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.