me of the the Rose Garden, where he read the dark-red curtains, where a long table was idea of resolving conflicts by peaceful Pope’s letter aloud to Obama, Rhodes, surrounded by paintings of past Popes means.” But pretty much everyone in and Zúñiga. In the letter, the Pope offered and cardinals. “All the Vatican knew was Cuba understood that he was unhappy help with the issue of prisoners, and with that they were going to host a meeting with the deal. improving relations between the two with American and Cuban delegations,” That year’s Summit of the Americas countries. Another letter went to Raúl Rhodes said. “They certainly suspected was held in Panama, in April, and Obama Castro, in Havana. that the prisoners thing was going to be and Raúl Castro were the stars of the The Cubans had evidently been un- involved, but they were shocked, I think event. The two had spoken once, in a

50 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 ceremonious telephone call before their announcement in December, but this was Obama’s first chance to take Castro’s measure in person. “For the head of a one-party state, he has a healthy sense of humor, a self-awareness, and a sense of irony,” Obama told me. “I suspect that’s in part because he was the younger brother who for so many years . . . was having to clean up and make things work” while “Fidel was out there making speeches.” Obama described Castro as a canny, good-humored pragmatist: “The first time we had the conversation about nor- malization, he warned me, ‘Look, we Castros, we speak a long time, but you’re lucky you’re talking to me and not Fidel.’ So that combination of humor and in- sight into his own issues has led me to be able to have productive conversations with him. Now, that does not mean that he is not guarded, cautious, that he’s not “Go find out why a peasant is giggling at midday.” steeped in his own dogmas. What it does mean is that we don’t spend a lot of time on lengthy rants about Communism and •• imperialism.” Before the encounter in Panama, Rhodes said, Obama sometimes can delegation, headed by Secretary of they don’t need to feel afraid of change. teased him for “spending a hundred hours State John Kerry, flew to Havana for a You can show warmth and vitality; they with the Cubans.” Now he became in- ceremony to reopen the U.S. Embassy, are more used to an authoritarian style volved in the talks himself. which had been closed for fifty-four from their leaders.’ ” Still, Fidel continued to bluster. Af- years. Nearby, a middle-aged man, bare- Obama’s tour culminated in a speech ter the Summit of the Americas, he chested in the heat, watched the Amer- in Havana’s ornate Gran Teatro, which published another letter in Granma, ti- ican flag go up with a bittersweet ex- included language inspired by conver- tled “In Defense of Our Right to Be pression. He told me afterward that a sations with the Cuban-Americans. Be- Marxist-Leninists.” In the letter, which gap in history was being closed. He had fore a packed audience, including most marked the seventieth anniversary of the grown up in the neighborhood, he said of the surviving luminaries of Cuba’s end of the Second World War, he lauded nostalgically. When he was a boy, he revolutionary generation, he said, “I have the Soviet contribution to the world: and his friends congregated on the sea- come here to bury the last remnants of “The twenty-seven million Soviets who wall across from the Embassy, waiting the Cold War in the Americas.” Then, died in the Great Patriotic War also did to dive for coins that the Marine guards more pointedly, he added, “A country’s so for humanity and the right to think tossed into the sea. greatest asset is its people. In the United and be socialists, to be Marxist-Lenin- States, we have a clear monument to ists, to be Communists, and to leave the hen Obama came to Havana, a what the Cuban people can build—it’s dark ages behind.” group of Miami Cubans were called Miami.” American conservatives seemed no thereW to cheer him on. Carlos Saladri- As it turned out, the Gran Teatro happier than Castro was about the open- gas had flown in on a private jet owned speech was the only event of Obama’s ing. Mario Díaz-Balart—a Florida con- by his friend Mike Fernández, a health- visit that was broadcast on Cuban tele- gressman who had taken over the seat care billionaire, together with Andrés vision, and it was not rebroadcast later. previously held by his brother Lincoln— Fanjul and Joe Arriola. Zúñiga had been But Cuban-Americans had been pur- called Obama an “Appeaser-in-Chief making regular trips to Miami to meet suing a similar outreach in Havana who is willing to provide unprecedented with the Cuba Study Group and other for years, advancing the idea that, as concessions to a brutal dictatorship.” influential Cuban-Americans, to gather Sala drigas said, “economic rights are Senator Lindsey Graham, of South ideas and to hint that talks were under also human rights.” With funding from Carolina, announced, “I will do all in way. As Obama prepared for the trip, Miami, Cardinal Ortega and the Church my power to block the use of funds to Saladrigas was summoned to the White set up an N.G.O. called Cuba Em- open an embassy in Cuba. Normaliz- House. He recalled, “My advice to the prende, which held workshops for ing relations with Cuba is a bad idea at President was: ‘Be yourself. Just by being budding entrepreneurs in Havana and a bad time.” there you are showing the Cuban peo- in the provincial cities of Cienfuegos Nevertheless, in August, an Ameri- ple that change is possible, and that and Camagüey. The workshops, which

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 51 address everything from marketing and city, a neighborhood of grand colonial that off. Once you start being part of management techniques to applying buildings whose façades are being eroded the global economy and the global for bank loans, have trained more than by the salty air. “I said this directly to supply chain, things happen quickly.” twenty-five hundred Cubans, the ma- Raúl,” Obama told me. “ ‘It is not my jority of them women; about two-thirds objective to see Cuba turned into some uring Obama’s visit, the Starwood have gone on to run businesses. Sala- tourist playground for the United States.’ company announced a deal to open drigas gave a guest lecture in Havana There are genuine gains they made in DHavana’s first American-managed hotel. as part of an international M.B.A. pro- health care and education that are worth Soon afterward, the first Carnival cruise gram—the first public speech in Cuba preserving.” He went on, “ ‘By opening liner docked in Havana, just as the by a Cuban exile. In an unmistakable up your economy, you can transform Malecón was closed so that action scenes signal that the initiative had Raúl’s Havana in a way that really works for for “Fast and Furious 8” could be filmed. blessing, he was asked to expand his the economy and works for you. But it At the same time, Chanel put on a fash- class to accommodate five Castro can’t just be haphazard. It can’t be open- ion show, with the theme of “Cuba grandchildren. Afterward, several of ing it up to the highest bidder, and then Cruise,” on the elegant Paseo del Prado. them thanked him personally. suddenly you’ve got the cruises coming After police removed street people from I asked Obama why, considering Fi- in and you’ve got fast-food joints pop- the area, Gisele Bundchen arrived for del’s long-standing distrust of the Amer- ping up in the middle of the old city.’ the show in a vintage red convertible. icans, Raúl had finally stepped forward. I said, ‘You should find advisers— Karl Lagerfeld m.c.’d. Fidel Castro’s “It’s my sense that two things are going and they probably shouldn’t be U.S. grandson, an aspiring model, showed up on,” he said. “One is that there is a rec- advisers—to think about a controlled, to help visiting celebrities to their seats. ognition—particularly in light of what’s thoughtful development plan.’ ” He Over lunch in Miami, Emilio Mo- happening in Venezuela—that sustain- said that he proposed calling Singapore, rales, a former market analyst for the ing their economic model over the next or one of the Scandinavian countries— Cuban government who is now a con- ten years becomes increasingly unten- ‘‘ ‘whoever it is that you think has prop- sultant for prospective U.S. investors, told able. So they’re very much in the mode erly balanced a market economy with me that he has a team of researchers going of: how do we make our economy run some sort of planning.’ ” quietly from neighborhood to neighbor- without giving up power?” He went on, Obama said, “I suspect that the model hood throughout the island, tracking the “My impression also is that Raúl rec- that appeals to him most is a China, recipients of financial remittances to lo- ognizes that any substantial change to Vietnam type of shift, where, slowly, cate “clusters of purchasing power.” their economic system—and, by exten- market elements are introduced but an “Would you like to see where the Mc- sion, at least their civil society, if not authoritarian political system remains.” Donald’s will go?” Morales asked me. He their full political system—requires him He suggested that such a strategy would pulled out his laptop and opened up a pro- to do the downfield blocking. If a be inherently short-lived. “China may gram; a map of Cuba appeared, with a younger generation tries to pull this off be able to pull that off for a while—for welter of little red tacks all over the island. without the revolutionary credentials, a pretty long while, given the culture “How many McDonald’s are we there will be too much pushback.” and the size of the country and its abil- talking about?” I asked. He recalled a particularly frank con- ity to isolate itself from outside forces. “Havana can absorb fifty—the island versation, after a tour of Havana’s old It’s very hard for a small country to pull itself eighty-four,” Morales said. “That’s in the first phase.” Mike Fernández, the Cuban- American businessman, said, “I have no business interest in Cuba myself. I look at it and see an economy of seven billion dollars— no more than Miami-Dade County. But it has the potential to be an economy of three hundred and fifty billion dollars within fifteen years.” Many close observers are less opti- mistic. “I think there’s a certain eupho- ria in the U.S., whereas the pace of change is actually very gradual,” Richard Fein- berg, a longtime Cuba analyst at the Brookings Institution, said. “The con- servative forces there are very strong. The number of new business deals that have gone through is one in a hundred.” Unravelling the rest of the embargo would be a complex task, requiring changes to countless provisions, spread across many government agencies. If ism.” Referring to Obama’s overtures, he five years, and they’re good at it. For the Obama wants to make significant alter- said, “We are not naïve. We know there past year and a half, though, they’ve been ations before he leaves office, he’ll have to are powerful external forces that aspire to forced to play a different kind of game.” issue executive orders, and Cuba’s critics ‘empower’ non-state actors to change and Rhodes says that the effects of the in Congress will fervently oppose him. finish off the revolution by other means.” opening have rippled through the re- Obama is betting, though, that even with- In Washington, people seemed chas- gion: he points to the recent peace deal out greater foreign investment, Cuba’s new tened and unsure what would happen. between the Colombian government and entrepreneurs will be a vanguard of change: The Obama aide told me, “We’ve done the rebel group FARC, which was nego- “If those cuentapropistas are spreading, as our thing. The best for us to do right tiated with help from both the U.S. and they have since we started these changes now is probably to keep quiet.” The Cuba. But, even though he believes that in policy—when I came into office, about Cuban state remains strong: after the the opening with Cuba is “in the first ten per cent of the population was self-em- congress, it reintroduced price controls tier of Obama’s foreign-policy achieve- ployed; now it’s approaching thirty—then on agricultural products; a Cuban Army ments,” he says that its greatest impor- they are empowered in ways that we on holding company, which dominates com- tance is symbolic—a belated reckoning the outside could never match.” merce on the island, still owns develop- with the “outsized role in historic events But that requires the Cuban govern- ment rights in many of the areas that and the global imagination that Cuba ment to feel secure enough to loosen might appeal to tourists. In Miami, Sa- played in the Cold War.” constraints. Feinberg compared Obama’s ladrigas told me, “Fidel wanted to slow In the Oval Office, Obama told me highly restricted trip to Cuba with a visit down the train, and I think he accom- he believed that Americans needed to that he made to Vietnam this summer. plished it. For the moment, the hard- make a greater effort to acknowledge per- “The Cuban regime closely controlled liners have regained the upper hand.” ceptions that exist outside the United the Obama visit—they purposely kept States. “We are a superpower, and we do him at a distance from people,” he said. or much of Obama’s time in office, not fully appreciate the degree to which, “In Vietnam, he had a lot more interac- his foreign policy has seemed to be when we move, the world shakes,” he tion with people. Shows you how much Fbuilt on the assumption that there are said. “Our circumstances have allowed us further along Vietnam is, and how much messes in the world that are beyond our to be ahistorical. But one of the striking further along the Vietnamese Commu- ability to clean up. As crises have prolif- things when you get outside the United nist Party is in terms of self-confidence.” erated—the tumult that followed the States is—Faulkner’s old saying, ‘The In mid-April, three weeks after Obama’s Arab Spring, Russia’s predatory behav- past is never dead. It isn’t even past.’ . . . visit, Cuba’s Communist Party held its ior in Crimea and elsewhere, a coup in People remember things that happened seventh Party Congress. Fidel, the guest Turkey—the Administration’s response six hundred years ago. And they are alive of honor, spoke with difficulty, but he re- has been, for better and for worse, cau- and active in their politics. mained commanding enough so that tious, rationalist, and unhurried. The re- “And so the intention here is not, as many of the delegates wept at the sight sults have been fitful, most obviously in the Republicans like to call it, engaging of him. He talked about his impending the Middle East. There, and in the bur- in apology tours. It is dignifying these ninetieth birthday, and suggested that he geoning regional competitions in the countries’ memories and their culture, might not be around much longer: “Soon Baltics and in the South China Sea, the and saying to them, ‘We understand your I will be like all the others—we all have Administration’s policies have left no experience and your culture, and that is our turn,” he said. “But the ideas of the clear endgame for the next President. valid.’ And, once you do that, if people Cuban Communists will endure. . . . To Perhaps the most persistent effort has think, he sees me, even if they disagree our brothers in Latin America and the been to fix the present by symbolic at- with you, there is an openness to having world, we should let them know that the tempts to mend the past. Obama’s 2009 a conversation.” Cuban people will triumph.” speech in Cairo offered the Muslim world The work his Administration had The speeches at the congress seemed “a new beginning,” and he later made done in Cuba, he suggested, was a pre- to raise the possibility that Obama’s meet- similar gestures in other places where amble, but an essential one. “It’s not a ing with entrepreneurs was a blunder: by the U.S. has been at war: Myanmar, Laos, cure-all. It’s a start. And if U.S. policy speaking too freely, he had forced the re- Vietnam. This summer, he became the then simply repeats some of the mistakes gime to tighten its grip again. The For- first U.S. President to visit Hiroshima, of the past, it has no force, then it just eign Secretary, Bruno Rodríguez, blasted seventy-one years after an American looks like cosmetics and manipulation. Obama’s visit as “an attack on our history, plane dropped an atomic bomb there. If, on the other hand, what we do seems culture, and symbols.” Alluding to the The opening with Cuba has been a to reflect examination of our own past event at La Cervecería, he said, “He came victory for the Obama White House, and where we’ve been right and where to dazzle the non-state sector of the econ- achieved at little cost. But even those we’ve been wrong, then the possibilities omy, as if he were a defender not of the who worked on it speak of it as an in- of more allies, more support, stronger big corporations but of hot-dog sellers.” cremental change. “I don’t think anyone pro-American sentiment are a whole lot When Raúl Castro spoke, he reassured involved ever thought there would be a greater. And one of the things that you the delegates that the economic reforms magic moment of change in Cuba,” Dan can’t always measure but I’m absolutely were merely steps toward a more “sus- Restrepo told me. “These guys have been confident is true is that world opinion tainable and prosperous model of social- playing the same game for the past fifty- matters. It is a force multiplier.” 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 53 PROFILES GERMANY’S NEW NATIONALISTS

The country’s resurgent far right has a surprising face. BY THOMAS MEANEY

ou can tell well in advance written by some very gutsy and well- Petry spent half an hour more rak- when Frauke Petry, the leader of informed citizens,” she said. “Maybe ing through the protesters’ arguments, Alternative für Deutschland, a they should come forward and tell us expressing concern that Germany’s youth burgeoningY new right-wing party, is going where they got these ideas.” The audi- could be led so badly astray and exas- to give a speech. AfD members put up ence cheered. perating the students with her pedantry. posters all over a town’s main streets de- A nervous-looking sixteen-year-old Both the protesters and the audience claring, “Frauke Petry Is Coming.” As with a mop of blond hair shuffled to- were relieved when she finally began the appointed hour approaches, police ward the platform. The audience jeered, her speech. assemble, and usually demonstrators, but Petry motioned for silence and said For decades, the German far right too, protesting against a woman known to the boy, “I’ll give you the microphone has been a limited force, with easily to her enemies as “Adolfina” and “die for a bit and you can explain to us how recognizable supporters—nicotine- Führerin.” At bigger events, hundreds you got the idea that women should re- stained ex-Nazis in the sixties and sev- show up bearing placards with slogans turn to the kitchen.” enties, leather-clad skinheads in the like “Voting AfD is so 1933,” pelting Party “But of course I don’t believe that,” eighties and nineties. Petry is something leaders with cake. Occasionally, a few the boy muttered in a deep Bavarian ac- different, a disarmingly wholesome fig- of them sneak into Petry’s talks. cent. “It’s your people here who do.” ure—a former businesswoman with a Petry, who is forty-one, with a pixie “Now you’re repeating your hypoth- Ph.D. in chemistry and four children haircut and a trim, athletic build, fre- esis,” Petry said, leaning over him from from her marriage to a Lutheran pastor. quently arrives late. She travels contin- the stage. “But how do you justify it?” During a month I spent with her this ually, often without any immediate elec- He hesitated in confusion, and other summer as she drove around Germany toral aim—the next federal elections protesters joined him. A teen-age girl giving speeches, she drew connections won’t be till the second half of 2017— began to speak from prepared notes, say- between politics and laboratory science, but simply to publicize the Party and ing that the AfD denied climate change. sprinkled her speech with Latin phrases, herself. Like most German politicians “You have to hold the mike closer to and steered discussions about German today, Petry observes the national mor- your mouth,” Petry interrupted, and then culture toward the cantatas of Bach. atorium on charisma, but her appear- rocked from foot to foot, marking the Petry is not a gifted orator. Her ances have the feel of a celebrity tour. slow tempo of the girl’s speech. “Your speeches tend to be dull, with ornate Her audiences seem awed, unsure party claims that CO₂ is not dangerous, sentences and technocratic talking whether it is appropriate to take photo- but how do you explain all the people points, and she is more comfortable graphs. But, once someone starts, the dying from air pollution in China?” the citing economic studies than discuss- room fills with the soft clicks of phone girl asked. ing the lives of ordinary people. Her cameras. “I’m a chemist,” Petry said. “The prob- manner belies the extremism of the Petry sees the presence of protesters lem is not CO₂—it’s the nitrogen and AfD’s views. At the start of this year, as an opportunity to score points. “We’re sulfur oxides that make the smog. So Petry said that, in the face of the re- not the sort of people who shut voices many people make this mistake.” She cent influx of refugees (many of them out,” she tells her audiences. One eve- went on, “Let me ask you a question. If fleeing the war in Syria), the police ning in Landau an der Isar, a small town you dissolve CO₂ in water and the tem- might have to shoot people crossing in Bavaria, she produced a flyer that had perature rises, will you have more or the border illegally. In April, the Party been distributed outside and read it aloud, less CO₂?” It was a trick question that said that head scarves should be banned in the tone of a teacher who has inter- Petry often uses. in schools and universities, and min- cepted a note being passed around a “More,” the girl said, meaning CO2 arets prohibited. Party members called classroom: “You believe women should in the atmosphere. for a referendum on whether to leave return to the kitchen? You’re against the “Exactly wrong,” Petry said, mean- the euro; for the expulsion of Allied protection of the environment? You have ing in the water. She made a dismayed troops, who have been stationed in homophobic, xenophobic, and extreme face to the audience. “There’s a huge Germany since 1945; and for school right-wing tendencies? Then you’ve come amount of misinformation out there,” curriculums that focus more on “pos- to the right place. Thank you for your she said. “When you see what’s in their itive, identity-uplifting” episodes in vote!” Silence filled the hall, and Petry school textbooks, it’s no surprise they German history and less on Nazi gave a tight smile. “That must have been believe these things.” crimes. Most contentious of all was

54 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 Frauke Petry leads a new populist party that has become Germany’s most significant right-wing force since the Nazis. PHOTOGRAPH BY OLAF BLECKER THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 55 the declaration “Islam does not belong on the continent. “It’s my hope that of group sexual harassment in the Arab in Germany.” the future will bring a Chancellor world—the ones that occurred during By American standards, especially in named Petry,” the leader of Austria’s the Tahrir Square protests are the most the age of Donald Trump, contempo- Freedom Party recently said. That hope famous instance—and the crimes were rary German politics is decorous and is still far from fruition, but the AfD quickly established in the public imag- understated. But although Petry’s crisp is already the most successful far-right ination as a specifically Islamic phenom- style is in many ways the opposite of phenomenon in Germany since the enon. In July, there was a weeklong spate Trump’s, her rise has similarities to his. Second World War. of violent attacks, unconnected with one She, too, has come late to politics and another but involving perpetrators of relishes her outsider status. Like him, first met Petry in April at her Muslim heritage: a teen-age Afghan ref- she often works by insinuation, fanning offices in the Saxony State Parliament, ugee pledging loyalty to ISIS wounded right-wing conspiracy theories not Ia gray modernist building, in the cen- four people with an axe on a train near merely to stir up grievances but to bind ter of Dresden, which incorporates the Würzburg; an Iranian-German gunman members together with a sense of shared ruins of a government office destroyed killed nine people at a shopping center beliefs. Like him, she has been accused in the Allied bombing raid of 1945. She in Munich; in Reutlingen, a small town of financial improprieties. Like him, she was in her pressroom, preparing for the near Stuttgart, a machete-wielding Syr- castigates the media for liberal bias but AfD’s annual convention and dictating ian refugee murdered a pregnant Polish also thrives on media attention. Petry posts for its Facebook page to two as- woman at the kebab shop where they and her colleagues have mastered the sistants. Behind her was a shelf of bind- both worked; and a Syrian asylum seeker art of dominating the news cycle, to the ers decorated with stickers that said, blew himself up outside a night club in point where a visitor to Germany lis- “Merkel Must Go.” Petry took me to the Bavarian town of Ansbach, injuring tening to the radio or reading the news- her office, where a biography of Merkel fifteen people. papers could be forgiven for thinking that she’d been reading lay on the floor. The response of Merkel’s govern- that the AfD is the party in power. “Like me, she’s from the East and trained ment, and of most of the German press, Two years ago, the AfD won its first as a scientist, so I can relate with her to has been measured, emphasizing the seats in regional parliaments. (Petry some extent,” Petry said. “You get the unique aspects of each attack: the Mu- was elected to the parliament of Sax- sense that she’s a woman who just fell nich shooting turned out to be a case of ony, one of Germany’s sixteen federal into things. When Merkel was young, right-wing, rather than Islamist, extrem- states.) Earlier this year, support for she had no passions.” ism; the kebab-shop murder a crime of the AfD reached fifteen per cent in na- When conversation turned to the passion; the Syrian asylum seeker a psy- tional polls, three times more than for AfD’s rise, Petry said, “You could say we chiatric case. When I spoke to Petry not any previous right-wing party, and well are Merkel’s children.” She meant that long afterward, she was scornful of what beyond the five-per-cent threshold the AfD owed its popularity to Merkel’s she saw as a liberal tendency to suppress required to enter the Bundestag after announcement, in August, 2015, that politically inconvenient truths. “Big Ger- next year’s national elections. In a re- Germany would take in anyone who was man media are always careful about what cent election in Mecklenburg-West a refugee. (Last year, 1.1 million refugees they report,” she said. “Our political op- Pomerania, where Germany’s Chan- arrived.) Merkel argued that Germany’s ponents absolutely avoid acknowledg- cellor, Angela Mer kel, has her constit- history gave it a moral obligation to ing the factors of illegal migration and uency, the AfD got more respond to the humani- open borders in these attacks.” For her, than twenty per cent of tarian crisis. “We can do the attacks had a simple explanation: the vote, edging Merkel’s this,” she said—a call for “These people coming into Germany party—the center-right national solidarity that are used to being in completely differ- Christian Democratic achieved the opposite. The ent social circumstances.” Union—into third place. phrase electrified the Ger- I asked Petry if she had ever met a A week ago, the AfD man right, which accused refugee, and she told me about an offi- won its first seats in the the Chancellor of selling cial visit she had made to an asylum state parliament of Ber- out the country in order shelter. “It’s true the quality of their lin, traditionally a social- to burnish her cosmopol- rooms was not very good,” she said. “But democratic stronghold, itan image abroad. Voters I saw food on the walls, excrement as in an election that brought the C.D.U.’s began to flock to the AfD, many of them well—I saw how they behaved. And I worst ever result in the city. from Merkel’s own party. thought, This is not going to work.” Populist parties have been flourish- Several events this year have exacer- Most of the refugees, she said, were a ing across Europe, and are already in bated this rightward turn. On New Year’s threat to contemporary German values, power in Hungary and Poland, but a Eve, in Cologne, roving groups of Mid- such as the separation of church and far-right resurgence in Germany is dle Eastern and North African men sex- state and the freedom of the media. uniquely alarming, both because of its ually assaulted and robbed hundreds Sometimes she justified her views with history—the postwar constitution was of women as they celebrated in the city long discourses on the history of Islam designed to curb populist influence— center. The German Federal Criminal and the European Enlightenment. At and because of its dominant position Police Office drew an analogy with cases other times, she cited Muslim clerics

56 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 who she claimed agreed with her, or opted for statistics about the failures of integration. But generally she hewed to a kind of populist folklore. “Asylum seek- ers must appear for appointments in order to have their status reviewed, but they are often late by one or two hours,” she told me matter-of-factly. “If you’re German and you’re fifteen minutes late to a court date, that’s it, it’s over!” When I asked whether Germany wouldn’t need younger workers to service its rapidly aging population—a common argument for a liberal immigration policy—she laughed and said, “To be frank, I don’t see young Muslim men wiping the asses of old German pensioners.”

ast week, Merkel publicly admit- ted that her original decision to let Lin so many immigrants had been a mis- take. “If I could, I would rewind time by many, many years so that I could better prepare myself and the whole govern- ment,” she said. She now believes that “Do I want the job? Huh, I never thought about it like that.” her “We can do this” slogan was “almost an empty formula,” and sees that she gravely underestimated the challenges •• involved. This was the climax of months of backpedalling in response to the AfD’s the main left-wing party, who has often move together, the more likely the AfD electoral momentum and to criticism clashed with Petry in the Saxony parlia- is to form some part of the government. within her own party. After the sexual ment, told me that she thought the In- It will be only a matter of time.” assaults in Cologne, she expedited the tegration Law would prove counterpro- deportation of refugees who commit ductive. “People are now under general ne morning in May, at a thermal crimes and cut a deal with the President suspicion until they prove otherwise,” spa on the outskirts of Munich, I of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to re- she said. “Migrants are deprived of all Ojoined Petry as she relaxed before an duce the number of Syrians crossing into self-evident fundamental rights, such as event at a beer hall downtown. There Europe. After the recent attacks, Merkel’s the free choice of residence. The law pro- was a drowsy atmosphere, with pension- Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière, vides them with jobs but pays them only ers suspended in the pool, exercising in called for a ban on burkas in a wide range eighty cents an hour. That’s not even a slow motion. Petry had changed into a of public contexts—an appropriation of tenth of the minimum wage. Second-class dark-blue one-piece and a swimming the AfD’s party line. The government citizens are being created—a poor pre- cap. She lowered herself into the water, also announced a new Integration Law, requisite for integration.” annexed a lane, and launched into an which gives the state the power to de- Some version of the law would have efficient breaststroke. I hung back, splash- termine where refugees can live and re- passed even without the AfD, Köditz ing around aimlessly with a business- quires them to learn German and to take thought, but the Party’s influence had man named Wilfried Biedermann, an classes on the country’s history and cul- made it harsher. The outcome demon- AfDer who organizes Petry’s Bavarian ture. The underlying assumption—that strated the precariousness of Merkel’s appearances. His duties had somehow immigrants don’t want to learn the lan- position, in a system where coalition included bringing an extra Speedo for guage—is a widespread belief in the governments are the norm. “Will the me to wear. After forty laps, Petry sig- AfD, and the C.D.U.’s embrace of it C.D.U. continue to be a moderate peo- nalled that she had finished. As she got represents an about-face: such programs ple’s party, representing broad sections out of the pool, she pointed to a sign have been underfunded for years. of the population?” Köditz said. “If so, warning swimmers of the deep end— So far, this tack to the right has done then there is a gap to the right, which in German, French, English, Turkish, nothing to halt the AfD’s rise, and pol- the AfD can easily occupy. Or will the and Arabic. “Really, Arabic, too, now?” iticians in other parties have been alarmed AfD push the C.D.U. to the right? Then she said, smiling. at how much power the AfD now has the C.D.U. might start losing votes in We made for the hot pools, and Petry to shape government policy. Kerstin the middle but take them away from positioned herself in front of a jet of Köditz, a representative for Die Linke, the AfD. And yet the closer the parties water, while Biedermann fiddled with

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 57 the controls. “That’s one thing they did one chemist was enough for the family. soon changed its name to Alternative right in the East,” he said. “They trained We agreed he would study theology.” für Deutschland, had been founded by you to be real athletes.” Keen to perfect her English, Petry got a group of economists and journalists “No, I wouldn’t say that,” Petry said. a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in the who felt betrayed when Merkel broke “They wanted me to be a gymnast—I United Kingdom, and moved back to a promise not to bail out Greece. Petry had the right body for it—but I wasn’t Germany in 1998. She and Sven pur- contacted the founders and helped set going to be in their circus.” sued Ph.D.s in Göttingen, where their up an office in Leipzig. The Party’s Petry was born in Dresden in 1975. first two children were born. Later, Sven leader, Bernd Lucke, was a mild-man- Her mother was an industrial chemist, became a pastor in a small town near nered free-market economist, whose and her father was an engineer who was Leipzig, where they had two more. agenda was based on a conviction that unhappy under Communism and tried In 2009, Petry won a competition the euro was unsustainable as a cur- to escape to West Germany three times, for entrepreneurs and invested the prize rency. Other Party founders, however, finally succeeding in 1989, just before money in a chemicals company she had wanted stronger restrictions on immi- the Berlin Wall fell. The rest of the fam- just started with her mother. The com- gration, and soon more people were ily joined him soon after, settling in a pany didn’t grow fast enough to repay joining for anti-refugee reasons than for small town near Dortmund. “There’s a its debts, and after five years Petry de- euro-related ones. Petry felt that Lucke cruel stereotype of Easterners coming clared personal bankruptcy—which is was failing to adapt to the concerns of to the West and taking advantage of ev- far more uncommon in Germany than the membership, and at last year’s Party erything,” Petry told me. “I pretty much it is in the United States. She was sued conference she seized control. fit that.” In her teens, she took af- by creditors of the business; the case Her accomplice was a Party leader ter-school language courses and singing was eventually settled, but journalists from North Rhine-Westphalia named classes, and made extra money playing still delight in speculating about the Marcus Pretzell, with whom she is now the organ in church on Sundays. state of her finances. in a relationship. The pair, who have di- In high school, she met her future While the company was struggling, vorced their previous spouses, are insep- husband, Sven Petry, and played in his Petry’s mother read on the Internet arable, courting publicity at every turn, father’s church. “He comes from a line about a new political party called Elec- and their relationship has become tab- of something like four or five genera- toral Alternative 2013. “It was about loid fodder in a way that is a novelty in tions of pastors,” Petry said. “I fell in love the euro, family policies, and energy, German politics. The Petry-Pretzell phe- with him for his brain. He wanted to and it demanded more direct democ- nomenon complicates Petry’s long- study chemistry, like me, but I thought racy,” Petry recalled. The Party, which established image as a figure of mater- nal wholesomeness; where she once bounced children on her knees at Party meetings, she is now more likely to be found on motorboats, in hotel bars, and at summits in the Alps. Her glamorous transformation has aroused suspicion and opprobrium among the Party’s rank and file, but many forgive it. Several AfDers I spoke to expressed pride that the Party now had a clever, starry mem- ber of the meritocracy who can take on the élites of the establishment parties. At the conference, Petry and Pret- zell filled the hall with their support- ers, who shouted Lucke down when he exhorted the Party to shed its extrem- ist image. Petry’s faction then riotously applauded her speech, which asserted that the AfD existed beyond conven- tional political categories and should ignore what outsiders thought of it. A few hours later, a vote established Petry as Lucke’s replacement. When I met with Lucke, he char- acterized Petry not as an ideologue but as an opportunist. “A new party at- tracts all sorts of people who see a new professional future in an otherwise unsuc- “Give me liberty, or give me just one sec.” cessful career,” he said. He told me that he first suspected her motives when she “The symbol of the Peasants’ War of decades, Germany was proud of not being refused to help him quell wild conspir- 1524!” I turned to find a small blond man proud—of confronting its past openly acy theories that were circulating on the in his forties. He introduced himself as and of accepting the principle of collec- Party’s fringes—for instance, that Ger- Andreas Kucharicky, and took me to tive guilt. It developed a political iden- many was not actually a state but a reg- meet the men holding the flag—col- tity based on allegiance to the laws and istered company on the Frankfurt Stock leagues of his at a construction-equip- norms of the state, rather than on any Exchange. Petry didn’t want to risk los- ment firm where he is an engineer. I cultural or ethnic sense of Germanness. ing votes by disavowing the rumors. “I asked them if they joined in PEGIDA’s As a result, patriotic displays that would was starting to realize that she would do strolls every week, and they said that be uncontroversial in other countries, anything to keep her position in the Party, Kucharicky did. We caught sight of a such as flying the national flag or saying even if she didn’t herself believe in it,” placard with Petry’s face, beaming an- that you love your country, were taboo in Lucke said. gelically. “That’s Frau Doktor Petry,” Germany. But, as the memory of the Petry’s tendency to temporize may be Third Reich recedes and the last gener- a crucial asset, according to Hajo Funke, ation of perpetrators and victims dies out, an expert on Germany’s far right who the nation has begun to see itself differ- has just published a book, “On Angry ently. The AfD is attracting voters, like Citizens and Arsonists,” about the AfD. Kucharicky, who want Germany to be- The party she presides over, he explained, come a normal country again, with an is fundamentally split. On one side there unashamed sense of nationalism. are moderate members, for whom the In the weeks that followed, I struck AfD is basically a protest vote; on the up a correspondence with Kucharicky. other is what he called a “dark core” of His e-mails gave me his nationalist per- true believers—people like Björn Höcke, spective on current events: he used the a former history teacher who has said Kucharicky said. “That’s who we want word Vaterland without irony. In some that the “reproductive strategies” of Af- for our next Chancellor.” ways, he seemed like a typical AfD sup- ricans are diluting the ethnic-German We marched out of the Old Market porter. On the other hand, as I discov- population. Petry had been a link be- Square onto the main avenue in down- ered, there is no truly typical AfD sup- tween the two wings, Funke said, but town Dresden. “This is where the Com- porter, because the Party attracts voters now she was vulnerable, because the dark munists had their big parades,” Kucha- who have a wide range of concerns and core had succeeded in moving the AfD ricky told me with satisfaction. I asked grievances. At town-hall meetings, con- even further to the right. “The Party is when he began to think of himself as a ferences, white-sausage breakfasts, din- in the hands of radicals now,” he said. nationalist, and he told me about a pro- ners, and late-night carouses, I encoun- test in 1999, to commemorate the vic- tered many types. I met a doctor from very Monday in the city of Dres- tims of the Allied bombing of Dresden, Kiel who had come back to Saxony to den, a few thousand nationalist pro- half a century before. Police broke up reclaim ancestral land confiscated by the Etesters take to the streets for what they the march, because of neo-Nazi involve- Communists; I met a middle manager call an “evening stroll.” One week in ment, and Kucharicky was appalled. for Mercedes who had had to seek med- April, I joined them. Skinheads marched “Germans trying to remember Germans ical attention for his heart when he alongside elderly people and gen- being arrested by Germans—it made no learned of Merkel’s bailout of Greece; I tle-looking fathers in fleeces trying to sense,” he said. met a Vietnamese-German man who keep overtired children in line. Banners As we marched, Kucharicky pointed joined the AfD because it was the only with Angela Merkel’s face filled the to some teen-agers outside a McDonald’s party that talked about the global in- streets: there was “Fatima Merkel,” in a and said, “They just sit there while the fluence of the C.I.A.; I met a trainee head scarf, and “Adolf Merkel,” wear- nation slips away from them.” He was pilot for United Airlines who admired ing a Nazi armband but with a euro disgusted that so many of his country- Trump and had decided that the AfD symbol in place of a swastika. “Home- men were immune to the tug of patrio- was the closest German equivalent; I land, Freedom, Tradition!” the crowd tism, and called Merkel “the Germany met a quiet architect who thought that chanted. “Ali Go Home!” The protest abolisher”—a newly popular term derived most of the Party was unhinged but still is the work of a movement called from a right-wing tract titled “Germany joined, because it was right about the PEGIDA—an acronym that stands for Abolishes Itself,” by Thilo Sarrazin, a economy. I met very few women. (The Patriotic Europeans Against the Islam- member of the executive board of the membership is eighty-five per cent male.) ization of the West—which arranges German Bundesbank. The book, which similar demonstrations across Germany. appeared in 2010 and sold more than a n April, Soon after the AfD issued It is not officially allied with the AfD, million and a half copies, argues that ev- its statement that “Islam does not be- but the groups share many supporters. erything from high immigrant crime rates Ilong in Germany,” Aiman Mazyek, the I was puzzled to see among the plac- to low test scores among Muslims could head of the Muslim Central Council, ards a yellow pennant with a picture of be partly traced to genetic factors. publicly compared the Party to the Nazis. a brown leather shoe. “It’s the Union The success of Sarrazin’s book revealed He invited Petry to exchange views at a Shoe,” an excited voice behind me said. an important shift in public opinion. For summit meeting in Berlin. Other Party

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 59 leaders sensed danger, but Petry accepted. assaults on asylum shelters—an average tributed to the violence, she said, “Typ- Surrounded by the German press of almost two a day—including fifty-five ical German journalist question!” Her corps, Petry and Mazyek, a sturdy forty- cases of arson, and there were more than voice took on a steely hauteur. “The first seven-year-old former media consultant, a hundred attacks on individuals. question you have to ask is what is caus- met in a boardroom on the second floor The most notorious attacks have been ing so many cases of breaking the law of the Regent Hotel. The discussion es- in Saxony, Petry’s state. At the start of in Germany,” she said. “Of course masses calated when Petry accused Mazyek of this year in Chemnitz, neo-Nazis beat will get out of control. Most of the Saxon wanting to impose Sharia law on Ger- and trampled a thirteen-year-old Tuni- protesters stay peaceful, but these are many, a popular but unfounded claim. In sian girl. In Bautzen, a small town close never talked about.” She began to speak response, Mazyek produced what he said to the Czech border, a large crowd faster and faster. “We have to distinguish was a gift—a giant copy of the German cheered when a refugee shelter went up between the causes and the symptoms,” Basic Law, which was drafted in 1949, in flames. In Clausnitz, another crowd she said. “In order to get rid of the symp- under Allied supervision. Mazyek had attacked a bus transporting refugees to tom, you have to get rid of the problem.” put his signature next to Article 4, which a shelter. After all, if there were no immigrants guarantees religious freedom. The attacks take place in a sinister there would have been no protests. Petry was in a bind. If she rejected atmosphere of municipal complicity. The the gift, she would be disrespecting the police keep interventions to a minimum, ast winter, I took the first of a German constitution; if she accepted and prosecutions are rare, in part be- number of trips to Berlin’s main cen- it, her supporters would say that she cause few witnesses come forward. In Lter for processing refugees, not far from was capitulating to the caliphate. She one town, after the home of an immi- where I live. It is in Moabit, a former got up, rushed out of the room, and grant family was firebombed, a volun- working-class neighborhood that is now told reporters that she would hold a teer fireman who helped fight the blaze gentrified. The center—called LAgeso, brief press conference in the hotel’s was later discovered to have thrown the an acronym, in German, for State Office lobby. Mazyek held his own press con- Molotov cocktail that started it. for Health and Welfare—is in a bureau- ference, and journalists had to choose In the economically stagnant, mostly cratic slab of concrete occupying a city which one to attend. Most followed Eastern, towns where anti-immigrant block across from a small park. Next to Petry. “I asked Mr. Maz yek whether he feeling runs highest, hatred of the new the main building, there is an empty lot would approve of marriages between arrivals has not prevented people from with two large makeshift tents where Christians or atheists with Muslims,” taking advantage of their presence. The people wait for their appointments. There she announced. “He could not give me government has invested millions of are guards out in front, but no one ever a guarantee that Islam does not dom- euros in housing for refugees, which tried to stop me from going in. inate these relationships. We came here local interests have welcomed as a Each tent had a wood-plank floor for guarantees and we got none.” rare form of economic stimulus. The and benches around the perimeter. Ber- As damage control, Petry’s words were Clausnitz attack was led by an AfD lin winters are very cold and damp, and more or less effective, but she clearly re- supporter named Frank Hetze, whose families clustered near large white ducts alized that the meeting had been a mis- brother, another AfD member, turned that piped in warm air. The men paced take. “On Facebook I said we taught out to be the director of the shelter. It back and forth, nursing giant plastic cups him a lesson,” she admitted to me af- later emerged that the Hetze family of tea or bottles of mineral water that terward. “But no one was able to teach business, a metals factory, had sold ship- had been handed out. The tents filled anyone a lesson. It was a good play on ping containers to a refugee center in up throughout the day, as buses arrived his part.” Mazyek, when I asked him Leipzig, which used them for tempo- with exhausted-looking asylum appli- about it later, admitted to an element of rary accommodations. cants from camps outside Berlin. My showmanship. “We did not go into the The day after the Clausnitz attack, eyes were drawn to people’s shoes. Some meeting with any expectations but ap- Petry gave a press conference in which were nearly falling to pieces, from the proached the AfD in the hope of rais- she blamed refugees on the bus for in- journeys that had been taken to get this ing awareness about its unconstitutional citing the violence. “The incoming ref- far. Others were new and shiny—recent agenda,” he said. The ploy had succeeded ugees were making unsightly gestures— purchases by those with connections in in showing that “the AfD is not capa- possibly obscene gestures,” she said. Berlin or access to a bank account. ble of having democratic discussions.” When asked about the involvement I met a gangly eighteen-year-old from He went on, “The AfD uses the ref- of AfD members, she said that the Aleppo named Muhammed Fateh. He ugee crisis to foment a propaganda of matter would “need to be further re- was leaning against one of the warm- fear in the minds of its followers. Insults searched.” Later, when I said that the air ducts, drinking tea. He had braces and daily Islamophobia have led to the AfD affiliation of the attackers was on his teeth that had worked themselves desecration of houses of worship, and well established, she became flustered. crooked, and wore track pants and a bullying in the streets.” According to an “That’s not true!” she kept saying. sleeveless T-shirt. He told me that he estimate by the German Interior Min- “There were no AfD members con- and his father had left Aleppo during istry, violence against foreigners increased nected with any of the attacks, or what- the Russian bombing campaign in Jan- by more than forty per cent last year. ever you are calling them.” uary. Initially, they took cover in a nearby There were six hundred and sixty-five When I asked if AfD rhetoric con- village. When they returned to their

60 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 house, they found that it had been de- stroyed. “It was unbelievable,” he said, sweeping his arm across the tent. “It was gone, gone, gone.” But his tone was non- chalant, as if he were referring to some- thing much milder, like a car accident. He didn’t want to burden me with all the details. Fateh spoke decent English, winc- ing when he thought he’d mispro- nounced something. He was impa- tient to begin learning German, and confident that he would find a place in a German school. Assimilation seemed to present few challenges for him. But his father appeared crushed. He lay on the floor, staring at the metal beams of the tent. A relative of theirs hovered nearby, looking warily around and examining the bottles of water to see if they had been tampered with. Fateh periodically glanced over at them “I’m sick of experts telling me what paints I can’t drink.” with concern. When I asked him what their future in Germany might be, he shrugged. •• I spoke to Cemile Giousouf, a poli- tician who is a rising star of the C.D.U. all much taller than she was, and most ican President, because the alternative and is well placed to understand the po- at least a decade older. She looked like to him, Hillary Clinton, is just so un- sition of people like Fateh. Thirty-eight a young Renaissance prince consult- convincing. She is almost like a copy years old, she is of Turkish descent and ing with his courtiers. She was com- of someone like Merkel—someone the first Muslim member of the C.D.U. plaining about the latest machinations who just keeps on with the same pol- to enter the Bundestag. Looking around of one of her AfD rivals, a favorite icies that led to the trouble in the first her office there—a shrine to multicul- topic. We moved to a pressroom, where place.” She admired the American will- turalism, adorned with Islamic, Chris- Petry addressed a handful of journal- ingness to take risks: “It might not be tian, and Jewish iconography—I won- ists about the AfD’s budget policy. better under Trump, but at least with dered how she would defend her party’s Her speech was, as usual, boring, but him there is the chance to change.” burka ban, which had been proposed a its dullness muted the radicalism of She thought that German politics few days earlier. Her answer showed her proposal—to defund asylum shel- was more weighed down by liberal pi- how valuable she is to a party that has ters and put the money into teachers’ eties. “It’s so moral to allow these at- traditionally had little in the way of mul- salaries. tacks to happen,” she said sarcastically. ticultural bona fides. “When my parents Afterward, in her office, we talked “It’s so moral to promise to people came to Germany, in the seventies, my about the AfD’s connections to other around the world that they can come father worked in a factory,” she said. “He populist movements. She has estab- to Germany and find paradise.” She never learned German. I still have to lished close ties with Heinz-Christian found this outlook anti-democratic, translate letters for him when I’m home. Strache, the leader of Austria’s Free- disdainful of the views of ordinary Ger- But German wasn’t as necessary for the dom Party, and has also met with Geert mans. “I myself am not morally good,” work he was doing as it is for the work Wilders, the star of the Dutch far right. she said. “I’m just a human being. I try we need immigrants to do now. I’m She told me that a colleague had re- to stick to the rules. And I think there talking about nurses, I.T. programmers, cently met with Marine Le Pen, of is a majority of Germans who agree and so on. You need to know German France’s Front National, and that over with me. So, reducing the entire En- to do these jobs, and so we need people the summer she had spoken to vari- lightenment and all of the successes of to integrate more quickly. We can’t afford ous American Republicans, including European history down to this need to wait a whole generation.” the Iowa congressman Steve King, who to be morally good: I find that ex- has compared immigrants to dogs and tremely dangerous. There’s this saying he last time I met Petry was in suggested building an electric fence on of Nietzsche”—she took out her phone August, back at the Saxony State the U.S. border with Mexico. When I and pulled up the quote almost in- Parliament.T When I arrived, she was asked her what she thought of Don- stantly. “Here it is, in ‘Zarathustra’: standing in a glass atrium, speaking ald Trump, she said, “My impression ‘The good have always been the be- sternly to a group of advisers—all men, is that Trump may become the Amer- ginning of the end.’ ” 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 61 FICTION

62 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW B. MYERS celebrate the kid’s birthday the At the escalator, he wants to go up to the cash register. “So I can play with day after. Always the day after or the down side, for the fun of it, and Yanir and Lyri, like we have a candy the day before, never on the actual I go along with him. It’s a good work- store.” Idate. Always the same shit. Why? Be- out for both of us. You have to run as “They don’t sell the cash register,” I cause his honor the judge decided that fast as you can so you won’t be dragged say. “Pick out something else.” the kid has to be with his mommy on down, have to strain the whole time “I want the cash register,” Lidor per- his birthday, even if she’s a bitch and a not to fall on your ass. Just like in sists. “Daddy, you promised.” liar who fucks every jerk who smiles at life. A hunchbacked old lady who is “I said to pick out something that’s her at work. Daddy is less important. coming down tries to argue with us, for sale.” Lidor and I go to the mall together, asks why we don’t go up the regular “You’re a liar!” Lidor yells and kicks not for a present; the last time I was way, like everyone else. She’ll be in my leg as hard as he can. “Just like in a duty-free shop, I bought him a her grave in another minute, and this Mommy says. You’re all talk.” remote-co ntrol multicopter drone. is what bothers her? I don’t even an- The kick hurts, and, when some- Eighty-nine dollars—eighty-nine!— swer her. thing hurts me, I get pissed off. But and they didn’t even put batteries for today I manage to control myself. Be- the remote in the box. So we’re going hen we get to the candy store cause I love my son more than any- to the mall to pick up some batteries, on the third floor, the lady with thing else in the world, and today’s a but I tell Lidor that it’s to have fun. yellowW teeth isn’t there, only a pim- special day, his birthday. I mean, the What can I tell him? Not only did ple-faced teen-ager, as thin as a chop- day after his birthday. The bitch. Daddy bring his present a day late but stick. I say to Lidor, “Pick out what- “How much do you want for the he didn’t even check to see if there were ever you want. But only one thing, cash register?” I ask Pimple-Face, as batteries inside? No way. O.K.? And whatever it is, even if it cool as can be. The bitch. Yesterday I say to her, costs a million shekels, Daddy will “What are you, six years old?” he Let me come to the party, just for ten buy it for you, promise. What does says with a crooked smile. “You know minutes. To give the kid a kiss, take a Lidor want?” it’s not for sale.” He says “six years old” shot of him with my cell when he blows The kid is excited, walks around as if Lidor were a moron or something, out the candles, and then I’ll leave. But the store like a junkie in a pharmacy, and I realize now that he’s trapped me. she starts with the threats and the re- looks at the shelves, picks things up, I have to choose a side—either I’m straining orders, texts her boyfriend, tries to decide. Meanwhile, I use the with him or I’m with Lidor. the law clerk, while she’s on the line time to buy AAA batteries. Pimple- “A thousand shekels,” I say and ex- with me—I can actually hear her tap- Face doesn’t ring them up on the reg- tend my hand. “We shake on it now, ping—and says that if she sees me any- ister, even though I wave the money and I go down to the A.T.M. and come where near the building she’ll make in front of him. “What are we wait- back with the money.” my life hell. ing for?” I ask. “It’s not mine,” he says, squirming. Lidor wants us to fly the drone “For the kid to decide,” he says, and “I just work here.” first and then go to the mall, but there pulls a string of gum out of his mouth. “So whose is it?” I ask. “The lady are no batteries in the remote, and I “I’ll ring them up together.” And, be- with yellow teeth?” don’t want to tell him that, so I say, fore I can say anything, he starts play- “Yes,” he says, nodding. “Tirza.” We’ll go to the big candy store on the ing with his cell. “So get her on the phone,” I say. third floor, the one with the Sponge- “Do them separately, man,” I insist, “Let me talk to her. For a thousand Bob SquarePants helium balloons shoving the batteries into the bag with shekels, she can get a new register. A and the lady with yellow teeth who the drone. “Before the kid comes over. better one.” yells, “Come in! Come in! Buy candy It’s a surprise.” Pimple-Face rings them Lidor looks at me like I’m some for the little boy,” and I’ll buy him up, and the cash-register drawer springs kind of a superhero. There’s nothing another present there, whatever he open with a ding. He doesn’t have small greater than to have your kid look at wants. bills to make change for me, so he loads you that way. It’s better than a vaca- Lidor says, The mall’s great, but first me down with coins. tion in Thailand. Better than a blow the drone. I lie to him, tell him that Just then, Lidor comes over. “What job. Better than punching someone the mall closes early. Luckily for me, did you buy, Daddy?” who has it coming. “Go ahead, call her,” he’s still young enough to believe. “Nothing,” I say. “Just some gum.” I say and give him a little push. Not Three in the afternoon and the mall “Where is it?” Lidor asks. because I’m angry. For the kid. is packed. To be with him for his birth- “I swallowed it.” He taps in the number and walks day, I had to take half a day off work. “But it’s bad to swallow gum,” he away from us, half whispering into Judging by how mobbed the mall is, I says. “It can stick to your stomach.” the phone. I follow him wherever must be the only person in this coun- Pimple-Face gives a stupid laugh. he goes, Lidor behind us. He looks try who works. But Lidor, what a sweet “You want a present or what?” I say, happy. He was already happy earlier, kid, he laughs all the time, never whines, changing the subject. “Come on, pick when I picked him up, but now he’s not even when we have to wait in line out something.” flying. forever to get inside. “I want that,” Lidor says, pointing “She says no,” Pimple-Face tells me

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 63 and shrugs as if the word had come give her two thousand, a thousand now by the hand and go down to the A.T.M. from God. and another thousand tomorrow.” Sometimes the machine gives me prob- “Give her to me.” I gesture with my hand. “But—” Pimple-Face starts. lems, but today it spits out the thou- “She says stores don’t sell their cash “I can’t take out more than a thou- sand in blue two-hundred-shekel bills registers,” he says. I grab the phone sand at a time,” I interrupt him. “I’ll without arguing. away from him. That makes Lidor bring the other thousand tomorrow laugh. Daddy’s making Lidor laugh. morning. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you my hen we get back, a sweaty fat “Tirza,” I say. “Hi, this is Gabi, a driver’s license as a guarantee.” guy with a mustache is talking good customer of yours. You don’t rec- “She told me not to call anymore,” toW Pimple-Face. I know him, he owns ognize the name, but you’d know my he says. “She’s sitting shivah for her the frozen-yogurt stand next door. face in a second. Listen, I need you to father. She doesn’t want to be disturbed.” When Pimple-Face sees us come in, help me out here. A thousand shek- “Sorry for your loss,” I say, putting he points at me. I wink at him and put els—you not only buy a new register, a consoling arm around his shoulder. the thousand on the counter. “Here,” I but I owe you a favor.” “So think about it. Two thousand is a say. Pimple- Face doesn’t move. “Come “And where the fuck will we ring lot of money. If she finds out later that on, take it already! Lighten up!” I pick up the thousand?” Tirza asks on the I offered it and you said no, she’ll tear the bills up and try to shove them into other end of the line. She’s in a noisy you a new one. Listen to a grownup— his pocket. place; I can hardly hear her. it’s not worth getting into trouble over “Leave him alone,” Fat Guy says. “So you don’t ring it up,” I say. “What a small thing like this.” “He’s just a kid.” am I, the Tax Authority? A thousand I press the bottom of the cash- “I can’t,” I say. “I promised my son. shekels straight into your pocket. Come register drawer and, bam, it opens. It’s Today’s his birthday.” on, what do you say?” a trick I learned when I worked at the “Happy birthday,” Fat Guy says and “Put him on the phone,” she says Burger Ranch, after the Army. “Take tousles Lidor’s hair without even look- impatiently. out the money,” I tell him, but he ing at him. “Want some ice cream, “The teen-ager?” I ask. doesn’t move, so I collect the money buddy? A present from me—a cup of “Yes,” Tirza says, starting to sound for him and stick it into the front ice cream with whipped cream and angry. “Put him on.” pocket of his jeans. chocolate syrup and gummy bears on I hand the phone to Pimple-Face. “Stores don’t sell their cash regis- top.” The whole time he’s talking his He talks to her for a minute, then ends ters,” he says. small eyes stay fixed on me. the call. “She says no,” he tells me. “Sorry.” “Who cares,” I say. “Trust me, it’s a “I want the cash register,” Lidor says, Lidor takes my hand. “Cash regis- sweet deal. Wait here for me, and I’ll be moving away from him and pressing ter,” he says in his most serious voice. back in five minutes with a thousand up against me. “Daddy promised.” “You promised.” shekels so the bills in your pocket don’t “What will you do with a cash reg- “Two thousand,” I say to Pimple- get lonely.” ister?” Fat Guy asks but doesn’t wait Face. “Call her back and tell her I’ll Before he can answer, I take Lidor for an answer. “We have one, too, but only because the tax people make us use it. It’s not good for anything. It just makes noise. What do you say—let Daddy take you to the computer store on the second floor and buy you an Xbox instead. For a thousand shekels, you can get the best one, with Kinect and everything.” I don’t say anything. I actually like the idea. It’ll save me a lot of trouble here, and later, too, with Lilia, when I take him back home. Because the min- ute Lilia sees the cash register, she’ll start carrying on. “So what do you say?” Fat Guy asks Lidor. “Xbox is the best. Races, chases, whatever you want.” “Cash register,” Lidor says, hugging my legs tightly. “Look at what an angel he is,” I say and try to hand the money to Fat Guy. “Help me make him happy on his birthday.” “You’ll feel a pinch and then a burn.” “It’s not my store,” Fat Guy protests. “First we fly the helicopter and then we go home. You promised.” RESOLVE “Yes,” I say in my gentlest voice. “But the cash register is heavy. Daddy can’t I believe the moai carry it and fly the helicopter at the walked to their resting places. same time. Now the register and to- Neither a zigzag morrow, right after school, we’ll go fly nor a bellwether the helicopter in the park.” beeline in their history. Lidor thinks for a minute. “Now the All face, some fell en route, helicopter,” he says. “And tomorrow the the machinery of government cash register.” And right then, just in getting by on the flat-foot plan. time, Pimple-Face comes running back Now disappeared, the largest palm trees into the store with a security guard. on earth lived like revolutionaries “What do you think you’re doing?” but only until the seventeenth century. the guard says. He’s a short, hairy guy, So much for strong silent types. looks more like a pinscher than like a Today in the street, winds security guard. swept two wheeled garbage bins “Nothing.” I give him a wink and halfway across, a frightening put the cash register back in place. “Just noon-hour stunt. trying to make the kid laugh. It’s his Returned from the chalklands birthday today.” and wearing my feather headdress, “Happy birthday, kid,” the guard I apprehended the pair, says to Lidor, as if he couldn’t care less. pushing them out of harm’s way “Many happy returns. But now you and before they reached that legendary dinette your father have to leave.” the National, “Yes,” Lidor says. “We have to go full of salty toffee, pâtes de fruits, and fly the helicopter.” candied tumbleweed. There was something so sweet n the park, Lidor and I play with about that vehicular effrontery, the multicopter drone. The brochure as if their obsidian eyes could Isays that it can fly forty metres high, issue an endgame between but after about fifteen metres it can’t irony and rationality. pick up the signal from the remote, its Marooned in winter country, propeller stops spinning, and it falls. their green gazes presided Lidor likes that. over me like gods on Rapa Nui. “Who loves Lidor the most in the For them all, double-handled world?” I ask, and Lidor answers, “Daddy!” and long-eared, “And how much does Lidor love I hoped for loving cups. Daddy?” I ask while the multicopter So I said, drone spins around him, and he yells, my loving cup “A whole bunch!” shall be your loving cup. “Up to the sky,” I shout. “Up to the moon and back!” —Nyla Matuk My cell starts vibrating in my pocket, but I ignore it. It must be Lilia. Above us, the drone is getting smaller and “I don’t even work here. I’m just try- says, and begins punching in numbers. smaller. In another second, it’ll be out ing to help—” I grab the phone away from him again. of our field of vision and will fall. Then “But you’re not.” I move so close to “Why?” I say. “It’s his birthday today. we’ll both start running across the grass him now that my face almost touches his. Everyone’s happy, don’t ruin it.” Pimple- and try to catch it, and if Lidor beats “I have to go back to the store.” Fat Face looks at his phone, which is in me to it again he’ll laugh that killer Guy shrugs and says to Pimple-Face, my hand, then at me, and runs out of laugh of his. There’s nothing nicer in “If he tries anything, call the police,” the store. I put Pimple-Face’s phone this stinking world than the sound of and leaves. A real hero. on the counter and pick up the regis- a kid laughing. ♦ I put the thousand shekels on the ter. “Now we’ll leave here fast,” I say to (Translated, from the Hebrew, counter, unplug the register, and start Lidor, my voice cheerful, as if this were by Sondra Silverston.) rolling up the cord, and, when Lidor a game. “We’ll go back home and show sees that, he claps his hands. Mommy what you got.” NEWYORKER.COM “I’m calling the cops,” Pimple-Face “No,” Lidor says, stamping his feet. Etgar Keret on the purest form of racism.

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 65 THE CRITICS

A CRITIC AT LARGE COULDN’T BE BETTER

The return of the utopians. SHBY AKA KAPUR

ive hundred years ago, a man almost interchangeably with its evil twin, jealously guard their own. “One thing we who condoned torture, religious per- dystopia—a word coined by John Stuart can say about the seductive visionaries Fsecution, and burning at the stake wrote Mill, three and a half centuries after the who led the utopian movement in Amer- a book about the perfect world. In “On publication of More’s book, to describe a ica,” Reece notes dryly, “is that they did the Best Kind of a Republic and About society that was “too bad to be practicable.” not lead the most self-examine d lives.” the New Island of Utopia” (the book’s Despite the caveats, the over-all tone full title, translated from Latin), Sir ow the tide may have shifted. As of both books is enthusiastic, even lau- Thomas More envisaged a paradise the literary Marxist Fredric Jameson datory. Set against the general oppro- where men and women could choose Nobserves, “In the last years, utopia has brium that has tarred utopia in the twen- their religion, without fear of violence again changed its meaning and has be- tieth century, these are works of intellec- or coercion. In practice, as Lord Chan- come the rallying cry for left and pro- tual and political rehabilitation. Jennings cellor of England, More oversaw the gressive forces.” A slew of books have laments “a deficit of imagination” in our burning of at least six Protestants and arrived to celebrate the utopian spirit, era, and argues that, “uncoupled from the jailing of some forty. One merchant notably two on the history of utopia in utopian ends, even the most incisive so- was tortured in More’s own home, and the United States. Erik Reece’s “Utopia cial critique falls short.” Reece likewise tied so tightly to a tree that blood re- Drive” is a travelogue through the ghosts ends his travels convinced “that things portedly flowed from his eyes. More re- of America’s nineteenth-century inten- will only get worse if we don’t engage in ferred to it as “the Tree of Truth.” tional communities. In Kentucky, Indi- some serious utopian thinking.” For Reece, Contradiction and hypocrisy have al- ana, Ohio, Virginia, New York, and Mas- in particular, the process of rehabilitation ways hovered over the utopian project, sachusetts, Reece visits the remains of a is an explicitly political project—an at- shadowing its promise of a better world handful of utopian settlements and towns, tempt to exhume the lessons of the past with the sordid realities of human na- mining their histories to reflect on the in order to frame an alternative to the ture. Plato, in the Republic, perhaps the present. Chris Jennings’s “Paradise Now: economic, environmental, and political earliest utopian text, outlined a form of The Story of American Utopianism,” a despair of recent times. Sitting in a ham- eugenics that would have been right at historical account of five utopian proj- mock in the intentional community of home in the Third Reich—which was ects, is more firmly rooted in the past. Twin Oaks, in Virginia, he reads More’s itself a form of utopia, as were the Gulag Both books seek to capture the spirit of “Utopia” and thinks of Bernie Sanders. of Soviet Communism, the killing fields what Jennings calls “a long, sunny sea- Driving toward what remains of the com- of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and, more re- son of American utopianism”—a period munity of Modern Times, on Long Is- cently, the blood-and-sand caliphate of of about a century, roughly bookended land, he decries “Big Oil, Big Coal, Big ISIS. “There is a tyranny in the womb of by the optimism of American indepen- Agra, Big Pharma” and the “corporate every utopia,” the French economist and dence and the butchery of the Civil War. vandals” who “pollute the commons.” Al- futurist Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote. Neither author is blind to the short- though their books are formally about The twentieth century was perhaps comings of his subject. Jennings is at- nineteenth-century intentional commu- the cruellest for utopian hopes. “Innu- tuned to the latent “terror and repression” nities, both Reece and Jennings tap into merable millions of human beings were in the utopian project. Reece has a sharp an altogether more contemporary strand killed in this century in the name of uto- eye for the contradictions of communi- of post- crisis (i.e., post-2008) economic

pia,” the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz re- ties that condemn the capitalist economy and political discourse. RREZ minded his audience, at a 1986 PEN con- but are sustained by vibrant commercial A rejuvenated Marxism underlies ference. In a 2007 polemic, “Black Mass,” enterprises. The founders of these com- much of this thinking. In fact, Marx and John Gray proclaimed “the death of uto- munities—a colorful cast of prophets, Engels were dismissive of nineteenth- pia.” Indeed, utopia’s name has become dreamers, and narcissists—preach against century bourgeois “utopian socialism,” so tarnished that it has recently been used private property and possessions as they contrasting it with their own “scientific GUTI É LUCI ABOVE:

66 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 Not long ago, utopianism was a mark of naïveté or extremism; now pragmatists are denigrated for complacent cynicism. ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 67 socialism.” Yet many of the principles phrey Noyes, whose followers pooled It was a time of remarkable ferment and championed by these communities—col- their resources and bought a hundred innovation, marked by what Jennings, lectivism, egalitarianism, the rejection of and sixty acres of land on the Oneida who has a gift for the striking phrase, capitalism and individualism—reflect a Reserve, named for a local Indian tribe. calls a belief that “society seemed like softer version of Communism: what Ben- They set about realizing Noyes’s vision something to be invented, rather than jamin Kunkel has described as “Marxish” of “Bible Communism,” believing that merely endured.” thought. As Fredric Jameson notes in his Christ had already made his Second Of course, all along there were fore- manifesto “An American Utopia,” now Coming (“like a thief in the night,” bodings, hints of the injuries and iniq- republished, along with several commen- as the Bible puts it), and that humans uities that so often seem to accompany taries, in book form, modern-day utopi- were thus living free of sin, with the re- utopias. For all the idealism, daily life ans embrace “Marxism as sponsibility to create a per- in these “heavens on earth”—to bor- a negative and critical anal- fect world. row the title of Mark Holloway’s clas- ysis of capitalism, without The pursuit of Perfec- sic 1951 work on American utopias— any longer being attracted tionism, as the doctrine rarely managed to rise above the to the cultural, social, and was called, led to a num- mundanities that mark most human political traditions estab- ber of unorthodox prac- settlements: financial shenanigans, nep- lished over a century by tices, notably “complex otism, authoritarianism, envy, sexual ex- the communist movement.” marriage” and “sexual com- ploitation. The Icarians, of Nauvoo, Il- One sign of how far po- munism,” which were es- linois, instituted a “moral purge,” litical rhetoric has shifted sentially coinages for rad- complete with a network of spies, de- in recent years is that when ical polyamory and free signed to cleanse the community of im- Reece and Jennings write about “secular love. (Utopia is very good at rebrand- perfections. In Oneida, parents were communism” or the “communistic” ten- ing existing human behaviors.) Under- separated from their young offspring, dencies of these projects they are writ- lying Oneida’s quirky sexual norms was, in an effort to break attachments that ing in celebration, instead of lamenting in fact, a set of deeply progressive be- could deviate from communal solidar- an ideology that tyrannized vast swaths liefs in collective ownership and equal- ity (“stickiness,” in another Oneidan of the planet. Not long ago, utopianism ity, notably for women. coinage). Children, passive receptacles was a mark of naïveté or fanaticism, or Oneida was sustained by a robust for their parents’ life choices, are always even of solidarity with political coercion; communal economy, built around the the worst victims of such communities. today, anti-utopianism is denigrated as a manufacture of animal traps and silver- Over all, though, the biggest prob- form of political cynicism and complic- ware. Just as Noyes and his followers op- lem—at least, in any attempt to harness ity with the global forces of oppression. posed any form of private property in these nineteenth-century projects to Utopias come in waves. The era that this economy, so they were against the twenty-first-century reforms—is one Reece and Jennings write about represents ownership of people, particularly in the less of evil than of ineffectuality. A spec- an early heyday of American idealism. form of marriage (which they saw as a tre hangs over these places—the spec- For ambitious young men of the nascent means of patriarchal control) and slav- tre of failure. In 1879, under external and Republic, utopia schemes were the apps ery. In an 1850 Oneidan pamphlet titled internal pressures to conform, Oneida of their day. “Not a reading man but has “Slavery and Marriage: A Dialogue,” one voted to adopt traditional marriage prac- a draft of a new community in his waist- character argues that each was an “arbi- tices. The next year, it abandoned the coat pocket,” Ralph Waldo Emerson trary institution and contrary to natural principle of collective ownership, con- wrote. The nineteen- thirties witnessed a liberty.” Women in Oneida were free to verting itself into a joint-stock company short-lived flowering of New Deal uto- choose lovers and jobs (e.g., as carpen- that went on to become a major silver- pias, government- created coöperatives ters) in a manner that was elsewhere ware manufacturer. Shares in the com- built to generate employment; the next shut off to them. Noyes wasn’t exactly a pany were allocated according to mem- big wave was in the sixties. Each of these feminist, but he helped create an envi- bers’ initial contributions (as well as time periods was marked by a sense of tumult, ronment that was among the most eman- spent in the community), in a stroke of cultural and financial dislocation, much cipatory for women. undoing the equality that had originally like the present. Jennings writes that “lit- A similarly vanguardist outlook char- characterized communal life. Noyes was erature is a sensitive indicator of utopian acterized almost all the places that Reece in exile at this point, having fled threat- sentiment.” Could these books—along and Jennings write about. Their books ened legal action over the community’s with the other recent utopian books— are exemplars of historical reconstruc- sexual practices. A mere three decades offer guidance for a grand new moment tion, and they vividly bring to life the in, the dream was effectively over. of social reform? ecological sensitivity, inclusiveness, and Virtually all these utopian commu- egalitarianism that inspired so many in nities met the same fate. Reece ends his neida, in central New York, early America. A significant number of book with a cry to action: “We can head was one of the most prominent, and these communities treated women (and out today toward the utopia of recon- Opromising, of these communities. It was a few even African-Americans) as equals; struction. We can build the road as we founded in 1848 by a mercurial Ver- almost all set out to erase barriers of eco- travel.” Readers of these books might be mont-based preacher named John Hum- nomic class and conventional hierarchy. forgiven for thinking that this road is

68 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 something of a dead end. None of the reality. At a certain point, it becomes im- Utopians tend to be skeptical when five places that Jennings writes about possible to resist asking, What is it that it comes to talk of human nature and, remain in existence. Of the many that makes the noble ideas embodied in these indeed, of humanism in any recogniz- Reece travels through, only one, Twin communities so fragile, and so appar- able form. They contest our assump- Oaks, survives in anything even vaguely ently unattractive? tions about what’s “natural.” Yet, as the resembling its initial form. The small Arthur C. Clarke had one answer. portraits in these books indicate, those number that haven’t disappeared are now “The newspapers of Utopia . . . would dreary assumptions win out every time. tourist attractions or bourgeois housing be terribly dull,” he wrote in “2001: A Utopias are, in the philosopher Leszek settlements—“a toy town, an ersatz ver- Space Odyssey.” The Polish poet Wisława Kołakowski’s phrase, “anti-human.” sion of the original dream,” as Reece Szymborska, who, like so many of her Sex—more specifically, the urge to puts it, visiting what remains of New Eastern European compatriots, lived procreate and nurture a family—has Harmony, in Indiana. through the ravages of two dystopian proved to be one reliable trip wire. The issue isn’t just that these com- utopias, hints at some deeper possibili- Many of these communities sought to munities failed to achieve the lasting, ep- ties. In her poem “Utopia,” she writes of regulate conjugal relations. They are ochal change that they often envisioned. an “Island where all becomes clear,” where not alone: think of China’s one-child Even at their height, they never reached “Unshakable Confidence towers over the policy, or of early Soviet efforts to dis- a critical mass, remaining instead scat- valley,” and where “The Tree of Under- mantle the institution of marriage. If tered and mostly minuscule attempts at standing, dazzlingly straight and sim- the Oneidans and their sexual com- social tinkering—Trialville, as one called ple, / sprouts by the spring called Now I munism occupied one end of the spec- itself, in an uncharacteristic burst of mod- Get It.” And yet: trum, the Shakers were at the other. esty. Oneida, at its apogee, numbered For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, They tried to address the same anxi- some three hundred people. Walking and the faint footprints scattered on its ety harbored by the Oneidans—that around the Twin Oaks settlement one beaches private ties would trump communal day, Reece asks a man how far he thinks turn without exception to the sea. solidarity—by banning sexual relations. the community’s collectivist economy As if all you can do here is leave Both approaches were fighting some could grow. “I’d say it can’t go beyond a and plunge, never to return, into the depths. powerful headwinds. Oneida nearly thousand people,” the man ventures. collapsed amid accusations of statu- This is delicate territory for utopians. Into unfathomable life. tory rape and squabbles over the allo- There is a sense in which failure is baked cation of virgins. The course chosen into the very idea of utopia; the goal of here is a moment early in by the Shakers was, quite evidently, the a perfect world—a holiday from his- Reece’s journey when he is having surest way to extinction. tory—is intrinsically self-undermining. aT meal of snap peas and fried chicken Today’s utopians are less interested The literature, consequently, ties itself in with his wife at Pleasant Hill. The wait- in sex than in the economy—specifi- anxious knots. Ruth Levitas, a luminary ress has a hickey on her neck. Con- cally, in hastening the downfall of cap- in the academic field of utopian studies, versation turns to Shaker injunctions italism. More than a century and a half writes defensively about “the elision be- against sex. “That’s crazy,” Reece’s wife after Marx and Engels predicted that tween perfection and impossibility” em- says. “Why build something this beau- capitalism would collapse under the ployed by critics who dismiss the prac- tiful and then tell people they can’t weight of its own contradictions, con- ticality of utopias. Reece thinks that, “as have sex here. It’s not natural.” temporary neo-Marxists maintain a a culture, we need them to fail because that failure affirms the inevitability of the dominant economy, with its atten- dant violence, inequality, and injustice.” Contemplating the now extinct Shakers of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, he argues that there are “simply no criteria by which we can say that [they] failed.” Instead, “we might say, in retrospect, that the larger American culture failed them.” Fair enough; there’s always plenty of blame to go around. But the serial col- lapse and the sheer insubstantiality of these projects brings to mind Thomas Macaulay’s jibe that an acre of Middle- sex is worth more than a principality in Utopia. The heart wants such worthy causes to succeed, looking to them hope- fully for solutions to our contemporary “For your comfort, you will be searched by someone dilemmas. The head can’t turn away from of your own level of sexiness.” dogged faith in the ephemerality of the lems has discovered that possessive- tion of one of its workers’ pension plans. modern economic system. “The start- ness in sex and family relations makes Oneida’s founding idealism, she con- ing point of the entire analysis is that economic communism unattainable.” cludes, “had been made a mockery.” capitalism is going to end,” Peter Frase, This passage—from radicalism to an editor at Jacobin, writes in an up- neida, and especially the man- conventionality, from communal social- coming book, “Four Futures: Life After ner of its ending, is worth revisit- ism to sharp-elbowed corporatism— Capitalism.” We can think of these two Oing. Reece and Jennings largely cover the makes for a fascinating, if somewhat ambitions—reinvented sex and a re- period from its founding until its incor- depressing, read. In Wayland-S mith’s made economy—as the twin pillars of poration, in 1880, but the story doesn’t extended chronicle, we see utopia as it the utopian project. actually end there. A fuller treatment of sails through the world, assaulted on all In fact, the example of America’s Oneida’s history, stretching over more sides by the forces of assimilation and nineteenth-century intentional com- than a century, can be found in another greed. But, for all the idiosyncrasies of munities suggests that there is some- recent book, “Oneida: From Free-Love this particular story, the broader contours thing elemental in what John Maynard Utopia to the Well-Set Table,” by Ellen are in fact quite familiar. Wayland-Smith Keynes, writing during the Great De- Wayland-Smith, who also happens to bemoans the “loss of energy and imag- pression, called “the resilience of cap- be a descendant of Noyes. (Owing to the ination behind the original dream,” the italism.” Nearly every utopia in these community’s principled promiscuity, he descent into “middle-class smallness” and books begins with a determination to had many descendants.) “conformity.” This is the trajectory of so create a new economy, usually through Assembled from diaries, personal cor- many of the utopias in these books and, some amalgam of collective ownership, respondence, and family recollections, indeed, throughout history. central planning, and voluntary labor. Wayland-Smith’s book is a lively and There is an element of reinventing Yet egoism, acquisitiveness, competi- often entertaining account. Sexual com- the wheel here, a sense that Oneida, in tiveness, and all the other ills of human munism lends itself to some raunchy its crawl toward monogamy, dynastic flesh bob repeatedly to the surface, like passages. “Tirzah Miller liked to have families, and mercantile (and mercenary) a cork that will not be submerged. sex,” begins one chapter, which goes on capitalism, was simply reverting to some- Twin Oaks, inspired by B. F. Skin- to quote a description of an encounter thing like a human mean. The circle of ner’s “Walden Two” (1948), was founded from Miller’s diary: “There was a won- our aspirations is not easily reconciled on a behaviorist faith that mankind derful glow and ache between us. . . .We with the square of our human propen- could be molded by “a positive, healthy seemed all aflame. We hurried to the sities. Over and over, optimistically and environment” and could elevate com- house, and then he wanted me to come stubbornly, commendably but maybe also munity over the individual. Yet when to his room. Ecstasy.” a bit foolishly, utopia just seems to take Reece visits a Twin Oaks spinoff, Acorn, But the core of the book is really an a long and circuitous route to the same, what he encounters suggests that age- account of Oneida’s many incarnations inevitable destination. old dilemmas of human motivation over the years and, in particular, of its and incentives are not so easily over- evolution from a group at the radical ave I been unfair to utopia? An come: some people are shirking work, fringe to a large corporation catering to acquaintance who spent several de- others are complaining about the need middle-class fantasies of sophistication Hcades of his life working and living in for more “accountability” and a “sys- and class distinction. In the decades after an intentional community much like the tem to make sure everyone is pulling its incorporation, Oneida Limited (as it ones in these books told me once that their fair share.” Similarly, in Oneida was now known) became one of Amer- utopia was all a matter of perspective. the twin pillars of sexual communism ica’s most profitable silverware compa- The final, articulated goal remains al- and collective ownership give way in nies—“an economic powerhouse and a ways just out of reach. But a lot of good quick sequence, suggesting their frag- leader in the field of industrial relations,” can nonetheless result from aiming for ile interdependence. Family life opens as Wayland-Smith puts it. Initially, the that goal. Small victories mark the path the door to self-dealing clannishness: company tried to hold on to some ves- to ultimate failure. Utopia is always sus- parents hoard for their children; sib- tiges of its founding idealism, by paying ceptible to the tyranny of high expecta- lings and spouses favor one another more progressive wages, among other tions, but it was up to each individual, over the collective. things. By the nineteen-sixties, when an my friend said, to decide whether to Such moments—along with the “efficiency expert” was brought in and focus on the victories or on the failure. repeated tensions over sex, property, the company was listed on the New York This seems close to the perspective and labor, which rent nearly all these Stock Exchange, even these trace prin- taken by Reece and by Jennings, and by places—are reminders that their in- ciples were a distant memory. The nine- at least some of their fellow-travellers habitants, for all their efforts at tran- teen-eighties and successive decades saw on the new left. Jennings writes that scendence, stubbornly remain status- efforts to professionalize management “the mere contemplation of an ideal seeking, gene-propagating, and, quite and a string of acquisitions that loaded polis . . . is a civic act.” Reece approv- simply, selfish creatures. As one mem- the company with debt. Predictably, this ingly quotes a man who tells him that ber of Oneida wrote, in a lucid assess- all led to bankruptcy, in 2006, and the utopia is “always a disappearing hori- ment of the community’s decline, company’s dissolution was accompanied, zon.” In this view, utopia is “less a blue- “Every serious student of social prob- Wayland-Smith writes, by the termina- print than a direction,” as a recent article

70 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 in Jacobin put it. We live in unjust and uncertain times, utopia’s contemporary BRIEFLY NOTED enthusiasts seem to be saying. Surely these nineteenth-century communities have much to teach us about daring to Battle for Bed-Stuy, by Michael Woodsworth (Harvard). In imagine alternatives, about interrupt- the nineteen-sixties, federal policy experts descended on ing what may seem like the ineluctable Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, to investigate the “root march of history. causes” of urban decay. As Woodsworth’s history shows, the As always with utopia, the sentiment neighborhood’s block associations and community coun- is irreproachable. But imagining is the cils made it seem a perfect laboratory for President John- easy part. It is what happens after the son’s War on Poverty, whose aim was to marry grassroots imagining—the movement from what organizing with Great Society bureaucracy. There were no- Ernst Bloch called “abstract utopia” to table successes, such as the Women’s Talent Corps, but more “concrete utopia”—that is most concern- frequently the initiative exposed tensions within the black ing. Modern-day utopians are not blind community and stoked anger at funding delays and con- to the lessons of history. Many of them fusing regulations. Gradually, Bed-Stuy became a lesson in see the limits posed by human nature, the limits of political action, and by 1977 Mayor Edward and recognize that utopia has always Koch was campaigning to rid the city of “poverty pimps.” veered between evil and futility. Yet, at least implicitly, they seem to view the American Revolutions, by Alan Taylor (Norton). This history, price of utopia—the disruptions of sweep- by a two-time Pulitzer winner, surveys the War of Indepen- ing change, the inevitable turmoil of total dence in the context of the wider colonial world of the Amer- overhaul—worth paying. “A revolution icas. Unsurprisingly, the question of race dominates. Taylor is not a dinner party,” as Mao put it. juxtaposes the white revolutionaries’ fears of enslavement to But what if there were another way? imperial power with their dependence upon slavery, and ar- What if lasting change could happen gues that their unity arose from a sense of superiority to other without all the violence and disillusion- races. Weaving accounts by ordinary colonists into the sweep ment and just sheer drama that always of events, Taylor undercuts the narrative of noble patriots stand- seems to accompany utopia? What if ing up to monarchical tyranny. The Founding Fathers emerge the real way forward weren’t a great leap as greedy, hypocritical élites who, as the young nation foun- but grinding, tedious, unglamorously dered under debt and class conflict, set out to put in place a gov- incremental change—what George Eliot ernment that would “weaken the many and empower the few.” called “meliorism”? The zealous conviction of utopians The Art of Rivalry, by Sebastian Smee (Random House). This that the present must be erased, rather portrait of four fiercely competitive friendships at the heart than built upon, fuels their denuncia- of modern art—between Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, tions of pragmatic incrementalism. It Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Wil- leads them to belittle the energies of lem de Kooning, and Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon—is reformism, and to obscure the truth that a tantalizing exploration of the role of passion in art. “Influ- change and reform do occur, even if in ence is erotic,” Smee writes of Bacon’s effect on Freud, ar- a halting and often unfathomable man- guing that he stimulated the ruthless purging of sentimen- ner. Few, if any, major improvements in tality that characterizes Freud’s mature style. What to make recent decades—the spread of democ- of the fact that de Kooning had an affair with Pollock’s girl- racy, say, or the halving of extreme pov- friend after Pollock’s death, he asks? Or that Manet obliter- erty, or the expansion of women’s and ated a likeness of his wife painted by Degas? The tales are L.G.B.T. rights—can be attributed to well known, but Smee extracts new insights from them, com- utopianism. (In fact, the first of these bining sophisticated criticism with psychological acumen. was helped along by the collapse of the twentieth century’s most prominent Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, by Blair Braverman utopian project.) Aiming not at perfec- (Ecco). In this coming-of-age memoir, a native Californian tion but at improvement, accepting the records her obsession with all things Arctic. As a child, she vagaries of human nature as a premise dreamed of the North Pole. At eighteen, she enrolled in a that policy must accommodate, rather Norwegian folk school and learned how to dogsled. The than wish away, meliorism forces a lon- memoir cuts, at times haphazardly, between Braverman’s ger, more calibrated approach. It is not time in Norway and her work as a tour guide on a glacier a path for the impatient, but it has the in Alaska. Her descriptions of the natural world—the “gun- verdict of history on its side. The uto- shot crack of avalanches,” a glacier that “lay like a dropped pian has a better story to tell; the me- towel”—are arresting, and powerfully convey her convic- liorist leaves us with a better world.  tion that “how to be cold” means “how to live.”

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 71 Squad series presents its readers with BOOKS a portrait of contemporary Ireland wob- bling in the aftermath of the Celtic Ti- ger’s collapse. The portrait is, to be sure, TRY TO REMEMBER of extraordinary quality. French, an American who has lived in Ireland for Tana French’s odd, intimate crime fiction. twenty-six years, chooses locations where her characters get pinched be- BY LAURA MILLER tween the desire to cling to history and the urge to jettison it for brighter hori- zons: an archeological site soon to be paved over for a motorway, the ram- shackle Georgian “big house” outside a fading rural village, and the tight- knit working-class Dublin enclave known as the Liberties. Most memo- rable is the setting for her fourth novel, “Broken Harbor”: a “ghost estate,” one of the half-built, barely inhabited sub- urban developments sold to families eager to climb the “property ladder” and then abandoned by developers when the housing market crashed. The corpse in “The Trespasser,” the most recent book in the series, turns up in a Victorian terraced cottage on a non- descript Dublin street, a home fur- nished in the kind of canned, im- personal good taste that would give Detective Antoinette Conway the creeps if she permitted herself such whimsies. She gazes down at the vic- tim, Aislinn Murray, whose straight- ened blond hair and fake tan are the series’ badges of today’s generic young Irish womanhood, and thinks to her- self, “She looks like Dead Barbie.” Yet, however convincing and well observed French’s Ireland feels, it isn’t the kernel of her work’s appeal, the thing that makes the Dublin Murder Squad series the object of an intense, even cultic fascination. French’s read- ll crime novels are social nov- tard earned his insignia. Fictional de- ers like to go online and rank the books els. They can’t help it; without a tectives make handy protagonists be- (six so far, counting “The Trespasser”) societyA to define, condemn, and pun- cause they have license to explore in order of preference, and while there’s ish it, crime itself wouldn’t exist. Even milieus that are off limits to other char- no consensus, it’s taken for granted that the detective fiction that seems most acters. This is part of the genre’s allure: anybody who’s read one will very shortly untethered from real-world concerns— the windows it opens onto the street have read them all. The early copy of those British country-house puzzles in life of Victorian London, the sordid “The Trespasser” that I presented as a which ladies in drop-waisted frocks fringes of postwar Hollywood, the dol- hostess gift this summer was greeted and gentlemen in evening dress gather drums of Sweden’s welfare state, and with ecstasy. The recipient spent much in the drawing room to hear a sleuth the sooty haunts of working-class Ed- of the weekend shuffling around in a dissect the murderer’s devious plot— inburgh. The detective, an intruder, robe with the book clutched to her murmurs of class and history: the provides the friction. chest and a distracted expression on wealth necessary to staff such a house, So it’s not particularly remarkable her face. Most crime fiction is divert- the far-off lands where Colonel Mus- that Tana French’s Dublin Murder ing; French’s is consuming. A bit of the spell it casts can be attributed to the French’s Dublin Murder Squad series inspires cultic devotion in readers. genre’s usual de vices—the tempting 72 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY CIARÁN ÓG ARNOLD conundrum, the red herrings, the slices pled evocation of summer as expe- sacrifices be fearless and without blem- of low and high life—but French is rienced by three quicksilver twelve- ish,” he muses, “and I wonder whether, also hunting bigger game. In her books, year-olds given the run of an ancient whoever or whatever took Peter and the search for the killer becomes en- patch of forest near the small town of Jamie away, it decided I wasn’t good tangled with a search for self. In most Knocknaree: enough.” crime fiction, the central mystery is: These three children own the summer. They The Knocknaree case wrecks Rob’s Who is the murderer? In French’s nov- know the wood as surely as they know the mi- life, his career, his friendship with Cas- els, it’s: Who is the detective? crolandscapes of their own grazed knees; put sie. She takes over the narration of the The Dublin Murder Squad books them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing second Dublin Murder Squad novel, are a mystery series in name only; in and they could find their way out without put- “The Likeness,” in a scenario that is ting a foot wrong. . . . multiple respects, the series transgresses They are running into legend, into sleepover flagrantly incredible. A dead girl, phys- the well-established conventions of the stories and nightmares parents never hear. ically identical to Cassie in every re- genre, the first of which is a reliable Down the faint lost paths you would never find spect, is found in a ruined cottage in continuity in tone and dramatis personae. alone, skidding round the tumbled stone walls, County Wicklow. She carries the I.D. The typical detective series offers its they stream calls and shoelaces behind them of Lexie Madison, a false identity cre- like comet-trails. And who is it waiting on the readers soothing familiarity spiced by riverbank with his hands in the willow branches, ated by Cassie and Frank Mackey back the mild novelty of each installment’s whose laughter tumbles swaying from a branch when Cassie worked for him. Frank crime. The quirks and philosophy of high above, whose is the face in the under- persuades her to go back undercover, the sleuth—Sherlock Holmes’s ratio- growth in the corner of your eye, built of light to masquerade as Lexie, with the sup- nalistic brio, Hercule Poirot’s little gray and leaf-shadow, there and gone in a blink? posed goal of finding the killer. He cells, the glum Nordic professionalism champions this scheme for the sheer of Kurt Wallander—become beloved Three kids go into the woods—two audacity of it. But Cassie’s motives are talismans to his fans. By contrast, each boys and a girl—but only one comes murkier. An orphan and only child, she novel in French’s series is narrated by a out, scraped and bruised, with his concocted Lexie out of scraps of a different detective, someone who ap- clothes ripped and his shoes filled with wished-for childhood, a second self pears as a supporting character in an blood. He has no memory of what hap- who now haunts her like a ghost. earlier book. Several of these narrators pened to him or his friends, who are In pursuit of this phantasm, Cassie quit the squad entirely by the end of never seen again. He grows up, begins moves into the country house where their novel, and one—Frank Mackey, going by his middle name, and becomes the victim lived with four fellow grad the narrator of “Faithful Place”—was a policeman, Rob Ryan, the murder students from Trinity College, an en- never on the Murder Squad to begin detective who narrates “In the Woods.” semble whose close bonds and genteel, with. (Mackey runs Undercover.) The He and his partner, Cassie Maddox, antiquated preoccupations (they read view that the narrator of the previous enjoy a seamless, wisecracking, joyful Dante aloud to each other in the eve- novel has of another detective is often rapport, much like the fellowship he nings) pay homage to Donna Tartt’s revealed to be significantly skewed once shared with his vanished chums. “The Secret History.” The students, when that detective gets to tell his or Then the pair get called in to investi- too, cleave to an impossible paradise: her own story. gate the murder of a twelve-year-old to live together, more or less platoni- girl whose body is found at an arche- cally and without forming significant he mystery genre is a minuet ological excavation in the very woods outside relationships, for the rest of between disruption and order. The where Rob’s friends disappeared. their lives. Cassie falls in love with this murderT sets the story in motion by in- Fair warning: the girl’s killer will be quixotic union, and with the beautiful troducing instability: not just the moral revealed, but what happened to Rob old house that shelters it, even as she wrong of homicide, a horror that re- and his friends in the woods will not. betrays them all. mains fairly notional in most crime fic- Depending on your taste, this is either tion, but the violation posed by the mys- an unforgivable lapse on French’s part lthough social issues aren’t ex- tery itself. Far more unbearable than the or a thrilling defiance of the mystery cluded from French’s first two nov- murder is the fact that we don’t know genre’s complacent faith in the know- els—bothA involve schemes to raze a who did it. To solve this, the detective ability of the world. Rob regains, briefly, rare old property in order to build a must strip away a host of concealments, flashes of childhood memory leading profitable new one—they cluster at the opening up drawers and prying off lids. up to the fateful day, and they are as periphery of a crisis with deeper roots. Small objects are made to speak vol- sweet, golden, and heady as mead. As The images and language are arche- umes, and the culprit is only the last of with many of French’s narrators, Rob typal, the stuff of ballads (“And who is the secrets to be exposed. At the end of clings to an idyll, an interlude of past it waiting on the riverbank . . .”) and the novel, justice is (usually) served, but, perfection to which he longs, hope- fairy tales (Cassie imagines sewing her- even more satisfying, the truth is made lessly, to return. His two lost friends self and Lexie “together at the edges visible and incontrovertible. remain suspended within that moment, with my own hands,” like Wendy re- French’s first novel, “In the Woods,” and his deepest secret is that he envies attaching Peter Pan’s shadow). This is published in 2007, rejected this for- them. “Sometimes I think of the an- the terrain of the gothic, a fictional mula. It opens with a rhapsody, a dap- cient gods who demanded that their mode that, at its best (“Jane Eyre,” the

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 73 novels and stories of Shirley Jackson), Frank believes that his first love, tigate the murder of a teen-age boy on scrutinizes the boundary between the Rosie, a girl whom he arranged to run the grounds of a posh Catholic girls’ inner self and the outer world and finds off to England with but who never school. This time around, the paradise it permeable. Identity is its abiding showed, bailed on him because of his of perfect fellowship belongs to a four- theme, and the house, a proxy for the family. The night they were supposed some of fifteen-year-old girls who at- psyche, is its organizing motif. In “Bro- to elope, Frank’s drunken, violent da tain an unusual power—social and para- ken Harbor,” French’s eeriest novel, a and his battle-axe ma (“your classic normal—by swearing off boys until they family of four is assaulted in a shod- Dublin mammy: five foot nothing of graduate. Stephen, naturally, has no ac- dily constructed suburban three- curler-haired, barrel-shaped don’t- cess to or investment in this circle, so bedroom; only the mother is left alive, mess-with-this, fueled by an endless chapters of his first-person narration and she just barely. At first, Detective supply of disapproval”) pitched a ghastly alternate with third-person present- Mick (Scorcher) Kennedy, a rule-lo ving scene right out in the street. Twenty- tense chapters that are set, confusingly, martinet, and his rookie partner sus- odd years later, a couple of laborers find a year or so before the investigation. pect the dead husband, a financial- Rosie’s suitcase hidden in an aban- The novel’s emotional center is diffused, industry recruiter who was laid off in doned house not far from where the and it loses the tense, marvellous effect the economic bust, unable to find new young lovers were to meet. Further in- of French’s other books, in which the work, and held captive by an under- vestigation unearths her body in the scrim of a faltering narrator makes it water mortgage. But then the detec- basement, and Frank reels: impossible to ascertain whether the su- tives discover video cameras trained on All my signposts had gone up in one pernatural elements are real or merely numerous holes in the house’s walls, blinding, dizzying explosion: my second a manifestation of the detective’s psy- and a leg trap in the attic big enough chances, my revenge, my nice thick anti- family chic distress. The girls’ witchy exploits Maginot line. Rosie Daly dumping my sorry to take down a puma. And then, in one ass had been my landmark, huge and solid as are a thin pop-culture borrowing, and of the many empty houses nearby, they a mountain. Now it was flickering like a mi- teen-agers are so protean to begin with find a hideout like a sniper’s perch, rage and the landscape kept shifting around it, that their identity crises lack the power affording a perfect view into the fam- turning itself inside out and backwards; none to unnerve. ily’s kitchen. Someone outside was peer- of the scenery looked familiar anymore. “The Trespasser” returns to the se- ing into the house while someone in- ries’ first-person form, cinching the side was trying to look even deeper, rime writers who win the ap- novel tightly to Antoinette’s well- into the walls themselves. proval of the literary world tend armored view of the proceedings and Gothics can be absorbing in a differ- Cto earn it with their style. Raymond her panic as that perspective comes un- ent way from whodunits, their inward Chandler and Elmore Leonard fash- done. A friend recently remarked that gaze enthralling but claustrophobic. ioned quintessential American voices— French’s novels always seem to be about This might have become French’s for- tough and melancholy, lean and real estate, which is not surprising in mula, a moody police procedural per- slangy—and whatever you read by ei- Ireland, where identity is often linked fumed by the uncanny and narrated by ther one of them is instantly recogniz- to the land. “The Trespasser” moves a psychologically unstable sleuth. But able. In French’s novels, however, char- away from this metaphor, an indica- her third novel, “Faithful Place,” de- acter trumps all. Each book has a dis- tion that French has figured out how parted decisively from that mood. Nar- to expand the series’ scope without rated by Frank Mackey, the book takes abandoning the intensity of its focus. its title from the working-class cul-de- The only woman on the Murder Squad, sac where Frank grew up. There’s noth- and mixed-race as well, Antoinette has ing spooky in “Faithful Place.” It’s a found it necessary to plow a path for ceaseless, riotous cascade of Irish yam- herself through an unwelcoming world. mering, from the operatic scoldings of “Round Conway’s patch of rough and Frank’s ma to the chatter of his four mine,” Stephen observes, “someone siblings as they squeeze around a table diss es you, you punch hard and fast in the corner pub. Instead of rural and and straight to the face, before they see isolated, Faithful Place is urban and tinct voice, from Rob Ryan’s cultured weakness and sink their teeth into it.” crowded, and Frank, a genuine self- lyricism to the blunt, meticulous fed- While one understands how this in- made man, seems anything but fragile. upness of Antoinette Conway: “The stinct has served her, it doesn’t adapt He has left his past behind and made case comes in, or anyway it comes in well to a professional career. Antoi- a new life as a police detective with a to us, on a frozen dawn in the kind of nette often displays a hair-trigger de- middle-class family. He hasn’t lost the closed-down January that makes you fensiveness that only the easygoing and common touch, by any means—when think the sun’s never going to drag it- persistent Stephen can penetrate. he notes a couple of junkies eying him self back above the horizon.” As with “Faithful Place,” there isn’t for a smash-and-grab, all he has to do Antoinette first appears in French’s a whiff of the otherworldly in “The to scare them off is smile—but he re- fifth and least successful novel, “The Trespasser”; a refusal to truck with such pudiates the old neighborhood and stays Secret Place,” where she partners with rubbish is one of the few qualities that in contact only with his kid sister Jackie. the narrator, Stephen Moran, to inves- Antoinette Conway shares with Frank

74 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 Mackey, along with a jumbo working- class chip on her shoulder. The mur- der of Aislinn Murray dredges up some issues; both women were abandoned by their fathers. Antoinette refuses to be troubled by the similarities. Far more perturbing is the vague, elusive mem- ory she has of once turning away from Aislinn’s pleas, way back when Antoi- nette was still in uniform. Now the young woman lies in her own sitting room with her head bashed in, not far from a table set for a romantic dinner. Antoinette can’t remember what Aislinn asked of her, only that she refused, thinking, “Pathetic.”

ore than any other novel in the Dublin Murder Squad se- Mries, “The Trespasser” concerns the squad itself, the pinnacle of the force and the unit (along with Undercover) “Everybody has a headache since we switched to solar.” to which all Dublin police aspire. A crime writer’s own background often shapes how he or she conceives of the •• art of detection. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a medical doctor, made Sher- she thinks, want to shut her out and sie Maddox, and each of French’s other lock Holmes a scientific diagnostician. watch her fail: “They went shoulder detectives not only narrate a case but French studied drama at Trinity Col- to shoulder and started pushing me navigate one of those rare interludes lege and worked in the theatre for ten out of the pack.” This is Antoinette’s when a human being’s foundations years. Her detectives are all perform- dilemma: she sees enemies and detrac- shift permanently, for better or worse. ers, and the Murder Squad detectives tors everywhere, and she’s not always Each of them is remade by the events have nabbed the lead roles. (There’s wrong. She is the target of bias in at the book relates. As much as readers also much of the fierce, fleeting cama- least some quarters, and someone in may come to love a series detective raderie of the troupe in French’s fasci- the department seems to be steering (few characters have ever been more nation with the tight, almost telepathic the Aislinn Murray investigation in a beloved than Sherlock Holmes), the bonds between partners, siblings, and particular direction. But why? Antoi- genre mostly doesn’t give us this. The the best of friends.) They pay close at- nette and Stephen get saddled with a creator of a series detective has two tention to how they dress, which cars third detective, a fatuous, patronizing options: supply the sleuth with one they drive to the scene, and exactly how showboater whom French deploys to forgettable case after another while the they walk once they get out of them. delicious comic effect. Toward the end character remains essentially unchanged Their interrogations are elaborately of the investigation, Antoinette has or, in the interest of keeping the stakes staged to manipulate their witnesses convinced herself that this man is fak- high, turn the detective’s life into soap and suspects. “Our relationship with ing the signs of a conspiracy to pro- opera, a preposterous string of mur- truth is fundamental but cracked,” Rob voke her into a career- ending error. dered wives, kidnapped children, and Ryan explains, “refracting confusingly She even begins to suspect Stephen of showdowns with diabolical serial kill- like fragmented glass. It is the core of being in on the plot. It’s as if she had ers. Those detectives investigate crimes, our careers, the endgame of every move contracted a psychological autoimm une but French’s pursue mysteries, the kind we make, and we pursue it with strat- disorder: the very qualities that helped that can never be completely solved, egies painstakingly constructed of lies her muscle her way into this dream although we all spend a life’s worth of and concealment and every variation job—her tenacity and bravado, her days in the trying.  on deception.” The same could be said denial of both her own vulnerability 1 of actors and novelists. and her longing for intimacy—have Correction of the Week Antoinette knows how to fight, begun to eat away at her. “Someone From People. and Stephen knows how to mollify; wants me to make a mistake,” she In our Sept. 29 issue the reviewer of the together they form an alliance that thinks. “And I’m a couple hundred Pussycat Dolls’ Doll Domination misquoted provides one of the few pleasures An- miles out to sea with all my systems the lyrics to “When I Grow Up” as saying they toinette takes in the job she once pas- going haywire.” want to have “boobies” when they grow up. sionately coveted. The rest of the squad, Antoinette Conway, Rob Ryan, Cas- The lyrics actually say “groupies.”

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 75 on about twelve hundred cases, during THET AR WORLD the previous decade, of “Jerusalem syn- drome,” in which ordinary tourists were seized by convictions of a sacred mis- HOLY PLACES sion and made public nuisances of them- selves, often by sermonizing at holy Passion, war, and medieval Jerusalem. sites while clad in hotel sheets. In the introduction to the show’s BY PETER SCHJELDAHL catalogue, the curators, Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb, tell of meeting with Theophilus, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem. He asked them, “Whose story do you in- tend to tell?” They answered that they hoped “to tell everyone’s story, and no one’s.” And so they have, to the extent possible, with visual evidence from a time and a place roiled by dozens of ethnic and religious constituencies. Most of the objects were not made in Jeru- salem, and only a quarter of them are from collections there. But their asso- ciation with the city isn’t strained; they evince a gravitational tug that was felt, according to Boehm and Holcomb, by people in regions as far-flung as Ice- land and India. The show documents the medieval city’s allure in sections en- titled “The Air of Holiness” and “The Promise of Eternity,” and follows its consequences in “The Pulse of Trade and Tourism”—involving waves of pil- grims and the commerce that served them—and “The Drumbeat of Holy War.” Regarding the last section, we are led to reflect on the era’s amplifi- cation of the concepts of Christian bel- lum sacrum—“God wills it!” was the Crusader battle cry—and Islamic mil- itary jihad, waged “to uproot the un- erusalem, 1000-1400: Every Peo- and blue are filled with a cumulative believers,” as a Muslim leader declared “ ple Under Heaven,” at the Metro- haze of spotlights, designed not for in the twelfth century. politanJ Museum, is a captivating show drama but for ease of attention; the Jerusalem was among the first con- of some two hundred objects from the show, though immense, won’t exhaust quests of the Arab Caliphate, in 638. era of the Crusades. There are manu- you. There are mural-like video projec- It was a polyglot city, in which Chris- scripts, maps, paintings, sculptures, ar- tions of the city today and brief video tians suffered oppression, when, in 1099, chitectural fragments, reliquaries, ce- interviews with representative citizens. armies of the First Crusade took it and ramics, glass, fabrics, astrolabes, jewelry, The ambience is conducive less to learn- massacred nearly all the Muslim and weapons, and, especially, books—in nine ing than to dreaming. This feels right Jewish inhabitants. The lavishly reno- alphabets and twelve languages. The for a history that is incomprehensible vated Church of the Holy Sepulchre, works, from sixty lenders in more than without reference to religious passions. on the supposed site of Christ’s Cru- a dozen countries, express the Jewish, I am reminded of Marianne Moore’s cifixion and Resurrection, stood near Islamic, and Christian cultures of the description of poems as “imaginary gar- the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome time, the three great Abrahamic faiths dens with real toads in them.” Jerusa- of the Rock, built on the ruins of the sharing a city holy to them all, when lem was then, as it remains for many, Hebrew Second Temple, which were they weren’t bloodily contesting it. The as much an idea as a locale. In 2000, temporarily converted to a palace and installation is lovely: rooms in gray the British Journal of Psychiatry reported a church, respectively. (The rock en- shrined is thought to be the one on Detail from a choir book depicting the prophet Isaiah outside the city. which Abraham was to have sacrificed BEAULIEU AND MARIE-ARMELLE JERUSALEM, MUSEUM, TERRA SANCTA COURTESY

76 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 Isaac, and from which, in 621, Muham- dated 1346. Another illustration, in a mad ascended to Heaven during his beautiful Italian Torah, of sacrificial night journey.) Muslims led by Sala- rites in the courtyard of the Temple, is din, the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, attributed to the place-holding “Mas- retook the city in 1187, and several sub- ter of the Barbo Missal.” sequent Crusades failed to achieve more The assumptions of the pre-Renais- than fleeting footholds there. But a re- sance world are irremediably alien to gime of general tolerance, instituted by most of us. But this show, more than Saladin and continued by Mamluk sul- any other that I can immediately re- tans, prevailed throughout most of the call, closes mental circuitry between following two centuries, drawing visi- then and now, owing to an exquisitely tors including the Spanish poet Judah managed sense of collective drives and al-Harizi, who characterized his days emotions that have not ceased to in- in Jerusalem, in the early thirteenth cen- fluence human affairs. The first of two tury, as “carved from rubies, cut from ravishing stained-glass roundels—the the trees of life, or stolen from the stars only ones surviving of fourteen Cru- of heaven. And each day we would walk sade windows from the twelfth-century about on its graves and its monuments Church of St. Denis, north of Paris— to weep over Sion.” shows mounted knights on the march As a cultural center, the city was to Jerusalem. In the second, three of more a destination than a fount of cre- them receive crowns of martyrdom ativity. Medieval invention from all from the hand of God. The missing points of the compass generated echoes middle of the story is evoked by an un- in the area, with such hybrid effects dated, probably Egyptian, watercolor as Christian symbolism engraved on a of a battle that abounds in severed heads dagger-scabbard in a fabulously in- and legs. The rumble of violence ren- tricate Arab style. The effigy on the ders sharply poignant the show’s more tomb of a Crusader knight—French, prevalent invocations of piety and peace. from the thirteenth century—finds him In the uneasy peace of today, there armed with a Chinese sword. (How he are tensions even within communities got it, by purchase or in combat, is of faith. In one of the video interviews, among the time’s innumerable untold an amusing Armenian Orthodox priest, tales.) The show’s wealth of calligraphic Father Samuel Aghoyan, says that at books includes translations between the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which languages and faiths. Even a non-bib- his congregation shares with Catholic liophile like me cannot help being riv- and Greek Orthodox ones, he must eted by the beauties and the signifi- watch that the services of those sects do cance of the tomes on display. Equally not run over their allotted time, because striking is the historical drama of such the extra length may set a precedent and documents as a letter from the Span- “become tradition.” (“Sometimes we ish philosopher and scholar Maimon- argue with each other, like members of ides, in 1170, seeking funds to ransom a family,” he says, in a tone not suggest- Jewish hostages held in the Holy Land. ing mild demurrals.) More astringently, The aesthetic appeal of the exhib- the writer Ruby Namdar testifies to the its is continual and intense, but con- “wound that, deep inside, never healed,” centration on it can feel disrespectfully for Jews, of the lost Temple. The mer- indulgent. Message, not medium, is chant Bilal Abu Khalaf displays the fab- the motive of even the most decora- rics and liturgical garments that he sells tive work, in which visual pleasure serves to groups from all three religions— to enhance belief and, perhaps, to give an ecumenical business that he main- a foretaste of Paradise. Partly, this is tains, it seems, with an edge of nervous true of all properly regarded medieval defiance. “I hope in the future to be art and design, from the time before much better,” he says of the city. Simi- Giotto and Duccio began insinuating larly wistful, and gently remonstrating, personal style into painting. Most of is the Franciscan friar Father Eugenio the work in the show is not credited Mario Alliata, who says, “You know, Je- to a named artist. An exception is Sar- rusalem, it is called the Holy City, but gis Pidzak, an Armenian who made it is really made Holy City only if we superb illuminations for a Gospel book are a little bit holy in it.” 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 77 bandmates and a girlfriend were in POP MUSIC shambles. He retreated to his father’s cabin, in the woods of Wisconsin, where, after spending a few weeks drinking WORD OF MOUTH beer and watching movies, he picked up his acoustic guitar, wrote some songs Bon Iver’s new voice. that reflected his bleak, wintry surround­ ings, and began experimenting with new ABY HU HSU ways of singing them. The odd thing about Vernon’s music, which fans related to because of its folksy vulnerability, was how much he withheld. His songs felt authentic and intimate, yet they were filled with in­ vented places and characters, private symbols, and impressionistic scraps of language. Emma wasn’t a person, he ex­ plained, but a foggy, wallowing state of mind. Do we listen to a musician’s mel­ ancholy songs because we want him to feel better, or because it’s comforting to know that people who are famous and accomplished don’t have it all fig­ ured out, either? Vernon followed “For Emma” with “Bon Iver, Bon Iver” (2011), a Grammy­winning album of exqui­ site, forlorn chamber pop. This time, he was surrounded by a band, which included his longtime collaborators the percussionists Matt McCaughan and Sean Carey, the saxophonist Michael Lewis, and the guitarist Mike Noyce. The pained vocals, the pastoral arrange­ ments: Vernon seemed to have perfected a studied approach to writing and sing­ ing sad songs.

ernon’s voice has become one of the most recognizable instruments Justin Vernon’s voice is one of the most recognizable instruments in indie music. Vin indie music, and not just on his own albums. During Bon Iver’s fre­ inging in falsetto is, by defini­ you couldn’t make out exactly what quent hiatuses, Vernon has recorded tion, a kind of false projection into he was saying. and toured with Gayngs, a largely Mid­ Sthe world. About a decade ago, when “For Emma,” which was released in western supergroup devoted to eight­ Justin Vernon, the principal member 2007, became the type of album that ies soft rock, and Volcano Choir, a Wis­ of Bon Iver, was recording the songs fans believe has magical, healing qual­ consin rock band that specializes in a that became the band’s début album, ities, an aura that had something to do kind of chugging, open­road ambience. “For Emma, Forever Ago,” he real­ with the record’s glum backstory. Ver­ He has lent his falsetto to the supple ized that ranging just above his usual non had lived the kind of quaint, rooted synth­pop of Poliça and to the down­ register made it easier to sing about existence that seems increasingly rare, cast electronic balladry of James Blake. memories that were otherwise too given the cosmopolitan ambitions of But his most famous collaborator— painful to recount. Vernon’s falsetto most professional musicians. Born and and the one whose influence resounds caused an obvious strain on his voice, raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Ver­ through Bon Iver’s new album, “22, making it sound weary and brittle. His non moved to Raleigh, North Caro­ A Million”—is Kanye West. Several recordings gave the impression of lina, with some friends, to try to make years ago, West became enamored of someone forcing himself to venture it as a band. Within a year, about a quar­ “Woods,” an unusual Bon Iver track far outside his comfort zone; they com­ ter of which Vernon spent bedridden that Vernon sang through Auto­Tune, municated a sense of solitude and with mononucleosis and then with a and invited him to collaborate on his drift, even if, as was often the case, liver infection, his relationship with his 2010 album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted

78 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY MIKKEL SOMMER Fantasy.” West recently called Vernon seemed too serious to indulge. It’s an tracks; the centrality of Auto­Tune to his “favorite living artist.” attempt at a new language, as evidenced Caribbean pop and Afrobeats, a style of Earlier this year, Vernon and West by the album’s unusual song titles and music that often sounds like a more ec­ made guest appearances on “Friends,” hip­hop­inspired approach to produc­ static version of American R. & B.; the a song by Francis and the Lights, which tion. “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ” and possibility that T­Pain, who popularized featured Vernon, West, and Francis “33 ‘GOD’ ” are built on crunchy dig­ the use of pitch­shifting software, might singing through Prismizer, a software ital drum programs. Samples abound: be one of the most influential artists of program that, like Auto­Tune or the one, of Stevie Nicks singing “Wild our time. Modified voices are the per­ vocoder, makes sounds bright and Heart,” is sped up to a high­pitched fect sound for a moment when old or­ syrupy. Melodies pulse and glow, sup­ squiggle; in another, the Scottish pop thodoxies about identity, gender, and au­ posedly following the dispersive prop­ singer Paolo Nutini belts out a line thority are slipping away. erties of a prism. After fiddling with about finding God and religion, mak­ We cherish the capacity of voices to Francis’s Prismizer, Vernon enlisted his ing plain Vernon’s riddle­like yearning; come together, to balance harmonies engineer, Chris Messina, to tweak the elsewhere, he weaves an Eau Claire or resolve one another’s melodies. On software. Eventually, Messina created radio jingle into a synth line, a nod to “22, A Million,” synthesizers and sam­ the Messina, a combination of soft­ the locals. plers help Vernon shake his despon­ ware and gear that is capable of har­ Throughout, Vernon tests the lim­ dency, adding layers, taking his voice monizing voices and instruments live. its of the Messina. One of the album’s apart and putting it back together, mak­ (The success of the first two Bon Iver most startling tracks, “____45_____,” ing his words gleam. As the story goes, albums has allowed Vernon to make is a duel between Vernon’s voice and Vernon began conceptualizing “22, A investments in and around Eau Claire: Lewis’s saxophone. The sax is fed Million” while on a solo trip through he set up April Base, the studio Mes­ through the synthesizer, where it’s the Greek islands. It was intended as a sina oversees, became part­owner of a sped up and slowed down before set­ vision quest, but the quiet and the iso­ boutique hotel, and helped found an tling into a gorgeous flutter. On “715 ­ lation only amplified his blues. He kept annual summer music festival.) CR∑∑KS,” Vernon’s sentences dissolve humming a line to himself: “It might “22, A Million” is an astonishing and into digital purrs. There are no other be over soon.” Those words open the strange album, the sound of a man instruments, just Vernon cooing and album; they’re roughed up by software, trying to figure out what he can make pulsing and raging against the Mes­ and greeted by a regal saxophone, a once he has broken a kaleidoscope into sina, trying to outrace the imperative sampled whisper from a Mahalia Jack­ its constituent slivers. Mostly, it feels of harmony. A patch of static almost son tune, and resplendent guitars—all like an attempt to erase the flesh­and­ scratches out the words “alimony but­ sounds suggesting a range of possibil­ bone authenticity that made Vernon terfly” on “29 #Strafford APTS,” a song ities beyond Vernon’s despair. “It might into an icon. Vernon’s falsetto is still built on acoustic guitar, piano, strings, be over soon” could be something you identifiable through the digital scrim, and Vernon’s untreated voice, which tell yourself to get through a tough time; but now the words wobble beyond his feels almost too raw to leave out in or perhaps it could serve as a reminder control. Sometimes it sounds like a one­ the open. to stay in the moment a bit longer. man gospel chorus; at other times as if Speech synthesizers often make a The most enchanting aspect of “22” it came from a distant crater. Vernon’s song sound as though someone were is the way that Vernon’s voice grows in lyrics suggest narrative episodes, or running a leaky fluorescent highlighter confidence, shedding its affectations, glimpses into someone else’s intimacy: across its lyrics. There are those who digital or otherwise. Maybe the past is fragments of an argument, a quick peek think that mediating voices through finally past. As with all of Bon Iver’s into a room at the Ace Hotel, bundling technology is somehow inauthentic, music, the scenes that compelled “22” “your sister” into a cab, hallucinations that when we sand away the coarse remain out of reach. When he played in fields of tall reeds, a cry for help to edges of our voices, or speak into boxes the album for a roomful of journalists his own personal “A­T eam.” “I’d be as that make us sound like robots, we earlier this month, he said that he didn’t happy as hell if you’d stay for tea,” he lose touch with what makes us human. even want his picture taken anymore. sings on “33 ‘GOD,’ ” with a kind of Rock music has generally remained “Faces are for friends only,” he explained. glistening desperation whose context hostile to these kinds of innovations. The lustrous final track, “00000 Mil­ we can’t quite grasp. But there’s nothing particularly natu­ lion,” is just Vernon, a piano, and a faint When Bon Iver first emerged, Ver­ ral about a singer’s murmur or a soft sample of the Irish folksinger Fionn non seemed like an artist from the past cry rising above a full band. These, Regan longing for “where the days have transported to the present, his selfies too, come out of recording studios, no numbers.” “I hurry bout shame and rendered as daguerreotypes. But the and are tricks of signal processing and I worry bout a worn path / And I wan­ ready­made idioms of folk and rock amplification. der off / Just to come back home,” Ver­ that inspired his first couple of albums The voice has become the focus of non sings. He’s never sounded this are no longer sufficient. Instead, “22,” the most vital experiments in pop music unburdened, this plainly iridescent. It which makes generous use of the Mes­ today—the way that the vocals of rap­ makes one wish that there were a ma­ sina, is filled with a sense of adven­ pers like Kanye, Future, and Young Thug chine through which we could pass our ture and mischief that his older works sound mangled and gooey over their words, and fix ourselves. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 79 Just for the record, then: the new film, THE CURRENT CINEMA directed by Antoine Fuqua, rehashes John Sturges’s 1960 classic, teasing us throughout with the drumbeat of Elmer HELP! Bernstein’s original score, and refusing to unveil the great tune until the final “The Magnificent Seven” and “Goat.” credits. The Sturges production was it- self a Western transplant of Kurosawa’s BY ANTHONY LANE “Seven Samurai” (1954), and it led to a diminuendo of sequels—“Return of the Magnificent Seven” (1966), “Guns of the Magnificent Seven” (1969), and “The Magnificent Seven Ride!” (1972). That’s an awful lot of magnificence to have at your back, so what does Fuqua bring to the party? The most obvious contribution is the ethnic range of his cast. It was difficult to ignore the pa- tronizing tone of Sturges’s tale, in which helpless Mexican villagers in white blouses are saved and blessed by the in- tervention of American tough guys, so the new version is wise to recruit a Latino gunslinger to the front line. From then on, however, surprisingly scant use is made of him, or of his Asian comrade, the implication being that a redressing of the racial imbalance is compensation The band of renegades from Antoine Fuqua’s version of the classic Western. enough, and that, with the right actors in place, the movie’s moral work is done. ay out West, in 1879, the town film rounding up a suitable herd of ren- Maybe that’s true; maybe the virtues of of Rose Creek is under threat. egades. These include Josh Faraday multiculturalism, on film, are best en- AW land grabber named Bartholomew (Chris Pratt), a cardsharp; Goodnight forced by not making a big deal of them. Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) has arrived Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), a marks- That is certainly the case with Chis- with a squadron of heavies and made man who saw action at Antietam; his olm, whose color, like that of Morgan the place his own. To be honest, he sidekick, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), Freeman’s character in Clint Eastwood’s doesn’t look well. Pasty and perspiring, who keeps a lethal weapon in his hair; “Unforgiven” (1992), goes unmentioned. he sniffs a lot, as if scenting gold in the Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), a Washington is not the first African- nearby mine, and his eyelids droop with wild man of the woods; Vasquez (Man- American to be numbered among the fatigue as he issues his commands. Set- uel Garcia-Rulfo), an outlaw; and a Co- Seven (Bernie Casey was, in “Guns of ting fire to the church perks him up, manche warrior, Red Harvest (Martin the Magnificent Seven”), but, with the but not a lot. I reckon you could de- Sensmeier), whose horse wears even nonchalant blaze of his stardom, he’s feat Bogue by sneezing in his general more face paint than he does. That the first to captain the gang. There re- direction, but for some reason the makes seven fighters in all—or, judg- mains, nonetheless, a hint of missed op- townsfolk are terrified, and one of them ing by volume, eight, since Horne counts portunities, and it would be a privilege asks, “Who’s going to stand up to a as two persons rather than one. As Far- to watch him, one day, in a film that man like that?” aday observes, watching him on the does delve into the ethnic perplexities Well, the movie is “The Magnifi- move, “I believe that bear is wearing of the period. The year in which “The cent Seven,” so you know the answer. people’s clothes.” Magnificent Seven” is set, for instance, Enter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Wash- Pratt seems happier firing off lines was the year of the Exodusters—tens ington), described as a warrant officer like that than wielding a pistol, and he of thousands of black migrants escap- from Wichita, Kansas. His name re- gives the impression that killing people ing the harshness of the South for a calls the hero of “Chisum,” a John onscreen is somehow uncalled for. That’s new and, in some ways, no less chal- Wayne picture from 1970, and, in terms a problem for “The Magnificent Seven,” lenging life in Kansas. of fashion sense, Chisolm goes for the which calls for little else, yet Pratt re- Traces of real history are hard to spot all-black look, as modelled by Hopalong laxes the movie, as he did last year’s “Ju- in Fuqua’s Western, but there isn’t much Cassidy. The most pressing task, of rassic World,” and his presence will bring evidence of a real Western, either. You course, is the formation of a team, and in younger viewers who neither know sense that an entire genre, far from being Chisolm spends the first half of the nor care about the ancestry of the plot. revitalized, is being plundered for handy

80 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY BILL BRAGG tips. The closeup of a shooter’s fist, curl­ widow of a fellow from Rose Creek. are ground through the mill. What ing around the butt of his holstered fire­ He was murdered by Bogue, in full makes the hazing onerous to watch is arm in readiness for the draw; the swing view of Emma, and it is she who sum­ not just the bestial particulars—new­ of saloon doors, admitting the quiet mons the Seven. “So you seek revenge,” bies are bound, beaten, hooded, caged, stranger whose very entrance halts the Chisolm says. “I seek righteousness,” and forced to wrestle in mud, submit chatter within; the coward who skips she replies. “But I’ll take revenge.” The to sexual mockery, and drink until they town on the eve of battle, only to return line is delivered straight, all stubborn retch—but the fact that they choose to in the redeeming hour of need: these resolve and no irony, and just for a mo­ suffer so. To pose “Guantánamo style,” and other details pop up in “The Mag­ ment you catch the authentic flavor of as one tormentor puts it, is to submit, nificent Seven” not because they pro­ God­fearing desperation that the saga of your own free will, to a regime that mote its emotional cause, or whip the demands. It’s a shame that she gets has no authority. Apart from a school narrative along, but as rusty quotations. saddled, at the end, with a laughable administrator, a couple of cops, and a Sergio Leone’s famous crane shot in voice­over, which is tacked on as one quick shot of the brothers’ mother and “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968), last tribute to the effort made by her father, silent at dinner, adults are no following Claudia Cardinale’s arrival at saviors. “It was,” she tells us—a weighty more in evidence here than they are in a railroad station, observing her through pause—“magnificent.” If you say so, “Lord of the Flies.” a window, then rising seraphically over a Ma’am. Neel’s cast is terrific, from Schnetzer roof to survey the wider scene, made and Flaherty, with their soft and soul­ audiences swoon, and not just because he opening credits of “Goat” ful—and thus punchable—faces, to Jake of Ennio Morricone’s score. They felt present an extraordinary sight. We Picking, who plays the leader of the that they were witnessing both the start seeT young white men, naked from the frat pack, and whose Popeye arms and of something—the bustle of a newborn waist up, snarling and clapping in slow buggy unblinking eyes make him both town, in a promised land—and an elegy motion. Their roaring is silent; all we a monster and, if you stand aside from for a past that was irretrievably lost. hear is the thrum of an electronic score. the melee, a bad joke. But standing When Fuqua tries the same trick, it What has ignited them is unclear, but aside is no easier at Brookman than it seems merely like the kind of move that they seem to be goading something on. will be in the corporate world outside. a director in his position, given such a So elemental is the display that you “I can’t quit,” Will says. “If you quit, setting, ought to make. wonder: Don’t these guys belong in what else is there? You’re just another On the other hand, he does have National Geographic? guy who couldn’t hack it.” The movie Vincent D’Onofrio: a mountainous Needless to say, they are students. is many things: an evil twin to Rich­ figure squeezed into a shrunken role, “Goat” is a feature film, directed by An­ ard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants and making the most of it. Having drew Neel, and we are glimpsing a fra­ Some!!,” from earlier this year; a bruis­ twice played Orson Welles, D’Onof­ ternity at play. Most of the action un­ ing account of brotherly love; and rio has chosen to import a Wellesian folds at Brookman, a fictitious college a fetid handbook to a culture (not bulk to “The Magnificent Seven,” at which Brad (Ben Schnetzer), still confined to higher education) that is though without the matching rumble smarting from a random assault and nourished by the all­male terror of of intonation. Instead, Jack Horne’s robbery back home, arrives as a fresh­ being thought anything but strong and voice is a high and husky affair, and man. His older brother, Brett (Nick exceptional. If you are college­bound, you yearn—sadly, in vain—for Fuqua Jonas), is already there, proudly enrolled go and see “Goat” first, but for God’s and his screenwriters, Nic Pizzolatto in Phi Sigma Mu, and hoping that sake don’t take your parents.  and Richard Wenk, to furnish Horne Brad will follow suit. And so to Hell with a tall tale. No less striking is Haley Week, as Brad, his roommate, Will NEWYORKER.COM Bennett, who plays Emma Cullen, the (Danny Flaherty), and a bunch of others Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 3, 2016 81 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 Frank Cotham, must be received by Sunday, October 2nd. The finalists in the September 19th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the October 17th 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

“Try to look surprised.” Kathleen A. Moore, Toronto, Ont. “He wants to know if you can move your seat up.” “He’s not reinventing it—he’s making it great again.” Rebecca Holzschuh, San Francisco, Calif. Tim Noble, Brooklyn, N.Y.

“The hole in the middle was my idea.” Jonathan Fast, Greenwich, Conn.